1985 was one of the greatest years for horror movies as there seemed to be a never-ending amount of horror movies released every week, and percentage of good movies to bad was never better. During this epic year such movies as Day of the dead, Goonies, Return of the living dead, Re-animator, The Stuff, Silver Bullet, Demons and one of the all time greats...Fright Night!
Written and directed by Tom Holland (Childs play, Psycho 2, The beast within) who used some great camera shots, even better special effects, a fantastic story and script combined with Brad Fidels (Terminator, Tales from the crypt, Amazing stories) score and you have one of the most amazing and creative vampire flicks ever to grace the big screen.
When Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) learns that his new neighbor (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire he does everything he can to convince everyone around him of this vampire, and of course no one believes him, not even his best friend Evil Ed (Stephen Geoffreys).
While all this is going on we are introduced to Peter Vincent (Roddy Mcdowell) who is a late night horror host. His name is actually a combination of two well known actors in the horror genre, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price. Charley finally contacts Peter and after a few failed attempts to convince the fearless vampire killer himself of the vampire he soon finds out the truth and so begins there fight to rid the thousand year old vampire from the neighborhood. This film combines comedy and horror perfectly creating a very even film without it feeling like a pure horror or comedy. I have always been a sucker for movies involving the perfect suburban neighborhood in which something evil exists, the idea being not everything is what it appears to be (The Burbs, Gremilns, Family). The characters are great and one of my favorites being Evil Ed, he was the joker and the outcast and his acting was way over the top yet it worked. Charley and Peter were also great but I think the vampire himself (Chris Sarandon) steals the show with his charisma takes the character to the next level making you really believe he is a vampire.
The special effects crew really went all out in this film and created some incredibly horrific scenes including Ed's make-up, Charley's girlfriend's transformation scene, the vampire's transformation when he changes first into a werewolf then a demon in which he had to spend eight hours having make-up applied for the vampire look and had to spend twelve hours made up as the werewolf...twice.
There was a puppet in the film that was created for Ghost Busters and not used so Tom Holland decided to use it in Fright Night.
Fright Night ended up winning five awards including the Dario Argento award, and rightfully so being so original and an obvious homage to a lot of older films (Rear Window). During a time when horror directors wanted to fill their movies with as much gore and slashing as possible, Tom Holland decided to make a film honoring the past films in cinematic horror history.
Columbia Pictures released a pretty standard DVD with not too many extras but the transfer look OK. If you go to Icons Of Fright you can download an audio commentary with Tom Holland and some of the actors. They also have a commentary with Tom for Childs play that I highly recommend.
With Fright Night it's pretty simple...you have to see it. If you are a horror fan you will love this film...guaranteed.
Rating: B
Review by Jason
No comments:
Post a Comment