This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the vampire classic, Fright Night. To celebrate this anniversary, let’s go over some totally awesome facts you need to know. Maybe by doing so, we’ll find out what makes Brewster so cool.

The writer and director of Fright Night, Tom Holland, started out as an actor in the late 1950’s. In the 70’s, Holland’s acting career started to dry up and he transitioned into writing. His first script was the horror movie, The Beast Within. The movie was based on a book that hadn’t actually been written. The film’s producer bought the rights to the book because he liked the title. But the author was going through a divorce at the time and decided to put writing the book on hold. So all Holland had to work from was the title.

Holland started writing with the intention of eventually directing his own scripts. The success of Psycho II gave Holland the clout to sit in the director’s chair. According to Holland, he chose to direct Fright Night as a way to protect his script. He was very upset with the way his script for the thriller Scream For Help was handled and didn’t want to see his vampire movie receive the same shoddy treatment.

Fright Night started off as a play on The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Holland had been riffing on the children’s story with the script for his spy movie, Cloak & Dagger. But he hadn’t gotten the story out of his system. According to Holland:

I started to kick around the idea about how hilarious it would be if a horror movie fan thought that a vampire was living next door to him. I thought that would be a interesting take on the whole Boy Who Cried Wolf thing. It really tickled my funny bone.

Holland said he kicked around the idea for about a year. But he couldn’t come up with a story to fit around it. Eventually, he came up with the Peter Vincent character played in the movie by Roddy McDowall and everything clicked into place. Holland explained, “He was important because he was the person that the boy would go to and cry wolf.” When he finally sat down to write the script, he did so in about three weeks.

I couldn’t stop writing. I wrote it in about three weeks. And I was laughing the entire time, literally on the floor, kicking my feet in the air in hysterics. Because there’s something so intrinsically humorous in the basic concept. So it was always, along with the thrills and chills, something there that tickled your funny bone. It wasn’t broad comedy, but it’s a grin all the way through.

The character of Peter Vincent was obviously inspired by horror icon, Vincent Price. Holland said he named the character after Price and Peter Cushing. He had hoped to get Price to play Peter Vincent in Fright Night, but unfortunately Price was in poor health at the time and couldn’t make the movie as a result.

Holland had worked with Roddy McDowall previously on Class of 1984, but he hadn’t considered McDowall for Fright Night. After discussing the movie with the head of Columbia Pictures, Guy McEvoy, Holland realized that McDowall would be perfect for the role. McEvoy, who was friends with McDowall, invited the actor to read for the part and according to Holland, McDowall “knocked it out of the park.”

After the audition, Holland and McDowall sat down to discuss the character. They both agreed that Peter Vincent was essentially the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz. He was trying to find his courage. McDowall decided that he didn’t want to play the part as though he were Vincent Price. Instead, he wanted to be kind of pathetic:

My part is that of an old ham actor. I mean a dreadful actor. He had a moderate success in an isolated film here and there, but all very bad product. Basically, he played one character for eight or 10 films, for which he probably got paid next to nothing. Unlike stars of horror films who are very good actors and played lots of different roles, such as Peter Lorre and Vincent Price or Boris Karloff, this poor sonofabitch just played the same character all the time, which was awful.

Holland later ran in to Vincent Price at a dinner party at McDowall‘s house. Price told Holland that he loved the movie and thought McDowall was wonderful in it.

According to Holland, one of the obstacles he had to overcome when it came to casting Fright Night was a small budget. Despite the involvement of a major studio, Fright Night was regarded as a B-picture. Holland said the movie had the smallest budget of any film at Columbia at that time. Additionally, Chris Sarandon who played the vampire, was reluctant to work for a first-time director. According to Sarandon:

I said to myself, ‘There’s no way I can do a horror movie. I can’t do a vampire movie. I can’t do a movie with a first-time director.’ Not a first-time screenwriter, but first-time director. And I sat down and read the script, and I remember very vividly sitting at my desk, looked over at my then wife and said, ‘This is amazing. I don’t know. I have to meet this guy.’

After doing some research, Sarandon added an unusual quirk to his character, Jerry Dandrige. He decided that Jerry should be seen eating fruit. “Jerry ate all kinds of fruit because it was just sort of something I discovered by searching it—that most bats are not blood-sucking, but they’re fruit bats. And I thought well maybe somewhere in Jerry’s genealogy, there’s fruit bat in him, so that’s why I did it.”

Charlie Sheen was one of many actors who read for the part of Charley Brewster. But Holland thought he was too good-looking to be believable as the boy next door. William Ragsdale had the look Holland was going for. “By casting William Ragsdale, I cast the underdog. I didn’t want the audience to be sure that Charley Brewster would be able to save the day or his girlfriend. Had I cast Charlie Sheen, the audience would’ve not had to worry about the outcome of the story because he looked more like a hero than the kid next door.”

Stephen Geoffreys was cast as Charley’s friend, Evil Ed based partially on a mistake. Geoffrey had the same agent as Anthony Michael Hall. Casting director Jackie Burch had asked to see Hall for Weird Science, but their agent accidentally sent Geoffreys in Hall’s place. Obviously, Geoffreys didn’t get the part in Weird Science, but Burch remembered him when she was casting Fright Night.

Geoffreys was in Palm Springs filming Fraternity Vacation with future Fright Night costar Amanda Bearse when his agent sent him the script. He loved it, but he didn’t want to play Evil Ed:

I just got this really awesome feeling about it,” he said. “I read it and thought I’ve got to do this. I called my agent and said ‘I would love to audition for the part of Charley Brewster!’ [And he said] ‘No, Steve, you’re wanted for the part of Evil Ed.’ And I went, ‘Are you kidding me? Why? I couldn’t… What do they see in me that they think I should be this?’

Visual effects producer, Richard Edlund, had recently finished up working on Ghostbusters. On that film, he had created a puppet for the librarian ghost which was deemed to frightening for a PG-rated comedy. A new puppet was created for Ghostbusters and the old scary puppet was recycled for Fright Night. Holland couldn’t believe his good luck:

What happened was, Richard Edlund’s group, along with production designer John DeCuir, came off of Ghostbusters. I inherited the entire team from this huge studio movie. They came on to my small, little movie. It was only because Columbia was trying to keep them together in order to keep them on another production. So you had the best effects people in town and the best sculptors and makeup people working on my little movie.

The studio had very low expectations for Fright Night. According to Holland, Columbia was more interested in their other features. “They didn’t expect the movie to do anything. They were stunned. Their big movies that year were Perfect and The Slugger’s Wife and now nobody remembers either one. That’s where they put the money and they had one slot left and they did a throwaway with Fright Night simply because I was so hot as a writer as a result of Psycho II.

But Fright Night exceeded expectations. Reviews were generally favorable and it became the 35th highest-grossing movie of the year, the spots above Weird Science. Columbia decided to make a cheapie sequel in 1989. To save money, Chris Sarandon was not asked back for Fright Night II. Holland was offered the chance to direct the sequel but turned it down. The sequel flopped, but in 2011, Fright Night was remade with Colin Farrell playing the vampire. Despite decent reviews, the remake flopped too.

Thirty years later, the original Fright Night still holds up. And Brewster is still so cool.

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