"You can't murder a vampire, Amy! They're already dead, remember!"
Fright NIght (1985) is a contemporary update of the original Dracula (1931). When a vampire moves in next door no one believes horror movie fan Charley. With new strange deaths on the news every day, every hour counts as Charley needs to convince his friends he's not crazy and slay the vampire.
I really like the humor in Fright Night it's not too over the top and in fact most of the humor is situational. But it also is a very quotable with some really funny and memorable lines.
I also really liked the house that Jerry the vampire lives in, it almost becomes a character of it's own. They light it awesome with fog in a lot of shots and it's genuinely creepy every time the characters need to go inside. You can also tell the production designer had a lot of fun designing the interior because there's a lot of cool things going on in there.
And the soundtrack has this screaming sax/guitar/keyboard that really fits and is genuinely cool/creepy, even if it is very eighties.
The biggest problem with this movie is some of the characters flip pretty easily, but it's mostly just small inconsistencies. I don't know why Charley's girlfriend comes back and is suddenly nice to him after he blows her off not once, but twice to stare at the vampire next door. Also Charley is set up as a horror nerd, he's watching horror movies in every shot he's in (and he's watching ones form the sixties and seventies, which means he'd have to be a nerd to watch those!), yet when he thinks he has a vampire next door he runs to the weird kid from school to learn the basic vampire rules... shouldn't he know them already? Hell I know people who HATE vampire movies, that know vampires are afraid of crosses and need to be invited in!
As I said before, this movie is a contemporary update of the original Dracula story, and specifically the 1931 movie. A vampire moves into the kids neighborhood and he must enlist the help of a "vampire expert" to slay the vampire and save his girlfriend. This movie works so well because it uses this story in a way you almost wouldn't even notice, and it doesn't just rely on this too. There's an awesome aspect of it that works in "the boy who cried wolf" story too and they work in things I've never seen in a vampire movie, like stabbing a vampire with a stake while it's in wolf form, that's just plain awesome! And while I'm on it, the effects are practical and for the most part still hold up amazingly today!! Eat that, CG!
I also really liked how great the characters are in this movie. I really liked Charley's friend "Evil" who loves horror movies but doesn't even remotely believe they're real, and Jerry really worked as not your traditional vampire. Jerry looks pretty normal on the outside, handsome... but can still be really creepy and evil. But my favorite character has to be Peter Vincent, former horror movie star and current late night movie host who doesn't believe in vampires!
Fright Night (1985) is a really fun vampire movie that doesn't try too hard to be funny and can even be really creepy in parts. Highly recommend it. 4/5 stars.
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