Fright Night is not the best acted horror movie of the 80’s, but it may be the most acted horror movie of the 80’s.
What struck me the most, after queuing up the original Fright Night for the first time in well over a decade, is how campy it is. There are only a handful of roles in the film, but each one is attacked with a manic gusto. These are not great performances in a technical sense, but the actors each pick a lane and invest fully in bringing their character alive. The plot is pretty simple: A vampire moves in next door to a high school kid and his single mom, the kid spends the second act of the film trying to convince people about the vampire, and finally he teams with a local actor to save his girlfriend from becoming the vampire’s eternal bride. So with that brief synopsis out of the way, I’m going to do something a little different and spend the rest of the review power ranking the performances of the main cast.
#7 – William Ragsdale as Charlie Brewster
Look, I think Charlie is fine. He is sort of a low-rent Billy from Gremlins, a dorky underachiever who gets caught up in something much bigger than him, but is naive enough to think he can make a difference. The things that keep him from excelling at school or getting laid, an obsession with cheesy horror movies and a catastrophic lack of self-awareness, are the very things that make him uniquely capable of being a hero in this particular scenario. He’s good, but he feels like the generic protagonist of any number of similarly toned horror flicks.
#6 – Dorothy Fielding as Judy Brewster
I don’t have anything against the Brewsters, honest! In fact, I think the performance of Judy is pitch-perfect as the doting single mother whose first priority is her son, followed very closely by landing a man. She doesn’t have a lot to do here, but it’s impressive that her relationship with Charlie rings so true in her limited screen time. You can tell she does her best, but never question that she ended up raising a dipshit.
#5 – Roddy McDowell as Peter Vincent
Hot Rod McDowell at number five?! Am I crazy?! That just goes to show how great the performances are in this movie. Roddy plays an ersatz Vincent Price, a horror icon brought low by flagging interest in vampire b-movies. Providing the film with its most nuanced performance, he gives Vincent an actor’s vanity and a streak of cowardice that he gets to overcome during the film’s third act. He also acts the hell out of the film’s most affecting scene, the death of Evil Ed, silently letting the mixed emotions of fear, relief and sympathy play out over his face. It’s not exactly Oscar-worthy, but it’s the most professional and well-calibrated thespianism on display. It’s just not the best.
#4 – Jonathan Stark as Billy Cole
Oh man, I love Billy Cole. Fright Night is not the least bit interested in giving us lore or explaining how vampires work in its universe, beyond some perfunctory rules of engagement that don’t ever veer beyond the most well-worn tropes of the genre. However, it does give us Billy, who is big bad Jerry Dandridge’s right hand man. If I had to venture a guess, I would place Billy in the ghoul category. He isn’t a vamp, because he casts a reflection and isn’t harmed by sunlight, but he isn’t fully human because his death scene is, *chef’s kiss*, a cross between the nazis staring at the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Emil Antonowsky’s toxic waste bath in Robocop. What I love most about Billy is what a prick he is. He is a loyal servant to Dandridge, which means he is constantly mixed up in some nefarious shit, and he clearly loves his job. Instead of brooding muscle, Stark plays Billy as a bully who knows he always has the upper hand and relishes lording it over his victims. If I can risk exhausting my allotment of chef’s kisses here, that scene where Charlie brings the police chief to investigate Dandridge’s house for some unsolved murders and Billy baits him into accusing them of being vampires, then mocks him openly along with the chief? *Chef’s kiss* times 1000. Billy’s placement in the rankings is largely due to his lack of screen time, but he makes the most out of every precious moment we have with him.
#3 – Stephen Geoffreys as Evil Ed
Evil Ed at number three!? Maybe I am crazy!!! Clearly the most iconic performance of the movie goes to Mr. Geoffreys, a character actor that popped up regularly in Cinemax and USA Up All Night fare during this era. He was always a welcome sight because you knew he was going to have a unique and bizarre take on whatever type of weirdo he was commissioned to play. Without a doubt, though, this is his Brando in On the Waterfront. “You’re so COOL, Brewster!” is his “I coulda been a contender.” Everything out of Geoffreys’ mouth is amazing, and you can’t picture any other actor approaching the lines in remotely the same way. He starts the movie at a ten when he’s just a high school oddball, but he really breaks the dial after his transformation into a vampire. And that aforementioned death scene with Roddy McDowell – so damn good. Most pundits probably have Ed at the top of their power rankings, because that’s how memorable his turn here is. You all come to me for my scorching hot takes, though, so I have to live my truth.
#2 – Chris Sarandan as Jerry Dandridge
Sarandan is the consummate heel. No matter the role, you want him to be brought down a peg, or in this case, murdered by a peg. You know, through the heart. Anyway, while Sarandan’s famous turn as Prince Humperdinck (A Princess Bride) had him playing a foppish coward, he is just as convincing here as a menacing lothario. Dandridge oozes sex appeal in very vampire-appropriate, very 1980’s sort of way. He is all oily charm as he talks his way into an open invitation to visit from Mrs. Brewster, but equally effective peppering Charlie with foreboding barbs throughout the same conversation. A movie like this lives or dies on the strength of its villain, and Dandridge is a great one. I also just adore the way Sarandan mugs every time a cross is brought to bear against him – it’s very funny stuff.
#1 – Amanda Bearse as Amy Peterson
I never would have predicted Charlie’s guileless, devoted girlfriend would top my list for the best performances in this movie, but here we are. From her opening line of dialogue, Amanda Bearse completely inhabits a teenage girl in what is likely her first serious relationship. Bearse chooses to play the character like she is in a teen melodrama rather than a horror movie. As the supernatural elements of the story take over, she just sort of orbits around Charlie as if he is the most important thing in the world, which is smart commentary on the mind of young idiots in love but also ridiculous because Charlie is such a doof and there are honest to God vampires putting their lives in mortal danger. Her petulance at every perceived slight and her exuberance at the mildest display of attention are pitch perfect and hilarious. She’s kind of like that one overly attached girlfriend meme come to life. I’ll reiterate that there isn’t particularly good acting going on here, but I was so delighted at everything she did that I couldn’t keep her out of my top spot.
Look if you’ve never seen Fright Night before, it is possible that you would find it cheesy and wafer thin and certainly not scary, but in a bad way. For me though, this is nostalgia personified. The film was a staple in my household growing up, and we had both a VHS recording of it off of HBO and even the soundtrack on cassette (the soundtrack slaps, by the way). Yet, even if I can’t untangle my personal relationship with the film in order to approach this review in a purely objective fashion, I traffic in goofy horror flicks pretty extensively and I can objectively say that this is one of the good ones. I found myself enjoying literally every performance I called out, and that allowed me to give a lot of leeway to the plot and special effects and other aspects of the film. And to be honest, those aspects didn’t really need much help either. I say give Fright Night a go, you will definitely find something to like about it, and you might be lucky enough that you like everything about it the way that I do.
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