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Fright Night" *** (out of ****)
"You have to have faith for this to work on me!" declares the vampire when confronted with a crucifix. It is a line that's spoken near the end of the film but it is at the core of "Fright Night" (1985), which is celebrating it's 40th anniversary.
I don't believe this dialogue or scene is actually about spirituality or religion. It is about having faith in yourself. The man holding the crucifix is an old out of work actor, Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall). He was best known for appearing in horror movies as a vampire killer; but he is a fraud who not only doesn't believe in vampires, he doesn't believe in himself anymore.
Peter was approached by a teenager, Charley (William Ragsdale) who is convinced his next door neighbor, Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire; responsible for a series of recent deaths. Charley has made it known he is aware of Jerry's true identity and is now desperate for help when no one will believe him, including his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) and friend, nicknamed "Evil" Ed (Stephen Geoffreys). Charley must now place his own faith in his favorite actor to kill the vampire. "Fright Night" is not so much about vampires as it is these two central ideas - having faith in yourself and the relationship between life and art.
Writer / director Tom Holland immediately sets up these themes in the movie's opening sequence, which takes place at night, with the shot of a full moon and a wolf's howl. We hear a couple; a startled man and a flirtatious, sensual woman. She suggest they remain outside and sit on a veranda. The camera pans from left to right along a suburban neighborhood but we can't see the couple. The dialogue becomes sexually suggestive as the man begins to compliment the woman's pale, luminescent skin and red lips. The camera lands on a home and begins to zoom towards a bedroom window. We hear kissing and suddenly see a television, making it apparent this was the source of the dialogue; subconsciously blurring a line between life and art. The woman on the television is a vampire and the man is about to be defeated by her seduction and become her next victim. It is quickly revealed there are two people inside of the bedroom, Charley and Amy. The screams and moans of the vampire being killed by a stake in the heart fuses together with the sound of Charley and Amy's aggressive moans, drawing a link between sex and violence. Initially the television image doesn't match the real world as it is Charley that is the aggressor but soon life imitates art when Amy, much like the female vampire, becomes the sexually dominate one, after Charley complains he is tired of waiting to take their relationship to the next level, after a year of dating.
The movie takes this interesting gender dynamic of Amy as the pursuer and Charley reluctantly pursued - much like the startled man first heard and the vampire woman the consoler - and transitions it into a Hitchcockian scenario a la "Rear Window" (1954) with Charley spying on his next door neighbors when he sees a coffin being taken into a basement. Much like Hitchcock's film the spying becomes a substitute for intimacy.
While male performance anxiety may have been the motivation for Charley's sudden avoidance of sex with Amy, it is fittingly as it serves one of the genre's most famous tropes; virginity as sacred. The concept of the dangers of pre-marital sex is often applied to female characters but notice how Holland flips the cliché; it is the male character's virginal status that saves the day. That's a subversive move on the film's part that went unnoticed in some mainstream reviews at the time.
This does lend itself to how the film treats these two characters differently. Charley's "purity" is contrasted with Peter. Notice when Charley aims a crucifix in front of the vampire, it immediately shrieks away. When Peter does it, the vampire mocks him. Charley's innocence becomes a weapon he can use against evil.
Compare that to how Amy is treated. Her "purity" isn't a weapon used against evil. Instead it becomes her weakness, as she is seduced by Jerry. And notice the blatant sexuality evoked in how Jerry seduces Amy. The movie wants us to ignore / forget the fact Jerry is a grown man and Amy is only a 17 year old girl. The act of a vampire piercing the neck of their victim does have a sexual connotation to it, especially if the vampire is a man and the victim is a woman. You could make the argument Bram Stoker's Dracula was about sexual repression during the Victorian era. Keep that in mind as you watch the scene when Jerry bites Amy's neck. Here is how such a scene is shot nine out of ten times. We start with a medium shot of the victim's back. The vampire opens his mouth, so we can see his fangs. He goes into for the bite while the camera then switches positions. Now we see the back of the vampire in a medium shot, so we can see the victim's face, reacting to the bite. Again, this is standard but pay attention to how "Fright Night" does it. Amy's naked back is exposed to us in a long shot. Jerry seductively leans in to bite her neck. The camera position doesn't change. Jerry continues to bite Amy when suddenly blood drips down Amy's neck and back. How does an audience not interpret that as Amy being deflowered? Sure, you can brush off a deeper symbolism of the dripping blood and try to convince yourself it is just an example of excessive gore but the fact that Amy is a virgin, makes the blood sexual and symbolic
As interesting as these characters are however it is McDowall's Peter Vincent that brings the movie to life. In Roger Ebert's Chicago Sun-Times review he referred to McDowall as "The center of the movie" and so he is. By having Peter Vincent - an obvious homage to Peter Cushing and Vincent Price - as the embodiment of the film's self belief theme, he becomes the moral center, along with Charley. Peter also becomes the perfect representation of art imitating life.
