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.

Shot-For-Shot: The Shop Around the Corner/You’ve Got Mail



In addition to watching lots and lots of movies, another hobby I have is cooking. I have a bunch of recipe books, but the one I use more than any other is the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. I like this cookbook because it’s mostly made up of the kind of recipes I like best: the ones that take something simple that I already know I like (for instance, apple pie or macaroni and cheese), and change it, ever so slightly, to make it even better. Everything I liked about the original dish is still there, but it’s been enhanced all because of a few simple changes.

Sometimes, a good remake is like food made with the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. The original movie is great, a beloved classic. But then the remake comes along, takes everything you loved about the original, and changes it to fit a newer era. In this case, the original film is the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch picture “The Shop Around the Corner” and the remake is Nora Ephron’s 1998 update, “You’ve Got Mail.” Both are comfort food movies, the kind you watch on a cold afternoon or evening on the couch with popcorn and hot chocolate. They are very similar movies, but each is different enough to be good in its own right. It’s a credit to Ephron that she was able to retain the classic, cozy and lovable feel of the original movie while creating a film that still feels very much of its time.

I should note here that my actual reaction to these two films is a bit backwards. I had not seen “The Shop Around the Corner” until very recently, while I remember watching “You’ve Got Mail” in a movie theater with my parents the year it came out (in other words, it’s a long time favorite). However, in watching Lubitsch’s movie, it was clear to me that Ephron had been immensely respectful and creative in re-writing the script, which I found impressive. In fact, several scenes from the original film are preserved practically line for line, with a few small differences. But Ephron goes beyond the clever dialogue and well-staged scenes of Lubitsch’s movie to create characters with fully-fledged personal lives, surrounded by friends and family members who are every bit as interesting as they are.

In “The Shop Around the Corner,” Jimmy Stewart plays Alfred, a salesman at a leather goods store. He’s worked at the store a long time, is a good worker and honest and smart to boot. We find out that he’s been corresponding with a young woman by letter after answering an ad she put in the paper for a male pen pal (note to self: must try that sometime…), and he’s fairly sure he’s in love. Klara (Margaret Sullavan) is Stewart’s new co-worker. They don’t get along, but unbeknownst to both of them, she’s the woman Stewart’s been writing to. Hijinks ensue.

“You’ve Got Mail” uses this same basic setup, but puts the characters in different-yet-intersecting professional circles. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan’s characters correspond by e-mail, neither of them knowing that they are business competitors. Hanks helps run a Barnes & Noble-style bookstore chain owned by his family. Ryan also operates a family business—a small children’s bookstore (called “The Shop Around the Corner”) first operated by her late mother, a shop whose future is endangered by the opening of Hanks’ new bookstore a few blocks away. In public, they’re enemies. But in letters, they are each other’s anonymous confidante.
While this separation of the two romantic leads makes the dynamic a little different, it allows for Ephron to create a richer inner life for the characters than Stewart or Sullavan has in “The Shop Around the Corner.” Whereas all we saw in “Shop” were the store employees, in “Mail” we have Ryan and Hanks’ family and friends to give the film a little more variety. Ryan’s boyfriend (Greg Kinnear) and Hanks’ girlfriend (Parker Posey) are both really entertaining characters, and the couples’ conversations are a lot of fun to watch—very typical of Ephron’s pithy, realistic style. There are plenty of scenes where Hanks and Ryan aren’t even together onscreen, but that’s fine, since these scenes help us get to know the characters better individually. It also helps that the audience actually gets to hear the content of Hanks and Ryan’s letters to each other, another element that isn’t in “Shop.”

But while “The Shop Around the Corner” is a simpler film, there’s still a lot that’s wonderful about it—the original recipe that begets variations. Take the leads, for example. Jimmy Stewart is, of course, Jimmy Stewart. It’s hard to find a more universally likeable leading man. And I hadn’t been aware of Margaret Sullavan before watching “Shop,” but she’s hugely appealing. She may not be a bombshell, but her peformance rivals Ryan’s in “Mail” for cute-as-a-button-ness. There’s also the script, adapted from a play by Miklos Laszlo, which feels very theatrical, but still holds up strong cinematically. It’s not terribly ambitious, but it’s good solid writing, funny and poignant. William Tracy as Pepi the Delivery Boy probably gets the best lines—I could easily see how he’d steal scenes onstage.

