September is done. October is beating down the door, and when it gets inside, it's gonna be a bloodbath. What did I do this September? Not too much, thank you for asking. I spent most of my time sitting in my brand-new hot tub, watching birds with my handy binoculars. Yes, I am something of a birder. Not a birdwatcher. Don't insult me with such a childish term. Birdwatchers are nothing more than weekend warrior-type amatuer bird enthusiasts. Birders take this shit seriously.
Can your average birdwatcher tell the difference between the alluring call of the Brown-headed Cowbird and the more haunting warble of its cousin, the red-eyed Giant Cowbird? I think not.
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| It's like this, only bigger. With red eyes. |
But the Welcome Swallow is a truly delightful sight, with its beautiful metallic blue plumage brilliantly contrasting the bright yellow feathers around its face, you can't help but sit up and notice when one of these gorgeous little critters takes wing. But what's most unusual about my sighting is that the Welcome Swallow is an Australian bird that has never been spotted in the continental United States outside of captivity.
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| What a fucking rock star. |
I've been attempting to contact my colleagues at the National Ornithological Society to share the news of my find, but they refuse to return my calls. They consider me a "crackpot" and "untrustworthy" and "a danger to himself and others" ever since my disastrous attempt to introduce the Yellow-tipped Pardalote into the Great Plains back in 1997.
I am unable to discuss the specifics of that particular case, because the court records have been sealed, but I still firmly believe that if I had been allowed to carry out my plan, then the state of Kansas would have been better off. A new ecosystem for the Yellow-tipped Pardalote, and the annihilation of a cesspool like Arkansas City? It's a win-win.
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| Would you rather look at this or a meth den? |
I always have my fingers in many pies. Mostly because I just love pie. I can't get enough of it. If you've ever seen me at a family reunion, you would understand. You might be disgusted, but at least you'd undersatand.
I've even cut out utensils altogether when it comes to pie eating. They just get in the way, and nothing gets in the way when I'm eating pie. Not utensils, not dignity, and not the chubby fingers of one unfortunate great uncle who refused to let me "defile" his precious key lime confection. Now he knows better than to come between me and a delicious pie.
Sure, he had to re-learn how to write with his left hand, but that's what he gets for meddling in affairs that do not concern him. What was I talking about? Why did I even start typing? I think I was talking about Autumn.
If you've ever read my blog, then you're likely familiar with my affection for the season where things begin to die. I am, at heart, a miserable and pessimistic soul, and therefore have no great love for flowery things like hope and... well, flowers. Every year when the world thaws and life returns to the wind-swept plains, I grow weary. The callous sun beats down on the flat land, and the smell of a new beginning assaults my nostrils. I quickly grow nauseous and sequester myself in my fallout shelter, certain that the world is going to end.
I don't grow comfortable with myself or the outdoors until the telltale chill of Autumn caresses my fat face in the dark, enveloping night. I always felt like George R. R. Martin stole the Stark family motto, "Winter is coming", right from my diseased brain.
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| Words to live by. |
The point is, Dear Imaginary Reader, now that Autumn is finally here, I feel like I can relax. Things are looking up for me. The green grass is slowly wilting. The leaves are falling from the trees. The flowers are dying. And somewhere in the depths of Middle America, one misanthropic shut-in is feeling fine.
Also, I saw a few movies. That's pretty much all I do, aside from hate things, eat pie and glare at birds.
One of the films I have recently seen is called Fright Night, and it is fucking terrible. It's a remake of a 1985 film directed by Tom Holland that I love with all my heart. In a post last March, I briefly touched upon my adoration for the original Fright Night during a rant concerning the current state of the horror genre.
Tom Holland's Fright Night was the first horror film I can remember seeing, and it became an intrinsic part of my youth. Being an impressionable young lad, the plot of the film made perfect sense to me. A vampire living next door? Hey, it could happen. And who would you go to for help if a vampire lived next door? The cops? You know they won't believe you. Of course you'd approach a man like Peter Vincent. Watching his filmography, you might assume he has his shit together and would be prepared for any vampire-related situation.
