So Cool, Brewster

Fright Night is one of my favorite horror movies. Its premise is extremely clever, and it's just a well made and filmed movie at a time when a lot of horror movies didn't have love put into them because they were copycatting a Jason or Michael.

The movie has a lot of elements of classic Dracula or vampire stories, but completely contemporizes them. Main antagonist Jerry Dandrige follows the typical Dracula type template -- he can be smooth, he can be charming, but he's still dangerous -- and brings him into the '80s, into the city. Farewell 19th century, farewell backlots mimicking London. But here's part one of what makes the movie gets really creative...the vampire is facing people who are well-versed in how to deal with him: horror fans. Part 2? That the horror fans, when every adult fails to help them, turn to a failed horror actor for help. That's just a stroke of genius to me, and writer-director Tom Holland has said that the movie only lingered in his mind until he came up with Peter Vincent, and after that flash of brilliance, the entire movie wrote itself. The characters and movie are aware of movies and genre convention, but not to the annoying degree of something like Scream, to where everything is a reference and it's really putting down the genre and has characters who think they're superior to typical genre characters, but fall into the same trap as those they ridicule.

People who criticize this movie think the premise is "cheesy" or "unrealistic," when you just need to go with the flow. You have to keep in mind the ages of the protagonists. At 16 years old, what choices do you have? Charley already tried to get his mom to help, but she's self-involved. He went to the police, they wouldn't listen. In his movie-obsessed mind, the only option left was someone who had done decades worth of fake vampire hunting, who had enough experience to know what to do and what they're up against.

It's a well made movie. The casting is great, the performances are good, everyone is likable. It's one of the rare horror movies that is comedic, but still scary. (I like to try to avoid calling it a "horror comedy," because that detracts from just how scary it actually is.) Honestly, while I like a lot of vampire stories, to me they're not really the scariest, but Fright Night has a lot of imaginative vampire designs that I actually DO find scary. When Jerry goes monstrous or how Evil Ed ends up and especially Amy with the shark mouth? That's scarier than that whole Lost Boys look, with their Klingon foreheads, which most vampire movies and shows have stuck with since. (Some people associate the look with Buffy, but Buffy ripped it off of The Lost Boys.)

For a lot of people, one character stands out. And for as much as this movie has going for it, I think without this character, without this specific piece of casting, the movie would be remembered less. That character is, of course, Stephen Geoffreys' Evil Ed. Where Charley Brewster is meant to be a horror fan, he kind of represents to me the type of casual fan who's a bit of a dabbler, who likes horror, but his attention can be swayed elsewhere. He's a "normal" fan, who will probably eventually abandon his being a fan and anything associated to that fandom -- including friends -- for a shot of "normalcy." Evil Ed is the bigger horror fan. Look at his room. This kid breathes horror, bleeds horror. He's the one who helps Charley further understand vampire rules, he's the one who impresses Peter Vincent with his knowledge of Peter's old movies. He hears the grisly newscasts about the murders and see Charley's descent into obsession over the possibility of Jerry being a vampire -- his town, his life, is turning into a horror movie all around him and he loves it. Evil's the die-hard fan who's often the point of ridicule, who knows he's not seen as "normal."

Evil Ed's seen as a nerd and an outcast and a weirdo -- look at the nickname he's earned. And he puts up this front about not believing Charley. While he enjoys the idea of his life turning into a horror movie, I don't think he's quite as wicked or "evil" as people in the movie and in the fandom think he is. He wants to think there are creatures out there in the night, but the idea still frightens him. He's still obviously scared deep down. Look how panicked and desperate he is when Jerry's after him. He gets cornered and bursts into tears knowing he's dead. But Jerry, in the smooth talking charm of Dracula, offers him power. A power Evil thought he'd never have, the power to be better than the "normal" folks who torment and ridicule him. The power of one of the monsters from the movies he loves. A power that can show those who have judged him what evil really can mean. He'll become the monster he's always been accused of being. His life now completely a horror movie, with him as its featured monster, he really lets loose.

We've seen a dozen mopey vampires in movies or on TV -- Jerry included -- but in Evil Ed we have a vampire who really loves being a vampire and is going to use it to his full advantage. It's interesting to me that the movie takes a character who was good, who was normal, and turns them into an antagonist. Unfortunately, once Evil Ed is injured by Peter, he drops out of a big chunk of the movie, until his one last scene at the end. And the movies loses a lot of life. The quirky energy, the manic glee brought to the character and movie by Geoffreys really energizes the movie and you don't quite realize just how much until he takes an absence. Geoffreys is such a good match for the character and gives him such unique life it's hard to believe he was under the impression he'd be playing Charley. I didn't care much for the remake, but was surprised that Colin Farrell often expressed how much he liked the original in interviews, even singling out Stephen Geoffreys and his performance as Evil Ed.

And, of course, the movie ends with a hint that Evil Ed has survived to terrorize another day. There's only been rumors and speculation, but most people seem to think he would have been the primary antagonist of Fright Night 2. I know the comics had this bizarre storyline of Evil Ed returning and running a nightclub, but...yeah, those comics were nonsense. Fright Night 2 itself ended up being a really weak and forgettable movie, a cheap, lazy and half-hearted flip of the first one. So I think it's better that Evil Ed and Geoffreys were left untainted by inferior follow-ups. (Tom Holland says he had written a spec script for Fright Night 2 that the studio nixed because they wanted someone new...and cheaper. I'm really curious what Holland would have done with a sequel, but he sidestepped the question when I asked.)

Horror fans seem to generally think positively about Fright Night. At the time, it was successful at the box office. Yet I always thought it kind of slipped between the cracks. (So I was surprised that it was deemed big enough to remake.) The Lost Boys -- which Fright Night is constantly pitted against by horror fans -- certainly seems more well known. Even feeling like Fright Night was a little under the radar, I felt a flicker of hope that maybe they'd make a couple of figures from the movie once I saw Lost Boys figures coming out. You could do vampire Jerry, Evil, shark-mouth Amy. But...no. Evil Ed's good enough to put on T-shirts, but not have a figure?! So it again falls to fans to make their own figures. Here's the custom Evil Ed I had made:

Boxed, front and back.

Before and after vamping out.