Fright
Night-Retrospective and Review
Fright
Night
1985
Director- Tom Holland
Cast- Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Roddy McDowell, Amanda
Bearse, Stephen Geoffreys, Jonathan Stark, Dorothy Fielding, Art Evans
Charlie
Brewster (William Ragsdale) is an average teenage boy trying to pass high
school and talk his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) into having sex. His all
American adolescence is interrupted by a string of grisly murders in the town.
Charlie
gets two new next door neighbors; suave and debonair Jerry Dandridge (Chris
Sarandon) and his apparent live in handyman Billy Cole. One night, while being
the voyeur, Charlie witnesses Jerry in the act of sucking a beautiful girl’s
blood and now Charlie knows the secret- Jerry is a vampire!. What’s worse,
Jerry knows that Charlie knows.
Jerry
shows up in Charlie’s bedroom the next night and offers Charlie a deal: you
forget me and I’ll forget you. Now me personally, I’d take that deal in a heartbeat,
but I guess Charlie had something to prove. He attacks Jerry, thus sealing his
fate. Jerry vows to return the next night and destroy Charlie.
Charlie
tells his girlfriend Amy and his best friend Ed (Stephen Geoffreys in a
wonderful, memorable performance) that he plans to kill his neighbor. Amy and
Ed both assume Charlie has lost his mind and enlist some celebrity aid to keep
Charlie from committing murder.
Peter
Vincent (Roddy McDowell) is a former horror icon in the vein of Hammer films.
His acting career is over and now he works as a local late night TV horror host
of a show called (you guessed it), Fright Night. It just so happens that
Charlie is a big Peter Vincent fan so they hope that Peter can convince Charlie
that he is wrong.
Peter,
Charlie, Amy and Ed all show up at Jerry’s house. Jerry is immediately enamored
with Amy, who reminds him of a long lost love. Things don’t go as planned when
Peter begins to suspect that Charlie is right and Jerry is a vampire. After they leave his home, Jerry stalks them,
turning Ed and Amy into vampires. If Charlie wants his girlfriend back, he and
Peter will have to go back and face the undead on their home turf.
This was
an incredibly clever film. It had the perfect blend of horror and comedy. It
had a smart script with witty dialogue. This was Tom Holland’s directorial
debut but he showed himself to be a natural horror director. He went on to
direct several other horror films including Child’s Play.
The real
genius of this film is in the casting. As already stated, Stephen Geoffreys as “Evil”
Ed created an immediate fan favorite character. He was offered a spot in the
sequel but turned it down for the lead role in 976-EVIL ( A bad move in my
opinion. 976-EVIL was good, but was a much lower profile film and not nearly as
entertaining as Fright Night 2).
Most people probably know
Amanda Bearse as the bitchy Marcy D'Arcy from Married With Children. In Fright
Night she is the perfect all American nice girl, that is, until she gets turned
and then she becomes a smoking hot succubus.
Chris Sarandon is the
perfect sexy vampire. Most people don’t think of Sarandon when listing the
pantheon of Scream Kings but he has an impressive list or genre credits. In
addition to Fright Night and Child’s Play, He starred in the Satanic thriller
The Sentinel, the Lovecraft adaptation, The Resurrected, the horror-comedy
Bordello of Blood not to mention he was the voice of Jack Skelington in
Nightmare Before Christmas.
The real feather in the
casting cap though is Roddy McDowell. I think it was his best role and Roddy
had a lot of great roles. He’s charismatic, endearing, and funny. His character
was named for Peter Cushing and Vincent Price and Roddy conjures up the
coolness Cushing and the camp of Price wonderfully.
This is one of the best
vampire films ever made, one of the best movies of the 1980s and (in my
opinion) one of the best horror movies ever. In short, I think this belongs in
every movie library.
Fright
Night 2
1988
Director- Tommy Lee Wallace
Cast- Julie Carmen, William Ragsdale, Roddy McDowell,
Brian Thompson, Traci Lind, Jon Gries, Russell Clark, Merritt Butrick, Ernie
Sabella
This
sequel picks up three years after the first film. In part 1, Charlie was the
one trying to convince everyone that vampires were real. In part 2 he has
become the unbeliever. Three years of therapy (and a healthy dose of denial)
have convinced him that Jerry Dandridge wasn’t a vampire but a serial killer
that used tricks and mass hypnosis to convince Charlie and Peter of his
vampiric nature.
Charlie
and Amy have gone their separate ways (Amanda Bearse was busy shooting Married With
Children) and Charlie has a new girlfriend, Alex (Traci Lind). Charlie has
avoided contact with Peter Vincent who still very much believes in vampires.
Charlie
is in college now and life seems to be good until a chance encounter with a
glamorous woman, Regine. Unbeknownst to Charlie, not only is she a vampire, but
she’s Jerry Dandridge’s brother. She has sought out Charlie and Peter for
revenge. She plans to just kill Peter but for Charlie she has a more sinister plan.
She will enslave him, turn him into an immortal vampire, and then torture him
for all eternity (Hell hath no fury as they say).
Regine
bites Charlie and begins the slow turning process but he doesn’t realize it,
believing his memories of the event to be a dream. He slowly begins to see the
truth and has to enlist Peter’s help. In
a twist from the first movie, instead of Charlie and Peter rescuing Charlie’s
girlfriend, this time around Peter has to recruit Alex to help him save Charlie
from the vampire’s lair.
