FRIGHT NIGHT (1985)

"FRIGHT NIGHT": A HORROR FLICK WITH LITTLE BITE - Special effects can't overcome the thin plot of this minor piece of the macabre

The Dallas Morning News - August 12, 1985

Author: Robert Denerstein, Scripps Howard News Service

Sprinkle them with holy water and they blister. Shove a crucifix in their faces and they cringe. Lure them onto the sunny side of the street and they're history.

We're talking vampires. We're also talking Fright Night, a wild fun house of a movie that contains one of the more menacing members of the breed and some ghoulishly rewarding special effects.

The vampire in Fright Night is played by Chris Sarandon, who gives a finely exaggerated performance, something on the order of Chris Sarandon doing Joan Crawford.

Sarandon's Jerry Dandridge is a vampire who's as at home in a disco as he is in his coffin. He's not afraid to flash his beautiful teeth; to quote Billy Crystal, he looks "mahvelous.'

But unlike George (Love At First Bite) Hamilton, Sarandon isn't lovable. Anger him and he goes for the jugular.

The story begins when Jerry moves next door to Charley (Wil-

liam Ragsdale), a teen-ager who lives with his mom. Jerry, not exactly the ideal neighbor, lives in a rickety house that has so much eerie, horror -movie smoke seeping out of it, it seems an apt target for an environmental impact statement. There's more. Every morning, a body (remains from the previous night's fun) is carted out of the house in a garbage bag.

One night, Charley looks out of his window and sees Jerry take a bite from his date's neck. This raises a big question: If you're the average teen-ager, just how do you persuade others that you're telling the truth about the vampire next door? Even your girlfriend (Amanda Bearse) won't believe you. Neither will Evil Ed (Stephen Geoffreys), the weirdest kid in town, the one with the Jack Nicholson smile and the porcupine haircut.

In desperation, you consult a TV personality, a washed up actor (Roddy McDowall), who's doing an Elvira-like turn on a local TV station. He's Peter Vincent, vampire killer. Not surprisingly, he's a fraud.

All of this is efficiently handled by first-time director Tom Holland, who builds toward an effective special-effects finale.

Consider the wolf, the one that creeps toward its doom with a stake in its heart. Or how about Sarandon's transformations, like the one from vampire to sharp-toothed bat.

Holland, who also wrote the script, pokes fun at recent slasher films in which young virgins are hacked apart by maniacs in ski masks.

This time the young virgin is seduced by a vampire in a couple of erotic scenes. Ms. Bearse makes a convincing transformation from teen-ager to woman to, well, go see for yourself.

Don't expect a masterpiece of the macabre. The plot is thin, the movie isn't as funny as it thinks it is and there's sloppiness in the script, the unexplained disappearance of Charley's mother from the story, for example.

Fright Night, R-rated with profanity, nudity and violence, is strictly a jolt-and-bolt affair that stays close to the surface. Although it never gives you much to sink your teeth into, it does deliver the nerve-wracking goods.
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"FRIGHT NIGHT' SCARES UP LAUGHTER

Akron Beacon Journal (OH) - August 6, 1985

Author: Bill O'Connor, Beacon Journal movie critic

Suppose you went to see a stage show and the entertainer came out and
told sly little jokes, made wry comments on familiar aspects of life.

Then, suddenly, the guy sat down on a chair and told you a serious story
about an ax murderer.

Not the best combination for an entertainment. Well, much the same problem
afflicts Fright Night, the latest vampire movie. It's not that Fright Night is a bad retelling of the vampire story. In fact, the plot is interesting. Chris Sarandon is an hypnotic vampire, and the idea of Roddy McDowall playing a
fading horror -movie star has possibilities.

But Fright Night gets stuck in the goo of its own muddy conception of
itself. Writer and director Tom Holland just can't make up his mind. Much of
Fright Night is in the general tone of Love At First Bite, where we laughed at the whole vampire idea.

Yet, other parts of Fright Night, especially the last 20 minutes or so when the special effects are trotted out, are serious attempts at making a vampire/ horror movie.

The story is that high schooler Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale), while
smooching with his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse), glances out the window and notices some strange activity. Charley notices two men carrying a coffin into the house next door. The men, the suave Jerry Dandridge (Sarandon), and his
cold-eyed sidekick, Billy Cole (Jonathan Stark), are new neighbors.

There are several murders in the city, and Charley begins to notice more
strange activities next door. Finally, he realizes that Jerry is a vampire.