It’s easy to see why a filmmaker like Nora Ephron—someone who’s made a career out of creating clever, widely accessible romantic comedies—would want to remake “The Shop Around the Corner.” It’s a pretty basic movie, but very satisfying, and with the potential to explore the characters and relationships to a richer degree. It’s the same reason I like to toy around with my favorite recipes: to see if I can make a good thing even better. And while it’s easy to overdo it, and make the thing you like so over-the-top that you no longer like it (see the other remake of “Shop,” 1949’s “In the Good Old Summertime”), with the right balance of deference and creativity, you get an America’s Test Kitchen recipe—something that’s new and exciting, but comfy and familiar all at the same time.

Shot-for-Shot: Miracle on 34th Street

It’s December, which means that anyone with even an ounce of holiday spirit is talking about Christmas. Therefore, it’s only appropriate that I observe the holiday, too. This week is a “Shot-for-Shot” week, and I’ll be paying homage to a frequently-remade holiday classic, “Miracle on 34th Street,” and its highest profile (but still oft-overlooked) 1994 reincarnation, written and produced by the late, great John Hughes.

In my opinion, most Christmas movies that directly involve Santa (or some kind of supernatural holiday magic) tend to be pretty silly. But some movies pull it off better than others. Consider, if you will, the dramatic court case at the center of “Miracle on 34th Street:” Santa (played in the original by Edmund Gwenn, and in the remake by Richard Attenborough, everyone’s favorite dinosaur theme-park mogul) has come to New York, and, since no adult actually believes in him, he’s on trial for insanity. And, of course, through the unfailing belief and wide-eyed innocence of kids, he wins the case. Christmas is saved!

Now, in the original movie, there’s a kind of spectacular whimsy to this situation. The audience is all completely aware that no real court of law would see action like this, but the spirit of the thing comes through, because at no point do you feel that the filmmakers are taking this seriously. The entire film, from beginning to end, is lighthearted, uncomplicated and sweet. But Hughes’ rewritten script takes all of this in a different direction. At first, it feels like it’s an improvement—characters and relationships are more fleshed-out, less one-dimensional. There are actual villains! Religious metaphors! It’s ambitious! But then, we come to those lynchpin courtroom scenes. And that’s when everything falls apart.

The plot of the two movies is, as you might expect, exactly the same. On Thanskgiving, Santa happens upon the famed parade of a large department store (in the original, it’s the Macy’s parade, in the remake, it’s the fictional Cole’s—licensing issues, apparently). The parade’s hired Santa is a drunken fool who doesn’t even have his beard on straight. Santa outs him to the parade director, Mrs. Walker, and serves as the man’s last-minute replacement, and subsequently as the department store’s Santa, since he seems to be a hit. Turns out, this is because he actually is Santa (or says he is). The practical Mrs. Walker and her precocious, disillusioned daughter Susan aren’t having it, despite the pleas of their friendly neighbor, who’s a believer, and has kind of a thing for the single Mrs. Walker. Eventually, Santa’s sanity is called into question (on account of continuing to say he’s the big man himself, and refusing to admit otherwise). After a big, publicized court case, the judge decides that Santa is who he says he is, and lets him go, to the delight of young children and their put-upon parents the world over.

Now, as I said before, while the major plot points of the two movies mirror each other, the approach Valentine Davies and George Seaton’s 1947 screenplay takes versus Hughes’ 1994 update are rather different. While both movies prominently feature a single parent, only the Hughes film really explores the relationship between the parent (Elizabeth Perkins as Dorey Walker) and the child (Mara Wilson, surprisingly emotive as Susan). Here, we find out more about why Mrs. Walker has told Susan that Santa doesn’t exist. And the reason is this: she’s still really bitter about her failed marriage, but instead of working out her issues with a therapist, she’s decided to stop believing in anything happy, and has infected the poor kid with the same philosophy. At one point, she tells the sweet, adorably buck-toothed Susan that, “believing in myths and fantasies makes you unhappy.” Yikes! I’m pretty sure Maureen O’Hara never said anything like that to baby Natalie Wood in the 1947 version.

