52 Weeks: Don’t Call Me Evil Anymore!!

Fright Night (1985)

★★★★★★★★★☆ (9 out of 10 stars)

Director: Tom Holland
Producer: Herb Jaffe
Starring: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse, Roddy McDowall, Stephen Geoffreys

“Welcome to Fright Night. For real.”
— Jerry Dandridge

The Review:

Come closer, my precious little creatures of the dark, and let me tell you a story about a boy who always lived in small towns.

Eight years I spent in Savannah, Georgia. Nowadays I make my home in Appalachia. And though Savannah is no small town — if you have seen the city, spent any time wandering its mossy squares, or know anyone who has, you understand this well — it carries an identity all its own. For that reason I never counted Savannah among the big cities. It shares a great deal in common with those isolated communities where I spent most of my life.

Movies, dear ones, were the first and best way for me to explore the world. On weekends I would travel to the nearest town with a theater and watch whatever new and exciting thing waited there, ready to entertain me with its visions of an alternate world. Horror movies are where I found the stories that spoke most directly to me. For that reason, little ones, it is my genuine pleasure to share my insight with each of you on the matter of scares and shocks, fabulous frights and dismal dives.

Tonight we visit an old, dear friend. A friend that once invited me to another small town, one that felt very much like my own — to spend a little time with folk who related to me on a personal scale. And though I was a little like Brewster, I confess I was probably a whole lot more like Ed. You see, children, I was most at home before my computer and beneath the flickering lights of the cinema. I rarely journeyed far from home in those days, so I wondered endlessly about the lives and journeys of others. This, my dears, is a tale of seclusion and suspicion — of what happens when your neighbor turns out to be so much stranger than you ever imagined.

There are three vampire films that share the same coveted spot at the very top of my viewing list, and this is one of them. I am happy indeed to share my critique of Fright Night, a reminder of a different time — when the end of the day arrived the moment the streetlights hummed to life, and the night was a liminal place best explored by the older and wiser, yet so often exploited by the young. Perhaps that is why I adore vampires so. They are masters of that in-between darkness, suspended forever between twilight and the dawn.

Let me speak plainly, as I always do. Fright Night is a nearly perfect movie of its era. Memorable, endlessly quotable, and eternally at home in the shadowed corners of imagination. I am always entertained by how bemused Dandridge is with himself as he toys with humanity — a predator so comfortable in his power that his cruelty wears the smirk of a man enjoying a private joke. That self-satisfaction is the film’s dark heart, and Sarandon plays it like velvet over a blade.

Are there parts that could have been done better? A few. But the soft fails of the special effects — and I am speaking almost entirely of that crawling dog — give us a gentle reminder that this is only a story, a bedtime tale told well. Otherwise the effects and makeup are impeccable. Frankly, they are groundbreaking in their consistency, a benchmark that many a bigger budget has failed to match. The film is terrifying where it needs to be, funny where it needs to be, and compelling — always.

So dim the lamps, my darlings, and keep your neighbors close. You never quite know who has moved in next door.

Until the streetlights flicker on again, keep prowling alongside us through 52 Weeks of Halloween from Scaldcrow Games. Pleasant nightmares.

Yes child, there is more…so much more. See what you have missed: T. Glenn Bane’s 52 Weeks of Halloween Index.