Fright Night (1985)
Fright Night is maybe the best dark horse champion of the cult-favorite horror movies of the 1980s. It’s not a perfect film but it comes pretty damn close. A sort of soft play on Rear Window, Fright Night asks the question of what a teenage boy would do if he found out his neighbor was a vampire and then provides some fairly absurd answers. Why, naturally he would seek out the help of an old washed-up actor now hosting a late-night horror movie show, presuming that this actor is a legitimate vampire hunter and then implore him to come murder his neighbor.
Realistic it’s not, but fun? Fright Night is a blast a minute and really ramps up with some creepy set-pieces and great special effects work making the vampires some of the most truly horrific looking creatures seen on film. A cast featuring Chris Sarandon, Amanda Bearse, William Ragsdale, Stephen Geoffreys, and the late Roddy McDowell make this movie a joy to watch.
Fright Night (2011)
Fright Night’s a hard act to follow, but the 2011 remake makes a very honest stab at it. The story is pretty much the same but vampire neighbor Jerry Dandrige’s sleazy ‘80s yuppie type has been replaced with a new more suburban scumbag version.
We’ve got another great cast on display with the late Anton Yelchin in the lead, Toni Collette, Imogene Poots, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, David Tennant, and Colin Farrell as Jerry. The CG effects are pretty iffy at times but don’t detract from an otherwise fun and enjoyable horror film.
Is it a good remake?
Kind of. Fright Night is a very different animal from its predecessor; the tone and the feel of the story are a lot more modern feeling and the nostalgic look back to old black-and-white movies is gone completely. For the most part this doesn’t detract from the quality of the film except whenever it tries to directly do something from the original.
The two main downfalls when comparing these two movies are with Evil Ed and Peter Vincent. There is no actor that can quite capture the screechy energy of a young Stephen Geoffreys. Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s take on the character is very different from Geoffreys’ performance and that’s fine but the character is underutilized, appearing at the beginning of the movie and in a later scene at the climax of the second act. They fail to properly address the tragedy of where the character goes and considering what a big part of the original move that Evil Ed was, its seems pointless to have him at all here.
As for Peter Vincent, David Tennant smartly doesn’t try to be Roddy McDowell but that’s a bit by design. Peter Vincent was already an anachronism in the 80s, horror hosts were still sort of around: Svengoolie and Joe Bob Briggs were still going strong and Elvira popped up from time to time but they were largely extinct. So the filmmakers decided to pivot Peter Vincent into a sort of Criss Angel: Mind Freak parody that happens to have a lot of vampire-killer imagery in his show. The transition really doesn’t work and they really should have just changed the character’s name to Petra Vincent, and hired some middle-aged actress to just play a thinly-veiled Elvira ripoff.
Does it stand on its own?
Yes, while Fright Night fails at nearly every attempt to homage or rework the original movie, those are the only places in which it does fail. All the new takes on the characters are quite good, the acting is tops, and the vampires manage to be pretty horrifying even with the dodgy CG. This is a fun and effective horror film and while it can’t possibly be the original, neither can Fright Night 2 and we all still love that so goddamn much, and this is a better movie than that one is.
David Tennant and Anton Yelchin do great work here but this is very much Colin Ferrell’s movie and he oozes sleazy charm all throughout.
Watch, toss, or buy?
Buy this movie, it needs more love.