Stars: Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowell, William Ragsdale
Director: Tom Holland
A teenager learns what happens when you peek into the wrong neighbor’s window…
Brief synopsis:
Charlie Brewster is a regular teen boy. He has a steady girlfriend, Amy, but she refuses to go beyond heavy petting, a situation that is a cause of frustration for him. His best friend is Evil Ed, a horror movie geek, and his mom is single and working a job that changes shifts on a regular basis. He is also a regular viewer of the Peter Vincent show “Fright Night” and has a great affection for his films. But one day he gets a new neighbor named Jerry Dandridge who soon begins to take a bite out of their little town…
Spoilers below (you have been warned):
Charlie watches Jerry and his roommate, Billy, move in with what looks like a coffin among other relics. Several nights later, a sex worker shows up at the house and Charlie hears a bloodcurdling scream later while he is studying. Amy comes to talk to him at a diner later but he is distracted by a news report about the same woman having been found murdered. Amy smashes a sloppy joe into his face and leaves him behind with a laughing Ed. Charlie tries to investigate the house but is stopped by Billy.
Later that night, Charlie is doing surveillance on Jerry’s house and sees him with another woman. Suddenly Jerry reveals sharp fangs and is about to bite the woman when he notices Charlie watching them. Jerry draws the shade while Charlie runs to tell his mom what is happening but she just thinks it is a dream. Charlie runs out to see what is going on at the neighbors and sees a shadow fly down and land in the trees, turning into Jerry. Jerry hands the woman’s purse to Billy who is putting the body into a truck. Charlie’s mom comes out yelling for her son blowing his cover. Charlie grabs his mom and drags her into their house. He tries to tell his mom what happened but she doesn’t believe him. He next tries Amy and gets the same result. Frustrated, he goes to the police and tells them about the two women who entered the house and ended up dead. It does not go well and the officer leaves once Charlie brings up vampires.
Charlie then goes to visit Ed and is reminded that Jerry cannot enter his house without an invitation from the owner. Unfortunately, Charlie’s single mom thinks Jerry is attractive (she is not wrong) and invites him over for drinks. Jerry smiles at Charlie as he remarks that now he may stop over anytime, a threat that he follows through on that night. Jerry threatens Charlie, telling him that he is giving Charlie the choice of forgetting that he is a vampire. Charlie manages to stab Jerry in the hand with a pencil, stopping the attack. Jerry flees but warns Charlie he will be back tomorrow night.
Charlie finally reaches out to a newly fired Peter Vincent but he thinks the boy is insane and quickly brushes him off. Out of options, he goes home and protects himself as best he can, surrounding himself with cloves of garlic, crucifixes, and begins making wooden stakes. Amy and Ed, who think Charlie is totally crazy, convince Charlie to stay in his fortified room while they talk to Peter Vincent themselves. The two teenagers manage to bribe the old actor into agreeing to a “vampire test” and work with Jerry to set everything up. Satisfied that Charlie will soon be out of their hair without having to resort to violence, Jerry and Billy decide to stay in and leave Charlie alone for the night.
The next night, Peter comes in with holy water but it is just regular tap water. They perform the test and Charlie tries to deny it was real. While the teenagers talk to Jerry, Peter pulls out an old prop from one of his movies, a cigarette case with a mirror. To his shock, Jerry does not cast a reflection and Peter drops the case, breaking the mirror. At the same time, Charlie sees a painting that looks like a blonde Amy. Both Charlie and Peter leave in a hurry, dragging Ed and Amy with them. Charlie confronts Peter who admits that Jerry did not have a reflection in the mirror before driving off. Charlie, more certain than ever that Jerry is a vampire, insists Ed comes with him to take Amy home. Back in the house, Jerry steps on a piece of mirror that came from the cigarette case and realizes that Peter knows truth.
