Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) is your normal, slightly dorky teenager. His best friend is “Evil” Ed (Stephen Geoffreys), an even dorkier teenager. His girlfriend is Amy Peterson (Amanda Bearse). Charley lives with his single mom, Judy (Dorothy Fielding). Charley’s favorite television show is called “Fright Night”. The host, Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall), is a former vampire hunter.
Charley learns that the empty house next door has been sold to a mysterious man named Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon). Dandrige and his roommate, Billy Cole (Jonathan Stark), are in the process of restoring the house. He sees Dandrige and Cole carry a coffin into the basement.
One night Charley looks out his bedroom window and sees Dandrige change into a vampire and prepare to bite the neck of a woman. The next day he sees a picture of the woman in the paper. The article says she had been found dead. Charley realizes that his neighbor is a vampire. Charley goes to the police but when they find out he is accusing his neighbor of being a vampire they chalk him up as a crazy kid. Amy and Evil Ed don’t believe him either, but Evil does give him some advice on how to deal with a vampire.
Dandrige attacks Charley but he manages to free himself. Charley realizes that it is only a matter of time before Dandrige kills him. As a last resort Charley tries to convince his hero, Peter Vincent to help. Believing he is crazy; Vincent turns him down. Amy then pays Vincent to pretend to be a vampire slayer so as to reassure Charley that Dandrige is just a normal guy. When Vincent sees that Dandrige has no reflection in his pocket mirror, the late-night host realizes that Charley is right and that he is in the presence of a real vampire.
“Fright Night” was released in 1985 and was written and directed by Tom Holland. It is a comedy horror movie. There was a sequel done in 1988 called “Fright Night Part 2” and a remake in 2011. Then there was a “Fright Night 2: New Blood” done in 2013.
There is a lot of comedy and lightheartedness in the film, but there are also some gruesome scenes with decent regular horror movie tension. The special effects are wonderful. The movie starts out as your normal cheesy teenager type horror movie but then the gore starts to move in, and it morphs into a really good horror film with some great acting.
During the film, Chris Sarandon’s character eats apples. Sarandon felt that was appropriate since he believed that his character had fruit bat DNA.
Roddy McDowell’s character, Peter Vincent is named after Peter Cushing and Vincent Price. Heidi Sorenson, who plays a hooker killed by Dandrige, was Playboy Playmate of the Month in July 1981.