The cops won't believe him, so Charley seeks help from Peter Vincent
(McDowall), the ex-movie star who now hosts a TV show, Fright Night.
Charley reasons that Vincent would be able to prove that Jerry is more than
your average guy with big teeth.

As Charley is drawn more deeply into the activities next door, so is his
girlfriend. In all vampire movies, there is a strong sexual undercurrent.
That, in fact, is the main appeal of these movies, an appeal that Love At
First Bite exploited so well. That sexual undertone is the only memorable
thing about Fright Night, and that is only because of one scene in which Jerry dances an erotic, seductive dance with Amy as she is drawn hypnotically to
him.

The change in tone, the shifting of gears, though, grinds the movie's good
points into dust. For most of the movie, Vincent is played as a fool, a
pompous minor leaguer. Stephen Geoffreys is just awful as Evil Ed, Charley's
buddy. Geoffreys plays him in such a manic way that we can get no handle on
who Ed is. The romance of Charley and Amy is played strictly for laughs, a
will- she-or-won't-she farce.

All this is changed abruptly at the end when we're supposed to get involved in a serious vampire hunt, one that is filled with danger.

In these climatic scenes, there are a lot of special effects -- melting bad guys, fangs, horrible faces -- but they fail to involve us. They fail because the story and characters, at this point, exist to serve the special effects,
and it should be the opposite.

The overall problem is that we don't fear what we laugh at.

Movie review : Fright Night Stars: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale Director: Tom Holland Studio: Columbia Pictures Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes Theaters: Akron Square, Chapel Hill, Kent Plaza, Belden Village and Gala and Magic City drive-ins Rating: R for language and violence * *
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MOVIE REVIEW- `Fright Night' puts bite on audiences with ghoulish fun

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - August 5, 1985

Author: CAIN, SCOTT, Scott Cain Staff Writer: STAFF

Fright Night: Written and directed by Tom Holland. Movie Guide: code rating, R; sex, mildly implied; violence, considerable; nudity, some female; language, a few bursts of profanity. Opens today at metro-area theaters.

"Fright Night" is hardly a classic horror flick, but it has several stunning moments and is infinitely more subtle and witty than "Friday the 13th."

Tom Holland, the writer and novice director, was previously known as the author of scripts for "Cloak & Dagger," "Psycho II" and other thrillers. "Fright Night" is his pet project, a long-awaited opportunity to tell a version of "the boy who cried wolf."

His teenage hero, Charley, correctly deduces that the new neighbor is a vampire, but he can't convince anyone about the supernatural menace even after grisly murders take place in the community.

When friends and police turn a deaf ear to Charley's warnings, he seeks the aid of Peter Vincent, a ham actor who hosts a TV monster-movie show. By accident, Peter becomes convinced of the vampire threat, but he is a coward and retreats to his shabby apartment. Charley is left alone to battle the powerful enemy.

Chris Sarandon plays the vampire in the glamorous-romantic-smart style of Frank Langella. This is unquestionably Sarandon's most entertaining film performance. You believe that he could bamboozle the police, charm gullible middle-aged ladies and debauch innocent teenagers all in the same evening.

In an intriguing variation on routine, the vampire's assistant is played as a pink-cheeked jock by Jonathan Stark. Endless speculation could center around this master/

slave relationship.

William Ragsdale is alert and frisky as Charley, the hero. His nerdish friend is played by Stephen Geoffreys, a resourceful actor who brings more emotion to the part than it deserves. After a chase down the longest and most deserted alley in modern America, he becomes one of the vampire's first victims. Later, when he is one of the "undead," Geoffreys has a powerful scene, but it is ruined by the comically massive fangs with which his mouth is outfitted.

Peter Vincent, the TV host, is not a consistently written character. He alter nates abruptly between quivering cowardice and stalwart heroism. Roddy McDowall, never an actor to worry about such trifles, milks the role for all it's worth. He is clearly having a great time and is a major contributor to the movie's sense of fun.

It's too bad that Charley's mother (played by Dorothy Fielding) is the most cartoonish sort of movie parent. She is distracted to the point of imbecility. This really wasn't necessary.

Another irritation is that Charley is strangely ignorant of vampire lore. This is an unconvincing lapse since he stays up late every night to watch horror movies on television.

Finally, there is not much consistency in the use of remedies. At one point, Peter Vincent has already successfully used a cross to foil a vampire. When he tries the method again, he has no luck and is informed that it's because he doesn't have faith. If so, why did the trick work the first time?

