Fright Night Retrospective Part Two: How the 80s Damn Near Killed Sequels, Fright Night 2 Underwhelms Everyone and How The Menendez Brothers Destroyed Fright Night 3
Steve Barton
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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.
After some heavyweight movies like Cat’s Eye, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning and A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge unleashed some very dark and straight-laced genre fare on audiences in theaters everywhere that year, Fright Night managed to make a huge impression in the film world: Not only did Holland’s refreshing script reinvigorate the horror world with a classic storytelling approach that hearkened to the Universal Monsters age of cinema, but it also reintroduced the idea of incorporating some heart and respect toward the genre as a whole, making the film an instantaneous classic with horror die-hards everywhere.
Once Fright Night proved to be a fruitful venture for all parties involved in its creation, the wheels were eventually put in motion for a sequel, which would eventually be released on May 19, 1989. With a four-year lapse in release dates, Fright Night 2 was doomed from the start, and the sequel floundered, only to eventually rake in about $2.9 million in box office receipts during its two-week theatrical release.
In Part Two of Dread Central’s exclusive video retrospective series with Tom Holland, we talk with him about the world of horror during the 1980s (something he’d know a thing or two about), the poor treatment of sequels by Hollywood during the 80s, his thoughts on Fright Night 2 and how the infamous serial killer siblings The Menendez Brothers managed to destroy Holland and McDowall’s plans for a Fright Night 3.
Check out Part Two of our four-part series below as well as two more exclusive photos provided to us by Holland, courtesy of make-up guru Steve Johnson. Also, make sure to check back here tomorrow for more with Holland, who talks extensively about the creature work and special make-up effects created for the original Fright Night in the next installment of our retrospective series.
CLICK FOR PART ONE.
CLICK FOR PART THREE.
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