"You deserve to die boy. Of course, I COULD give you something I don't have: a choice! Forget about me Charley...forget about me and I'll forget about you! What do you say, Charley?"- Jerry Dandridge, offering Charlie a compromise to hide his vampiric actions and protect his family, Fright Night (1985)
Something Niche, Blogspot.com presents...
STRANGER
SINEMA
Come one, come all to a midway of the most bizarre in pictures! Journey into the unknown through the deepest depths of celluloid film! Bear witness to some of the most unique and peculiar stories and characters! Dive into a rabbit hole a leave behind your mundane world for a glimpse into the upside-down world...of Stranger Sinema!
Welcome, young and young-at-heart explorers! Welcome to the first episode of Stranger Sinema, where we hear at Something Niche take a deep dive into the world of cult cinema, discovering some of the most strange, imaginative, madcap, or merely just obscure parts of the film world! Many of the films we will be discussing on this show are like no other and will send you to places you thought were never possible to capture on film before!
As part of the Halloween season, our first episode will delve into one of my personal most favorite cinematic niches to explore; late 20th century horror! Spanning the decades of the post-WW2 era of history, many of these cinematic tales of terror took advantage of brand-new filming techniques and technology to create grander stories that expanded on the early creepshows from the first half of the 1900s. These films often combined threats of the supernatural with allegorical storytelling that delved into the new anxieties of a post-interwar period Planet Earth, be they the shadows cast by fears of nuclear fallout caused by the Cold War period or the rise of domestic crimes and over-sensationalized news media stories during the 70s, 80s and 90s.
The film we will be starting this journey with is a personal favorite of mine from the 1980s; the tale of a boy who finds himself face-to-face with the evils of the supernatural world after it moves in next door. A cult classic tale of terror that officially shares a 40th anniversary with the likes of Super Mario Bros. and Back to the Future this year! Today, we will be taking a look at the eerie, yet bizarrely entertaining vampire flick Fright Night!
To quote one of the film's official tagline's as we get the tape rolling; "If you love being scared, it'll be the night of your life!"
Take a Bite of My Heart Tonight
A film that takes the vampire legends of yore and brings them to the suburbs of Reagan-era America, Fright Night tells the tale of young Charley Brewster (pictured above, played by William Ragsdale), a normal American teenager with a passion for classic horror. Living in a small town in Iowa, Charley enjoys his evenings viewing reruns of classic vampire flicks and snuggling in bed with his girlfriend Amy Peterson (played by Amanda Bearse).
However, Jerry soon finds that the stories he views on his CRT set are about to become real-in his own neighborhood. A strange pair of new neighbors-Jerry Dandridge (played with absolute menace by future Mayor of Halloween Town Chris Sarandon) and his roommate Billy Cole (played with equal menace by Johnathan Stark)-move in next door. Charley manages to catch a glimpse of Jerry's unusual behavior one night from his bedroom window; Jerry and Billy carry a coffin into the house, and
Jerry has a sensual moment with a beautiful woman; whom he promptly bites on the neck.
After Jerry becomes wise to Charley's peeping, he makes his acquaintance with Charley's family one evening. Later that night, Jerry returns and confronts Charley in his bedroom, where the worst of Charley's late-night TV-induced paranoia is found to be justified. Jerry is in fact, a real, honest-to-God vampire, and is responsible for taking the lives of several fair maidens who populate the town. After Charley rejects a proposal to keep Jerry's actions a secret, Jerry vows to make Charley face the ghastly consequences, and destroy everybody close to him.
As Charley prepares to fight back, he makes the acquaintance of Peter Vincent (brought to life by the late great Roddy McDowell), host of his favorite late-night horror programming and an aged horror star, asking him for assistance with his new vampire problem. Predictably, Mr. Vincent is skeptical at first, but one attempted glance at Jerry in the mirror later, and he comes to realize the ugly truth.
Charley must now work with a reluctant Peter Vincent to take out Jerry once and for all before he strikes again, all the while dealing with his own coming of age issues with his girlfriend and his now estranged friend Evil Ed (played with dastardly charisma by Stephen Geoffreys).
Fright Night was the brainchild of a man known as Tom Holland. No, I'm obviously not talking about the kid who played Spider-Man in the MCU (though this Tom Holland coincidently did begin his career as an actor who appeared in episodes of shows such as The Incredible Hulk and 77 Sunset Strip)!
And the film, impressively, even served as his debut film as a director!