I've said it before, but it felt like this film was made for me. Like Tom Holland directed a motion picture specifically for one lonely little boy in Kansas. I'm not much for nostalgia when it concerns pop culture. I know that the cartoons I watched growing up are garbage. He-Man & The Masters Of The Universe, Thundercats, Transformers, etc. I hold no love for these things as an adult. I don't hate Michael Bay's Transformers movies because they weren't like the cartoons. I hate them because they're terrible movies in their own right.
My love for Fright Night isn't just nostalgia. I don't think it's perfect, but I do think it's a genuinely good movie, clever, funny & scary, with something on its mind. I will always hold it in high regard. Roddy McDowall, a man with a long and varied career, will always be Peter Vincent in my mind.
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| Nobody does it better. |
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| Nobody rocks a scarf like you! |
These actors created two entertaining, memorable characters that could never be usurped by any remake. Sarandon's master vampire was a suave, arrogant and charming villain who never believed that some pathetic teenager and his washed-up movie star pal could pose a credible threat to his power. And McDowall's late-night television host was a timid, faithless has-been who never thought he could find the will to be a true hero until he was backed into a corner and discovered what he was really made of.
I was hoping that instead of the remake simply attempting to copy the original film's brilliant characters and failing miserably, that it would take the familiar story and reinvent it for a new audience, taking the same story in a different direction. And despite the remake doing just this (to a point), it still failed miserably.
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| Even the poster sucks. |
Anton Yelchin plays Charley Brewster 2.0, a teenager who has attempted to reinvent himself in his Senior year of high school, distancing himself from his nerdy past in an attempt to get laid, which is admirable. Although I'm sure there are plenty of LARPers who actually have active sex lives, those sex lives tend to involve other LARPers, and I don't think Charley was terribly impressed with those options. So Charley transformed into a dirt bike-riding douchebag to find a girlfriend, and it worked! And she doesn't look like an orc!
Unfortunately for his old pal Ed (McLovin), this new development in Charley's life means he has to be a raging dick to his once-BFF in all social situations. Because you can't have your cake and eat it too. But you can always have pie.
Charley's new next-door neighbor is a mystery man who keeps odd hours and is doing a fair bit of late-night renovation at his new property. This sets the neighbors to gossiping. Well... maybe it does, but we never see any of that. We just see Charley's mother (Toni Collette) complaining about the dumpster parked in front of the neighbor's lawn in one brief scene. Ed tells Charley that a lot of their classmates have been turning up missing as of late, and threatens to unearth Charley's nerdy past to all of his hip, new friends if he doesn't come along after school for a little extracurricular investigation work.
Before meeting his jilted pal, he is introduced to his pale, mysterious neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrell) by his mother. While searching the home of one of their missing school chums, Ed drops the bomb on Charley, telling him that their new neighbor is a bloodsucking monster. Charley, being a rational human being, thinks Ed is off his meds, and Ed does little to help his case what with his erratic behavior and nervous demeanor. Charley abandons Ed to his rambling to hang out with his girlfriend, and Ed gets immediately atacked by Jerry in a swimming pool, succumbing to the vampire's sweaty charms.
This is a major departure from the treatment of Ed in the original film, and it doesn't really work. In the 1985 film, Ed's seduction and transformation is played with much more weight, and when Ed surrenders to Jerry it feels like a natural choice for the character. He's a miserable person who doesn't fit in anywhere, and with Jerry he finds someone who will finally accept him for who he is.
In the remake, Ed becomes a vampire because it happened in the original. It's as simple as that. One moment, he's loaded down with crosses, wooden stakes and holy water, ready to go all Van Helsing on some vampire ass, and the next moment, he's trembling in a swimming pool, baring his neck to his supposed nemesis. It doesn't feel natural; it feels perfunctory.
After Ed goes missing, Charley starts to finally get suspicious and breaks into Jerry's house. Inside, he discovers a secret corridor lined with doors. Behind one of these doors is another of Charley's neighbors, being kept as a midnight snack for the man of the house. Jerry quickly comes home, leaving Charley trapped in the house until sunrise. Come daylight, Charley manages to free the frightened hostage and attempts to escape from the house alive, trying to sneak out without attracting the attention of Jerry, who is watching television.
