Fright Night (1985)

High school student Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) likes to stay up late watching old horror movies on television. His favorite show is Fright Night, hosted by one-time B-movie actor, Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall.) One night, Charley notices someone moving into the house next door. After some observation, he decides that his handsome new neighbor, Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon), is more than just a little odd. In fact, after a series of murders make the news, Charley suspects Jerry is a vampire. Of course, convincing anyone of this is damn near impossible. That is, until Charley the decides to ask former Hollywood vampire-killer Peter Vincent to help him rid the neighborhood of the menace.

Fright Night came out at a time when slasher movies were at their peak. Peter Vincent decries the popularity of “demented madmen running around in ski-masks, hacking up young virgins.” Writer/director Tom Holland has created a loving tribute to the old school, Gothic horror classics. By updating the time period while keeping the venerable tropes intact, he proves that horror doesn’t have to just be about the aforementioned madmen. Fright Night is funny and entertaining but also manages a few genuine scares.

Taking a tongue-in-cheek approach to the material, Holland crafts believably skeptical characters like Charley’s girlfriend, Amy (Amanda Bearse,) and his best friend, “Evil” Ed (Stephen Geoffreys.) Their reactions to Charley’s insistence that Jerry sleeps in a coffin by day and hunts for victims by night are perfectly reasonable. All of the players involved are perfectly cast and they all excel. From Chris Sarandon’s seductively confident Jerry Dandrige to Roddy McDowall’s believably reluctant transformation into a real vampire killer, there’s not a weak performance in the bunch.

While enjoyable enough on its own merits, the passage of time also helps add some seasoning to the experience. Fright Night perfectly encapsulates what made the 1980s such a rich time for genre movies like this one. The combination of Brad Fiedel’s synthesizer score, effective practical special effects, the wild clothes, and the general attitudes of the era coalesce into a movie that simply could not be recreated today. Try as Stranger Things might, it can’t come close to the real thing.