"I. Kill. Vampires!"
I've mentioned that lately I've been having thoughts out of nowhere, and one of them inspired this post.
There are few sequels that surpass the original movie, but Fright Night 2 is definitely one of them. It has more going on than you'd think. It was a meta horror film ages before Scream went that route, and it's less blatant and smug about it. It balances the humor and horror well.
In Fright Night, a teen who's a horror movie fan keeps seeing suspicious things when he looks out his window. Every time it looks more and more like something from a film he'd watch. Eventually he decides he needs help from someone who'd believe him, so he goes to the host of a TV weekly horror showcase, Peter Vincent, who acted in a lot of these films and is the host as a Fearless Vampire Slayer. Vincent, an actor, doesn't believe him at first. But then things happen that change his mind, and he eventually overcomes his first instinct to run for his life.
Fright Night 2 takes place years later, when our horror movie fan is in college and has had so much therapy that he believes that his first encounter was a way for his mind to deal with the horror of what Dandridge had done by making him a vampire. It's a great hook, especially since he's now thoroughly unprepared when more vampires arrive. When things start looking vampirish, he tells himself that he's just being crazy again and that anyway it can't possibly happen twice. It can if this batch has come to avenge the one you killed, Charlie....
I liked the therapy angle, which made this Old World superstition versus modern logic. (Modern logic loses. *g*) Charlie's psych major girlfriend is also a snob who looks down on his taste for horror movies, which adds a lowbrow culture versus highbrow culture element to the plot. "Bowling?" When the vampire Regine takes over Peter Vincent's show, she makes the host segments artsy. In fact, she masquerades as a performance artist throughout. The vampires Regine and Belle come off as artists and somewhat European, which adds an element of Middle American values versus the avant garde. Belle is also a crossdresser on rollerskates. *g* The vampires using sensuality and sex as weapons adds to this take. The first person to go to them is Charlie's sluttish roommate. Somehow the seduction scenes seem more seductive than they usually do in movies like this. Regine's dance with Charlie is erotic and disturbing as she takes his will over... then lets him go.
The character of the vampire who prefers a werewolf form is a discordant note for me, too incompetent and cheap humor when compared with the rest of the movie. But I enjoy the actor, who later played Broots on The Pretender, so I go with it.
I love Roddy McDowall, and he's great here as Peter Vincent, Vampire Slayer. It's cute watching him reminisce about the movies he appeared in and heartbreaking watching Charlie and his girlfriend condescend to him at the beginning partly for him being old and inclined to old stories but mostly because he hasn't been to therapy and thus isn't self-aware like they are. Peter is a bit of a coward, which is realistic for a guy who's an actor instead of a professional vampire slayer, but he's loyal and fierce when it counts. It kills me that as he gets down his movie props to use as real weapons he lovingly mentions the titles and often the circumstances in the movies they appeared in, with the titles eventually becoming an almost spell-like litany of names.
The psychiatric institution scenes come out of nowhere and steal the movie. I love the manic and helpful inmate! “You’re a star!”
And I love that in this series you can be physically made to crave blood but in the end you have to choose this life.
There are few sequels that surpass the original movie, but Fright Night 2 is definitely one of them. It has more going on than you'd think. It was a meta horror film ages before Scream went that route, and it's less blatant and smug about it. It balances the humor and horror well.
In Fright Night, a teen who's a horror movie fan keeps seeing suspicious things when he looks out his window. Every time it looks more and more like something from a film he'd watch. Eventually he decides he needs help from someone who'd believe him, so he goes to the host of a TV weekly horror showcase, Peter Vincent, who acted in a lot of these films and is the host as a Fearless Vampire Slayer. Vincent, an actor, doesn't believe him at first. But then things happen that change his mind, and he eventually overcomes his first instinct to run for his life.
Fright Night 2 takes place years later, when our horror movie fan is in college and has had so much therapy that he believes that his first encounter was a way for his mind to deal with the horror of what Dandridge had done by making him a vampire. It's a great hook, especially since he's now thoroughly unprepared when more vampires arrive. When things start looking vampirish, he tells himself that he's just being crazy again and that anyway it can't possibly happen twice. It can if this batch has come to avenge the one you killed, Charlie....
I liked the therapy angle, which made this Old World superstition versus modern logic. (Modern logic loses. *g*) Charlie's psych major girlfriend is also a snob who looks down on his taste for horror movies, which adds a lowbrow culture versus highbrow culture element to the plot. "Bowling?" When the vampire Regine takes over Peter Vincent's show, she makes the host segments artsy. In fact, she masquerades as a performance artist throughout. The vampires Regine and Belle come off as artists and somewhat European, which adds an element of Middle American values versus the avant garde. Belle is also a crossdresser on rollerskates. *g* The vampires using sensuality and sex as weapons adds to this take. The first person to go to them is Charlie's sluttish roommate. Somehow the seduction scenes seem more seductive than they usually do in movies like this. Regine's dance with Charlie is erotic and disturbing as she takes his will over... then lets him go.
The character of the vampire who prefers a werewolf form is a discordant note for me, too incompetent and cheap humor when compared with the rest of the movie. But I enjoy the actor, who later played Broots on The Pretender, so I go with it.
I love Roddy McDowall, and he's great here as Peter Vincent, Vampire Slayer. It's cute watching him reminisce about the movies he appeared in and heartbreaking watching Charlie and his girlfriend condescend to him at the beginning partly for him being old and inclined to old stories but mostly because he hasn't been to therapy and thus isn't self-aware like they are. Peter is a bit of a coward, which is realistic for a guy who's an actor instead of a professional vampire slayer, but he's loyal and fierce when it counts. It kills me that as he gets down his movie props to use as real weapons he lovingly mentions the titles and often the circumstances in the movies they appeared in, with the titles eventually becoming an almost spell-like litany of names.
The psychiatric institution scenes come out of nowhere and steal the movie. I love the manic and helpful inmate! “You’re a star!”
And I love that in this series you can be physically made to crave blood but in the end you have to choose this life.