Fright Night-Retrospective and Review

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 20^th 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.