Caption: The last two paragraphs did not appear in the final edition.
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A MOVIE CAPTURES THE TEENAGE GORY DAYS

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - August 3, 1985

Author: Rick Lyman, Inquirer Movie Critic

Hollywood figured it out about 30 years ago: Teenagers make up the biggest chunk of the horror -movie audience.

In the '50s, we got high-schooler Steve McQueen battling The Blob and Michael Landon sprouting werewolf hair. In the '60s, Count Yorga stalked the Southern California beach-party set.

In the '70s, the monster angle was dropped completely. Who needs vampires or giant spiders? Splatter flicks offered enthusiasts exactly what they were seeking in its most gory, undiluted form: promiscuous teens stalked and butchered by a huge, masked maniac wielding a phallic knife.

Now, in a blatant attempt to tap the same exploitation audience, we are given Fright Night, a special-effects bloodfest combining Risky Business-style teen antics with the staples of vintage vampire flicks. Written and directed by Tom Holland, whose witty script was the best part of 1983's Psycho II, it will be of interest only to devotees of state-of-the-art gore.

Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) is your basic small-town teen. He goes to school. He hangs out at the fast-food joints. On TV he watches junky monster movies introduced by a faded horror -movie actor named Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall).

And he's got sex problems. He and his cute-as-a-button girlfriend don't seem to connect. When they get intimate, they get awkward - they're hopelessly stalled in the transition to post-virginhood.

All of a sudden, a suave gent moves in next door. Jerry Dandrige, played with smooth aplomb by Chris Sarandon, oozes sex appeal. Every night it seems some beautiful woman is going into his house. Only problem is, they never come out.

Charley begins to suspect that Mr. Dandrige is not your ordinary neighbor - that, perhaps, he sucks blood for a living. Naturally, nobody believes him. Not even pathetic Vincent, who has been fired by the local TV station and wants nothing to do with this wild-eyed teen.

What's Charley to do but sharpen a few stakes, surround himself with crucifixes and prepare to do battle with the neighborhood creature of the night?

On paper, it's a wonderful idea - Spielberg-style teens stalking a vampire. But Holland undercuts the material by making just about every wrong move possible.

Fright Night's tone is inconsistent. Instead of giving the story a sense of the fantastic, Holland keeps matters morbid, even threatening. Elements of camp are tossed around casually, but the humor is flat. Holland never uses them in the classic fashion - to deflate tension.

Nor does Holland show any dexterity with his actors. They either are poorly cast or they emote shamelessly. Only Sarandon has the poise to overcome this lack of creative direction.

Fright Night's violent effects are frequent and intense. It's not so much splatter-movie gore, where heads are lopped off by giant axes swung from the darkness. It's people turning into animals with plenty of makeup, oozing slime and tiny, mechanical creatures.

But the biggest problem is that Holland doesn't understand that this type of fright fantasy only works when the director places his characters in a realistic setting. You have to believe the characters could actually exist or there's no sense of exhilaration when the plot takes a turn for the bizarre.

The truth is, Holland's not really interested in his characters. He doesn't care enough to breathe life into them. They're just imitations of teens we've seen a thousand times before.

Holland wants to get to the gore as fast as he can and then keep it splashing. Which is what Fright Night is all about.

FRIGHT NIGHT * *

Produced by Herb Jaffe, written and directed by Tom Holland, photography by Jan Kiesser, music by Brad Fiedel, distributed by Columbia Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour, 32 mins.

Jerry Dandrige - Chris Sarandon

Charley Brewster - William Ragsdale

Amy Peterson - Amanda Bearse

Peter Vincent - Roddy McDowall

Evil Ed - Stephen Geoffreys

Billy Cole - Jonathan Stark

Parent's guide: R (violence, profanity, adult situations)
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MAKEUP MAKES SCARY FILM

SACRAMENTO BEE - August 3, 1985

Author: George Williams Bee Reviewer

IT'S BEEN A lot of years since we've had a real, visually scary vampire movie. To match the kind of stunning impact provided in the new 'Fright Night,' you'd have to go way back to Lon Chaney - The Man of a Thousand Faces

in the silent era.

The star of 'Fright Night' is the makeup man, Richard Edlund, the Oscar-winner who created the special makeup effects for movies like 'Ghostbusters' and 'Poltergeist,' not to mention the 'Star Wars' trilogy. His vampire effects are superb.