Prior to Fright Night, Mr. Holland was primarily a screenwriter in the Hollywood circuit, writing the screenplays for Class of 1984 and Cloak and Dagger, among others. It was during the production of the latter film when he first conceived Fright Night, which was conceived with the plan of bringing the classic vampire-hunting stories of the Golden Age of Hollywood into the 1980s.
"The genre faded in the 1950s because most vampire films were still period pieces." he explained in an early interview. "Nobody knew how to bring them up to date. I like to think that this picture works well in contemporary terms."
When drafting his script, he looked to the classic folktale of The Boy who Cried Wolf , but changed to focus to a young horror fanatic whose claims are brushed off as the result of an overactive imagination, rather than a propensity for pulling pranks. He also asked who a young horror fan would call in order to combat an actual vampire during the modern age. The answer he came up with? Vincent Price!
Neighborhood Vampire Watch
Yep, after finishing the script, Mr. Holland reached out to Vincent Price himself to co-star as a mentor figure to the film's young protagonist. Unfortunately, the 50s horror icon ended up turning down the role due to experiencing health struggles at the time (ultimately culminating to his death in the early 90s) and wanting to move away from the genre.
Ultimately, Mr. Holland decided to create a new original character from this idea, eventually conceiving Peter Vincent (pictured above); an aging horror host who becomes a reluctant ally to Charley's cause. Fellow veteran actor Roddy McDowell (who was previously in the aforementioned Class of 1984 that Holland wrote) was ultimately cast in the role, and was told take inspiration from Price for his performance.
However, McDowell ultimately considered that particular request to be too daunting, saying that Vincent Price was a bit "out of his league". He eventually decided to portray the character as an aging man longing for a purpose in an ever-changing world, who starts out as a complete coward but eventually learns to face his insecurities for the better good, almost becoming as much of a main protagonist as Charley himself in the process!
Speaking of Charley Brewster, Charlie Sheen originally auditioned for the role, but was ultimately turned down because Tom Holland felt he didn't look enough like a normal teen. William Ragsdale ultimately got the part due to his chemistry with Amanda Bearse, who was also one of the last actors cast because Holland had trouble finding the "perfect girl-next-door"
Stephen Geoffreys was cast as Evil Ed, a morbid estranged friend of Charley's who halfway through the movie gets turned by Jerry and becomes a secondary antagonist. Geoffreys was in the process of auditioning for potential future Stranger Sinema topic Weird Science when he turned up to the set of Fright Night, having shared a casting agent with Weird Science's lead Anthony Michael Hall. He had coincidentally just finished working with Amanda Bearse on the sex comedy Fraternity Vacation, where they actually played a couple together.
As for Jerry, the film's antagonist, Oscar-nominated actor Chris Sarandon initially wanted to turn down the part, not wanting to work in the horror genre or play a villain. He changed his mind as he continued to read through the script, but he suggested making a few changes to Jerry's character and motivations. He saw Jerry as wanting to lead a normal life despite his vampirism, and reluctant to kill Charley (hence the quote you saw at the top of this page), and would go after Amy not after blind lust, but because he saw her as the reincarnation of his long-dead lover. While on set, he also helped apply some of his own makeup, and came up with a few visual quirks such as having Jerry eat an apple in several scenes, jokingly explaining that Jerry "had a lot of fruit bat in his DNA."
The remainder of the main cast included the aforementioned Johnathan Stark as secondary antagonist Billy Cole, Dorothy Fielding as Charley's oblivious mother, and the late Art Evans in a small role as a police detective whom Charley turns to help initially, only to be immediately brushed off.
Painting the Set Red
After the final version of the script was finished, Fright Night went into production during the holiday season of 1984. In addition to the cast, Tom Holland assembled a large production posse of filmmaking masters in order to bring his modern-day Dracula to life, most notably Visual Effects Supervisor Richard Edlund and Composer Brad Fiedel, both of whom had just finished work on the now classic films Ghostbusters and The Terminator respectively.
"Following the large-scale production of Ghostbusters and 2010, this seemed like the perfect project for us." , reflects Edlund. "We had our creature shop all set up and, although there were project negotiations, we didn't have any other work at the time. Also, it afforded us with the opportunity show we could do a small project. As opposed to doing a $5 Million or $8 Million budget, we were dealing with somewhat less than $1 Million, so it was a good chance to show our flexibility."
Production for the movie was held (strangely enough) on the backlot of Walt Disney Studios, which had just recently wrapped production on their own, family friendly horror film Something Wicked This Way Comes. Each of the cast members were given to weeks to themselves in order to rehearse their lines, which, at the time, was rather unusual for a film's production schedule.
