Fright Night

Open up wide and prepare to choke on a great big serving of Dinner for Fiends. The past few weeks haven’t been very kind to the horror releases at the multiplex, and we’re not much kinder to them either. You’d be an idiot to miss out on this smorgasbord of a show.

Here at Dread Central we don't screw around. When word broke of a possible Fright Night Blu-ray coming later this year, we went straight to work and now bring you the exclusive first word!

Since the remake of Fright Night slipped into theatres, the question on every fan's mind has been the same ... "Where the hell is the Blu-ray of the original?" Sit tight, kids! It sounds as if an announcement is on the horizon.

How much did Hurricane Irene whipping up the Northeast affect this weekend’s box office can only be guesstimated. This was a terrible weekend at the box office, especially for genre films, and that probably would have remained the case even if the East Coast hadn’t been bracing for Irenageddon™.

Another week, another episode of SHHH. This week we have everything from insights into Hollywood's latest remakes to not so ghostly recordings to another classic streaming review. The full description follows...

If you've ever seen Tom Holland's original Fright Night, then I probably don't need to tell you just how special the characters are in the film because you're already well aware. But for those of you out there who may not be as familiar with Holland's story, allow this writer to indulge a bit in the world of my favorite horror film of all time and take this opportunity to bring you up-to-speed on just what makes Fright Night so special, even after 26 years.

As a child of the 80s, to me there were two distinctive kinds of horror movies: the kind you watched if you really wanted to scare the crap out of yourself (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Thing) and the kind that you enjoyed because they treaded on the lighter side of genre fare (The Monster Squad, Ghostbusters, Gremlins), and Fright Night definitely fell into the latter category, making it an almost instant classic for myself and worldwide fans alike when it hit VHS shelves everywhere in late spring 1986.

At the time Columbia Pictures was set to release writer/director Tom Holland's Fright Night in theaters on August 2nd, 1985, the horror world was much bleaker than the story created by Holland in the flick, which gave genre fans a change of pace from the endless cavalcade of slasher flicks that preceded its release in the late summer of 1985.

Welcome to Fright Night! Before making his directorial debut in 1985 with the original Fright Night, Tom Holland was just getting started establishing himself as one of the Masters of Horror. Prior to creating his modern twist on Rear Window with vampires, Holland was a genre writer coming off of a hot streak of well-performing scripts including The Beast Within, Class of 1984, Psycho II and Cloak & Dagger.

This weekend’s ultra violent reboot of Conan the Barbarian and remake of Fright Night have been met with widely differing critical reactions. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Judging by their respective box office takes, it's more like, “Who cares?”

By now you’ve probably seen the Kid Cudi music video for the Fright Night 3D remake - a future B-Sides in the making, no doubt. But how does it compare to the J. Geils Band’s theme song from the original Fright Night?

This writer's love for horror-themed t-shirts is second only to my addiction to classic genre posters. That being said, this morning I was extremely pleased to find one of the coolest emails ever waiting for me in my email inbox from the good people at Fright Rags.

After 26 years, the people are talking about Fright Night again ... and in a surprisingly good way, too. So we thought that in addition to our dueling reviews, you might like to check out what some other critics are saying about the movie.

Now that Fright Night is finally out in theaters 26 years after the original, we thought it might be helpful to package some of our past coverage to help you dear readers make your decision on this weekend's movie selections. We even have two reviews to give you different perspectives!

Have our dueling reviews of Fright Night made you even more curious about the flick? So curious you can't wait until this weekend to check it out? Well, thanks to AMC Theatres you can see it early - beginning this Thursday, August 18th, at 9:00 PM!