The realization of life imitating art becomes crystal clear to Peter in one of the most emotionally complex scenes in the entire movie; Peter witness the death of a vampire that has transformed into a werewolf. The scene is initially played for horror; in slow motion we see the werewolf charging towards Peter, who is preparing to meet his demise. When the werewolf leaps toward Peter, he accidentally impales the wolf with a banister railing. If vampire hunting wasn't real to Peter before, it most certainly is now. The werewolf begins to return to human form and reaches out to Peter for help. The scene becomes both frightening and sympathetic at once. Holland doesn't break away, adding to the tension as Peter has a moment when we wants to grab the hand of the vampire. We sympathize with his decision to do so until Peter stops himself and realizes what the implication would be. He must watch the vampire die in front of him; as the painful howls of the wolf fill the room; tearful Peter looks on.
This becomes more than what Peter was anticipating. His motivation for helping Charley had nothing to do with a belief in vampires and a desire to help. It was a purely financial decision brought on by an eviction notice. For Peter, this was all just a quick, harmless way to make a dollar.
And this becomes why the "You have to have faith" line becomes so crucial to the movie. Peter's acting the hero won't protect him. He needs to learn to believe in himself and his art. Only then will he be able to stop the evil in front of him.
It also shouldn't go unmentioned that the fact the movie takes place in the American suburbs is within itself a social commentary. A lot of emphasis isn't placed on it, so I won't belabor the point but ever since WW2, suburbia was considered a safer alternative to life in a big city. By the 1980s however crime was on the rise in the suburbs. A vampire moving into the area doesn't help either.
At this point it seems like I have discussed everything in "Fright Night" except for the vampires and the horror. The movie could be described as a modern day adaptation of the vampire legend, only instead of a European setting, it takes place in America. This isn't exactly an entirely new concept as
"Son of Dracula" (1943) for example did something similar and could be interpreted as a commentary on WW2. For its part however "Fright Night" does a moderately good job of retelling a traditional vampire story while finding humor in its contemporary setting. Maybe that's why the wonderful
New York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote in her review, the movie "has a lot more personality than the usual horror film". That "personality" most likely referred to the comedic elements in the story, which may have made this material feel fresh for 1980s audiences. If that were true, it would be quite ironic because back in the 1940s it was
"Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948) that brought about a renewed interest in Universal's Monster characters.
The 1980s by extension seems to have been part of a trend of taking these horror monsters and adapting them in modern times, sometimes for comedy. In 1985 alone you had "Teen Wolf" and "Weird Science"; modern takes on the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's Monster. But the decade also saw "Monster Squad" (1987), "An American Werewolf in London" (1981), "The Howling" (1981) and "Frankenweenie" (1984).
Part of what makes "Fright Night" fun to watch is catching the references to older vampire movies such as
"Dracula" (1931) and
"Nosferatu" (1922). For example, how does Peter discover Jerry is a vampire? When he doesn't see Jerry's reflection in his pocket mirror, which is very similar to how Van Helsing discovers Dracula's identity in the 1931 movie. Or what about Jerry's long fingernails and skinny, long fingers? That recalls Count Orlok. In one of the movies within the movie, Peter drives a stake into a vampire's heart while blood squirts on him. This is supposed to make us think of the bloody Hammer horror movies.
One element of the movie that managed to divided critics was the movie's special effects. Movie critics like the
Chicago Tribune's Gene Siskel felt the gore became too excessive and lost focus of the humor at the beginning of the movie. Janet Maslin had a similar complaint, stating in her review, "its horrific touches are more disgusting than scary." Meanwhile Roger Ebert praised the effects believing they never "overwhelm the action." The effects were done by Richard Edlund, who had previously worked on
"The Empire Strikes Back" (1980),
"Return of the Jedi" (1983), "Poltergeist" (1982) and
"Ghostbusters" (1984). I found the special effects to be quite scary at times and always remained impressed by their craft and artistry.
Tom Holland's career seemed to show great promise with this feature-length directorial debut but the rest of his career never quite matched this movie's potential. One bright spot may have been as the director of the original
"Child's Play" (1988) movie, which is arguably the best in the franchise. One of his low points may have been as the director of "Thinner" (1996), based on a Stephen King book.
"Fright Night" was a successful film at the box-office becoming the second highest grossing horror movie of 1985, only second to "Nightmare on Elm Street 2". It's popularity brought about a sequel, "Fright Night 2" (1988) which was unfortunately poorly distributed and unable to match the original's fame. A remake was created back in 2011 starring Colin Farrell as Jerry, as well as its own sequel, "Fright Night 2: New Blood" (2013).
For the last forty years it appears the consensus has been that "Fright Night" is a campy horror / comedy, and that is how the positive reviews describe it. Somehow the film's themes and subversion of horror clichés were lost on critics at its time of release. Perhaps because it wasn't deemed serious for a proper critical analysis. That makes me wonder who are these arbiters of taste that get to decide such things? Nevertheless, "Fright Night" is an entertaining horror movie that perceptive eyes will find many rewards in. Roddy McDowall steals the movie and becomes an on-screen delight.
