Every year, on October 1st, I have a ritual.
I light some candles. I plug in the jack o’lantern beside my couch. I watch as the timer on my outdoor decorations clicks over, illuminating my front yard with floating ghosts amid a soft, orange glow. I pour a glass of my Oktoberfest brew of choice (this year it fell to Left Hand) and I finally sit down to watch my first horror film of the Halloween season:
Fright Night (1985).
Fright Night represents everything I love about the genre. Featuring a smorgasbord of genre references, ranging from the low-budget shlock of Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972) to the high-brow meticulousness of Rear Window (1954), the film covers the genre gamut and honors every facet of the culture that birthed it.
Plus, the movie is fun.
The story allows for the collision of horror both old and new to intersect and converge: bringing together the 1960s ham-fisted nature of the Hammer Horror set and the wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time teen sensibilities that were so prevalent in 1985. By employing a washed up character actor in the role of late night horror host and legend to the cast of young and hapless teenagers, the film creates a narrative able to service multiple generations of horror fandom, deviating from the overt simplicity of the slashers which were the dominating force in the genre at the time.
All of that aside, the reason I revisit Fright Night every year on October first, is that it is infused with heart. Halloween embodies the dark and sinister, certainly, but it does so through a lens of innocence. It’s a time when children dress as the monsters they spend the rest of the year fearing and, in so doing, gain perspective into what creates that fear in the first place.
Fright Night offers characters who are forced to come face to face with such fears. Fears regarding their own mortality, yes, but also those regarding adulthood. Acceptance. Sexual awakening. Purpose.
Each character’s sense of levity is juxtaposed with solemnity. Peter Vincent’s comical plight as the intrepid vampire hunter is weighted against his regret and personal lack of faith in himself and his abilities. Charlie Brewster’s determination to fight the evil next door is contrasted by his emasculating relationship with Amy Peterson, whose unwavering support and concern for Charlie serves to further complicate their stagnant intimacy.
And, of course, there’s Edward “Evil Ed” Thompson. An odd boy who begins as a grating personality with a nearly unbearable presence in the film and ends as one of the most sympathetic creatures in its runtime. He represents those who fail to fit in and see no other option but to adopt dominance in any form by which it is offered. His mask of instability and zaniness acts as the ideal skin to conceal his inner sadness, something which when prodded is immediately apparent.
The demise of “Evil Ed” at the hands of Peter Vincent represents the dichotomy between the more lively and more sobering elements of both character’s journeys. The scene is a showcase for incredible visual effects, a frightening climactic moment and the emotional pain that’s shared between the film’s two more comedic and broadly drawn personalities. Tom Holland’s script employs a simplicity which begets the coldness of the featured interaction and the realistic notion of loss that an actual hunter of the sort Vincent had spent years portraying would have to endure. The film carries the words to the screen with exquisite care and detail, filling out the frame with raw emotionality that elevates the subtext and places the viewer into the proper mindset heading into its finale.
THE SCENE
Peter Vincent emerges from the bedroom into the hallway, stumbling over a table which splinters. A wolf emerges from the bedroom. It turns to him and bounds down the hallway. The wolf lunges and Peter thrusts a splintered leg of the table into the animal’s chest, impaling him. The wold tumbles through the stair railing and lands on the ground. Slowly and painfully, the wolf transforms back into Edward “Evil Ed” Thompson. The boy dies in suffering, expressing regret as he stares into Peter’s shocked, dismayed and empathetic eyes.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
The scene starts by playing out verbatim to what is written:
Peter races down the hallway only to hit a table in the dark, crashing to the floor on the the landing, the table splintering beneath him.
What the screenplay does not mention is the emotion of the character on display. Peter Vincent emerges terrified, wearing a look of disbelief and confusion that will inform him for the remainder of the sequence. When he hits the table and lands on the ground, he winces in spite of himself. He closes his eyes exasperatedly as if to say: “I can’t believe I just did that.” This level of emotional vulnerability adds an immediate layer of visceral terror that creates a pervasive sense of loss before we ever see his stalker’s new form.
He suddenly hears a GROWLING, low and deep and vicious, coming from the other end of the hallway.
