A Look Back: Fright Night 1985

-

                                                  Fright Night Turned Los Angeles into Anytown, USA

 

  I state this as always I do not own the rights to this, they belong to Columbia pictures. I should say this is really not a look back, I first actually saw this movie yesterday. I have been well versed in the 2011 version with the late great Anton Yelchin. That was a fun film. I have to say, my expectations for this were a little low. The track record for 80's horror is spotty at best, so why would this be any different.

     The story revolves around Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) living a seemingly normal teenage life. What happens when a vampire ( Chris Sarandon) moves in next store? Do you ignore it or do you fight?

   I think, out of everything, what stood out to me, that stood out, was the performances. This movie had to be horror but have comedic elements. I think that across the board it works. I think were it truly shines is from Chris Sarandon (Jerry Dandridge) and Roddy McDowall (Peter Vincent).  Dandridge is, no doubt, the villain of the story. The big thing you needed was for him to have so much charisma, that it be hard not to like him. Sarandon nails this part. Roddy Mcdowall's, Peter Vincent character, was there to inject the comedy into the story. When it comes to characters that have to be the audiences eye into the movie, sometimes they can be overdone. What I mean, eye into the movie is, whatever character it is talking to the other characters in the film, like you the audience would. When it comes to this film its done very lightly. He is made a likeable character even though he is not a good person in the beginning of the film.

 As a movie going society, we have been spoiled when it comes to special effects. A lot of times when you look back at older  movies the use of practical effects can be off putting. "Fright Night" uses a lot of practical, and it works. To me, I really think it rivaled the Indiana Jones series. It is expensive now, but I wish things would stay more practical.

 In the end, this movie was a great surprise for me. This easily goes toward the top of my list of horror films.

GRADE: A   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unfriended: Dark Web

-
Image
    I would be the first to admit, when the original "Unfriended" dropped in 2014, I was not expecting to enjoy it. I was pleasantly surprised with what I saw. I always thought though, there is no need to make a sequel. Alas.. we fast forward to 2018, and there is a sequel.     The story revolves around Matias, who finds a great laptop, in his local internet cafe's lost and found. Since it has been there for weeks, he takes it. Later that night, while playing a game night over Skype, he begins to discover some terrible things.    One of the problems that plagued both of the films was the acting. In most of these cases, the actors from these films, do not have a lot of experience. It unfortunately, caries over to this film. When the story got to the climax, the line delivery got a little rough.    What really worked for the first one, was essentially, everyone was a terrible person. As the story progresses, you find out the terrible things t...
Read more

Triple 9

-
Image
     When it comes to cop films, for the most part, I tend to be a huge fan. When this came out, I was not very sure what to expect from it because there was such little press for it.     A professional group of thieves lead by Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor) does the biding of Irina Vlaslov ( Kate Winslet). The guys want out of her buiding, but her being a big player in the Russian mafia, she gets what she wants. She drags the crew into a final heist with a huge payoff, what could possibly go wrong?        The biggest thing that hurt this film was the scope was so huge for this film with how many characters it has. It is hard to care or, for that matter get to know any Of the characters when the time spent with them is so short. On top of that, this film does not go in any new directions for the crime thrillers. I feel like if they may have added twenty to thirty minutes to get to know all the characters it may have added an edge it do...
Read more

The Ridiculous Six

-
Image
   The Ridiculous Six is the start of the long contract that Adam Sandler signed with Netflix. It comes in the form of the spoof of the classic Magnificent 7.      In the story it surrounds White Knife (Adam Sandler) and his seemingly perfect life with the apache tribe. Things get a little messy when his long absent father (Nick Nolte) shows up and is subsequently kidnapped. Fifty thousand dollars is needed to set him free, so White Knife takes it upon himself to rob the terrible people of the West to get his father back. Along the way he finds out that he has many other brothers in the shape of Taylor Lautner, Terry Crews, Rob Schneider, Jorge Garcia, and Luke Wilson.      Through most of the later of Sandler's Carter you could at least count on his movies being entertaining. This film seemed choppy in places when it came to the story. None of the jokes seemed to really work. It's hard to say but Sandler has done so much better even in recent...
Read more