The OG FRIGHT NIGHT. . .a great Valentine's movie? By Kymm Zuckert
“I have just been fired because nobody wants to see vampire killers anymore, or vampires either. Apparently, all they want to see are demented madmen running around in ski masks, hacking up young virgins.”
So, Cinematic Void, after the end of January Giallo, is extending their Monday night residency at American Cinematheque, programming vampire movies in February, and for Valentines Day they showed good old Fright Night. The original and far better version.
For my entire childhood, and beyond, Roddy McDowall always was my favorite actor, and I loved this movie because it really gave him a terrific late career role. Though it pains me to call it late career when he was exactly my age when this came out, he had been working for 47 years, and math doesn’t lie, which is why math is a terrible thing.
So, Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) is a teenager is watching a movie tv show called Fright Night, hosted by Peter Vincent, Vampire Killer (our Roddy), while making out with his girlfriend, Amy Peterson (Amanda Bearse from Married With Children). In a break from smooching and trying to get to second base, he notices a coffin being carried into the house next door, which has just been sold to Jerry Dandridge, seemingly merely the best looking man ever to have walked the earth (seriously, Chris Sarandon at this precise moment of his life, could have toppled monarchs had he a mind to), but wait a minute, could he be a vampire?
Well, since ol’ Jerry is the most careless vampire ever to live beyond one day in terms of munching on beautiful girls’ necks in well-lit rooms without closing the blinds first, it is pretty clear to us and Charley that yes, here there be vampires, in Anytown, USA. But convincing everyone else is another matter.
Whoa whoa slow your roll. . .we just met.
Charley enlists Amy, his friend literally named Evil Ed (Stephen Geoffreys, I know it’s an iconic role, but it’s a really terrible performance), and Peter Vincent, the great vampire killer, (really Peter Vincent the has-been B movie actor), to clean up the vampire problem in this town, which is kind of tricky. It doesn’t help that when you start going on about the vampire next door in a wild-eyed fashion, people do tend to back away from you warily, though eventually, everyone has cause to believe Charley’s ravings.
This film holds up really well, and is as enjoyable now as when I watched it multiple times in the 1980s. Fright Night for Valentines Day, a new tradition!
Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog