So it was always, along with the thrills and chills, something there that tickled your funny bone. Because there’s something so intrinsically humorous in the basic concept. “And I was laughing the entire time, literally on the floor, kicking my feet in the air in hysterics. “I wrote it in about three weeks,” Holland told Icons Of Frightin 2008. That gives the movie an opportunity to indulge in some genuinely clever humor, making it also one of the first and best of the modern horror/comedy hybrids. Predating the post-modern Scream by more than a decade, Fright Night takes place in a world where our protagonists - Charley and Evil Ed - are fully aware of the conventions and clichés of vampire movies and lore. Fright Night put the bloodsucker right in the suburbs, right in the heart of Reagan’s America, and made him into the homeowner next door (a convincing case could be made that Jerry Dandridge was a stand-in for sexual predators, but that’s another article).īut Fright Night represented another far more interesting crossover: the fusion of the old-school horror film with the contemporary teen thriller - and with an added layer of self-awareness to boot. The TV version of Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot, broadcast six years earlier, was set in the present but in rural Maine, where you could believably imagine a vampire infestation taking root. So here came this film that not only was about a vampire, but a traditional, very Dracula-like vampire making his way in the modern world. You can probably still find the far inferior DVD around. The original movie was released as a limited edition Blu-ray in 2015, with all 3,000 copies selling out quickly and some fetching three-digit prices via resale. It spawned a sequel, Fright Night 2, a 27-issue comic book series, a video game, and of course the inevitable remake, released in 2011 (which itself led to a loosely-connected direct-to-video sequel in 2013). The movie was a hit when it came out, earning just under $25 million at the box office (in 1985 dollars) and becoming the second highest grossing horror film of that year after A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. Frustrated by his disbelieving girlfriend Amy (Bearse) and best friend “Evil” Ed (Stephen Geoffreys in a one-of-a-kind performance), Charley tries to enlist his favorite TV horror host, Peter Vincent (McDowall) to help him stop Jerry before it’s too late for all of them. Written and directed by Tom Holland and starring William Ragsdale, Roddy McDowall, Chris Sarandon, and Amanda Bearse, the original Fright Nightfollows a young man and horror fan named Charley Brewster (Ragsdale) who discovers that his next door neighbor, Jerry Dandridge (Sarandon) is a vampire.
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