October Horror 2011: Day 13 - Fright Night (2011)

Last year's October Horror month started with the original Fright Night, from 1985.

I really like how they've updated the original for this remake.  Instead of copping out and just updating the setting and some superficial trimmings they really revamped (lawl) the entire story and all the characters to make sense in a modern context.

The basic idea here is that a vampire moves into a cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood, and the nerdy guy living next door discovers he's actually a vampire.  No one believes him, and he eventually loses his best friend and girl-interest to the vampire.  His only hope is to enlist Peter Vincent, an entertainer who appears to be "faking the funk", to help him kill the vampire and protect his mom.  The vampire is a funny character because while being ostensibly a modern predatory alpha male in both movies he's still bound by old-school vampire rules.  There's a pretty funny scene where Colin Ferrel's vampire is fishing for an invitation from Anton Yelchin's Charley.

The character that was updated the most was probably Peter Vincent.  In the original Peter Vincent was a meek old man played by Roddy McDowall.  He was the host of a late night horror movie show called "Fright Night", which showed the 1930's-1950's Hammer Studios-style gothic horror films Vincent once starred in.  In the remake Peter Vincent is a multimillionaire magician performing a highly theatrical stage show in Las Vegas called "Fright Night" in which he battles vampires and a host of other demons with the power of magic.  He's also a collector of rare and magical artifacts and books, mostly concerning vampires, which he keeps in his gigantic hotel penthouse along with his gorgeous wife.  His wife hates his guts, he's completely superficial, and quite often hammered on Midori liqueur.  The character is played with a sloppy, but confident, swagger by David Tennant.  He's very fun to watch in the role, although there are a few time when he falls into the giddy and excitable Dr. Who mannerisms which don't seem to fit very well.

It's a nice casual vampire movie, very well executed.  It's not a dark story, or dark humor, but not quite as comedic as something like Shaun of the Dead.  A good balance of somewhat unsettling visual effects and light story.

And I definitely don't see Christopher Mintz-Plasse getting into gay porn for a decade like the original "Evil" Ed.

Anyway.  Tomorrow is a return to the Theatre for The Thing.