As the pair reaches the front door, we see a sly smile cross Jerry's face. And as soon as the duo steps out in the sunlight, the poor woman erupts in a burst of sparks, leaving Charley to look on in confusion and fear. This entire sequence is surprisingly effective and suspenseful, which is a shame because nothing else in the film can live up to it, although there is a moment that comes very close, and echoes a similar scene in the original film.
In this scene, Jerry stops by Charley's house, asking if there's any beer in the place that he can borrow. At this point in the film, Charley knows Jerry's a vampire, and Jerry knows that Charley knows, but they never directly address it. Charley never invites Jerry in, so he hovers right at the threshold. Jerry starts talking about Charley's mother and his girlfriend in a surreptitiously threatening manner, telling Charley that without a father around, he has to be the man of the house. He has to stand up and protect the people he cares about. He wonders if Charley's up to the challenge.
These two scenes are really, really good, and I just wish that the rest of the movie could have lived up to this. Unfortunately, it just doesn't. Desperate for help, Charley tries to gain an audience with Peter Vincent (Doctor Who), a flashy Vegas magician in the Criss Angel vein who also claims to be a world-renowned expert on the occult. Peter acts like an English asshole and tells Charley to fuck off.
Later that evening, Jerry stops by to "hang out" with Charley's mom, but after her son freaks out, she decides not to invite the dude in. In a clever twist, Jerry decides to rupture the gas line and blow up the damned house, bringing his prey out for the taking. I always wondered why more vampires didn't just set the houses of their intended victims on fire in order to draw them out. It's a good solution to that whole "the vampire can't come in unless he's invited" rule.
A supposedly tense action sequence follows involving Charley, his girlfriend and his mother in a minivan pursued by Jerry in his pick-up truck. The "clever" cinematography is blatantly ripping off the very suspenseful sequence from Stephen Spielberg's War Of The Worlds where Tom Cruise and his family flee their hometown during the initial extraterrestrial attack. Rip-off or homage, the sequence sucks either way.
After a crash with another motorist played by Chris Sarandon, Jerry quickly dispatches the hapless actor in what I assume is supposed to be a humorous moment for fans of the original film. All it did was remind me that Chris Sarandon played a better villain in a better movie called Fright Night back in 1985.
Jerry turns into a screeching, digitally-enhanced tooth monster and tries to kill Charley, but is staked by the teen's mother with a real estate sign, leaving the bloodsucker thrashing comically on the ground, squealing like a stuck pig as our heroes take off in Chris Sarandon's damaged car. It's not like he was going to need it anymore.
Sidelined by a convenient head injury, Charley's mom spends the rest of the film in the hospital, and... Sorry, I was just bored. I'm sick of talking about this. I still have the third act to cover, too.
Let me try to speed this up a bit. Peter calls Charley and asks to meet back at his posh loft. He reveals that his family was killed by a vampire when he was just a child, and I was flabbergasted. What the fuck was this?! Peter Vincent informs Charley that the vampire he's facing is most likely from a Mediterranean breed (what?!) that enjoys changing lots of people at a time, because like most Mediterraneans, these vampires like big families.
Ed shows up to crash the party, which surprised me because I forgot the character even existed at that point. Jerry, having gotten over his blood-spewing temper tantrum on the side of the road, pops up as well. Charley kills Ed and the world shrugs, Charley and Amy duck into a night club (like in the original film), and Jerry shows up to steal his woman away (like in the original film), leaving Charley alone to take down the unholy bastard once and for all.
Not to worry, because Peter Vincent, having arbitrarily grown a pair, stops by to aid his comrade in his time of need, not wanting young Charley to have to suffer the way he suffered, I guess. Peter presents Charley with a special stake that will kill Jerry and transform his surviving victims back into human beings... somehow. Perhaps he could have shared this deus ex machina with Charley before he had to kill his best friend, but I digress.
In Jerry's basement, Charley and Peter are ambushed by Jerry's new vampire family, Peter gets bitten a lot, and immediately begins to transform into a vampire, which seems a little fast. Charley decides that enough is enough and sets himself on fire (!), leaping on Jerry like a madman, disorienting him with the flames before stabbing him in the heart with the very special wooden stake. Jerry explodes into a digital cloud of evil (seriously, what is with this effect?), before dissolving into a blur of pixellated sparks. With the day saved, the movie ends, and we are treated to a rather amusing end credits sequence set to the tune of Hugo's delightful bluegrass cover of "99 Problems".