This is not to take away from Roddy McDowall and Chris Sarandon, whose* acting lifts 'Fright Night' immeasurably. Sarandon, a respected Broadway performer, displays the right combination of sexuality and danger to make the vampire a credible creature. And McDowall, the former MGM child star, seems to get better with age. He has the especially difficult challenge of playing a bad actor, a former horror movie star like Vincent Price. He's funny and wonderfully convincing.

The story is about a teenager, Charley Brewster, who discovers a vampire has moved in next door. No one believes him, of course, when he tries to get help. Neither his mother nor his lover, Amy. Not the police. Not even his best friend, Evil Ed Thompson.

But the former horror film star, Peter Vincent, takes an interest. Probably because Vincent's creature-features television show has been canceled and the ham actor sees Charley's problem as a way to make some easy money.

But Jerry Dandridge, the vampire, is more than a mere problem. When you can come out of your grave at night and present yourself as a handsome and mesmerizing playboy with superhuman strength, well, not even your own mother is safe from his lust to suck the blood out of people while they sleep. It's going to take more than crucifixes and garlic to bring this vampire down to size.

Edlund may have created the ultimate in vampire makeup and optical effects to make the Jerry Dandridge monster believable. So believable, in fact, that you feel a seam. The first half of the movie is funny horror . The second half, the Edlund half, well, there's nothing funny about it. It's just plain horror .

Director Tom Holland is a former actor who knows how to give actors room to do their thing. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UCLA and a California attorney, he has written a number of heralded screenplays, including the script for 'Psycho II.' He's an Alfred Hitchcock fan, which shows clearly in the inventiveness and black humor of 'Fright Night,' his directing debut. FRIGHT NIGHT Cast: Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowall, William Ragsdale, Amanda Pearse, Stephen Geoffreys. Writer-director: Tom Holland. Producer: Herb Jaffe. Photography: Jan Kiesser. Production design: John De Cuir Jr. Editor: Kent Beyda. Music: Brad Fiedel. Distributor: Columbia.

Sacramento Inn, State, Birdcage, and Sacramento and Forty Niner drive-ins.

Rating: R, for scaring the daylights out of you.
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'FRIGHT NIGHT' IS TERRIFIC

Boston Globe - August 2, 1985

Author: Jay Carr, Globe Staff

Could Tom Holland be the next Ron Howard? Like Howard, Holland is a TV actor turned film director, and I'd say he has a future. His first feature, "Fright Night," is a clever comedy of horrors -

a slick reworking of the Dracula legend into contemporary terms for the teen market. It begins by using the same kind of

lurid lettering emblazoned across cheap late-night horror movies. But Holland has more on his mind than campy parody. He doesn't just use the Dracula iconography. He clearly understands the subtexts in that most Victorian of novels, and parades them across the screen in elegantly creepy ways, putting a real charge on his material.

His starting point is the fact that in this supposedly rational age, nobody believes in vampires. When one moves next door to teenager William Ragsdale, and Ragsdale tells his mother and the cops, his mother's reaction is predictable: "Want a Valium?" He bombs when he goes to the cops, even though he saw the vampire's buddy carry out a body. Ironically, the vampire is the only one who believes him. The catch is that the vampire intends to kill him that night, and almost does, as the world, starting with his lonely, divorced mother, turns a deaf ear. To them, he's just the boy who cried bat.

Rightly, the film is built around Chris Sarandon's seductive powers as the vampire. He gains access to the boy's house by seducing the boy's mother. Like Frank Langella in the recent stage version of "Dracula," Sarandon is sexy. As Bram Stoker's original did, he zeroes in on his adversary's woman. The kid's girlfriend (Amanda Bearse) is afraid of sex, but clearly fascinated by it. In short, she's ripe for a Dracula - a projection of her fears and desires - and fangs of her own. Even the kid's be st friend, played by that disheveled leprechaun, Stephen Geoffreys, is skeptical, and it costs him. He's turned into the contemporary version of Dracula's disciple, the fly-eating Renfield.

Ragsdale's only ally for the late-night showdown in the vampire's chic, restored Victorian gothic digs is Roddy McDowall, the local late-night TV horror movie host, who once hunted vampires on screen himself, but whose crucifix has been gathering dust, and who isn't inclined to believe Ragsdale. Still, he and "Fright Night" know their way around crucifixes and garlic. The duel is a good one. The often gushing special effects really seem special. Sarandon is a vampire in whose evil powers we can believe, even during the film's light moments, when it barely skirts self-parody. There's a lot of deft work on view here, including Ragsdale's frightened young hero, which means the director must have done something right in back of the camera as well a s in front of the word processor. "Fright Night" is a clammy winner.
Caption: PHOTO

Memo: MOVIE REVIEW FRIGHT NIGHT - Directed and written by Tom Holland.

