Shot-For-Shot: Fright Night

It’s funny how things in life tend to cycle. About a year after my first regular post on this blog, where I wrote about a remake of a vampire movie (“Let Me In”), we’re back with…another remake of a vampire movie. This time it’s “Fright Night,” a remake of the 1985 movie of the same name. In my post on “Let Me In,” I wrote that the best remakes work in one of two ways: giving new life and bringing a new audience to a good but obscure movie, or taking a second crack and bringing a movie to the audience it was always intended for, but missed out on the first time. “Fright Night” mostly fits this pattern, in the first sense. The difference being that the original is obscure, but not necessarily good.

Unless you came of age in the 80s, or spend lots of time watching late-night horror movies on cable, you might not be familiar with the original “Fright Night.” It’s known, and has its fair share of cult followers, but it doesn’t occupy a place in the 80s horror pantheon in the way “A Nightmare on Elm Street” or “Poltergeist” does. It’s often overlooked. In terms of mining material, the studios were more or less scraping the bottom of the barrel here. But in this case, it’s a good thing they did—they picked a movie that not only could be remade, but easily improved on; and put together a movie that does more or less everything it should, and does it pretty well.

The story is fairly simple. Charlie, a kid living in the suburbs gets a new neighbor, whose nocturnal habits are suspicious to say the least. Charlie, a horror fan with an active imagination, realizes the guy is a vampire. He takes it upon himself to do away with him, and seeks out help from the host of a local “Tales from the Crypt”-type show, a self-proclaimed vampire hunter who turns out (no surprise) to be a phony. Along the way, Charlie’s skeptical friend and girlfriend are captured, and he has to rescue them both. Both films follow the same plot. The difference is that while the original doesn’t try to develop anything beyond that simple premise, the remake puts in some nice details that make the material live up to its potential.

Tom Holland’s original 1985 “Fright Night” is funny, well-intentioned and has some impressive special effects sequences, as well as entertaining performances from Chris Sarandon and Roddy McDowall. But it’s also pretty rickety. The characters and setting are poorly developed. Characters who are supposed to serve as comic relief are just plain annoying. The lack of development early on makes the film’s climactic last half sloppy and hard to understand as unexplained background details suddenly get piled on at the last minute. Not to mention, Sarandon’s vampire is surprisingly easy to kill. Considering he’s supposed to have been around for about 400 years, you’d think he’d have developed better survival skills. The movie is a little over 100 minutes, but everything happens so fast that it feels more like half an hour. Given that there were plenty of horror movies at the time that did scares and humor well (“An American Werewolf in London” and “Evil Dead,” just to name a couple), it’s disappointing that “Fright Night” doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. It’s a movie that deserves to be a lot better than it is.

This is the main reason the remake is so satisfying. While the original movie barely waits five minutes to start on the bloodsucking action, 2011’s “Fright Night” takes its time introducing characters and establishing at least the basics of each relationship before moving on to the stuff we’ve all come to see. In the original, the audience knows very little about Charlie Brewster, the main character, other than his enjoyment of hokey horror movies, and the fact that he had a single mom, a girlfriend, Amy, and a whiny-voiced frienemy, Ed. In the remake, Charlie’s a former nerd and high school social climber. Amy is his ticket out of Dungeons and Dragons territory. Ed, Charlie’s spurned best friend, now has a reason to act towards Charlie the way he does. Charlie’s mom, who, in the original, was little more than a cardboard cutout, now has a little depth—just enough to make her a believable suburban single parent. It’s not Chekov, but it works for what the movie’s trying to accomplish.

We’re given a location, too, which is more than we get in Holland’s film. The remake is set in the suburbs of Las Vegas, in a weird little island of streamlined civilization just outside of the city, surrounded by desert on almost every side.  Screenwriter Marti Noxon, best known for working on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” does a good job of combining two common concepts in horror movies: the idea of peaceful neighborhoods masking ultimate evil, and that “nobody can hear you scream” sense that comes from isolated locations. There are plenty of peaceful neighborhoods in “Fright Night,” but they’re peaceful because many of the houses are abandoned. It makes for some effective imagery—the idea that really nasty things could happen in those houses, and nobody would know.

However, the 2011 version disappoints in that it doesn’t pick up on what strengths there were in its source. In the ‘85 film, Chris Sarandon’s Jerry was an old school, seductive, flamboyant bloodsucker. He was interesting to watch. Colin Farrell’s version is a working-class bachelor tool, which I suppose works for his cover (nighttime construction worker), but just doesn’t give the audience much to look at. The regenerative creature effects, so neat-looking in the original, show up in the new version, but aren’t used to their fullest extents. In fact, the violence of the 2011 “Fright Night” on the whole is pretty slick-looking, which was a letdown. The best parts of 80s horror movies are their low-budget, DIY quality, which this new generation of remakes have none of.

