Fright Night (1985)
“…Nobody wants to see vampire killers anymore. Or vampires. Apparently, all they want are demented madmen running around in ski masks hacking up young virgins.” – Peter Vincent
Charley Brewster (Ragsdale) is a typical suburban teenager with a special interest in old-time horror b-movies, the kind seen on the local creep-fest TV showcase, “Fright Night”, hosted by the self-proclaimed king of vampire hunting films, Peter Vincent (McDowall). It’s all fantasy to Charley until he spies on his new neighbors in the house next door to discover that there is a man there that is, in fact, a vampire himself (Sarandon). As bodies end up dead throughout the town, no one will listen to Charley’s assertions.
Trouble brews when his tenaciousness draws the ire of Jerry, the vampire himself, who threatens that he’s going to take down Charley and everyone he loves before Charley can take him down first. Knowing he needs help, Charley turns to the only man he knows known to kill vampires, Peter Vincent himself, though he’s no killer — he just plays one on TV. When Jerry has his sights set on Charley’s girlfriend Amy (Bearse), the war is on between the men for love and continued life.
A cult favorite horror-comedy of the video/cable era, Fright Night provided a bridge between the classic B-movie horror films and the more modern gory slasher movies that ruled the early 1980s. It takes a simple vampire premise and tosses it in the middle of suburbia, where a teenage boy has nowhere he can hide from the clutches of a powerful vampire who can watch his every move. It’s the “boy who cried wolf” story with a vampire tossed in, merging a De Palma-esque sensational and erotic thriller with goopy (but mild) gore, and making an entertaining adolescent fantasy film for lovers of the macabre.
Good casting is a strength of this enjoyable release, with newcomers Ragsdale (who beat out the likes of Charlie Sheen, who was deemed too good looking for the “boy next door” role) and Bearse (who first-time director Tom Holland cast because the then 26-year-old actress could be believed in making the transition “from virgin to slut” – his words, not mine) very appealing as the protagonists, a memorably energetic turn in a dual-toned role by future gay porn actor Geoffreys as “Evil” (Geoffreys was cast when he was accidentally sent by his agent in lieu of Anthony Michael Hall to audition for Weird Science and the casting director remembered him fondly), and Sarandon, who does look remarkably like a young Hammer horror-era Christopher Lee, oozing menace underneath his metrosexual charisma in every scene he’s in. Sarandon had to be courted into the role because he had no interest in being in a horror movie, especially one directed by someone who was a first-time director no less. Sarandon ended up loving the role, and would also work in a horror movie with Holland for Child’s Play, and again for The Stranger Within.
However, it’s veteran actor McDowall, who appeared in a Tom Holland-scripted film before in Class of 1984, who proves to be the one to watch as Peter Vincent (his character name derived from old school horror greats Peter Cushing and Vincent Price), trying his best to show bravery, with knees wobbling from out-and-out fear with every step closer to Jerry’s presence (McDowall says he used Bert Lahr’s performance in The Wizard of Oz for inspiration). Vincent Price was originally sought for the part, but he was physically too ill at the time to act without much effort and felt he had spoofed his image too many times to merit coming back to films for yet another. When he saw the film, he complimented McDowall for his portrayal of the b-movie vampire slayer, especially in the way he makes the character his own, rather than an impression of him. McDowall decided that not emulating Price would be the best way to go because he reasoned out that Peter Vincent was a terrible actor, unlike Price. The originally scripted ending involved a twist in which Vincent is revealed to be a vampire himself by turning into a bat on his TV show, but wiser heads prevailed.
Unlike most other combinations of comedy and horror, Fright Night works because we like the characters and their interactions. Like Ghostbusters the year before, we’re on the side of the good guys not because we hate the bad guy, but because we learn enough about the protagonists to not want them to fail. We can even claim to not despise the bad guy here, as Jerry is seductive and, on occasion, surprisingly merciful in willing to let Charley off the hook for knowing what he knows, provided he agrees to forget. However, we have an irresistible force and an immovable object in both of their character make-ups, and the real test comes in seeing which one will fold first. Many fans catch on to the homoerotic undertones within the interplay between the two main characters, though the actors weren’t aware of them until they saw the film to witness Charley’s Rear Window-esque voyeurism (he ignores the green light for sex given by his girlfriend in order to watch the carnal escapades of the man next door) and Jerry’s enticing lines to the perhaps-closeted “Evil” Ed like, “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I know what it’s like to be…different.” Tom Holland has subsequently claimed that, while he sees this reading as valid, the gay subtext was not a conscious decision.
However, Ghostbusters plays more for laughs than scares, and Fright Night isn’t really funny as it is comical, generating most of its amusement from the comic relief provided through the tensest of moments than in anything that would be funny on its own. Without the lighter tone, and the allusions to classic horror of days gone by, this would be fairly routine stuff, very derivative of other vampire flicks that have come before. Like An American Werewolf in London, another movie that features lengthy scenes of practical effects of transformation from man to monster (coincidentally, former ILM effects guru Richard Edlund’s Boss Film Corporation also did some of the effects work for Ghostbusters under the team’s original name of Effects Entertainment Group), the interest raised is in the telling of the story, rather than the story itself, and Fright Night spins a pretty good vampire yarn with a comic book mentality that works.
The film would prove to be a decent hit at the box office, primarily because its production budget was a modest $8-10 million, and it would rake in just under $25 million, which was not bad at all for a film that had an R-rating but was not entirely of appeal to adults. It did better than the John Hughes film Weird Science, a PG-13 teen-oriented film with a hit song on the radio that came out the same week. A follow-up was already greenlit before its release because of positive test screenings, written but not directed by Holland, who instead concentrated his efforts behind the camera for another horror franchise in the making, Child’s Play.
Fright Night isn’t the sort of film one points to as an example of a trendsetting horror film so much as one that took pre-existing conventions of the time and blended them into a satisfying hybrid. It took all of the popular teenage films of the early 1980s (campy horror, voyeuristic sex comedies, suburban paranoia, etc.) and capitalized on their appeal enough to overcome any redundancy in its execution to other films. Writer-director Tom Holland, who had already penned a few minor camp classics in the early 80s with Psycho II, Cloak & Dagger (his other film about a boy who cries wolf), and Class of 1984, tested his ability to conceive his vision with this first directorial outing. As Fright Night shows, he studied the old films and brought their visual appeal to a modern generation quite well.
- A less charming and humorous remake came out in 2011 featuring Colin Farrell as the big bad vampire.
Qwipster’s rating: B
MPAA Rated: R for nudity, gore, violence, and language
Running time: 106 min.
Cast: William Ragsdale, Chris Sarandon, Amanda Bearse, Roddy McDowall, Stephen Geoffreys, Jonathan Stark, Dorothy Fielding
Director: Tom Holland
Screenplay: Tom Holland