However, it would seem that this benefitted the film in the end, as much of the film's cast and crew claimed to have had a pleasant working experience making the film. Much of the cast members notably had some interesting things to say about Roddy McDowell in particular. The younger cast members have often described him as a "walking history book" who shared many stories and trivia about the older days of Hollywood, while Chris Sarandon described him as a "kind of Yoda" to the younger cast members.
Granted, there were still a couple of minor mishaps on the set. While filming a scene where Charley runs down a staircase, William Ragsdale suffered minor injuries to his foot after he tripped, and much of the rest of his action scenes had to be postponed as he recovered. Stephen Geoffreys contracted food poisoning one day while filming a scene where Evil Ed and Amy find Charley's room adorned with crosses and candles. Chris Sarandon spent as much as 8 hours in the makeup chair on certain days and eventually had to study hypnosis and meditation to improve his mental health. Billy's actor Johnathan Stark scratched his eyes while wearing contact lenses for one scene, so he requested his shots be redone without them.
Monsters Unleashed
After a lengthy post production schedule, Fright Night first bore its fangs to the world on August 2nd, 1985. Unlike a lot of the works that we have discussed on Something Niche so far, however, the film was actually a success from the get-go.
Granted, it was more of a surprise hit than an expected blockbuster. Initially, distributor Columbia Pictures, who dominated the box office with Ghostbusters the previous summer, didn't have much faith in the project, and only gave it a limited release that day, and poured more marketing for two other movies that ended up underperforming, Perfect and The Slugger's Wife.
Columbia was ultimately proven wrong however, and Fright Night became a sleeper hit. It was so successful in fact, that it became the 2nd highest grossing horror film of 1985, only bested by A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge, and outpacing the likes of Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning, Cat's Eye, and Silver Bullet!
Reviews for the film were also generally positive, with praise being given to its old-school horror vibe and character development. The cast was also seen as a highlight, with Sarandon and McDowell being singled out in particular. The latter would even win a Saturn Award (an awards ceremony that honors works of speculative fiction in film and tv) for Best Supporting Actor for his performance, while Sarandon was also received a nomination!
The film was considered enough of a success to receive a sequel in Fright Night Part 2 three years later, but that film was met with much less financial and critical success, and no further films were produced afterwards as a result. However, a comic book series that expanded on the series' lore was produced and lasted well into the 1990s! A remake was produced by Dreamworks in 2011 with a cast that included Colin Farrell, David Tennant and sadly taken from us too soon Anton Yelchin, which received its own direct-to-DVD sequel a few years later.
However, I feel that in more recent times as generations have moved on to different forms of horror, with the exception of many online horror circles and retro afficionados, Fright Night has started to fall to the wayside in the eyes of the public. And while there are certainly quite a few people outside of those niches who have at least heard of it, I think only a few have actually seen the film in its entirety (especially during the TikTok age!).
And that is a crying shame, as Fright Night is definitely a film that future generations could get a real kick out of! And maybe I should explain why!
A Bloody Good Time
Indeed, Fright Night is definitely a film that I can call one of my personal favorites and a true cult classic of the genre. The film manages to combine both contemporary charm and chilling gothic atmosphere to create a film that adds fantasy and terror to the mundane; one of my personal favorite things to do with the power of fiction, as you will soon learn with future installments of this series!
In addition, for a low-budget horror film, the movie also manages to insert a surprising amount of sophisticated special effects that border on Oscar-worthy, no thanks in part to Richard Edlund's expertise in the craft. Plenty of spectacularly gruesome highlights appear throughout the film, with some personal favorites including Evil Ed's pus-filled transformation from a wolf back into a humanoid form, a vampiric Amy's iconic contorted expression with drooling, shark-like teeth, and perhaps my most favorite (spoilers, btw), Billy's death scene, where after being staked through the heart in true vampire hunting fashion, his body melts down into a gloppy mess of putrefied green blood and coarse ashes that waterfalls down the staircase, ending with a shot of his skull sliding across the floor below into a wall.
But that's not all. The film is also a rare horror film that also has genuine heart. We see a lot of character development throughout the movie from both Charley and Peter. We see Charley come of age and stand up to the unknown as he applies his knowledge of the vampire mythos in order to save Amy and end Jerry's threat one and for all. But perhaps most impressively, we see an ingenious deconstruction of the mentor figure to our young protagonist through Peter Vincent. Rather than being a wise, experienced badass, Mr. Vincent starts the story as an insecure coward who's nothing like the character he masqueraded as in the films Charley watches. However, as he continues to experience more and more of the supernatural suddenly occur before his eyes, Peter Vincent finds himself fighting back as a result of being put through a situation he initially didn't want anything to do with, ultimately managing to face his newfound dilemma head one while simultaneously managing to live up to the legend he established through his movies. As I said before, Mr. Vincent becomes practically as much of a main protagonist as Charley himself!