Again, the film follows this instruction exactly as it is given with the added nuance of the continued look of fear growing against Peter Vincent’s tortured face. Then, Suddenly, a HUGE WOLF, as ugly as Evil Ed, tears out of the master bedroom, skidding to a halt, staring back at Peter. The wolf, not ugly but rather beautiful, does not “tear” out of the room in the film. The viewer instead is treated to a medium shot of the large animal walking carefully into the hall, building tension and a sense of awe. The shot cuts to a close up of Peter Vincent who appears petrified beyond reason which heightens the impact. That’s when the wolf’s eyes glow like red-hot coals.
The screenplay instructs that Peter scrambles to his feet but the film allows him to stay on the floor, watching as the huge animal bounds down the hall toward him. Peter is petrified, his inability to move a metaphor for the inaction he has always been plagued by. Sweat coats his face and he becomes the antithesis of the character he played in his long forgotten films— fearful instead of feared.
The image cuts back and forth between the close on visage of the limp willed Peter Vincent and the face of the determined, otherworldly wolf running at top speed toward its prey. Peter fumbles onscreen, searching for anything that might allow him to overcome his own inertia when he finds the fractured table leg: Peter picks up a splintered leg of the table just as the wolf launches itself into the air. A creation of his own clumsiness, the leg embodies what Peter resents about himself and, at the same time, the wherewithal his fictional character was so known for. This is when he stands, defiantly raising himself against the impossible odds instead of lying down before them. If he was going to fall, he would fall fighting.
He slams the jagged piece of wood into the animal’s chest as it flies past, its snapping jaws missing his throat by an inch, the wolf hits the landing railing and plows through it, almost in slow motion, plunging over the side.
In the film, a chandelier is added, something to work as a distraction and for the wolf to strike against as it falls. The creature’s raw power is diminished and it plummets unceremoniously to the floor with a loud thud. Peter Vincent is knocked down and although the screenplay doesn’t call for it explicitly, the film continues to track his emotional progression as the events unfold.
As Peter Vincent gains composure and peers over the ledge, his terror begins to transition to dark curiosity. We remain in close ups on Peter, keeping his eyes clear on the frame and allowing his silent reactions to tell the story of the scene. By way of a slightly disorienting, canted, high angle shot, Peter watches as the bloodied wolf pathetically drags itself under the staircase.
The next minute or two of the scene is encapsulated inside of a single line of text on the page:
Peter hurries down the stairs, stopping above him and staring down, watching in fascinated horror as humanity leaks back into his eyes, his face transforming into that of a normal teenage boy.
Peter does descend the staircase, wearing a look that more closely resembles morbid curiosity and disgust than fear and finds the beast under the staircase. A close up of an elongated foot graces the screen as it morphs into its previous, human state. A hand reconstitutes itself from a gooey, viscous, pus-like substance. The torso is red and splotchy, covered in patches of oily, blood-stained hair.
Peter Vincent gets closer. His dark interest in facing the realities of the creature and their impact to human life outweigh his fear. He’s appalled but… interested. As Peter’s emotions turn to pity, the full creature is put on display. His body has become mostly human once more, but his face is a monstrous sight. Sporting the head of a malformed, viscous wolf-like creature, Evil Ed roars and screeches in deeply felt, animalistic pain.
The film adds depth to the events, even showing the boy’s feeble efforts at removing the table leg, consistently cutting back to close ups of Peter Vincent’s conflicted expression. The most impactful of these additional character interactions is a moment where Evil Ed reaches out for Peter Vincent’s hand. Peter reaches back, tears welling in his eyes, momentarily connecting to the writhing beast sprawled out before him.
Peter had spent his life making a name for himself by claiming to be something that he wasn’t, capable of heroics that he could never imagine embodying, ultimately landing him in a position to be discarded. Here, he is finally offered a chance to be that which he had claimed, to seek adventure and embrace vitality, but in so doing, he is also forced to bare witness to the cost of living an adventurous life. Peter comes face to face with the pain and power of mortality, an affliction that will inevitably destroy all in the end.
Peter pulls away from Evil Ed and his pitied, teary eyed gaze resets to hateful disgust, as if reminding himself that Evil Ed is the villain, after all. Again, the emotion on his face exhibits the character’s trajectory, something the script was smart to only hint at.
The boy collapses before Peter as the camera continues to cut back and forth between the two. The shot holds on the boy’s hand as it clutches the table leg for several seconds, the backdrop of which is the miserable, wretched groans of the dying thing. The look of piteous horror on Peter Vincent’s face seems to have as much to do with the terrifying nature of the creature’s mere existence as it does the ultimate price of dispatching something so vile. Nothing so heinous can be easy, nothing so appalling can be simple— it would seem that even the vanquishing of evil is a dirty sport.
