So even though the Fright Night remake never managed to blow away audiences at the box office, it obviously made enough to get a sequel made (even if said sequel is a direct to DVD version). Now for most readers straight to DVD will set off quite a few alarms (most of them are dire), but before you judge here is the films synopsis (thanks to Slash Film).
By day Gerri Dandridge (Jaime Murray) is a sexy professor, but by night she transforms into a real-life vampire with an unquenchable thirst for human blood. So when a group of high school students travel abroad to study in Romania, they find themselves ensnared in Gerri’s chilling web of lust and terror. Charley and “Evil” Ed must stop Gerri from drinking and bathing in the blood of a “new moon virgin,” which just so happens to be Charley’s ex-girlfriend, Amy. They enlist help from Peter Vincent, the vampire hunting host of a reality show called “Fright Night,” to drive a stake through Gerri’s plan and save Amy from a fate far worse than death.
Okay so this is obviously following the laws of the sequel (laid out in the Scream movies) as it will have more blood and sex in it as well as even more annoying teenagers. However it will not have most of the old cast in it. Replacing Peter Vincent, Evil Ed and Amy is Sean Power (Cowboys and Angels), Chris Waller (Inbred) and Sacha Parkinson (A Boy Called Dad) respectively. Will Payne (Elfie Hopkins) plays Charlie. So gone are Colin Farrell (fair enough he is dead in the first film), Anton Yelchin, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Imogen Poots and my personal favorite Peter Vincent himself – David Tennant. So I admit it is not looking promising, especially with a cast of relatively unknown actors and actresses.
Here is the trailer for the new movie (directed by Eduardo Rodriguez in case you wanted to know who to blame).
Now not to sound too sexist about this, but it appears the only reason to actually watch this sequel is to see the very easy on the eye actress Jaime Murray (Dexter, Spartacus) in various stages of undress. I have also just learnt Jaime is Bill Murray’s daughter. I only mention this because this is the only interesting thing to come out of the researching of this release. Unfortunately it looks very much like a very generic cash in on the moderate success of the original with only one stand out scene (the car hitting Gerri). Now this is a real shame because they did have another route they could have used.
Fans of the original 1985 movie will no doubt know the surname Dandridge. It was the name of Jerry Dandrige (spelled slightly differently) the lead vampire played amazingly by Chris Sarandon. Now casual viewers may not know that this film actually had a sequel itself in 1988. Starring most of the original cast (well at least Charlie and Peter Vincent) it basically had the same story line but had Charlie getting seduced by a vampire and the crew having to rescue him from the clutches of Regine Dandridge, Jerry’s sister who wants revenge and plans on turning Charlie into a vampire to torture him forever. It was also cheesy fun with a great selection of henchmen Regine used to help her with her goal (the scene in the bowling alley is great fun).
Now it’s unclear if the sequel to the remake is going to do this or not, but it seems that they are at least going to go with the brother sister angle because otherwise why use the surname? Alas it looks like there will be no henchmen involved which is a loss in my eyes. The final problem this reviewer had while watching the trailer is that because it is a whole new set of actors and actresses playing the roles I found it hard to know who is who. I found it even harder to care. At least with other direct to DVD sequels they managed to incorporate at least one star from the previous movies (look at the Lost Boys and American Pie sequels for evidence of this). If anyone is interested in how this film will play out then it is scheduled for release October 1st of this year.
This reviewer will indeed be checking it out just to see if my predictions on its shoddy nature come true. Hopefully they will not.
Grizzly Bomb 