Ed continues to mock the idea that Jerry is a vampire and decides to take a short cut down a dark alley. Jerry commiserates with the outsider and turns him into a vampire. Amy and Charlie hear the scream and assume Ed is just messing around until Jerry appears on the sidewalk following them. They make their way to a club and attempt to get in touch with Peter, even though Amy confesses that she paid Peter to fake the test. As Charlie makes the call, Jerry appears and dances with the virginal girl, bringing her under his thrall. After killing the bouncers, Jerry takes advantage of the chaos to kidnap Amy. Ed makes his way to Peter Vincent’s apartment. Peter makes the mistake of inviting the young man in only to discover he is a vampire. He uses a prop crucifix to burn the sign of the cross into the new vampire’s head. Ed runs off swearing that Jerry will make him pay.
Charlie makes his way to Peter’s and, after proving he is not a vampire, begs him to come to Jerry’s house and kill the vampire. He refuses at first but eventually meets up with Charlie at Jerry’s house to end the vampire menace. While all this is going on, Jerry completes his seduction of Amy. He bites her and then takes her virginity. The two vampire hunters enter the house and begin to climb up the stairs. Jerry appears and Peter brandishes his crucifix. At first Jerry is scared but then he just laughs, telling Peter that without faith, it will not work on him. Charlie jumps in and successfully uses the weapon however he is quickly thrown over the stairs by Billy who is not a vampire but an assistant of some sort – think Renfield. Scared, Peter runs next door to try and get help from Charlie’s mom, not aware that she is working the night shift and not home. Instead, Ed is waiting for him and they fight. Ed turns into a wolf and Peter stabs him through the heart, seemingly killing him. Peter removes the stake from Ed and heads back over to Jerry’s house, his faith and courage restored. He finds Charlie with Amy, who is slowly turning into a vampire and changing into a version of Jerry’s lost love.
Eventually they kill Billy and chase Jerry into the basement where his coffin is. Peter closes the coffin, stopping Jerry from reaching his hiding spot, while Charlie deals with a now monstrous Amy. They accidentally break one of the blacked-out windows and realize that the sun is up. Charlie and Peter break all of the windows and the room fills with sunlight, killing Jerry. No longer under Jerry’s influence, Amy returns to normal.
A few nights later, Charlie and Amy are making out in his bed while Fright Night comes on, once again hosted by Peter Vincent. He throws on an old schlocky movie instead of a vampire film. Charlie is making his way to his bed when he thinks he sees a pair of glowing eyes in Jerry’s house but they quickly disappear. Charlie jumps on the bed to sleep with Amy while we hear in Ed in the background tell Charlie “(y)ou’re so cool Brewster.”
My thoughts (with spoilers):
The summer of 1985 was a rough one for me. I started out the summer falling off my bike and getting stitches in my right arm. Two months later I was visiting my maternal Grandma and fell, breaking the same arm. Yeah, not fun. But I also got to see my first rated “R” film in the theater, Fright Night. We went the day I got my cast off and, given that the cast had gone above my elbow, the muscles were all tight and still needed to loosen up. That meant I spent the entire film trying to cover my eyes and couldn’t, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because if I had, I would have missed so much of a great film.
Vampires were passe in the 1980’s, with very few films being produced and even fewer of those films being any good. Fright Night is an example of how to do the genre right. The premise is basically Rear Window with vampires. Charlie sees a murder and then spends the rest of the film trying to convince everyone, including his girlfriend, that he is not crazy. In the end he saves the girl and is the hero but the journey is what is important and what a journey it is.
I will say that Holland's script is mostly great but it does play fast and loose with the vampire rules. The big ones are there: wooden stakes or sunlight being the best ways to kill them, the use of the vampire’s charisma to hold someone in thrall, and the fear of crucifixes. However, they play fast and loose with how someone becomes a vampire. For instance, Ed is immediately turned into a vampire after being bitten but Amy slowly transitions. And if Peter hadn’t staked Ed, would he have turned human again with Jerry’s death? What is the rule for that? Let’s not even get into Billy because there does not seem to be a consensus on what he is. He walks around in sunlight and turns into green goo and sand as he dies so I always assumed he was a zombie but I have read that writer/director Holland intended him to be another vampire in transition so who knows?
