Despite the 1974 release year, Dead of Night (available on DVD as Deathdream) was actually filmed immediately after Bob Clark's and Alan Ormsby's first horrific fare called Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1973). Joining them for his first movie as makeup artist was Tom Savini. These three in particular will garner much acclaim during their careers - Black Christmas, Porky's and A Christmas Story for Bob Clark; Alan Ormsby would script My Bodyguard, Cat People, and The Substitute; Savini would move on to do Martin, Deranged, and the seminal FX classic, Dawn of the Dead, among many others. Until then, they all honed their skills doing these two early movies and used this experience as their stepping stone. As with any sophomoric work, there are glaring gaps in the plot and amateurish camerawork that will keep this from being a true classic but, casting great actors, an eerie story, good pacing, climactic ending and sheer luck keeps this from being grade-Z crapfest.

The story is inspired by the W.W. Jacobs short story "The Monkey's Paw" from his 1902 anthology The Lady of the Barge. In this story, a father foolishly uses an Indian token to wish for money. The effects of the wish come true but at the expense of his son's life - the company the son worked for compensated them for his work-related death in the exact amount he had wished for! After burying him, the mother makes the father use his second wish to bring back their son from the dead. (Read the rest of the story to find out the ending.) It is easy to see how this influences the plot to Dead of Night but Ormsby's script scans over this and leaves too much behind. For one, how does Andy get back if he is killed in battle? Was he merely wounded and accidentally reported as KIA? If he was merely wounded, how did he recuperate so quickly? Why does he need blood to stay alive? Was there some Vietnamese curse or cure that made him this way? Was it a mother's unbridled desire to have her son back make him alive? Way too many questions are brought up at the beginning of the movie but it does move forward without care. The lesson learned here - and from its origin - is that every wish comes at a price.

Besides the major plot holes, Bob Clark's camerawork at this stage was a bit to be desired. There was overuse of closeups, many shots were out of focus, and some scenes weren't framed properly. Bad lighting was probably meant to cover up a lot of these faults but it didn't. All is not lost when Bob is shooting the kill scenes and the penultimate car chase scene.

I thought the casting for the movie was superb. Bob Clark was dead on (pun intended) in picking Richard Backus as the disconnected and zombie-ish "Andy Brooks". Supposedly during his audition, Richard was able to demonstrate Andy's character enough to freak out Bob into giving him the part. Bob was also a big fan of John Marley and cast him as Andy's frustrated dad "Charles" because of his Oscar-nominated role in The Godfather, released earlier in the same year (you will remember him as the one waking up with a severed horse head in his bed.) In my opinion, Lynn Carlin had the most difficult role in the film as Andy's mother, "Christine" and she pulled it off spectacularly. The blind devotion to her son contradicted her knowledge that he was no longer who he used to be. She was also willing to sacrifice the rest of the family to keep him alive...that's gotta be some good acting! The rest of the cast such as soap star Henderson Forsythe ("Dr. Philip Allman"), Anya Ormsby ("Cathy Brooks" and Alan Ormsby's wife at the time), and Jane Daly ("Joanne") all very much carried their own and added to the realism and believability of the film. Hell, the dog even did a good acting job!

Tom Savini happened to be in the right place at the right time. He bumped into one of the crew working on this film and had his portfolio with him. After seeing his work, he was immediately asked by Bob to come aboard. This movie was made better for it. Yes, it was his first film work but that didn't stop him from creating some very good FX along with Alan Ormsby. The "zombie" effects late in the film is the precursor to what Savini is best known for.

You cannot really categorize Dead of Night as a zombie nor voodoo movie and is more of a hybrid of the two. As would be expected from early works of their careers, this movie does have its flaws but they are minor compared to the acting and FX and are easily overlooked. The combination of Alan Ormsby and a very young Tom Savini are very good and you will see early signs of Savini's godly skills in making dead people look ever so good. This movie could easily have been much worse in any other director's hands. Clark/Ormsby/Savini fans notwithstanding, everyone should find this one on DVD and enjoy these wizards' early work. This could be a late-night classic if word got out!