Fright Night

Farrell looks like he's having the time of his 400-year-old life. more

It ends up getting a surprising number of things right. more

It stands apart from the rehash pack by accomplishing something rival remakes rarely do: It improves on the premise it has been handed, producing a modernized version of a decades-old story that's superior to its predecessor in virtually every aspect. more

Fright Night isn't quite a classic vampire movie, but it's refreshingly straightforward and self-deprecating. more

Fright is way too quick on its feet to be slowed by clichés. David Tennant seizes McDowall's role as Peter Vincent, now a Criss Angel-style clown vampire slayer. Christopher Mintz-Plasse was born to play a high school nerd. more

It honors the original throughout, including a memorable nightclub scene and a surprise cameo that's a huge crowd-pleaser, while at the same time giving updates to make it fresher and better than ever. more

Fright Night joins "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" as proof that you actually can do this sort of thing correctly. more

The remake isn't openly nostalgic. In a sense, this is another sexy vampire movie. But Farrell does something special with the sexuality: It's simultaneously omnivorous, dangerous, and a hoot. more

Plenty gory, but graced by a jovial sense of humor and an enjoyably guts-centric use of 3-D. more

The film's greatest pleasures come from Noxon's script - which puts the sexual chaos created by Farrell's attractive bloodsucker front and center - and from the performances. more

Seeing as the rather dubious looking remake is due out pretty soon I thought I would go back and see the classic original and see if it was still...classic. At first I must admit the start and build up to this kooky horror is slow and not that spooky or interesting, its the usual stereotypical American teen problems, teen look accompanied by all those glorious 80's cliches, styles with a bog standard plot. So the rather basic stuff aside the fun starts of course when the vampire action kicks in with bites, transformations, werewolves and melting corpses haha The real gem in the film is the... more

Being obsessed with 80's horror movies, I couldn't help myself with this vampire tinged Chris Sarandon vehicle from '85. Featuring a plot that is a mismash of the old Dracula movies everyone loves so well and a special effects heavy, synthesizer laden soundtrack, sex centered parallel, Fright Night is overexaggerated to the hilt. Between the strange series of events that make no true sense, to the misuse of the actual legends of vampires and their roles in the film, this sort of confused me. I do give kudos where they are due to the awesome sequence where the werewolf/vampire (no logical... more

Awesome! It's just about perfect in all its 80's glory. It's cheesy, gory, fun and it has real vampires that hate crosses, sleep during the day, have fangs and feed on pretty-ish girls. I was in to it. more

If you like 80s monster movies, you'll really get a kick out of this one. The visual effects are not its strength, and are clumsy enough to take you out of the movie. Vampires' fangs are long wobbly rubber, the rubber facial appliances defy the realm of the believable and if a seductive vampire's elongated fingers give the audience pause, it follows that it would give his victim pause as well. All that aside, the strength of this movie resides in its villain, Jerry Dandridge and how he is able to slowly win over any victim he sets his sights on. I think it's really amusing that when the... more

Definitely a fun movie, but I wouldn't consider it a classic. Most of the dialogue, story and characters fall totally flat. It's Chris Sarandon as the vampire neighbor from hell that makes the movie worth watching. The teen cast members all seemed to be hamming it up for no real reason, which gets in the way of taking this movie seriously or truly appreciating it. It's average film making with a better than average set up. more

Sometime in the 1980's someone decided to make a Hammer horror movie set during the age of Reagan. Fright Night is about a teenager (William Ragsdale) who finds out that his new neighbor (Chris Sarandon) is actually a vampire. He ends up enlisting the help of the over the hill horror film star turned late night movie host Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) in battling the beast who's out to kill him. This film is pure '80's, mainly the disco scene. But it's one of those flicks from that era of non stop horror that sticks with you, ala Return of the Living Dead. It's a well written piece that... more