By Richard Winters
My Rating: 6 out of 10
4-Word Review: Vampire moves next door.
Charley (William Ragsdale) is a teen making-out with his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) in his bedroom one night when he looks out his window and sees movers carrying a coffin into the home next door. Throughout the proceeding days he becomes convinced, after eyeing what’s going on over there, that his new neighbor, Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon), is a vampire. With the police refusing to believe him he feels his only option is to elicit the help of an actor named Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) who has starred in a lot of old movies about vampires and hosts a horror TV-show called ‘Fright Night’. Peter does not believe Charley at first, but when they go over to Jerry’s house for a visit he becomes convinced that Charley is telling the truth when he can’t see Jerry’s reflection in a mirror. Knowing that he’s now been found-out Jerry immediately goes on the offense by turning Charley’s friend Ed (Stephen Geoffreys) into a vampire and then setting his sights to do the same to Amy who closely resembles a woman he was once deeply in-love with.
The film became a surprise runaway hit despite the studio feeling it had no chance and pumped more money into the John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis film Perfect that was being shot at the same time. Because the execs were putting more focus on that one they left writer/director Tom Holland alone allowing him full directorial control and not forcing him to have to deal with the usual studio meddling. Holland, who had started out as an actor during the 50’s and 60’s before eventually moving into screenwriting during the late 70’s when his acting offers began to dry up, came up with the idea for this film while working on his Cloak & Dagger script and since he had won accolades for some of his earlier horror scripts that had gone onto success including Psycho II, he was offered the chance to make his directorial debut with this one.
The film has a wonderful tongue and cheek approach, which keeps it consistently entertaining and lively throughout. While it’s funny at times it also has some really impressive special effects done well before the advent of CGI, but in many ways better. The best one and possibly best moment of the whole movie is when Ed morphs into a wolf and attacks Peter and Peter is able to pierce the dogs heart with a broken chair leg forcing the injured and dying Ed to slowly return to human form, which is both gory and realistically handled and creepy visually. If there’s definitely one part to watch again and again and never get tired of it would be that one.
The acting is stellar particularly Sarandon who displays a casual and very frightening menacing quality that makes all of his scenes unnerving. Supposedly he attempted to try and humanize his character by adding in certain traits that were not in the script like him eating apples to show how he was using it to help ‘cleanse his pallet from all the blood he had sucked’, but to me he just came off as this constant evil presence and one of the scarier film villains in horror movie history. Bearse, who has become better known for her work in the TV-show ‘Married with Children’, is entertainingly feisty as the teen girlfriend despite being already 28 at the time of filming though you really couldn’t see it. Though not as well known Dorothy Fielding is very amusing as Charley’s daffy mom and I wished she had been in it more and of McDowall is absolutely perfect in a role that was originally intended for Vincent Price.
While the film has a lot going for it I did find its logic to be problematic. I found the fact that Amy so closely resembles Jerry’s past love from long ago to be too much of a coincidence and felt there should’ve been more of a backstory. The idea that these kids would choose some two-bit actor in their quest to defeat this vampire made no sense as an actor is just reading words off of a script and would have no more insight into vampires than your local junkman. Having Peter be some self-promoting vampire hunter and advertise his ‘vampire eradicator services’ in TV-ads, even if he was just a huckster, would’ve at least been a better choice than expecting someone starring in low budget movies from years ago to be the solution that will ‘save them’. Also, him bringing along a gun that he used in a past movie, in order to deploy it to shoot Jerry’s bodyguard, played by Jonathan Stark, is another head-scratcher because movie guns are props that shoot blanks instead of real bullets.
The use of the cross to ward off vampires gets confusing. When Peter attempts to use it on Jerry it isn’t effective and yet when Charley tries it it works. Jerry says this is because ‘you have to have faith’, but what type of faith? Faith that it will work, or faith in a deity? To help clarify this Charley should’ve been shown earlier, even briefly, as having some spiritual leanings, or just a quick shot showing the Holy Bible in his room would’ve been enough. Also, when Peter uses the cross against the vampire Ed it’ works, so why is this, or does Peter’s ‘faith’ go flip-flopping back-and-forth?
Spoiler Alert!
Having Amy transform into a vampire and to be advised by Peter that if Jerry gets destroyed before dawn the process will reverse seems like its making up rules as most vampire movies I’ve seen seem to say the opposite like once they’re bitten there’s no going back. Having the two then go back just a few nights later after the big ordeal is over and be snuggling together in his room didn’t seem believable to me. Personally if I were Charley I don’t care how deep my feelings were for her I’d still be frightened to be alone with her especially after seeing her face turn into such a scary bloodthirsty monster. In the back of my mind I’d be paranoid it could happen again and who’s to say it wouldn’t. I realize American audiences are conditioned to expect everything to ‘work-out’ in the end and if it doesn’t they get cranky, but having things here go back to normal was too quick and seamless. Psychologically there would’ve been post traumatic stress by all and this overly smooth resolution is phony.
My Rating: 6 out of 10
Released: August 2, 1985
Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Tom Holland
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube
Scopophilia 