Before Buffy, there was Charley Brewster and Peter Vincent, the vampire-slaying duo in the brilliant 1985 horror-comedy Fright Night. I’ve said before that I’m not keen on the current vampire craze, but I’ll take a well-done, old-school vampire movie, particularly one made in the ’80s, any day.
The first time I saw Fright Night was on cable when I was about eight or nine. I’m pretty sure it was one of the first vampire movies I’d ever seen, and even though I don’t find it terribly frightening nowadays, it did scare the crap out of me back then.
Written and directed by Tom Holland, who also helmed the first Child’s Play (1988), Fright Night does a really great job of combining comedy and horror. It stays true to the conventions of vampire movies while also poking a little bit of fun at the genre, setting the stage for films like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) and From Dusk Till Dawn (1996).