The boy’s body is largely human then, his face, torn between beast and man, the only monstrous element. As the evil finally leaves Evil Ed, Peter Vincent shakes his head and even utters a small, uncomfortable chortle of recognition. There’s relief in the minute outburst, albeit short lived, as Peter is clearly comforted to see the boy as he was in those final moments. The sense of hope that brings, however, is drowned in sorrow as Edward “Evil Ed” Thompson’s final moments are spent sputtering high pitched gasps of torment and regret. Still Peter Vincent watches, unable to turn away, his eyes filled with tears and a pervasive, insurmountably bleak sense of anguish.
Again, all of this from a single line of text in the script: Peter hurries down the stairs, stopping above him and staring down, watching in fascinated horror as humanity leaks back into his eyes, his face transforming into that of a normal teenage boy.
The script calls for one final line from Evil Ed, which reads in emboldened text:
I’M SORRY.
The film does away with the line, rather focusing on the boy’s inability to communicate with his words. The picture instead leans on the broken, dysphoric soundscape of Edward’s suffering and the woeful, pitying presence that Peter Vincent offers to accomplish what those two words of dialogue were meant to.
The scene ends, as scripted, with: He dies, Peter staring down at him, sorrow struck by the waste and horridness of it all…
As Peter surveys the motionless body, watching as the scar of the cross disappears from Evil Ed’s forehead, there is a clarity and empowering sense of purpose which was not present before. Every choice comes with a cost and sometimes that cost is one’s own sense of humanity— a purity that can be lost on either side of a fight, regardless of the guiding moral compass to which your chosen side turns.
And as Peter Vincent reflects, it becomes clear what he must do, what he must become capable of, if he is to shield the rest of the world from Edward’s fate. It may not be in the script, but the scene makes it abundantly clear that Peter Vincent Vampire Hunter is fiction no more.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“Now I have the power, now you have to be afraid of me,” Tom Holland said thoughtfully, referring to the plight of Evil Ed on his audio commentary for Fright Night, found on the out-of-print blu-ray disc from Twilight Time.
In that same commentary, effects artist Randall Cook and, actor who portrayed Evil Ed, Stephen Geoffreys discuss the hours of make-up and uncomfortable glass contact lenses that had to be worn for the scene. The time, energy and effort, as they phrased it, was put in for a specific reason and one that might come unexpected to the uninitiated horror fan: “not disgust… sadness.”
Fright Night will forever be my personal gateway into the conceptual landscape that surrounds the Halloween season. It’s a film that’s as interested in the ghoulish as it is the misfits who tend to flock to such grim machinations. It wears its influences on its sleeve, right beside its heart, and never forgets to provide the emotions behind the decisions of its characters.
Tom Holland constructed a work that is equal parts homage as it is reinvention. Even in this one scene, the addition of the chandelier is, as the director points out in the aforementioned commentary track, “from Psycho.” Hell, the part of Peter Vincent was famously written for Vincent Price, the true-to-life inspiration for the role (aside from the washed-up actor part).
Evil Ed’s demise is presented in the script with little flourish and yet it is written with a sense of precision. The emotion and impact of the death is present in both characters and poetically referenced, all the while allowing for the ingenuity of the filmmaking process to allow such ideas to evolve and grow in a visual way as they transitioned to the screen.
Tom Holland, with the help of Richard Edlund, Steve Johnson and their visual effects teams coupled with outstanding performances from Roddy McDowall and Stephen Geoffreys, crafted a sequence that embodies everything that works about Fright Night. The scene carries with it the power and metaphor of purpose and place within humanity as a whole, while driving the narrative forward. Tom Holland does this with few words, but words that are loaded with subtext. Sometimes all the screenplay needs to do is deliver conceptual purpose, it’s then that the seeds which the text planted can blossom into something complex and hauntingly beautiful.
I have a ritual on October 1st, as many horror fans do. Put simply, I watch one of my favorite horror movies. A flick that is equal parts heart, humor, terror and sorrow; a picture to set the pallet for the month and to remind myself what the best in the genre can offer.
It’s about humanity:
What makes us human? What can take that away? Can we ever get it back?
Behind the words, beneath the performances and underneath all the makeup, lies the questions— as mysterious as they are unanswerable.
What better way to kick off the spookiest season of the year, than with that? Well, that and vampires.
Fright Night (1995): Written & Directed by Tom Holland