Starring Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse,

Stephen Geoffreys, Roddy McDowall. At the Cinema 57 and

suburbs, rated R (impalings, dismemberments, simulated sex).
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'FRIGHT' RECALLS HORROR OF THE GOOD OLD NIGHTS
Miami Herald, The (FL) - August 2, 1985

Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic

Fright Night is not what you think. It is not just another wheeze from the slasher cartel, nor does it star Linda Blair. It's not Citizen Kane, either, but what the heck: This is summer.

Fright Night is about the vampire who moves in next door, and according to director Tom Holland, it's an attempt to "update" the whole idea of Dracula. But what it does best is quite the opposite: Fright Night resurrects the blissful naivete and dizzy plot implausibilities of the great wave of horror films of the 1950s and '60s, the Bronze Age of cinema.

It's daffy and sweet and sometimes unintentionally funny. It's even scary in its closing moments, when the genre- sanctified confrontation -- a boy with a wooden stake against the suave undead -- is re-enacted wholly without irony, as if Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Hammer Films, not to mention Bela Lugosi and Abbott and Costello, had never drawn blood.

Holland is a screenwriter (Class of 1984, Psycho II, Cloak and Dagger) making his directing debut, and his idea of something new is to have teen-agers discover odd doings next door, and turn to a washed-up horror -film star (played by Roddy McDowall with epochal fidgetiness) for help. The teens are
sexually repressed, but this is not really new; the vampire legends ooze Freud.

Holland was smart enough to keep the good old stuff in, too, from shape shifting to tricks of the undead trade (a vampire may not enter your house to bite you unless he has been invited in by the "rightful owner"). The cast plays them out with all the corn and plot holes (where is everyone else in the neighborhood, much less the cops, when the screams start in the old manse?) of the vintage Dracula spin-offs.

What's fun about Fright Night is that comforting sense of deja vu, by which one feels oneself stepping back, back, back in time, to an era when horror films were unabashedly dumb.

Fright Night is as silly as a film about hungry ghouls can be, and with the exception of an eccentric-teen turn by Stephen Geoffreys, a spiky-haired supporting player who looks as if he just wandered in from The Breakfast Club, there isn't really a "modern" moment in it. The movie is bloody and gruesome and quite harmless, just the way they made them "in the good old days."

Fright Night (R) ** 1/2

CAST: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amada Bearse, Roddy McDowall, Stephen Geoffreys, Jonathan Stark.

CREDITS: Director: Tom Holland. Producer: Herb Jaffe. Screenwriter: Tom Holland. Cinematographer: Jan Kiesser. Music: Brad Fiedel. A Columbia Pictures release.

Running time: 104 minutes. Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations, violence and gore.

Herald movie reviewers rate movies from zero to four stars.

**** Excellent; *** 1/2 Very Good

*** Good; ** 1/2 Worth Seeing; ** Fair

* Poor; 0 Worthless
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'FRIGHT NIGHT'

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - August 2, 1985

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer

"Fright Night." A thriller starring Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Stephen Geoffreys, Amanda Bearse and Roddy McDowall. Written and directed by Tom Holland. Photographed by Jan Kiesser. Edited by Kent Beyda. Music by Brad Fiedel. Running time: 100 minutes. A Columbia release. In area theaters.

Well, now, it's been a long time between fright flicks.

Time was, many of us were members of the Horror -of-the-Week Club, what with the assorted "Omen," "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th" installments released on cue and ready to sow seductive seeds of corruption in our sleep. Every week, they invaded our mass consciousness, and then, poof! All of a sudden, they were gone.

Fear not, the genre is not dead and certainly not buried; it's back - and it's as vicious and mechanical as ever.

First, we had George Romero's "Day of the Dead," an unsettling tale of flesh-eating zombies, a mad doctor and medical zealotry. And now we have Tom Holland's "Fright Night," which is no less than a youth version of that old horror chestnut, the blood-sucking vampire movie.

This is a first, says Holland, who refuses to acknowledge "Love at First Bite" and "The Hunger," two vampire fables that respectively featured such creaky actors as George Hamilton, Susan Saint James and Richard Benjamin, and David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. Holland means to pump new blood into the genre. (The pun is very much intended.)

