The first bad ass Jerry the vampire from the 1985 original Fright Night dropped a piece of batshit insane knowledge on us during our exclusive interview. Find out why it was both he and the newest vampire, Colin Farrell, need fresh fruit to survive.


Plus Sarandon lists his must-haves for a quality Fright Night remake.

We were a little skeptical about the Fright Night remake, but it's getting awesome buzz.


Chris Sarandon: Well it should get awesome buzz, because it's a terrific movie. I saw it last week and I just think they've really nailed it.

So now you say "nailed it," what are the three things that a Fright Night remake has to have in order to capture the original?

Humor — a faithful view of the genre as being something that you can have fun with but not necessarily make fun of. Terror — it's a very scary ride, this movie. And also, the relationships are really strong, which makes the movie work much better. Because always, to me, when you're dealing with this kind of genre, you need to have relationships that the audience identifies with, so that they go along for the ride and they really care about what happens to the characters. So I think those three elements are the things that they nailed all the way through.

Colin Farrell is playing your role in the reboot. Are there any little moves or hat tips that you caught him doing, since you saw the film, that you kind-of did as the original Jerry.


Well I think they were very lovely about doing, which was they added a couple of things that weren't in the script. Jerry's eating fruit, a few things like that that really are from the original that give you a sense that we care about the original, we loved it, but we're moving in our own directions as well.


You guys both eat fruit [in the film] it is the scariest way I've ever seen anyone eat fruit ever. It's an apple, right?

In this one, it's an apple, but in the original, 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.


That's absolutely brilliant, and it makes perfect sense, too. I'm also curious, it's pretty iconic, the dance scene with the song and the whole seduction. Is that maintained in this remake?

It is, to a certain extent. They don't play it as strongly in this one as we did in the original, but I think it doesn't matter because by then, you're really on the, 'Will he get her or won't he get her? Will the boy be able to save the girl?' No, he doesn't — what's going to happen? It's much more in that vein of sort-of plot driven rather than being the psycho-sexual thing, because that happens earlier in the movie anyway.


A big concern with everyone is the fact that everything's CG now. And you were so horrifying in your transformation. Did they decide to use prosthetics? Did they decide to use latex in this film? And is it scary?

They do, [and it's] very terrifying. The makeup is really good, but they don't overdo it, which I think is important and I think they do it quite well and utilize it really terrifically.


Is it true that you're actually in the film?

I can't divulge that information, except to say that come to the movie and see.

I swear to god, I almost fainted when he told me about the fruit. OF COURSE HE'S PART FRUIT BAT! Amazing. The Fright Night reboot hits theaters on August 19th.