Streaming Availability: AMC Plus
Half the reason I do these big Spooky Month reviews is to finally cross off a ton of movies on my To Watch List that I would never get around to otherwise. This year has been a goldmine: Martin, Herzog’s Nosferatu, and The Last Man on Earth have been on my radar for years. So I feel bad that today we’re reviewing a movie I’ve seen somewhere between twelve and twenty times now and already have a 100% solid opinion about. In fact, the original Fright Night could very well be my #1 favorite vampire movie of all time. I could have written this review without bothering to watch it again.
On the other hand, who can turn down an excuse to rewatch
Fright Night? This movie fucking rules.
By 1985, the old run of Hammer Horror Dracula films had been
hokey and lame for at least fifteen years - longer than they had ever been cool in the first place. Of course, nothing ever stays dead (least of all the undead), fashion always turns around again. If you inhabited the United States in 1985, you could not admit to enjoying Disco music
without suffering the wrath of Rock'n'Roll's secret police disappearing you to a
Hair Metal Black Site for reeducation. Cut to thirty years later, and Disco is a beloved
classic genre with a rich history. The same would happen with
vampires. What’s old and corny one decade is suddenly the tip of the spear of
huge YA franchises like Buffy and Twilight.
One of the very first YA vampire stories is today's movie, Fright Night, a film that stands at the transition point between the past and
future of vampire fiction. Our protagonist is the teenage horndog Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) introduced necking with his girlfriend, Amy (Amanda
Bearse) while watching old vampire movies hosted on the in-universe show Fright Night.
Oh, it is 2022, I guess I have to explain what that kind of
show this even would be. Fright Night is a fictional version of horror programs
that reran old B-movies, these used to be institutions on television. Just about every regional station had them,
usually featuring iconic hosts like Svengoolie or Elvira. I think Joe Bob
Briggs’ program on Shudder is the last surviving show of this type. Before VHS
and movie rentals became common, this is how a lot of classic horror managed to
find new generations of audiences. The host of Fright Night is Peter Vincent
(the great Roddy McDowall), an aged star who once hunted vampires in dozens of
movies, who so inhabits the character we never learn the actor’s real name.
He's basically a sillier, more nebbish take on the great English vampire
hunters played by Peter Cushing and Vincent Price. (Get it?)
Anyway, Charley becomes distracted from the prospect of
scoring with Amy when the big spooky, very Salem’s Lot-esque house next door
suddenly has a new resident. Charley’s new neighbor needs to be carried in
via coffin. Good heterosexual sex is suddenly broken by the mysterious presence
of two strange men, and Amy runs off in a huff. Romantic tension between the two will be a major running theme, but also a certain lack of tension.
The queer subtext of Fright Night is screaming louder than
the various victims of the vampire next door, so let’s get into this. Our new villain is not a foreign sophisticate like Dracula or a bestial Nosferatu, he’s
a handsome, affable seemingly normal adult, Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon)
who seduces just about everybody in this movie. He also has a live in
“carpenter”, Billy (Jonathan Stark), who is his less affable but still
relatively normal human familiar. Jerry and Billy are basically married, sharing knowing smirks and how casually resting on
each other’s shoulders. But it
goes further. Peter Vincent is an utterly sexless character, a strategy employed by many
20th century gay men in the public eye. (McDowall was a closeted gay man
in real life.) Then there’s Charley’s cackling twerp of a best friend, “Evil” Ed (Stephen
Goeffreys), whose sexuality is never made clear, but he does seem a bit jealous
of Amy. That is until Jerry transforms Evil into a vampire, whispering “You
don't have to be afraid of me. I know what it's like being different.” Not sure if this is even subtext anymore.
Frankly, Fright Night is another example of good human
hetero sex beating bad vampiric gay sex, though it does complicate things. The
most intensely erotic scene would be where Jerry seduces Amy at a dance club. I
am personally obsessed with that sequence, all the neon club colors, I have the
music stuck in my head right now while writing this. I love how Jerry can
magically hairspray Amy’s hair between cuts. The choreography is fanstic. (This is why Dracula A.D. 1972
needed Christopher Lee on the dance floor!)
There’s also the level of sympathy Fright Night has for its
monsters. This is most especially seen during Evil Ed’s heartbreaking death
scene, where Peter Vincent is utterly in tears watching the young man suffer. A
movie that just wanted to condemn everything queer would not have these two
characters suffer together in tragedy as the older man cannot help a younger
gay man.
Besides a few swings towards successful drama, Fright Night is mostly just fun. It’s a horror comedy
that masters both tones so well. Jerry the Vampire in full monster form is caught scared like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar when Charley’s mom wakes up. Peter Vincent is a
ridiculous coward underneath all the purple prose bluster of the character he
plays. It’s a teen romp self-aware of the horror tropes it’s playing with,
winking at exactly the right times just as Scream would with slasher movies a
decade later.
And I cannot end without talking about what an effects masterpiece Fright Night is. This is the most impressive vampire film yet on a technical wizardry level. They all have monstrous transformations, fulling showing-off what Eighties puppetry and latex could achieve. Evil Ed turns into a werewolf for additional goopy body horror swag.
But
this is all pure ideology to me. Something you have to admit that you cannot be a fully objective critic. I grew up
with this movie and Eighties films just like it, a core part of my brain was
programmed believing this is what horror effects are supposed to look like. I
swim and breathe in these morphs and slimes and colors, all other atmospheres
are alien to me.
Which is why I think the 2011 remake’s effects are vastly inferior. And I think the
remake is worse in every single way, even after giving it my best attempt at a fair review during last year's Spooky Season. But hey, I’m just me. Fright Night (1985)
is a wooden stake dangerously close to my heart.
Next time! There’s a direct sequel to Fright Night that
nobody ever talks about. Fuck it, Dude, let's go bowling in Fright Night Part 2.
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