The difference between "Fright Night" and other fright flicks is that Holland's film generally is dominated by an innocence. In fact, it is very much an innocent version of "Day of the Dead." Both films feature supernaturals - either vampires or the undead - who feed on the living in order to survive.

"Fright Night" is amiably gross and not one whit sexually retro. What I mean is that, unlike "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th," this film does not resort to using horror as a punishment for sexual curiosity. Random screwing or petting is not followed by a blood ritual here. There is no random screwing or petting here. Sex, in fact, has almost nothing to do with it and, blessedly, "Fright Night" also is free of the usual direct scatological references.

Of course, these omissions do not necessarily make "Fright Night" a good movie. For one thing, it is a structural mess, alternating a campy tone with a tragic one and leaving the viewer (at least, this viewer) feeling discombobulated, instead of with a feeling of dread. The film also has one too many ugly little creatures, covered with saliva, snot and fecal-looking matter. Its scatological references are indirect. As I said earlier, this movie is gross.

Holland's plot is about a nitwit named Charley Brewster (newcomer William Ragsdale), who spends far too much time alone in his room watching old horror movies on creepy Peter Vincent's TV show. Vincent (played by Roddy McDowall) claims to be a real-life vampire killer (actually, he's a ham actor) and specializes in showing vampire movies.

Well, to make a long story short, Charley becomes convinced that the two single gentlemen who have moved in next door are vampires. Nobody believes him, of course, and to add injury to insult, the head vampire (Chris Sarandon) elects to recruit Charley's sexually frightened girlfriend, Amy (Amanda Bearse). Amy is no fool; she knows what happens to girls who sleep with their boyfriends: In horror films, they usually end up hacked up.

Holland, who makes his directorial debut here (he previously scripted ''Psycho II" and "Cloak and Dagger") has consummately crafted his movie and has filled it with more ideas than most big movies you can name. He could be the man to bring the horror movie out of the dark ages. He knows how to create a catharsis.

What he hasn't learned is how to integrate these ideas, which accounts for ''Fright Night's" structural mess.

Parental guide: Rated R for its gory effects.
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STRA-A-ANGE A PAIR OF NEW MOVIES DEMONSTRATES HOW FUNNY THE NIGHTMARISH CAN BE

San Jose Mercury News (CA) - August 2, 1985

Author: GLENN LOVELL, Mercury News Film Writer

THERE'S some seriously weird stuff going on at the movies these days. We're talking cuckoo-crazy, as in stra-a-ange. But don't be alarmed. The odd goings-on in "Fright Night" and "Weird Science" (both opening today) will have you laughing so hard you'll almost forget your fears.

Almost -- but not quite.

As every spooky spoof from "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" to "Ghostbusters" reminds us, the horror genre with its creaky cliches and moldy monsters is perfect for teasing.

And that's exactly what the two young filmmakers behind today's new arrivals have done, in films that flit easily from the stylish to the silly, from the erotic to the eerie.

And with this range working for them, it's a safe bet that both will become required summertime viewing for the out-of- school-and-ready-to- howl set.

The more conventional "Fright Night" is an ingenious reworking of the Dracula legend. Only here the hero is a small-town kid with a vivid imagination, the vampire is a Valentino-suave neighbor played by Chris Sarandon, and the fearless vampire killer is a cowardly horror -movie star who's now hosting a "Creature Feature"-type TV program.

But don't go expecting another zany "Love at First Bite" lark. Though there are laughs aplenty in "Fright Night," written and directed by Tom Holland, there are also wonderfully nauseating makeup and bat effects that will have you hiding under your seat.

Indeed, Holland, who wrote "Psycho II" and last summer's overlooked "Cloak & Dagger," has whipped up the best tongue- in-cheek chiller since Joe Dante's "The Howling." And just as the Dante film revitalized the werewolf yarn, "Fright Night" gives the vampire melodrama a much-needed transfusion of humor and suspense.

And just as you think Holland has played his last devilish prank, he one-ups himself with more gruesome surprises and throwaway comedy touches (like the vampire throwing sparks by dragging his long fingernails along a banister).

Newcomer William Ragsdale plays Charley Brewster, a horror - movie buff who spies new neighbor Jerry Dandrige (Sarandon) with his next luscious victim. Charley spends the rest of the movie trying to convince his mom and friends that the mutilation murders being reported nightly are the work of an honest-to-gosh vampire.