In either form, “Fright Night” isn’t the best of movies—neither the ’85 or ‘11 versions are standouts, but that was never really the point. “Fright Night” is meant to be straight entertainment: a good story with some thrills, spills and chills. The original film has the better look, but the remake is better where it really counts: story and characters. It’s a solid (if disposable) movie that takes some interesting steps to improve its source.

Random observations:

-I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the remake’s interesting filmmaking pedigree: In addition to Noxon’s script, the film is directed by Craig Gillespie (of “Lars and the Real Girl”). In Noxon’s case at least,  I can’t think of a person better suited to write this script—it carries a lot of “Buffy’s” pop culture references and believable wit.

-For those of you who have seen the original “Fright Night”: Chris Sarandon has a good cameo in the remake. See if you can find him.

That Guy File #9: Peter Mullan

Where you’ve seen him: Session 9, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part 1), Children of Men, the Red Riding Trilogy, On a Clear Day, The Magdalene Sisters, NEDs, Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, Braveheart, Riff-Raff

Peter Mullan is a seriously cool guy. You know it the moment you see him in anything. He’s a tough-looking character actor with a thick Glaswegian Scot accent who often plays hard living working-class guys, criminals and drug addicts, characters whose stories he knows from experience. Before Mullan broke into acting around age 30, he was a gang member, a bouncer, and, after college, taught theater in prisons and community centers. Rough-around-the-edges characters are ones he knows well. He’s like the Scottish Danny Trejo, but with less tattoos and a Marxist activist core.

Chances are good you’ve seen Mullan as a supporting player in something like “Shallow Grave,” “Braveheart” or “Children of Men.” But his most recognizable performance, for those of my generation, anyway, is as troubled contractor Gordon Fleming in “Session 9,” the low-budget horror film that scared the pants off countless high school kids in 2001 (I have strong memories of seeing the film at a sleepover in 9^th grade).

Mullan’s acting is probably best defined from his memorable performance as Syd, the corrupt refugee camp officer from “Children of Men.” Here’s a scene:

Syd’s tough, complex, and kind of slimy, an entertaining but more or less wholly nasty character. He’s an example of the kind of acting Mullan is best at: threatening, untrustworthy guys who are still totally interesting to watch. He looks like the kind of person who wouldn’t think twice about giving you a sharp smack if he thought you needed it.

But Mullan’s acting is only the beginning of what makes him so interesting. As I mentioned before, he’s a Marxist and activist, who took a leadership role in left-wing theater companies during the Thatcher years and was a vocal critic of Tony Blair and Britain’s labour party. He’s also an accomplished director whose films reflect his background and politics. He picked up awards at the Venice, Paris, and British Independent Film Festivals for his feature-length directorial debut, 1998’s “Orphans,” and got the Golden Lion award for 2002’s “The Magdalene Sisters.” His latest, last year’s “NEDs” is a film about the 1970s Glasgow where Mullan grew up, comprised both of his memories and his observations from teaching theater.

Mullan will next show up as the protagonist of Paddy Considine’s dictorial debut, “Tyrannosaur,” a character with a checkered past and a shot at redemption. It looks like it’s going to be a great but tough film, from what I’ve seen and heard, and given Considine’s previous collaborations with Shane Meadows, a director known for personal, gritty features. If Mullan’s back catalog is anything to go by, it should be another in a long line of powerful, hardcore performances.

Plan 9 Cinema: The Expendables

“The Expendables” is an anomaly in the area of bad action movies. It contains every element that we love about movies that fail spectacularly. It even has the perfect cast: Stallone, Lundgren, Rourke, Eric Roberts, even Jason Statham. But it just doesn’t satisfy the way a movie like, say, “Double Team” or “The Transporter” movies do. It’s basically Sylvester Stallone’s big, testosterone fueled love-letter to manly men and the manly lives they lead, without an ounce of self-aware irony of believable dialogue to be seen. I’d try to add something like “no homo” here, but I don’t think it actually applies. Stallone does appear to be sort of besotted with the characters onscreen, and it’s a little weird.

Stallone and his company (which also includes Terry Crews, Jet Li and Randy Couture) play mercenaries. But not just any mercenaries. These guys have a code of honor. So, they’re morally corrupt soldiers of fortune, but morally corrupt soldiers of fortune with hearts of gold, as evidenced by Jason Statham’s attempt to propose to his girlfriend (Charisma Carpenter) and subsequent rejection/heartbreak. They may be manly men, but they, too, are vulnerable to soft and squishy feelings. Anyway, the gang is hired by a mysterious man named Mr. Church (Bruce Willis in a cameo!) to check out a South American country led by a dictator who’s actually being controlled by ex-CIA agent Eric Roberts. Their contact there is the dictator’s revolutionary daughter, who is, of course, hot. Kidnappings, gunfights, explosions, etc., follow.

