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Happy Monday! I have a question for you: Do you remember the 21st night of September? Today's movie is the 1985 vampire horror-comedy Fright Night—streaming on Prime Video. Like last week, I'm including a full review with an added “10-second cut” section for those of you that like shorter reviews. Here's the trailer.
⏱ 10-second cut: Fright Night is just about as eighties as a horror movie could be, complete with a vampire disco hypnosis scene and macabre late-night creature feature host. However, in embracing the inherent cheese and the genre tropes that we're familiar with, director Tom Holland makes a creature feature that has both fangs sunk deep into both golden ages of horror—the 30s/40s and the 70s/80s.
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Though I was born in the nineties, eighties horror will always have a special place in my heart—as it does with many horror fanatics. Until the sixties, which is when we started to make the gradual transition into modern horror, the template for the genre was largely based in the Universal Monsters franchise, which includes classics like Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Invisible Man, and, of course, Dracula. The fear was derived from the unknown of what's out there, which is exactly why Fright Night worked well then and now.
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Fright Night feels so much in and of its time. For many movies, that's a detriment. However, its keen sense of nostalgia for the long-gone days where men dressed in questionable monster suits were considered terrifying coupled with its unapologetic embracement of the tropes that defined eighties movies make watching it today a joy. By combining both elements, it becomes something completely new. At the time, it was modern. Watching it now, it's a time capsule.
Following the classic “my neighbors might actually be monsters trope,” Fright Night follows 17-year-old Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale), an ardent horror fan and regular watcher of “Fright Night,” a horror TV series hosted by former “vampire hunter” Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall). When Charley discovers that his new neighbor Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire, he struggles to get anyone—his mother, the authorities, his friends—to believe him.
So, he enlists the help of Peter Vincent, who at first writes him off as an obsessed fan. Worried about his well-being, Charley's girlfriend Amy (a pre-Married with Children Amanda Bearse), hires Vincent to prove to Charley that Jerry isn't a vampire. After the brilliant and iconic mirror scene, the trio band together to stop him.
Fright Night benefits from being one of the purest versions of horror-comedy. Both genres are equally represented without manipulation. The tropes of both combine to present real laughs with the terror and real terror with the laughs. Instead of relegating a single character to be the comedic relief, like in many horror movies that toe the line with comedy, the laughs are placed more deeply in the screenplay. It's all serious until you get a line like:
“He has a live-in male carpenter. With my luck, he's probably gay.”
— Judy Brewster
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Conversely, unlike the horror-comedies that immediately try to cut through the tension of terror with a joke, Fright Night lets its scares marinate. And at some points, when there are laughs in the horror, they're playing with each other rather than against. In one scene, Charley and Vincent are sneaking up a set of stairs while unbeknownst to them a corpse reanimates behind them. It's ridiculous, especially when combined with the movie's eighties cheese, but also as terrifying as any “look behind you” scene.
And the screenplay intelligently structures the movie so that you're always dialed into the story from multiple perspectives. You learn early on that Charley's suspicions about Jerry are true while also exploring the lore behind Jerry and his minion Billy (Jonathan Stark). When Peter Vincent is added in you explore yet another layer of character. However, the movie never loses its charm or wit in its explorations. It is made to entertain—and that it does.
The famous—or notorious—disco hypnosis scene is a perfect example of everything Fright Night does well. It's campy, funny, genuinely terrifying, and, most importantly, furthers the plot. Unlike its fanged subject, the movie doesn't overstay its welcome. It's the perfect tone to kick off the spooky Halloween season. Happy Hauntings.
? Pair it with The Cabin in the Woods for a Halloween perfect double feature.
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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter and Letterboxd. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.
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