Making matters even more frustrating is the fact that Dandrige is a smug charmer who mocks Charley's every feeble attempt to expose him. Like all the best fiends, Dandrige delights in taunting his adversary.

And when he really gets mad, Dandrige puts the bite on Charley's girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) and his already wacked-out buddy (Stephen Geoffreys of "Fraternity Vacation").

Holland, who doesn't always play fair with vampire lore and logic, has great fun making his hero squirm. At every turn Dandrige outsmarts his young crucifix-wielding opponent (Roddy McDowall as the TV show host). Worse, that blankety-blank bloodsucker mesmerizes Amy at the local disco in what has to be one of the hottest, funniest seduction scenes in recent years.

Sarandon really comes into his own as the supercilious vampire who becomes a howling, red-eyed banshee from hell when miffed. Geoffreys is also a scream as the freaky friend who's basically an insecure loser. This is really the old Renfield/ Igor role given a New Wave slant.

Credit Richard Edlund of "Ghostbusters" fame with the amazing visual effects, which include an appallingly graphic reverse transformation from wolf to boy and a dive-bombing vampire bat that's about the size of B-52 bomber.

What Edlund's makeup people do to Bearse's lovely smile in the final basement crypt scenes will have you tossing in your sleep for weeks to come.

'Weird Science" is something else again -- a deliriously funny mix of "National Lampoon's Animal House," "Risky Business," "The Road Warrior" and such vintage Disney hoots as "The Shaggy Dog" and "The Absent-Minded Professor."

Since we're title-dropping, we should add that it's a color-tinted print of that 1935 classic, "The Bride of Frankenstein," that inspires our two young nerd heroes to show up the preppy bullies at school by creating their very own dream girl.

''Just like Frankenstein -- 'cept cuter," drools Gary (Anthony Michael Hall of "Sixteen Candles" and "Breakfast Club").

''I'm not digging up any dead girls," whines the shyer Wyatt (Ilan Mitchell-Smith), who lives in mortal terror of his older brother, the snarling CroMagnum (sic) with the boot-camp crewcut.

Of course things have been refined a bit since Dr. Frankenstein's days on the moor. Now our heroes blend computer science with voodoo and a bit of old-fashioned studio fog to create a living doll named Lisa (Kelly LeBrock of "The Woman in Red").

Their toughest decision: Whether to favor boobs over brains.

''I want her to live. I want her to breathe. I want her to aerobicize," Gary rants in a hilarious variation on the original Frankenstein's exultant "It lives!"

As it turns out, Lisa is as bright and brassy as she is beautiful. And this works out just fine, because she can protect her horny creators from threatening elders, as well as lecture them on the importance of friends who "like you for what you are, not what you pretend to be."

In other words, the boys have hit the jackpot -- a centerfold nanny who shelters them at night and showers with them in the morning.

''Weird Science" runs out of things to say and do, so eventually it resorts to repetitious sight gags and effects as well as the obligatory car chase. But there's still more to howl over here than in any five other teen comedies.

Once again John Hughes ("Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club"), who also wrote the script, proves himself a master at capturing high-school angst. His young Frankensteins possess all the intensity and nervousness of real misfits, not the cartoonish "Goonies" variety.

And Mitchell-Smith and Hall complement each other beautifully. The former is charming and painfully shy; the latter mouthy and naughty. The mix results in some of the year's funniest moments -- first at a blues bar (where Hall becomes a rappin' "Saaay whaaat?" soul brother), then at a wild and crazy party that's crashed by a Pershing missile and a gang of motorcycle mutants straight out of "Mad Max."

''Weird Science" is a weird concoction all right -- weird, wonderful and unexpected.

Fright Night

(star)(star)(star) 1/2

R (fleeting nudity, nauseating makeup effects)

Cast: Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Roddy McDowall Director-screenwriter: Tom Holland

Studio: Released by Columbia Pictures

Weird Science

(star)(star)(star)

PG-13 (profanity, nudity,

emphasis on sex)

Cast: Anthony Michael Hall, Kelly LeBrock, Ilan Mitchell-Smith

Director-screenwriter: John Hughes

Studio: Released by Universal Pictures
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`FRIGHT TAKES DRACULA'S LEGACY IN VEIN

The Record (New Jersey) - August 2, 1985

Author: By Lou Lumenick, Movie Critic: The Record
MOVIE REVIEWS

FRIGHT NIGHT: Written and directed by Tom Holland. Director of photography, Jan Kiesser. Music by Brad Fiedel. Editor, Kent Beyda. Special effects coordinator, Richard Edlund. With Chris Sarandon (Jerry), William Ragsdale (Charley), Amanda Bearse (Amy), Roddy McDowall (Peter), Stephen Geoffreys (Evil Ed), and others. Produced by Herb Jaffe. A Vistar Films Production released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 106 minutes. Opens locally today. Rated R: gore, violence, strong language.