There’s also that religious metaphor bit. While in the original, belief in Santa simply represented a belief in the magic and joy of Christmas, Hughes expands it to represent faith as a whole. For example, at the beginning of the movie, Mrs. Walker and Susan have the neighbor, Bryan, over for Thanksgiving dinner. Bryan (a freakishly good-looking Dylan McDermott—seriously, someone please break that man’s nose) asks if they say grace. Turns out that, unlike the Walkers, Bryan’s a religious man. He’s also a believer in Santa (surprise) and thinks that Attenborough is the genuine article (double surprise).

Later on, Santa casually lets Mrs. Walker know that if she can’t accept anything that requires faith, she’s “doomed to a life ruled by doubt,” and that he’s “a symbol of the human ability to be able to suppress the selfish and hateful tendencies that rule the major part of our lives,” just in case you didn’t pick up on the religious undertones earlier. It’s actually a valiant effort on the part of Hughes to take the movie from a candy-cane colored bit of holiday fun to something of real substance.

But, unfortunately, “Miracle on 34th Street” just isn’t a movie built to carry a message that heavy. We come now to the dramatic centerpiece of both movies: the courtroom scene. In the original movie, this scene was, dare I say it, cute. It was kind of a cherry on a peppermint sundae of a movie. But in the remake, it’s something more in tune with the message and dramatic heft we’ve come to expect from Hughes’ treatment. But while the touch of pathos was bearable, even thoughtful in the rest of the movie, here it’s asking too much of the audience to take it seriously. Santa sits in his room in Bellevue hospital, looking forlornly out the window. The trial is on every single TV channel, and the front page of every newspaper (even though it only takes two days). Whole throngs of people gather in the streets to hear the judgment. There are montages of people throwing public support behind Santa, from city workers to diner owners. Dylan McDermott, representing Santa, puts on a courtroom performance worthy of Atticus Finch.

Suddenly, we’ve morphed from family Christmas movie to 90s courtroom drama, and these characters don’t quite work in their new setting. Hughes changes the case’s closing argument from the original, another aspect of this part of the movie that doesn’t really work. In the original court scene, the defense convinced the judge by getting thousands of letters to Santa delivered to the court from the Dead Letter Office, therefore proving that Kris Kringle, the defendant, was officially recognized as Santa by the government. It’s a fun scene, and presents a decent (if slightly flimsy) case. Hughes’ convincing argument ignores the post office, and brings the U.S. treasury into the mix. Apparently, because we have “In God We Trust” stamped on our money, we as a people collectively put our faith in an unseen entity. Therefore, we believe in Santa, because apparently he operates under the same principles. It fits in with Hughes’ prevailing religious metaphor, but it doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, and really lays the message on thick, even though you’d need to have slept through the whole movie to miss the point if you hadn’t gotten it by now.

Both versions of “Miracle on 34th Street” are relatively harmless pieces of Christmas fluff. But, if given the choice, I’d much rather watch the original over Hughes’ remake. The 1994 version has one up on the 1947 release in the relationship and heartstring-tugging departments, but being able to watch a movie in which Santa walks among us (incidentally, neither movie explains why he’s there) requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. In that vein, George Seaton’s original is the clear champion.

Additional Observations:

-There’s another notable change in one of my favorite scenes from the original that involves Santa and a little girl. In the original, Gwenn speaks Dutch with a little orphan girl. In the 1994 remake, Attenborough uses sign language to communicate with a deaf girl. The original scene made me smile. The 1994 one almost made me cry. Well played, John Hughes.

-In watching the scene where Santa babysits Susan in the remake, I couldn’t help but wonder, given what I saw of Richard Attenborough’s cinematic childcare abilities last week in “Jurassic Park,” would I really want him looking after my child? I have my doubts.

Shot-For-Shot: Let The Right One In/Let Me In

Here is the first in a series of regular columns that I’ll be posting each Wednesday here on the blog. To find out more information and see what other topics I’ll be covering, check out last week’s post.

