Fright Night (1984)

Charlie Brewster (William Ragsdale) has a problem. His next-door neighbor, the suave, sophisticated, and undoubtedly wealthy antique dealer Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire. He lives with a huge, lumbering manservant (Jonathan Stark), and Charlie sees him carrying what looks to be a coffin out from their creepy Adams Family-style home to the waiting van outside. All this while watching his favorite creature feature host, Peter Vincent (the late Roddy McDowall) on "Fright Night," host bad vampire movies while trying to get some nookie from his girlfriend Amy (a young Amanda Bearse).

There appear to be a series of brutal murders happening in this quaint, unnamed, unknown, all-American Reagan Era suburb. One of them, a "known prostitute" seen going into the Dandridge home by Charlie, appears on the old-fashioned tube TV in the high school cafeteria while Charlie's weird, punky, giggling, and obnoxious "friend", "Evil" Ed (Stephen Geoffreys) seems to think the whole thing amusing).

Charlie goes to the police, and they go visit Dandridge (or rather his ambiguous manservant Billy), and both Billy and the detective have fun yukking it up at Charlie's expense. Although we already know that what he says is the truth.

Charlie's mom invites Dandridge over. Bingo. The vampire has an entryway into the house now.

Charlie turns to the only person he knows of who seems an expert "Vampire Hunter": Mr. Peter Vincent, host of "Fright Night," a former bad actor (the name is a nod to Peter Cushing and Vincent Price) from vampire movies he plays on his local horror host show.

Amy and Evil go to Peter after Peter brushes Charlie off, paying him to go to Dandridge's house with phony holy water, and Charlie, to "prove" that the vampire Jerry Dandridge is, in fact, NOT a vampire. But Peter Vincent, who notes he cannot see Dandridge's reflection in a mirror, leaves convinced instead.

Dandridge captures Charlie's friends, first turning the bullied, pathetic, but still undeniably obnoxious Evil Ed into a vampire servant, then capturing Amy, who resembles a lost flame (from maybe two hundred years ago?).

Charlie finally convinces Peter to have some courage, to try and "live" the role he's played for so many decades, and go and pound a stake through the heart of Jerry Dandridge. The rest of Fright Night is action-packed campy fun, with what was, at the time, state-of-the-art special effects and excellent performances. Dandridge comes off as charming, and creepily evil, and his servant Billy has a terrific scene wherein, after being shot multiple times, he is staked through the heart, and dissolves in a gloopy mess of green zombie ooze. Evil Ed is appropriately hellish, with the image of a burned crucifix on his forehead, and a wisecracking, "nails on a blackboard" laugh that make him less a frightening character than a pathetic one. (He wears new-wave clothes, has a buzzed haircut, and is a picked-on outsider. His death is a little saddening, with a little bit of monster movie pathos thrown in at the end.)

The originality of the film, even though it borrows from other, older films, is undeniable. Below the surface, there is fear of the outsider, fear, and suspicion of the "new neighbors," who seem perfect if a little odd. Reagan's America was a different place, a different world. The totality of white, bourgeois affluence in a small town (where even someone as mundane as "Evil" is an outsider), must be preserved. In the end, Charlie and Amy make love, while Peter Vincent hosts yet another midnight creature feature. For a moment, Charlie thinks he sees something lurking outside the window. Amy asks him what it is, and then he says, "It's nothing." White picket fences and happy lawns, dingbat mothers (here played by Judy Fielding, curiously there is no father present), and gracious, attractive girlfriends: the all-American mid-1980s balance of things has been restored. Life is still life, and all have been made well again.

Fright Night, when I was eleven, was compulsive entertainment, with a pop and new wave soundtrack readymade for Halloween parties, glorious gothic trappings, special effects, and good, solid performances from all. The film could be accused of n undertone of homophobia: Dandridge and presumed lover Billy Cole are bad guys, spreading a "vampire illness" of the blood. Charlie's mom even states (spying on them moving in with a pair of binoculars), "With my luck, he's probably gay."

Evil Ed seemingly has no parents, but Charlie's father is curiously absent. Amy seems reticent to have sex with Charlie but is eager to be hypnotized by the suave, older Jerry Dandridge, although he lives with another man.

Dandridge romances beautiful women, but his interest in them is purely predatory--in the literal sense. At one point, he locks Charlie and the half-vampire Amy in a room together, throws in a wooden stake, and tells Charlie, Here. You'll need this." That is the depth of his caring for Amy.

But, if there is such a subtext, it is completely unintentional on the part of the filmmakers, who seem intent on doing what every good filmmaker should, by all rights, set out to do: show the audience a good time. That's what it's all about, right?

And on that point, this one always hits the mark, like a wooden stake in the heart.