Fright Night

"Welcome to Fright Night... for real!"

Fright Night is a 1985 vampire movie directed by Tom Holland and starring Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse, and Roddy McDowall.

Charley Brewster (Ragsdale) is a teenage boy who loves watching horror movies on late-night television...or at least, pretending to be watching them while making out with his girlfriend Amy (Bearse). One night, he sees two men, Jerry Dandridge (Sarandon) and Billy Cole (Jonathan Stark), carrying a coffin into the house next door, and makes the natural (to him) assumption that a vampire has moved in. Soon after, dead prostitutes start being reported, and Charley actually sees Jerry attack a woman while looking out his bedroom window. When Jerry attacks him late one night to scare him away from investigating further, Charley's suspicions are only confirmed.

Charley first seeks help from Amy and his friend "Evil" Ed Thompson (Stephen Geoffreys), who both think he's crazy, and then from Peter Vincent (McDowall), former B-Movie actor turned host of the late-night horror program Fright Night. After some goading, the four of them arrange to meet Jerry to test whether he's a vampire, though secretly, everyone except Charley is actually trying to "prove" to him that Jerry's not a vampire. However, when Peter notices Jerry's lack of a reflection, he quickly realizes that the boy is right. He and Charley decide to meet up to stake the vampire before he kills him and his friends.

It doesn't go well...

Fright Night was followed by a sequel in 1989, aptly titled Fright Night Part II. William Ragsdale and Roddy McDowall reprise their roles as Charley and Peter respectively, with Julie Carmen and Traci Lind joining the cast. Set a few years after the first film, the second movie follows Charley (now attending college) and Peter as they battle the seductive vampire Regine (Carmen), who's out for revenge on both Charley and Peter for their role in Jerry's death, and decides the best way to make Charley pay is to turn him into a vampire. Now it falls to Peter and Charley's new girlfriend Alex (Lind) to save Charley from A Fate Worse Than Death.

A remake, Fright Night (2011 film) starring Colin Farrell, Anton Yelchin, David Tennant and Toni Collette was released in 2011. It drops the Peter Vincent Becoming the Mask story and turns Charley into a Buffy the Vampire Slayer-type character, with Jerry resembling the evil version of Spike and Peter now a Vegas showman instead of a former actor. Tropes for the remake go on its own page.

Both the original and the remake have garnered positive reviews.


Tropes used in Fright Night include:
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