I’m gonna go ahead and be biased for this one because it’s one of my favorite horror movies of all time. Does it stand the test of time? Hell no. At this point there is nothing appealing about watching Prince Humperdink dancing to an eighties song with Marcy D’Arcy, but it’s still a fun film, with great special effects and an awesome performance from Roddy McDowell as ‘Peter Vincent the Great Vampire Killer’.
If you watched the current remake that was released in August, it’s basically the same premise. Charlie Brewster, teenage horror fan, suspects his neighbor Jerry of being a creature of the night due to the strange practices going on next door… not to mention all of the dead hookers and Charlie spotting one of them going into his house. After the Vampire Lord next door finds out that Charlie knows his terrible secret it’s up to Charlie to save himself and those he cares about. And I don’t mean his terrible secret is being gay, even though there is some serious innuendo going on between Jerry and his minion Billy Cole.
Once Peter Vincent gets involved as the Vampire skeptic the movie really gets going and the cast is pretty well rounded out. Chris Sarandon is perfect as smooth talking Vampire Jerry Dandridge, a role that Colin Farrell seemed to inherit perfectly in the remake. When Jerry turned all Vampire on us in the film he was genuinely creepy looking. People might think it looks cheesy as hell now but I think it holds up to this day, so I must have been traumatized by it as a youngling. Most annoying to me was the character of ‘Evil Ed’, played by Stephen Geoffreys.
Geoffreys was terrible as the high-pitched little pipsqueak dork. I don’t know if he honed his acting skills as I haven’t had a chance to see any other movies that he was in, such as Seamen Training Day, Buff & Gay, Latin Crotch Rockets and Guys Who Crave Big Cock. But they sound like some real fine family films…
Anywho, I give this film a 4 out of 5 Great Pumpkins, which is less than the remake God forgive me. It’s a Halloween movie everyone who is a fan of horror will enjoy. Plus it would make a great musical as evidenced by the video below.
Grizzly Bomb 