The acting is great all around. Chris Sarandon is charming and charismatic as the vampire Jerry. You can see why all the women have no issue being bitten by him. Sarandon is often eating fruit, a little quirk he added to show he was descended from a fruit bat. It is a small detail but shows how committed he was to the character. William Ragsdale has not done much notable work since this film but he is a great everyman, a kid who loves horror films but not as much as the thought of having sex with Amy. He isn’t the most popular guy but he tries his best to do the right thing and stop Jerry. Amy is nice but not a pushover. She loves Charlie and is torn between wanting to believe him and wanting to get him the help she thinks he needs. Amanda Bearse has a nice girl-next-door quality and you can believe that her and Charlie are a real high school couple. Stephen Geoffreys plays Evil Ed with an underlying sense of sadness and longing for a place in this world. We get why he agrees to be turned by Jerry; he feels alone even when he is with his friend.
And Roddy McDowell is pitch perfect as horror film host Peter Vincent. A combination of Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, with a little Christopher Lee thrown in, he is a relic trying to survive in the modern age. His movies, homages to the classic Hammer Films, were over the top and contained enough fake blood to be considered shocking in their day. However, the newer generation wants slashers and blood, something he cannot comprehend or understand. Peter eventually learns to let the past sleep after defeating Jerry, earning a new perspective and his job back.
In many ways, Fright Night is like Peter, an old voice struggling to be heard in a new age. Jason, Freddy, and Michael were the new boogeymen, replacing Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man. Special effects, blood, and gore were on the rise, as well as sex scenes instead of innuendo. Fright Night manages to fit in by embracing some of these new components of a horror film and mixing them with the old school charm. When Jerry takes Amy’s virginity, we do not see them have sex after he bites her, it is implied through her sounds as the scene fades out. There is very little in terms of nudity or sex in the film period. However, the special effects are quite good. We get a good amount of blood through the nightclub scene and the transformations of Jerry, Ed, and Amy are quite good. Compared to the Terrifiers and Saw films of today, the effects are quite tame, but they were shocking in the 1980’s.
One final thing to note is the score of the film. Soundtracks really found their groove in the 80’s, going from a thing only true fans buy to selling millions of copies. Think of Footloose, Purple Rain, Flashdance, Top Gun, and Caddyshack, films that made a nice profit on their soundtracks along with the films themselves. Not only that but, thanks to composers like John Williams and John Carpenter, movie scores had also become popular. Star Wars, E.T., Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Jaws all had memorable scores that not only heightened the mood of the film but also the tension. These composers used their skill to work with the director and improve on the film. The standout track on Brad Fiedel’s score is “Come to Me”, which is basically Jerry’s seduction theme. Smooth and sexy with an ethereal feel, it conveys Jerry’s seduction perfectly. Fiedel has some great scores including Terminator 2: Judgement Day and True Lies so it is a shame he is not a more well-known name.
Fright Night is a great update on the classic vampire film. It is scary without being too gory and has a wry sense of humor. Definitely one to add to your yearly Halloween rotation.
More films from 1985 to check out:
The Goonies – Adventure film about a group of kids who are trying to save their parents home by going on a treasure hunt. Along the way, they cross paths with a trio of bungling criminals. Includes future stars Sean Astin, Josh Broland, Ke Huy Quan, and Martha Plimpton. Still a favorite and loved by my kids and grandkids.
Girls Just Want to Have Fun – Cheesy dance movie starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Helen Hunt, Shannon Doherty, and Jonathan Silverman. SJP is Janey an Army brat and Catholic school girl who just loves to dance and makes friends with eccentric Hunt. Hijinks ensue as Janey tries to land a spot as a regular dancer on Dance TV. The soundtrack is amazing.
Back to the Future – The film that put Michael J. Fox on the map and is still a great time. Teenager with a nuclear scientist friend, which is a totally normal thing for a teenager to have, gets sent back in time and accidentally stops his parents from meeting. A classic and the inspiration for a great John Mulaney bit.