Fright Night

Sometimes things in movie land nag at me. 

Like, did you know Steve McQueen was supposed to play Quigley in Quigley Down Under?

So instead of affable Tom Selleck and a fun comedy (which I love) you would have had action star McQueen facing off against Alan Rickman’s bad guy. 

Mannnn, I don’t know if that would have been a better movie but it is definetely a movie I would love to see. 

In Fright Night, Roddy McDowell, plays Peter Vincent, a down on his luck has-been who once was the star of a host of Hammer Horrore-sque movies. 

Now he hams it up on a television show where he introduces his own movies and gets paid almost nothing. 

It’s a not bad performance in a not bad movie. 

But it’s hard for me to watch when the whole time I’m wondering what Peter Cushing or Vincent Price would have done with the role. 

McDowell in an interview somewhere said he chose to pattern his performance on The Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz. 

Absolutely right choice for McDowell, but I would have loved to see the gravity Price or Cushing would have delivered. 

The character would have been less of a joke, the movie would have probably felt less scattershot as it moved from comedy, to straight horror to nearly erotic horror and back again. 

But it would have been a different thing. And this is perfectly acceptable 80s horror. Chris Sarandon is maybe the sexiest vampire of the decade.

Sarandon is also trying really hard to bring depth to a character that the screenplay would prefer to be as flat as cardboard. 

I think that’s what’s I’m trying to articulate that this lacks just the amount of depth it needs to make it a true classic. 

Here’s the best example of that: At one point Charley runs to his best friend, Evil Ed, to ask him what he should do about the vampire living next door. 

But there is no reason given why Charley would think Ed has that answer. In fact, Charley is the horror movie fan. 

The movie also doesn’t explain why Ed’s nickname is so unique. Sometimes mystery is a good thing. Most prequels suffer because creators and fans can’t let the mystery be. But calling someone (ostensibly your best friend) evil feels like it needs a footnote in the dialogue. 

But what do I know. This romp in the suburbs was exactly what audiences wanted from their creature features in the Reagan years. 

It was the second highest grossing horror movie of 1985. And it still has a strong fan base. 

If I had caught it as a teenager I’m sure I would have loved it. As an old man I found it charming but not thrilling. 

The Lost Boys remains the king of this particular decade in vampire flicks for me with Near Dark (which I only recently watched) being a close second and kindred cousin. 

I also really liked Monster Squad when I was a kid. But that movie is great when you are young and then you watch it again as an adult and you realize it’s a dog. 

IMDB trivia suggests that this movie owes much to the vampire relationship in Salem’s Lot and the human relationship in the same Stephen King book. Then it goes on to point out all the similarities to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. 

It’s probably fairer to say say that Fright Night is a genre piece and follows most of the conventions and cliches of the genre. 

At one point one character tells another character that a plan will work because everything else they learned about vampires from the movies has worked so far. 

It’s that kind of film. Not exactly a guilty pleasure but certainly a mild pleasure all the way around.