Fright Night: The Cast and Crew Reunion Screening

Last Friday night at Midnight at the Nuart theater in Los Angeles, Icons of Fright’s Tim Sullivan hosted a special reunion of 80’s vampire classic Fright Night, with the director and the majority of the cast in attendance. When I first heard this was happening, I knew there was simply no way I was missing this. Fright Night was the movie that made me a vampire aficionado, lo those many years ago, and I still have a deep affection for it, warts and all.

As a young kid, my knowledge of vampires pretty much extended to The Count on Sesame Street, Count Chocula cereal, and the Dracula Halloween decorations that littered suburban homes every October. In some way though, even as a small child, I somehow absorbed all the vampire lore through some kind of weird cultural osmosis, without ever watching a single vampire movie or reading a single vampire comic book ( I always quickly skipped over any of my brother’s issues of Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula comics when going through his stack, because the Gene Colan drawings of Drac, fangs bared, scared the shit out of me ) But it was Fright Night that made me a true vampire fan. Not that there were many vampiric options when I was a kid; as it turned out, the late seventies and early eighties were a dead time for the vampire genre. Horror films had shifted away from the classic monsters, and movies like Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street had made the slasher film the only game in town.

That was until 1985, when writer director Tom Holland released his homage to the vampire flicks of his youth called Fright Night. Released in August of that year, Fright Night was not expected to do much business. In fact, it didn’t even get a proper premiere, as Columbia Pictures had put all their marketing muscle into the John Travolta / Jamie Lee Curtis aerobics movie Perfect. Well, Perfect turned out to be anything but, and was a notorious flop, while Fright Night made twice the money and remains a beloved cult classic to this day.

The story is pretty simple as far as these kinds of movies go; teenage Charley Brewster ( William Ragsdale ) is your typical all American 80’s teen movie geek. Charlie’s got a girlfriend named Amy ( Married with Children’s Amanda Bearse ) who decides in the opening scenes of the movie that it’s finally time to “go all the way” with Charley. But Charley, ignoring the eager and willing girlfriend waiting for him to pop her cherry on his bed, pulls his binoculars out and gets transfixed with the two good looking men who are moving in next door in the middle of the night. Turns out the new neighbors are Jerry Dandrige ( played by The Princess Bride’s  Chris Sarandon ) and his live in “interior designer” Billy Cole. Apparently they are restoring the dilapidated ( yet fabulous ) old house together. If anyone says I’m projecting by saying that’s a very gay set up there, then I really don’t know what to say to you.

After young Charley sees an attractive young woman get naked and then get bitten when Jerry leaves his window open ( you’d think after several centuries he’d be a little more careful about things like killing hookers in perfect view of the neighbors ) Charley decides he needs to do something about the vamp next door before he kills any more local hot chicks. He first enlists the help of his fellow horror movie geek friend and all around weirdo, “Evil” Ed. Evil is that kid we all knew in high school, who was really into Megadeth and bought every issue of Fangoria, and then actually posted the insert pin ups of blood and gore up on his bedroom wall. Evil Ed is played perfectly by Stephen Geoffreys, and in many ways his is the most fun and iconic performance in the whole movie. No offense to William Ragsdale, but I always wished Evil Ed had been the main character in the movie and not him. He’s just that much more fun to watch. Stephen Geoffreys went on to star in Robert Englund’s 976-EVIL and Moon 44, and then spent much of the 90’s doing gay porn movies like Cock Pit and Latin Crotch Rockets. He recently returned to horror with the indie flick Sick Girl, and I say horror is where he belongs. Although in all fairness I never have seen any of his porn work, maybe I’d change my tune if I did.

When neither Evil Ed nor Charley’s girlfriend Amy provide much in the way of moral support, Charley turns to his idol, washed up monster movie actor Peter Vincent, who hosts his own local horror movie show called ( surprise! ) Fright Night. Peter Vincent is a rather obvious amalgamation of horror icons Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, but is played with the appropriate tongue in cheek gusto by the late Roddy McDowall, who chews scenery with the best of them. It’s really the great trio of Roddy McDowall,Chris Sarandon, and Stephen Geoffreys that elevate this movie to cult status in my opinion.  While the movie’s script might not always be that great or that clever, these three actors always bring it and are a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

I was too young to ever see Fright Night in theaters when it came out, but I finally caught it when it started playing in constant rotation on HBO the following year. In many ways, Fright Night served as “My First Horror Movie” the way The Monster Squad, with it’s many television airings, was the monster primer for the generation right after me. Fright Night managed to mix horror with comedy in a way that didn’t devalue either genre, and revived the vampire movie in a very real way. The successful mix of the vampires and the quirky comedy resulted in a new mini genre, which led to The Lost Boys two years later and eventually, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Funny thing is, the more times I watched the movie, the less I liked Charley Brewster and the more I liked the vampire Jerry Dandrige. I mean, Jerry wasn’t all bad. Mostly he just wanted to be left alone. Vampires gotta eat, as they say. Plus, he could’ve killed Charley lots of times and didn’t, and literally tells him at one point in the movie “forget about me kid, and I’ll forget about you” But did Charley take his advice? Hell no, he kept fucking with his neighbor till Jerry had no choice but to vamp out his best friend and attempt to do the same to his girlfriend. Ok, ok…. so maybe my perspective is a little skewed here. But Fright Night taught me that if you like the human in the vampire movie more than the actual vampire, then that movie is probably doing something wrong.

Not to say that the movie is some great masterpiece or is perfect, because believe me, there are some unintentionally hilarious bits in this one. When Jerry Dandrige is attempting to hypnotize and seduce Amy in some cheesy 80’s disco, just seconds after one song ends and another begins, Amy is sporting a totally different hair do and make up. I had no idea that the hypnotic power of the vampire included an instant trip to the Vidal Sassoon hair salon. But the 80’s retro cheese factor is also part of the reason why the movie is still so fun to watch today, so I wouldn’t change a thing.

The reunion screening of the movie was a blast. Again, props to Tim Sullivan for getting the cast and crew together like that, not just for the reunion, but also to record an audio commentary that he’ll make available for free on his site. The fact that Sony has dropped the ball on releasing Fright Night in a proper Special Edition DVD is a damn shame, but I suppose sometimes you just need to leave stuff like this in the hands of the fans to do it right. Chris Sarandon couldn’t make it, but he was thoughtful enough to provide a little video greeting for the screening, which was cool of him to do, so in a way it felt like he was there. Almost all of the remaining major cast members and special effects team were there, with the notable exception of Amanda Bearse ( I was hoping she would show up and then maybe at the Q&A afterward she’d be wearing a totally different hairstyle ) The print of the movie they used was terrific; so many times at these revival screenings the prints are scratchy and awful, but not this time. Everyone involved still seems really proud of this one, and they should be. As one of the cast said at the Q&A after the movie, here we are, 23 years later and at 3:30 in the morning, and the theater is still packed with people who love this movie. Someone did something right.