In 1974, Bob Clark released two horror films that reflected the anxieties running rampant in North America: Black Christmas and Deathdream.
In 1974—the year Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of Watergate, and just one year after the United States withdrew from the Vietnam War, having wasted 19 years, five months, four weeks, one day, and nearly 60,000 American lives—confidence in and trust of the United States government was in a shambles. Facing failure for what many perceived to be the first time, average Joe Americans found their spirits wavering, like a shed of rotting wood about to suffer a storm.
That sense of morality and the honest acceptance that sometimes evil things happen, maybe for no discernible reason, or for reasons that are themselves evil, also pervades and propels. An American soldier named Andy is slain in Vietnam, another life wasted, betrayed by the country whose jingoism he was forced to defend. The film opens in the gloomy haze of chaotic jungle as plumes of fire consume the earth and bullets tear through the night and human bodies.
Clark understands the power of his performers’ faces, with many shots of them and them alone, talking, listening, staring at the next realm. He also makes the small town, with its thick pools of shadow, seem realer than real with stylized chiaroscuro and dream-swoony shots and editing—images of traditional unamazing American small town life, and images of that small town torn from the rules of reality.
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