Moments into Fright Night, Tom Holland’s 1985 horror-comedy classic, we catch a glimpse of an old horror film playing on a TV in a teenage boy’s bedroom. In the film, a Peter Cushing-style vampire hunter named “Peter Vincent” is about to slay a bloodsucker. In keeping with the style of the film he’s in, Vincent utters some grave words about slaying the undead, then holds up a stake and prepares to do the dirty deed.
But if you look closely, you’ll see that Vincent is, despite his character’s reputation, holding the stake backwards.
It’s a tiny joke in the background of the background, and the camera quickly moves away and focuses on other things, but that little moment is key to understanding what Fright Night is about to give you. As it has so many times in the nearly four decades since its release, the film is enjoying a fresh moment right now thanks to its streaming prominence over on Max, so it feels like a good time to revisit this goofy, spooky, and surprisingly deep film about a horror fan immersed in a world he thought only existed in the movies.
Movies about horror fans are a subgenre unto themselves, and they have been for quite some time. Films like the Scream series, The Monster Squad, Popcorn, and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark all contribute metafictional angles on that premise, but Fright Night predates them all, and it actually has some very potent things to say about the nature of the genre. The film’s hero is Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale), a teenage boy who lives on a quiet street in a nice neighborhood and spends his time the way a lot of teen boys in the 1980s (and now) spent their time: Making out with his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) and watching horror movies on his bedroom TV. Importantly for the purposes of our discussion about horror fans, Charley doesn’t enter Fright Night as a shut-in nerd who’s only interested in the minutiae of the films he watches at night. He’s not presented as an outcast or a weirdo. He’s just a kid who likes horror, which means his mind is accidentally trained to notice something strange is going on next door. Charley’s new neighbor, the charming and handsome Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire, and it’s up to Charley to not just prove it, but stop this bloodsucking menace before it’s too late.
To do this, Charley turns to none other than…Peter Vincent, the vampire killer from the movie in the opening scene, played by Roddy McDowall. Vincent’s become a local TV horror host, popping up on a spooky set to introduce his old movies, but to Charley, he’s the greatest vampire killer who ever lived, and the only one who’ll believe him. It’s a clever idea, one that Holland’s script milks for maximum laughs, and it’s also a key to the film’s larger portrayal of horror fandom.
Horror cinema had undergone a major metamorphosis by the time Fright Night came around in 1985. The success of Halloween followed by Friday the 13th triggered the slasher movie golden age of the first half of the ’80s, practical gore effects had become more widespread, and gruesome, thrill-a-minute horror was box office gold. That was good news for horror fans, as production companies started dishing out more genre fare than ever, but bad news for a certain type of horror film, one that had faded steadily throughout the 1970s.
That type of horror film is, of course, the kind that Peter Vincent starred in, the Hammer and American International Pictures films of the 1960s and 1970s, garish, atmospheric pieces full of bright red blood and heaving bosoms. Once considered the height of the genre, they’d been eclipsed by even more extreme depictions of terror and sex, and their more melodramatic tones had been pushed aside in favor of new approaches. At one point in Fright Night, Peter Vincent even mentions that no one watches his show anymore, because all the kids want are movies about masked men terrorizing virgins.
But crucially, there’s at least one person who still watches and loves his show: Charley.
And just like that, we’ve got a bridge. Fright Night is, on every level, a very satisfying horror-comedy from the 1980s, with a charming performance from Sarandon, some great visual effects by Richard Edlund (culminating in some goopy, gruesome brilliance in the film’s climax), and a sense of fun that permeates the whole story from its Boy Who Cried Vampire roots to its monstrous thrills. But it’s also a satisfying ode to the horror films of the 1960s, the ones Peter Vincent would have starred in, the ones that set us on a course to the excesses of ’80s horror. It’s a film that somehow manages to be both, because as a fan of Peter Vincent’s show and a kid of the ’80s, Charley is both, and Holland makes sure we understand this.
Jerry’s house, when we finally get inside, is all old wood and ornate furnishings, from its grand staircase to its basement full of coffins. Peter Vincent, despite living and working in 1980s America, looks and acts like a Hammer character who stepped out of a period horror piece. And as the monstrous shenanigans pick up steam near the end of the film, even Charley and Amy take on elements of those throwback films from Peter’s show while never losing their essential ’80s-ness. Watching and rewatching this film, you feel its exuberant willingness to embrace both worlds, to celebrate horror that’s both new and old, just as Charley himself would. That makes Fright Night both a fascinating moment in horror history and a remarkable statement on horror fandom: We can like it all, and have it all, and if we keep embracing the whole of the genre’s history, we just might have what it takes to beat back some real-life monsters.
Fright NIght is now streaming on Max.
Matthew Jackson (@awalrusdarkly) is a pop culture writer and nerd-for-hire whose work has appeared at Syfy Wire, Mental Floss, Looper, Playboy, and Uproxx, among others. He lives in Austin, Texas, and he’s always counting the days until Christmas.
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