This film had very little going for it. The performances were fine, but the story was incredibly flat. Not just in a metaphorical sense, either. This is another film I was forced to see in 3D due to a lack of 2D screenings, and like Conan The Barbarian before it, Fright Night featured very few 3D effects. And considering most of this film takes place after dark, the 3D glasses just made the movie too damned dark to actually see anything on several occasions.
There's very little time spent on building any of the characters aside from Charley and Peter Vincent, with the girlfriend (played by an actress whose name I refuse to type) given essentially nothing to work with. Peter Vincent himself is just saddled with a ridiculous backstory, being a victim of a prior vampiric attack that killed his parents. Then the film throws another bag of stupid into the mix when it's revealed that Jerry Dandridge is in fact the vampire responsible for Peter's tragic past. Give me a fucking break.
David Tennant is decent in his portrayal of the not-so-fearless vampire killer, but the character is terrible, with the script never bothering to give him more than one dimension. I was hoping for so much more, with all of the possibilities inherent in a vampire vs. magician battle, but we get nothing on that front. Seriously?
How cool and clever would it have been to set the final confrontation in Peter Vincent's workshop, allowing Peter to use his abilities as a master illusionist to fight Jerry Dandridge? At least in that case Peter Vincent would have brought something to the table in the final battle, aside from his magic stick. It's another case of this film just dropping the ball.
In the original film, Peter Vincent put his old motion picture vampire-slaying kit to good use, but the remake presented the opportunity for this new master of illusion to put his skills to the test in a fight against ultimate evil and completely missed that opportunity. It was so disappointing to see David Tennant pop up during the film's climax loaded down with wooden stakes and ammunition, knowing that the story made him a magician for no other reason than the old-fashioned horror TV host doesn't really exist, anymore.
Toni Collette is wasted. I thought the film might do something interesting in the third act by involving her character in the vampire slaying antics, but she spends the last twenty minutes in a fucking coma. Why hire an actress like Toni Collette if you're not going to do anything with her? Anton Yelchin is a good actor. I've loved him since I saw him in Hearts In Atlantis (which really should have been called Low Men In Yellow Coats, but that's beside the point) back in 2001. He's very good here, but not good enough to save the film.
Christopher Mintz-Plasse doesn't really bring anything new or interesting to his portrayal of "Evil" Ed, never earning that specific nickname. In the original film, Charley consults the skeptical Ed because of his more extensive knowledge of the horror genre, something he thinks might come in handy. Here, he's just a nerd who already believes that Jerry Dandridge is a vampire, which removes one of the key elements from the 1985 film's plot, where Charley was the one who pegged Jerry for a vampire.
This would be fine, I suppose, if the film bothered to go anywhere with it, but it doesn't. Kind of a running theme. Ed just tells Charley that his neighbor is a vampire, then disappears for an hour, when the plot suddenly remembers that Ed needs to show up again.
As for Colin Farrell... there are only a few moments in the film where he brings anything resembling "characterization" to his performance, disappointingly becoming a personality-free killing machine after the scene where he blows up Charley's house. I wasn't looking for a rehash of Chris Sarandon's performance here; that would have been boring. But Colin Farrell is a damned good actor when he wants to be, with charisma to spare.
Once again, the screenplay gives him nowhere to go, leaving him stranded as a stock movie villain in a film that needed something bigger, something more memorable.
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| Something like this. |
I remember several years ago when this project was announced, the original story pitch took the Fright Night idea in a direction I certainly didn't expect. Taking place in the "real world" where the original film was actually made, a teenager who believes his next-door neighbor is a vampire attempts to enlist the once and future Jerry Dandridge, Chris Sarandon himself in his quest to kill this real-life vampire.
That's an interesting and original twist, right there. Of course it was abandoned for something more conventional and ultimately disappointing. What a missed opportunity.
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| I just wanted an excuse to throw this poster in. |
It's going to be exciting, kiddies!
I don't understand this. At first you're raving like a crazy person about birds and pie, then you throw yourself into a coherent movie review. Weird stuff. I totally agree about the missed opportunity with the 'magician v. vampire' stuff, by the way.
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