Fright Night Part 2 (1988, Tommy Lee Wallace)

At first glance, it appears Fright Night Part 2 is the rare example of a film saved by a mullet. Lead William Ragsdale doesn’t have much more onscreen charisma than last time, but with his gloriously juvenile late eighties wavy mullet, his lack of appeal becomes charming. Or it may be another thing director Wallace fixed this time around; the horrific mullet, which would distract entirely in a lesser film, would still help a lot in that case.

The sequel picks up approximately three years after the first film; now twenty-seven-year-old Ragsdale (the mullet makes him look younger than in the first movie) is a nineteen-year-old college student. He’s been in therapy at the school, which appears to be provided. The film establishes, later on, they’re at a community college; Ragsdale’s got a single and a private bath, the student union has a bowling alley; it’s a very well-funded community college.

Ernie Sabella plays the psychiatrist, who convinces Ragsdale vampires aren’t real. The first movie was his brain protecting him from discovering a serial killer next door who kidnapped his girlfriend and apparently brainwashed his best friend into serial killing too. The sequel will end up being all about the first film in one way, but the continuity’s loose.

Sabella’s the only disappointing performance. It’s like they wanted Danny DeVito and got this guy instead but left the script for the disinterested DeVito. Sabella tries, and his scenes are sometimes really effective thanks to the other actors and Wallace’s direction… he’s just not very good.

Almost the entire rest of the cast is good. Leaving aside Ragsdale, Roddy McDowall’s good (he gets a full arc this time), and Traci Lind’s good (as Ragsdale’s new girlfriend but not the damsel in distress); the villains are all good, with one asterisk. But Jon Gries, Brian Thompson, and Russell Clark, all unqualified good turns as the new gang of creatures come to terrorize Ragsdale and McDowall. The asterisk is main villain Julie Carmen, who doesn’t just try to seduce Ragsdale away from Lind but also has her sights set on taking over McDowall’s horror movie hosting gig.

Since the fallout from the first movie (apparently, the film’s epilogue was a bad dream), Ragsdale has been avoiding McDowall. Sabella encouraging Ragsdale to get back in touch with McDowall is where the film’s main plot seems to start, except unrelatedly to Ragsdale’s therapy breakthrough, vampires are moving into the same building where McDowall lives. It’s a giant, gothic apartment building in L.A., even though the movie’s not set in L.A. (the street opposite the building, which is primarily a composite effects shot, is so L.A.). For a while, it seems like Part 2 is going to be a paint-by-the-numbers retread of the original, sticking to the home locations, but then Part 2 opens up, and then again, and then again. And it keeps opening up, only returning to the building for the excellent finale.

Wallace does a great job directing. His cinematographer, Mark Irwin, isn’t up to many of the shots, unfortunately, but there are still some great sequences in the film.

Now back to Carmen. When she’s a seductive vampire, she’s fantastic. With Brad Fiedel’s “wish I was Tangerine Dream” score and Ragsdale having to wear dark sunglasses for a long stretch of the film, Fright Night Part 2 feels like Risky Business with vampires, especially as it becomes a mystery for a while. Ragsdale and McDowall both investigate the vampires, sometimes to comedic results, usually to bloody.

Of course, Wallace is happy to use dream sequences—and it’s a vampire movie, so why not—which lets them get away with a bunch.

But when Carmen’s just got to drop exposition like a fanged Bond villain, she’s lacking. The first half of the movie, I wondered why she didn’t have a more successful career, then she started talking about something besides Ragsdale being yummy (if only she’d commented on the mullet), and her line reading’s so, so bad. She improves a little afterward, thanks to more seductive vamping, but it’s too bad she’s not better.

The script’s well-paced, the gore’s excellent (though it sometimes goes on just a little long), and Fiedel’s score’s… not without its own charms. The film definitely needs better cinematography, but even though the music’s too much, it might be just right.

Fright Night Part 2’s a surprising success; big kudos to Wallace, McDowall, Lind (who gets to play the real hero, without a jealousy subplot either), the effects people, and Ragsdale’s mullet.

Fright Night (1985, Tom Holland)

So much of Fright Night is humdrum, with the occasional energy pulses whenever Chris Sarandon gets to be vampirish, I didn’t really expect it to get any better. I certainly didn’t expect director Holland to go all out on the special effects or even Roddy McDowall to get such good material. I also didn’t expect Stephen Geoffreys to go from pointless background to constant annoyance; Geoffreys isn’t any good to begin with, so when he gets even worse, it claws. Especially as he gets one of the great effects sequences.