Stallone’s fetishizing of these men and their lifestyle comes through in the production design and set decoration. These guys ride shiny, noisy motorcycles and drive custom cars that they aren’t afraid to destroy in high-speed chases. They have loads of badass-looking tattoos. They have regular sex with hot ladies, and enjoy fiercely loyal friendships with each other. The soundtrack is peppered with big, sexy classic rock songs by bands like Mountain and Thin Lizzy, songs designed to get the male juices a-flowin’. And then there are all those gunfights and explosions and clunky one-liners, like the one below:

Basically, Stallone is letting us know that these guys live The Life. They are the epitome of muscle-bound manhood, and every dude in the audience should aspire to be JUST LIKE THEM.

But here’s what’s wrong with that: no one should aspire to be like these guys, because these guys are jerks. Stallone tries to slip in the occasional bit of pathos, to let us know his characters aren’t without their battle scars, both physical and mental, but it doesn’t really work. For example, Mickey Rourke tells a story about having PTSD in Bosnia, and being so disillusioned with his job that, when he sees a woman standing on a bridge in Sarajevo poised to jump, he turns his back on her and allows her to commit suicide. This is a story that’s meant to make him seem like a tragic figure, but what it does is make him seem like a horrible person. Presumably, he didn’t save the woman because he was depressed, and didn’t see the point in living himself. But that does not make up for the fact that he ALLOWED A WOMAN TO DIE when it was easily within his power to prevent it.

This fetishizing is what keeps “The Expendables” from being the boisterous fun that it should be. Say what you want about movies like “Die Hard” or “Hard Boiled,” but those movies are successful because they have a healthy dose of self-aware ironic humor. John McTiernan and John Woo’s action scenes aren’t without their share of slapstick. Their characters are capable of making mistakes as often as they’re capable of mind-blowing feats of acrobatics and gunplay. Stallone’s characters don’t have that quality, despite the fact that one of them is Jet Li, who made his name in mind-blowing feats of acrobatics and gunplay. They aren’t funny guys. They aren’t even really smart guys, or exceptionally agile. They’re just guys with access to ridiculous amounts of explosives and ammunition.

Suffice it to say, I was really disappointed by “The Expendables.” While it is an over-serious, easy-to-defuse mess of a movie (which, in my book, is a good thing for movies of its ilk), there’s just not enough awful goodness to latch onto. Stallone didn’t make a movie that could be enjoyed by irony-loving bad movie aficionados. He made a movie that could only be enjoyed by the kind of people he’s portraying: manly men with an underdeveloped sense of humor, and a penchant for cars, hot ladies and big explosions. It’s too bad. I went in really wanting to love this movie. I came out wanting it to go away.

Random observations:

-I feel like “The Expendables” is poorly named. The fact that the group’s name insinuates that they feel their deaths aren’t important strikes me as a sign of low self-esteem.

- Randy Couture has to have one of the most ironic names ever, given that he’s famous for being a UFC fighter.

-It’s interesting that Mickey Rourke does everything he possibly can to mess up the good will he builds up in Hollywood from great performances in movies like “Sin City” and “The Wrestler.” He gets himself an Oscar nod, and what does he go and do? “Passion Play and this movie. It’s like he wants to languish in bad movie obscurity.

-Eric Roberts’ performance got me thinking: the life of a corrupt, extortionist CIA agent really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You get in it for the money, but you never get the opportunity to enjoy all that money, and even then, where are you going to spend it in a third-world country, really? It’s a lose-lose situation.

Minding the Gap: Badlands

Confession time: I am not a big Terrence Malick fan. At best, my relationship to his work is tumultuous. I get why he’s an important director. I do. He’s got a stunning visual sense, and I appreciate his particular gestalt for stories that are at once small and large in scope (note how I’m hoping you artier types will forgive me because I know how to use gestalt and tumultuous in a sentence). But he’s just never made anything that satisfied me as a moviegoer. I’m someone who likes structure and dialogue. I like watching characters and stories first, and thinking about the ideas they illustrate later. Malick has a much more philosophical approach, where he first takes a concept, then acts it out with characters that are less like people and more like illustrations. To put it in musical terms, I like three-minute rock songs with a catchy hook. Malick likes Shoegaze—the longest, most introspective kind possible.