But this won’t be as simple
as the first movie. Regine has an entourage of supernatural hangers on. Belle
(Russel Clark) is an androgynous glam rocker vampire. Louie (Uncle Rico himself,
Jon
Gries ) is a jovial werewolf. Bozworth is her insect eating chauffer but he’s
no deranged Renfield. Rather he is played by the hulking, menacing Brian
Thompson (The Terminator, X-Files, Cobra).
The movie is thematically
and stylistically very similar to the first film. Although it is an original film
that stands on its own merits, it doesn’t feel like a rehash but nor is it so
different that it feels unfamiliar. Part of this is due to the return of Brad Fiedel providing a musical score. In
addition to the two Fright Night films, he also provided the musical scores for
The Terminator, Terminator 2, Serpent and the Rainbow, Johnny Mnemonic and many
other films. Herb Jaffe was producer for both films (he produced Nightflyers in between the two
installments).
Tom Holland didn’t return as
director (probably because he was busy shooting Child’s Play) but they got a
very capable horror director to replace him. Tommy Lee Wallace had previously
directed the excellent Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. Besides directing he
had worked with the master John Carpenter on The Fog, Halloween, and Big
Trouble in Little China. He later went on to direct the It TV miniseries with
Tim Curry.
But like the first film,
this film’s greatest strength is its cast. Ragsdale and McDowell returning was
a must and the film wouldn’t have worked without that chemistry. Brian Thompson
and Jon Gries play off each other as Regine’s quarreling henchmen (the year
before Jon played a different werewolf in The Monster Squad). Also of note is Merritt
Butrick as Charlie’s friend who also gets turned. Merritt had a sadly shortened
career , dying from AIDS the next year. He is best known as playing James Kirk’s
son in Star Trek II and III.
Julie Carmen, though, as
Regine steals the show. She is mysterious, demure and glamorous, every bit as
seductive as Chris Sarandon was in the first film. Julie was not originally interested
in the role but later, after reading the script, became very interested. She
watched the original many times and studied Chris Sarandon’s performance. It
shows in a few scenes where her mannerisms and vocal inflection are very
similar to his. This was not Julie’s last horror role. She later starred
opposite of Sam Neil in John Carpenter’s ode to Lovecraft, In the Mouth ofMadness.
Fright Night 2 is a true
sequel. It would be confusing, and probably unenjoyable to anyone who hadn’t
seen the first film. It’s not as good as the first film, but that’s not a
detractor. The first is one of the pillars of the vampire genre. Hard to
compare with that! Fans of the first film will find a faithful and very
enjoyable sequel.
Legacy
The 1980s was the decade
that changed the vampire genre. The whole genre had been living in the shadow
of Bela Lugosi for 50 years. Almost every vampire from the 1930s through the
1970s was just a variation of the Lugosi character. Even Hammer Studios, who
tried to be more creative with their vampires in the 1970s, was still giving us
aristocrats living in gothic castles. Even in films that took place in modern
times (Dracula 1972 AD, Blacula or some of the Paul Naschy films) we just got
old world vampires transported to the modern era.
The 1980s gave us truly
modern vampires that looked and acted like members of the 20th
century but still retained all of the coolness of their forbearers. The Hunger,
Vamp, Lost Boys and Near Dark gave us cool outsiders with a rock star chic.
Fright Night acts as a bridge between the old and the new. Jerry and Regine
would both have been at home in a Hammer film facing off against Peter Cushing,
but they also seem at home in our world, with no sense of anachronism.
A third film was planned but
tragedy worse than any horror film kept that from happening. Roddy McDowell and
Tom Holland had talked with Hollywood mogul Jose Menendez about making a third
film. However, before this could be pursued, Menendez and his wife were
murdered by their children Eric and Lyle in what became one of the most sensational
murder cases of the decade. This also interfered with the distribution of
Fright Night 2 resulting in a limited theatrical release. Fright Night 2 bombed
(by Hollywood standards) and that effectively ended any chance of a third film.
A remake was made in 2011.
It wasn’t a bad film, but didn’t really offer anything new and failed to
rekindle any of the magic of the original. That remake spawned a sequel that
was also just a remake of the first film albeit in a European locale.
Fun facts!
–It was Chris Sarandon’s idea to have his character
eating apples throughout the movie. It was also his idea to have Amy resemble
his long lost love.
-Charlie Sheen
tried out for the part of Charlie Brewster but Tom Holland wanted someone who
seemed more average looking so he went with William Ragsdale.
-The giant vampire mouth that Amy has toward the film’s
ending was created by Randall William Cook. The film was almost out of time and
money and Cook made the whole thing from scratch over a weekend.
-Charlie’s Mustang was actually Tom Holland’s personal
car.
- Heidi Sorenson, who plays the hooker that
Charlie sees going into Jerry’s house was Playboy Playmate of the Month in
July, 1981. Prior to shooting her scene, Holland asked wardrobe to rub some ice
on her nipples to make her extra perky!
-Russell Clark, who played the androgynous Belle in part
2 was a respected dancer and choreographer and had worked with David Bowie and
Grace Jones. He choreographed Regine’s dance number.