Unfortunately, Holland hasn’t set Fright Night up to be easily saved, not even by effects sequences. Especially not as the technically superior finale lacks much dramatic oomph. Fright Night starts being about William Ragsdale’s curious, then terrified teenager. The part requires someone who can get away not just with being nosy, but a jerk to girlfriend Amanda Bearse. Ragsdale’s got absolutely no charisma. Five minutes in the first act feels like a half hour, as Ragsdale starts to investigate new next door neighbor Sarandon while ignoring Bearse and palling around with Geoffreys. Only it turns out the palling makes Geoffreys miserable and he feels picked on; it can’t be any other characters who pick on him, because there’s no one else in the movie. Holland isn’t interested in directing a high school movie.

There’s the requisite eighties club scene, however. Fright Night does have a club scene. It’s even a good club scene–Sarandon seduces Bearse, while Ragsdale goofs off trying to figure out a payphone. Better photography would’ve helped; Jan Kiesser’s photography is always competent, but never excellent. Still Sarandon and Bearse are good in the scene. Sarandon plays the part of bloodsucker as eighties thoughtful stud well. So well his relationship with his charmless doofus sidekick Jonathan Stark never works. Seeing him have a subplot with Bearse, some character development, it’s nice.

Bearse has a terrible part. She’s got no chemistry with Ragsdale, which would be hard because Ragsdale’s actively unappealing. But she does all right as a reincarnated lady love of a vampire. Of course, it’s kind of creepy since she’s seventeen and Sarandon is forty-three and Holland does nothing to establish Bearse’s character other than her being a prude who’s better that trig than mathematic dummy Ragsdale.

So the two vampire seduction scenes are good. Just a tad too exploitative. Even if you remove the female actor being underage, Holland really doesn’t want to deal with any of the repercussions of the film’s events. Fright Night is a spoofy comedy. It’s also a terrible scary movie. And it’s a special effects spectacular. It’s sometimes exquisite–though in McDowall and Sarandon’s performances. None of the other actors give unqualified good performances; they need stronger direction and Holland apparently doesn’t give it to them. Maybe he’s just in a hurry to the never hinted at special effects finale but even it lacks personality.

The score is another big disconnect. For example, when Ragsdale is suspiciously peeping on Sarandon, Brad Fiedel’s score goes to its synthpop vampire seduction thing. And Holland doesn’t seem to notice it doing nothing for the film or Ragdale’s performance. Ragsdale’s what happens if Billy Peltzer is unlikable.

Oddly enough, the seduction part of the score ends up being the most effective, if only because editor Kent Beyda screws up the rest of Fiedel’s work. Fright Night is not well-edited. Almost never. And, along with the frequent, unchecked bombastic music and Kiesser’s flat photography, the filmmaking itself acts as a barrier. Nowhere near as much as Ragsdale being an unlikable shit (maybe because he’s at least seven years too old for the part), but it does act as a barrier. Fright Night lacks mood. Holland’s all over the place, often competently or better, but his direction is moodless and needs to be quite the opposite.

Also Ragsdale is really, really, really, really bland until Bearse, Geoffreys, and McDowall take over. And Geoffreys is really bland too, but he’s not as damaging the overall experience.

So once McDowall’s part is bigger, Fright Night starts to get better, then it gets good, then it chokes on an epilogue. So after opening too flat to make an impression, Fright Night still ends up being a disappointment.

Mannequin: On the Move (1991, Stewart Raffill)

If the best part of your movie is a Starship song recycled from the nearly unrelated previous entry in the franchise… you’re in trouble.

It’s not hard to identify the biggest problem with Mannequin: On the Move, but it feels somewhat bad to single out Kristy Swanson when there’s so much other terrible stuff going on in the picture.

And it’s not even entirely Swanson’s fault. Towards the end of the movie, she’s actually quite appealing. But for the first two-thirds, as a tenth century girl awakened in the twentieth century, she’s an unappealing moron. Every scene bombs.

Once she’s acclimated, however, Swanson’s not bad at all.

Unfortunately, the terrible plotting also affects leading man William Ragsdale. Ragsdale has no time to make an impression before he’s acting like a doofus around a mannequin. The screenwriters don’t even bother making him sympathetic, only later giving him a tragic backstory.

On to the other big problem (besides the writing in general)–Terry Kiser is atrocious. Playing a Bavarian royal, Kiser does a combination of a Mae West impression and evil forties Japanese villain.

As for the supporting cast, Meshach Taylor is okay (the script fails him often) and Stuart Pankin is mostly bad (though sometimes good). In tiny roles, both Andrew Hill Newman and Julie Foreman are great.

Raffill’s not a good director, but Larry Pizer’s photography is excellent, as is most of William J. Creber’s production design.

On the Move‘s a stinker and, oddly, shouldn’t have been one.