57th St. Playhouse, Manhattan. Rated G.

Let's face it. Vampire movies have become a pretty toothless genre.

Sure, we all have fond memories of Bela Lugosi as Dracula. But "Psycho" (1960) marked a turning point in the American horror film. And the real-life horrors (assassinations, the Vietnam war) of the 1960's made the notion of stylish, undead villains lusting after the blood of virgins seem fairly ludicrous. The dull-witted, decidedly unromantic zombies of "The Night of the Living Dead" were a more apt Zeitgeist. They were succeeded by a series of ax-wielding maniacs ("Halloween," "Friday the 13th") determined to mete out punishment to heroines foolish enough to indulge in the new sexual permissiveness.

With the exception of Herzog's "Nosferatu, the Vampyre" and the Frank Langella "Dracula," more recent attempts to return to the classical genre have been unsuccessful. Perhaps screen audiences have become so sophisticated that vampire movies are almost automatically greeted with titters. Who could forget the spectacle of Catherine Deneuve hunkering down into Susan Sarandon's jugular in "The Hunger"? It's no accident that "Lifeforce" wherein vampire aliens from Halley's comet turn London's population into zombies inadvertently turned into one of this summer's funniest movies.

State-of-the-art effects

During the last decade, most of the few vampire movies played it for laughs: George Romero's "Martin," "Court Yorga Vampire," and the best of the genre, "Love at First Bite," with George Hamilton. Now we have "Fright Night," which tries to combine spoofery with gory, state-of-the-art special effects by Richard Edlund ("Ghostbusters," "Lifeforce"). It's like mixing oil and water.

Not that debuting director Tom Holland (he wrote "Psycho II" and "Cloak and Dagger") has anything more than mild chuckles up his sleeve. It's a basic variation on the boy-who-cried-wolf story, about a suburban teen-ager (William Ragsdale) who catches a glimpse of his new next-door neighbor (Chris Sarandon) carrying on the rites of the undead. Unable to persuade his mother or the police that property values are in danger, Ragsdale tries to enlist the aid of Roddy McDowall, a broken-down vampi re movie star who's just been sacked from a job hosting his old flicks on television. ("All they want is demented young men in ski masks hacking up young virgins! ")

McDowall understandably takes Ragsdale as a loony, but is enlisted through the efforts of the kid's girlfriend (Amanda Bearse). She doesn't believe him, either, but pays McDowall to reassure Ragsdale that Sarandon really isn't a vampire. Only it turns out Sarandon doesn't cast a shadow, and McDowall winds up fighting a real, as opposed to reel, vampire. You get the general idea. . . .

Playing a part more suited for Vincent Price or Christopher Lee, McDowall is mildly amusing as the cowardly horror -film star, though his characterization lacks bite. Sarandon looks merely embarrassed as the bogeyman, and there's an uncomfortable suggestion of a sexual relationship between his character and the young man who tends to his coffin. The young leads are merely bland.

Holland throws in more plot twists than you can shake a crucifix at, but his chase scenes are so tiring that all that's left to marvel at are Edlund's special effects. Absolutely nobody is better at depicting disintegrating heads, but it's no laughing matter.

IN BRIEF: Made 10 years ago, Jamie Uys's "Animals are Beautiful People" is having a belated New York debut on the heels of his incredibly successful "The Gods Must Be Crazy. " The South African film maker's nascent style is discernible in this earlier work, an almost-documentary about wildlife in the Dark Continent.

I say almost-documentary because of the tongue-in-cheek narration, which stresses anthromorphic humor. (Animals, fish, flowers, and even clouds are compared to human beings at various points.) Several sequences seem to be clearly staged (including, appallingly, a fire in a nesting place) for dramatic effect, and animation is used in several places.

Uys reportedly shot 500,000 feet of film over four years, and he's captured some remarkable sights. Among them are a snake capable of swallowing whole an egg 10 times as big as its head, and a colony of animals becoming intoxicated from fermented fruits. There are no human beings in the film, aside from a brief appearance by several bushmen.

"Animals are Beautiful People" is a good place to take the kids. Adults won't be bored, either. -