Fright Night (1985)

Revisiting films from childhood carries risk - a lot of it. A film that you loved as a child and now remember fondly as an adult can be ruined when you screen it again and realize just how cheesy or dumb the movie really was all along. On the other hand, sometimes you can watch a movie that you have not seen since childhood and now, as an adult, realize there was a level of depth and symbolism that went completely over your head the first time around. The latter is the case of Fright Night - the 1985 original - a movie that still works quite well on the surface as a fun, comedic horror film but that also  explores themes of sexual angst that seem obvious now but did not register with my childhood self.

The lead character Charlie is a closeted gay teenager in the mid-80s struggling with his sexuality. When his girlfriend, who dresses with deliberate asexuality (overalls!), finally decides she's ready to have sex after a year of going out, Charlie is suddenly and immediately disinterested in her and distracted by the two men moving in next door. The men are a gay couple who alternately explain to the community that one of the men is a live-in carpenter as they restore the house or that that they are simply roommates (Charlie's single mom ruefully notes that it is just her luck that a good looking man moves into the neighborhood and he's gay). To Charlie, however, he quickly identifies them for what they really are: his sexual demons coming to haunt and destroy him.

Unable to convince his friend Evil Ed (who taunts Charlie about his girlfriend by asking, "Did she find out who you really are,") or girlfriend Amy that Jerry Dandridge (played with leering delight by Chris Sarandon) and his partner are vampires, Charlie, haunted and driven to distraction, begins to believe that he will ultimately succumb to them because he cannot fend them off by himself. Only then he realizes that he can enlist the help of Peter Vincent, an aging former B-movie horror star now doing local creature features and living alone as an aging bachelor. Vincent is played by Roddy McDowell, a casting move that works on a number of levels, not least of all because McDowell gives it a pro's effort and appears to also be having a good time.

Eventually, Dandridge gets Evil Ed to himself come out of the closet and join their gay community. Then Dandridge captures Charlie's girlfriend and tells Charlie that the only way for Charlie to get her back is to conquer him. In 1985, the story of needing to conquer homosexuality (replete with a little pray-the-gay-away imagery in the final act) would have been the politically acceptable direction, but now the tables have turned and Fright Night's story of reclaiming heterosexuality by conquering homosexual demons becomes rather conservative - a reminder of the moral battles of the Reagan era but perhaps fighting on the wrong side (with a bit of a decadent sneer, though). Charlie seemingly conquers his homosexual demons with the help of Peter Vincent, but the film ends with a reminder that those demons are really just around the corner, lurking in the dark. He can't kill who he really is, just suppress it and try to pretend.

The dimension of a young man struggling with his homosexuality and viewing it through that lens does not take anything away from the fun of the movie (in my view, it adds to it by deepening the stakes, no pun intended). As I noted above, it still works quite well as a comedic horror film on the surface. The film embraces modern vampire mythology and asks the question, "What if all of those dumb Hammer horror movies were really real?" While the film proceeds with joy, it does not feel the need to try and puncture or deconstruct the horror movie at all times. The film more or less celebrates the horror movie; it is not really trying to criticize it and certainly the filmmakers embrace horror conventions rather than trying to place themselves above the genre. Charlie never questions what he is seeing, and the characters approach things so earnestly that they do not stop to utter one-liners and ironic asides that we would expect in the present day. Managing to convey that the film is in on the joke while, no pun intended, still playing it straight is a great feat and writer-director Tom Holland is to be commended.

Visually the film still holds up quite well. The horror effects still pack a surprisingly strong punch, particularly some of the grotesque deaths of the various demons. In most respects, the film has held up remarkably well. It remains well worth seeing.

Screened most recently in the theater.