Fortress of Horror 11 - Fright Night
Oh, you're so cool, Brewster!
Fright Night is a movie about that age-old dilemma every boy deals with at some point during his teenage years: What to do when a vampire moves in next door? Like many of us did when we were his age, Charlie Brewster immediately makes life difficult for himself. He goes around spying on the vampire and his henchman (which we all know doesn't work, the vampires can see through bushes), he goes to the police (again, bad move, as vampires always get along famously with law enforcement). The vampire in this story, Jerry Dandrige, wastes no time tightening the screws on poor Charlie. He manages to get himself invited into Charlie's house and makes it look like he might put the moves on his mom at some point. Dandrige really goes for the jugular when he instead goes after Charlie's girlfriend, little miss Marcy from Married with Children.
Charlie really has his work cut out for him. Going toe-to-vampiric toe with Dandrige isn't going to be easy, especially since ol' Jer' is the real deal. He wears a sweater that both me and a friend could crawl through without touching, not to mention his stunning leather jacket, which sort of works as a cape. His secret weapon though has to be the cassette tape he was with his own theme song on it. I'm not exaggerating here, Jerry Danrige has a cassette tape with his own theme song on it, a one-two punch of lush synthesizers and swirling electric guitar.
Lucky for Charlie, he gets an in with Peter Vincent, legendary vampire killer. Vincent, who surprisingly doesn't look like an ape in this movie, lives in the apartment that I want to live in when my life eventually goes south. It's really, really cool monster memorabilia wall to wall in there, I love it.
All joking aside, this movie is really fun. Yeah, it's goofy, runs a little longer than it should, but it delivers the old fashioned monster goods. It's surprisingly well acted and has some terrific creature effects. It had been awhile since I'd seen it and more than a few times I couldn't help but say, "Damn, that's cool." I also got to see it in a theater and man, does it play well to an audience.
SCARE RATING: 2/5
OVERALL RATING: 3/5
Mr. White wrote: It's been years since I've seen Fright Night. I'll need to check it out again this season.
I was surprised by the rating though...sounded like you really dug this flick, so I was expecting at least a 4.
I do really dig it and, in the right mood, it's probably a 4. It does have some pacing issues and at a full 2 hours, it's a little long. It's one I'm always more than happy to watch though.
You should be seeing these once a week now. Last year I had had a few weeks where I had two come out just because I had written so many and didn't want to go past Halloween. Could happen again this year.
Plus, the podcast with Egg Shen should be dropping soon, too, and it's going to be a lot of fun.
I've never seen the remake.
Fright Night straddles the line of homage and 80s cheese fairly well. The biggest compliment I can pay to the movie is its ever present sincerity to the genre. Even with its faults, you can easily sit down almost anywhere within the movie and simply have a good time.
Million Dollar Mimring wrote: Growing up, a friend always chose to rent Fright Night II, which I seem to remember for its titillation and not much else.
The only thing I remember from Fright Night II is a vampire with big hair slowly roller skating into some fog and decapitating someone. It's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.
But it's still a ton of fun. I love some of the effects at the end. You get the feeling that it's lamenting the end of classic monster cinema on some level but it's going to give a good, spooky time regardless. Much like Monster Squad you get the idea that the filmmakers grew up *loving* the old Universal and Hammer movies, the kind of kids who spent hours pouring over issues of Famous Monsters and building Aurora monster kits. I'm always going to relate to that kind of love for that stuff.