Generally speaking, remakes occupy a difficult space. They live in a kind of cinematic Catch-22 filled no-man’s land. The problem is this: for a remake to be considered a good film in its own right, it has to vary somewhat from the source material and establish fresh territory on familiar ground. But in order to cater to the fans of the original film, the filmmakers (as with beloved literary adaptations) have to be true to the source material. It’s a tough line to walk. To my mind, the best approach is to re-make movies that are well respected, but don’t have a wide modern audience, because it provides a kind of pedigree while also introducing an old concept to new audiences, as with James Mangold’s remake of “3:10 to Yuma.”  Or, as was the case for Michael Haneke’s shot-for-shot remake of “Funny Games,” justify the remake by bringing the original movie’s message to the audience it was really meant for.

All of this is to say that while it is possible for a remake to be good, it’s not easy. There are just so many potential pitfalls. Some remakes are made too soon after the original film’s release. Some take too many liberties with the material. But most are just plain unnecessary. “Let Me In” falls squarely into the first and third categories. It’s an English-language remake of a Swedish movie, “Let the Right One In,” released in 2008 that has an established (and still growing) cult following. “Let Me In” does a make a few interesting diversions from its source film, and novel of the same name, but is so concerned with keeping “Let the Right One In’s” subtle tone that it neglects to develop these changes in interesting ways.

The plot of the original film is as follows: Oskar, a 12-year-old kid with divorced parents, is constantly bullied at school. He harbors disturbing violent fantasies about getting back at the nasty kids who torment him. One day, in the courtyard of his apartment complex, he meets Eli, a girl his own age who has recently moved in along with an older man who appears to be her father. Oskar and Eli become friends and begin a sweet and awkward relationship. Then, Oskar finds out what the audience has known all along: Eli is a vampire. Her “father” kills people to drain them of blood to feed her. Surprisingly, Oskar isn’t bothered by any of this. His relationship with Eli continues to grow until Eli accidentally turns a neighbor into a vampire, and the consequences threaten to drive the two kids apart.

“Let Me In” follows the same plot, with a few changes. It adds a local policeman, played by Elias Koteas, who’s trying to solve a series of violent murders (no guesses as to who’s responsible). The vampire girl (here called Abby…That’s right, Abby) also has a slightly more competent guardian, played by Richard Jenkins. His character is sloppy, like his Swedish counterpart, but he’s less comedic and more disturbing. The scenes of Jenkins attacking drivers in their cars, his head covered by a black plastic trash bag, are tense and creepy as all get-out. The apartment complex neighbors are also a lot younger and better looking than the depressed, late middle-aged band of losers portrayed in “Let the Right One In.”

Barring the changes made to Jenkins’ character, the additions made in the American film are the most disappointing thing about it. Not because the film’s writer/director Matt Reeves took liberties with the source material (in fact, the addition of Koteas’ character is closer to the novel), but because he failed to fully explore them. Koteas, for example, seems like a decent cop just trying to do his job, confused about everything that’s happening around him. Because of the way his character was introduced (he’s the first one we meet), I constantly found myself wondering what he thought of everything over the course of the film. Yet the audience never gets his side of the story. We know nothing about him. He merely shows up from time to time as a vague background presence. Abby and Owen’s (Oskar’s) neighbors in the apartment complex are never explored much either. In “Let the Right One In,” they were, and their presence added another interesting and gloomy layer of atmosphere to the film.

This isn’t to say that “Let Me In” is a terrible film. It’s not. Technically speaking, there’s very little wrong with it. After seeing the movie with my friend Dan, he told me, “If I hadn’t already seen ‘Let the Right One In,’ I’d have thought this was the best movie I’d ever seen.” I’m inclined to agree. “Let Me In” is smart, creepy, and builds to an epically satisfying climax. It does well all the things that “Let the Right One In” did, with one or two small-ish exceptions. But, when it comes down to it, this movie is about as original as an English-language dub of its Swedish source. What’s more, the original film is not hard to find, nor is it hard to understand (I’m of the mind that if you aren’t willing to read subtitles, you just shouldn’t bother watching movies, because you’ll miss out on most of what’s good. Sorry). There’s no real reason it needed to be made. It is, as Scott Tobias puts it in his review on the A.V. Club, “a beautiful redundancy.”