Suburban Vampirism

Fright Night – 1985.

Producer(s): Herb Jaffe

Director: Tom Holland
Writer(s): Tom Holland

Principal Actors: Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowall, Amanda Bearse, William Ragsdale, Stephen Geoffreys

Running Time: 106 minutes.

Country: USA

Favorite Lines: “And to what do I owe this dubious pleasure?” –Evil Ed. “Welcome to Fright Night…for real.” –Jerry Dandridge.

Plot: I won’t go into great detail here.  Anyone reading this blog probably knows the plot of this eighties cult favorite.  But, here it is, in a nutshell: vampire moves into Suburbia.  Boy next door catches on.  No one believes boy next door.  Boy next door goes a little nuts.  Vampire goes a little too far.  Now everyone believes boy next door.  Big fight to kill vampire.  Everything is back to normal…or is it?  The end.

I’ll admit, this movie is not all that obscure, although I’d say it deserves a wider audience than it’s ever had.  Plus, it’s one of my favorites, so I’m leading with it…

I can remember watching it for this first time and wondering why I hadn’t heard about it before.  No one had ever recommended it to me.  I’d never heard anyone say a single word about it, in fact.  I just happened to catch it on HBO one night and was pleasantly blindsided.

The cool thing about this movie is its inventiveness, and its nostalgic nod to the then out-of-fashion Gothic horror genre.  This “horror” movie was made when the Jasons and Freddies and Michaels were the reigning horror box-office champs.  Subtly and characterization and plot were out of style.  The slasher films of the mid-eighties, with their ultra-gratuitous (albeit chillingly fun) violence and dismal look at adolescents were the prevalent mode of delivering screams.   Fright Night was different.  It was something new and something old, all at once.  And, unlike the piss-your-pants scariness of some slasher films, it was a “fun” horror film.

The plot is a deft reworking, and up-dating, of Bram Stoker's Dracula.  You have a Renfield, a Mina, a Jonathan Harker, a Van Helsing, but they’re all re-imagined in a nineteen-eighties milieu. It’s a simple idea, but the execution, despite some admittedly lagging scenes (the dance club scene, for instance, is a snorefest…), is brilliant. Part of its brilliance is in the fact that it never tries to take itself too seriously.  Also, it’s clear that the actors were having fun. 

And there are some great performances in this film. I can’t say enough about Roddy McDowall as “Peter Vincent, Vampire Killer.”  McDowall is so good in this roll (he’s the Van Helsing-type character) and strikes just the right notes.  McDowall’s understanding of this rather pathetic, conflicted, loveable, down-on-his-luck character is acute. It's hard not to read into his spot-on portrayal in this role as mirroring, in some way, his personal life.  McDowall himself was a bit "washed up" at this point in his career.  Also, Amanda Bearse (yes, Marcy from the TV show “Married with Children”) is adorably good as Amy, the Mina character.  But, arguably, the star of the movie is the delightfully odd Evil Ed, played by Stephen Geoffreys, whose performance is so desperately weird that he commands almost every scene he’s in.  Also, the majority of the best lines in the film are Ed’s, delivered in a twisted, cracking pubescent snarl.

If for some reason you haven’t already seen this movie, don’t be too hard on yourself.  Just rectify the situation by getting your hands on the DVD.  

-Basil Rathbone.