The film received some criticism at the time for its unabashed one-sidedness, but with hindsight its approach seems reasonable, given the nobility of its intentions and the severity of the matter at hand. Peter Davis’s Oscar-winning documentary is an anguished but lucidly reasoned plea for America’s withdrawal from Vietnam, completed and released shortly before the fall of Saigon in 1975. The imaginative way in which director Bob Clark riffs on vampire mythology also anticipates George A. The film was completed a full five years before the issue of US veterans reintegrating back into society would be tackled more directly in The Deer Hunter and Coming Home. It soon transpires that Andy is more than simply war-weary – he can in fact only maintain the façade of humanity by feasting on flesh and blood.ĭeathdream may be hokey and riddled with baffling plot holes, but viewed today it seems remarkably prescient. Jacobs’ 1902 short story ‘The Monkey’s Paw’, the film depicts a small-town family struggling to cope with the bizarre and erratic behaviour of their soldier son Andy (Richard Backus), who arrives home from Vietnam shortly after being declared missing in action and presumed dead. This scuzzy 70s shocker is a bracingly inventive rumination on what would in years to come be recognised as combat-induced post-traumatic stress disorder. While the likes of Dang Nhat Minh’s When the Tenth Month Comes (1984) and Ho Quang Minh’s Karma (1985) have screened internationally to general acclaim, and offer valuable insight into the war from a domestic perspective, neither is currently available on DVD in the UK. Notably absent from the list are any films from Vietnam itself. What follows are 10 films that deserve consideration alongside The Deer Hunter as Vietnam war greats. And, of course, the 19-year conflict has also provided rich material for documentarians, including pioneering work by heavy-hitters such as Errol Morris and Werner Herzog.Įach of the recommendations included here is available to view in the UK. The war has served as inspiration for less ‘respectable’ genre fare, from the gung-ho antics of Rambo to the schlock horror of House (1986). Over the course of the following decade, American filmmakers lined up to dissect the war and its aftermath, with results ranging from Francis Ford Coppola’s ostentatiously ambitious Apocalypse Now (1979) to Barry Levinson’s crowd-pleasing comedy Good Morning, Vietnam (1987). The two films, both major critical and commercial hits, went head-to-head at the 1979 Oscars, and jointly dominated the major categories: The Deer Hunter took home five awards, including best picture and director, while Coming Home was recognised for its screenplay and lead performances by Jon Voight and Jane Fonda. Both films were decidedly anti-war in their outlook, reflective of a broader growing consensus in America that the country’s involvement in Vietnam had been largely unjustified. Alongside Hal Ashby’s Coming Home, released the same year, Michael Cimino’s 1978 Vietnam war epic The Deer Hunter marked the first serious attempt by a Hollywood studio filmmaker to explore the conflict’s lasting consequences from the perspective of surviving veterans.