And lastly, the film has style in spades! It not only serves as an excellent supernatural tale, but it also serves as on arguably one of-if not the-quintessential time capsules of 1980s-produced horror, a style that has been often imitated, but rarely replicated in the past couple of decades. Brad Fiedel's synth-laden score adds a bit of poppy charm to its gothic chord progressions, managing to combine the styles of two different eras of horror in order to create something truly unique to the era. The lighting and cinematography are also soaked in plenty of flashy neon colors, creating visuals that are as slick and vintage as they are unnerving. Not only that, but a lot of the actual mise-en-scene of the 80s gets preserved on camera with the presence of recycled appliances and unique wardrobe choices for our leads, managing to establish an authentic view of a bygone era you won't find in any modern-day period piece!
Freakish Fun Facts
Now, we come to a segment of this article that will become a staple for this series movie going forward; Freakish Fun Facts! Here, we will share with you some odd behind the scenes stories and obscure trivia pertaining to the topic of the article;
- Originally, the film had a much different twist ending similar to most horror films of the time period. Initially, Charley and a now-cured Amy were to witness Peter Vincent suddenly transforming into a vampire while hosting a live episode of his show (presumably having gotten bitten previously, either by Jerry during a climactic fight scene or by Evil Ed during an earlier scene where he attacked Mr. Vincent in the form of a wolf.) This ending was scrapped for being too confusing.
- Towards the climax, we see Jerry transform into a large bat creature (pictured above) and attack Peter Vincent. The special effects prop was originally created by Richard Edlund for his work on Ghostbusters the previous year but was rejected for looking too scary for that film's comedy-first tone.
- For when her character Amy is turned partway through the film, actress Amanda Bearse had a set of fake breasts made to wear. She still keeps these prosthetics to this day and even has her fans touch them during appearances at horror conventions!
- Peter Vincent actor Roddy McDowell, as mentioned previously, had a prolific acting career prior to Fright Night, including the classic science fiction film Planet of the Apes. A makeup head from that film can be seen in Mr. Vincent's apartment during the course of the film!
- In addition to the aforementioned American remake, an unofficial remake was made in Bollywood in 1989 under the name of Kalpana House!
- The car Charley drives at several points in the movie was a 1966 Ford Mustang that belonged to director Tom Holland.
So, in the end, Fright Night is a classic from the 80s that has established quite a legacy that deserves to be worth remembering, especially as the film officially turns 40 this year!
It introduced the vampire films from the Golden and Silver Ages of horror to the Bronze Age, allowing a whole new generation of fans to fall in love! And in the process, as the world continued to grow more and more nostalgic for the 80s, it became a classic in its own right by inserting some of the decade's own quirks into its mise-en-scene!
It managed to create memorable heroes and villains alike with gusto, which is something that a lot of movies nowadays can't really attest to!
And above all else, it manages to have heart, with a story that underneath its core, is about the misunderstood weirdos and past-their-prime relics of the world managing to save the day from a narcissistic greater threat despite the odds. As a horror fan with odd tastes myself, this message always gives me hope to keep fighting in a world that constantly seems to work against me from time to time! And it's this message that has made Fright Night and other films that will be featured later on this show that has made them favorites of mine that I keep coming back to.
And with that, tonight's showing has concluded. Please leave all trash in the wastebaskets at the front of the auditorium and share your thoughts on our showing in the comments section down below!
Have a great night, drive safe, and above all else, don't be afraid to be a little strange!
Sources:
Database, Grindhouse Cinema. “Fright Night/Fun Facts.” The Grindhouse Cinema Database, 7 Mar. 2024, www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/Fright_Night/Fun_Facts.
Kronner, Brian. “The Chill Atmosphere of Fright Night.” The American Society of Cinematographers, The American Society of Cinematographers, 13 Oct. 2024, theasc.com/articles/the-chill-atmosphere-of-fright-night.
Loftus, Matt. “11 Fearsome Fright-Night Facts for Super-Fans!” Horror, Oct. 2021, vocal.media/horror/11-fearsome-fright-night-facts-for-super-fans.
Pierdomenico, Dave. “35 Fun Facts about ‘Fright Night.’” Halloween Year-Round, 2 Aug. 2020, halloweenyearround.wordpress.com/2020/08/02/35-fun-facts-about-fright-night/.
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