I’ve had two recent Malick viewing experiences that both helped me understand what it is I don’t care for about his work, and gave me an interesting perspective on how that particular style has evolved. About a month ago, I saw “Days of Heaven” for the first time, after meaning to see it for years, and came away really disappointed. It wasn’t necessarily a case of a movie being oversold, since it was really as gorgeous as it’s purported to be. But I thought the film felt detached, and kind of soulless. All the characters in the film (even narrator Linda Manz) are viewed from a distance. We see them, and occasionally hear them, but we never get to know them, or understand their motives. It’s like we’re watching them through a window, just a little peek at one story in a larger part of history. This voyeuristic approach, which to me serves to show how small and fleeting our lives are, is an interesting one in concept. But in practice, it gets old quickly. “Days of Heaven” was one of the most gorgeous films I’d seen, but one whose lack of substance in other areas I found irritating.

I was hoping “Badlands,” the director’s first film, one I’d heard was different from his other work, might give me what I was looking for. I’d heard it was more scripted, that there was more going on in terms of plot structure. I thought, too, that there might be a little more heart. Not really. “Badlands” is just as distanced, just as emotionless. However, if I’d seen this movie before I’d seen “Days of Heaven” or “The New World,” I think I might have gotten a very different impression of Malick, since here that emotionless distance is used to a different, more effective purpose.

The protagonist of “Badlands” (if you could call her that) is Holly (Sissy Spacek) a 15-year-old girl who’s moved to South Dakota with her father. She takes up with Kit (Martin Sheen) a dropout greaser 10 years her senior who looks like James Dean, and is trying to cultivate a rebel persona to match. Kit kills Holly’s disapproving father, and takes her along on a killing spree that stretches all the way out to Montana. Holly, whose flowery narration suggests she’s romanticizing the situation beyond all reason, thinks of the whole thing as a grand adventure. George Tipton’s playful score amplifies the feeling with marimba music that sounds like it belongs in “The Swiss Family Robinson.”

Holly doesn’t seem much bothered by the bodies left in Kit’s wake. She occasionally wishes he wouldn’t shoot people so much, but hardly reacts when he commits the deeds. Indeed, Holly’s and Kit’s attitudes toward the murders are both eerily blasé, and over quickly. Holly barely sheds a tear when Kit kills her father, and is completely willing to be his accomplice and go on the run with him, even though she doesn’t see their relationship as permanent (when she wonders what her future husband will be like, it’s clear she assumes he’s someone she hasn’t met yet). She doesn’t even seem to care much whether she goes or stays, she just wants to be with Kit, so she allows him to make all the decisions.

Kit, however, is playing for keeps, and is determined to go out in a blaze of glory, Bonnie and Clyde-style. His rising body count is just for the sake of his criminal reputation. He tells Holly that when he’s caught by the cops, he wants a girl to scream his name as the lawmen shoot him full of holes. In fact, the only time he really loses his cool is when Holly tells him she’s going to stop running with him as the police are closing in. Some may argue that it’s because she’s coldly dumping him after they’ve been through so much, but I think it’s because Holly’s leaving Kit doesn’t fit with his aesthetic. In his mind, they’re supposed to go down together, and she’s cheating her way out.

“Badlands” is also notable as part of Malick’s filmography because of how much it informs “Days of Heaven,” his next movie. The flat, emotionless narration is back, this time in the form of Linda Manz’s little girl character. For all the similarities, she sounds like she could be Holly’s grandmother. The plains setting, with its varied shades of gold and blue and green is also repeated. “Badlands” also teases the fascination with nature that carries into pretty much everything Malick’s done since. We’ve also got the sense of emotional distance from all of the main characters, but unlike Holly and Kit who are more easily understood, Richard Gere, Brooke Adams and Sam Shepard all seem to have an emotional depth that would probably be compelling, if it were allowed to be developed. “Badlands” shows a series of cold-blooded murders done by cold-blooded individuals. “Heaven” takes a single crime of passion involving complex people, and renders it frustratingly passionless.

But while I will say that I liked “Badlands” more than “Days of Heaven,” I still can’t say that I really enjoyed it. It’s not a movie I’d choose to watch more than once. It had some interesting moments, but I still found it kind of dull. I found myself checking the time counter on my laptop more than a few times. It didn’t really disappoint me, the way “Days of Heaven” did, but its lack of empathy, or really any feeling at all, left me ambivalent, the way “The New World” did when I first saw it. I think “Badlands” has finally proven to me that while I do respect Malick’s ideas and his technical ability, I just don’t like watching his movies. I’m not saying they’re bad by any means, they’re just not the kind of movies I watch movies for, just like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart isn’t the kind of music I listen to music for. But please, don’t judge me based on my dislike of an important director and his important movies. Remember, I still know how to use gestalt in a sentence.