Fright Night **** (1985, Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Roddy McDowall) – Classic Movie Review 6092

Chris Sarandon has apparently been taking lessons in smooth, polished bloodsucking from Christopher Lee for his performance as bloodsucker Jerry Dandrige, in this rousing, exceptionally good-humoured 1985 horror movie from writer-director Tom Holland.

William Ragsdale plays Charley Brewster, the all-American teenager who finds out to his horror that his new neighbour is a vampire. Roddy McDowall plays washed-up actor Peter Vincent, the phoney TV expert who hosts Charley’s favourite TV show Fright Night, and reluctantly agrees to help him even though he doesn’t believe in vampires.

Holland does a great job of keeping the yarn on the move, sending in the top-of-the-range special effects when they are needed, and raising charismatic turns from Sarandon, Ragsdale and McDowall.

Fright Night is enormous fun. The mix of fun-house frights and laughs in Holland’s screenplay is exactly right, and the characters, relationships and plot are really well developed. This cult movie is campy in a good way, and there is a hard-to-ignore homosexual sub-text with the gay vampire, as in Roman Polanski’s 1967 Dance of the Vampires [The Fearless Vampire Killers].

It was a hit, and McDowall and Ragsdale returned for the sequel: Fright Night Part 2 (1988).

Also in the cast are Amanda Bearse as Amy Peterson, Stephen Geoffreys as Evil Ed, Jonathan Stark as Billy Cole, Dorothy Fielding as Judy Brewster, Art Evans as Detective Lennox, Stewart Stern, Nick Savage and Ernie Holmes.

It is shot by Jan Kiesser, produced by Herb Jaffe, scored by Brad Fiedel and Tangerine Dream, and designed by John de Cuir Jr.

Fright Night was remade in 2011 with Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell and David Tennant.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6092

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