Collectible; an item valued and sought by collectors.
Collecting can be an exhausting experience. Sure it is pretty awesome when you can snag a hot new release, but it hard to track them all, and inevitably, some slip through the cracks. That’s where Homemade Horror comes in. We try to gather some of the coolest releases of horror collectibles currently online, and show them to you in one tidy bundle.
Continue reading Homemade Horror: Custom Figures, Top Trumps, VCR Art and More!
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.
Not many vampires these days really do it for me. You have all of the leather clad Underworld vampires, glittery hipster vampires from Twilight and not much else these days. It’s a far cry from actual threatening vampire menaces from Blade and 30 Days of Night. But, to find a true Vampire lord that added equal parts terror and douchey charm into the horror mix, then look no further than Mr. Jerry Dandrige from Fright Night.
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’.
Continue reading #23 – Countdown to Halloween: FRIGHT NIGHT (1985)
Being such an uber fan of the 80’s classic that was the original Fright Night, I went into this one with excitement and apprehension. Were they going to do something completely different than the original or stick to the same thing? Luckily they did a little bit of both. They changed a few things, but gave plenty of nods to the original and what they did change was actually pretty cool.
So we start off with pretty much the same premise as the original Fright Night. There’s a young kid named Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin) who lives with his mom (Toni Collette), has a girlfriend and all of the normal teenage problems you would expect. Luckily that’s where the remake changes things up a bit. The relationship between Charlie and Ed was different, as they were nerds-in-arms in the past, but now Charlie is one of the “cool guys” who won’t talk to Ed to maintain his status. I was pretty surprised at how fast they jumped into the “he’s a vampire” mode, but it didn’t kill the movie for me. It’s not long before Charlie is suspecting that there’s something more going on with his new neighbor Jerry than meets the eye.
I never thought that Chris Sarandon could be replaced as the smooth talking, hooker slaying vampire from the original, but Colin Farrell really took that role and ran with it. He was excellent as the vampire lord, looking like he had a ball playing the part the whole movie. Chris Sarandon had a great cameo in the movie that made me grin ear to ear and it’ll be easy enough for you fans of the original to catch, trust me.
Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots did fine as Charlie and Amy respectively in the movie. They may not have been the most interesting characters in the flick, but I didn’t hate them either. Yelchin is great in pretty much everything up to this point, such as Kyle Reese in the most recent Terminator and Chekov in Star Trek which we’ll see more of in the next year or so. Christopher Mintz-Plasse played “Evil” Ed perfect, compared to his annoying counterpart from the 80’s Stephen Geoffreys. Honestly I’m not sure if Mintz-Plasse can play anything except the dorky outcast kid that he is notoriously famous for since the creation of the Hawaiian organ donor Mc’Lovin in Superbad. Is that a bad thing?
The biggest role that it seemed like the movie kept under wraps until the release of the movie was that of Peter Vincent. We knew that Doctor Who veteran David Tenant would be playing the Las Vegas Illusionist, but other than a couple of publicity pictures there wasn’t much in the way of footage of him. I was skeptical because of how much I adored the Roddy McDowell ‘Peter Vincent’, because there is no way that anyone could replicate that character. Thankfully Tenant took the character and made it his own. At first it seemed like he was channeling Russell Brand, but after about five minutes I began to see he wasn’t as annoying as his fellow countryman. Peter Vincent was definitely a drunken mess to start out, but they pulled out a twist in there that made him have a far more integral part to the story that surpassed the original.
I can’t help but give the movie a 5 out of 5 grizzlies based on what it was, plus I’m a little biased with my love for the original. It was a horror movie that gave me everything I wanted from it and then some, with a bit of humor injected here and there.
It honored the original that it was derived from while still maintaining its own separate identity. I’m definitely disappointed that the movie didn’t fare so well in the box office, limiting its chances for a sequel. Though perhaps based on its modest budget we may still see the continuing adventures of Charlie Brewster and Peter Vincent. And now, check out the awesomeness that is the musical version of the original Fright Night below!
The Wolfman, starring Benicio del Toro and Sir Anthony Hopkins came out last year to poor reviews and a low box office. This was shattering to the studio that had planned for a money making trilogy to cash in on the recent drive for all things werewolves and vampires.
So you’d think that with The Wolfman ‘failing’ at the theaters that would be it for the movie. But no, that just is never the case these days. So instead of just going ahead with their planned sequel, they have reportedly opted instead to simply remake the movie… again. After only one year.
Universal is saying that it’s a remake of the classic version and not the one from a year ago. But the one from a year ago was a remake of the classic version as well, so really who knows anymore. Also they may call it Werewolf, further throwing originality out the window.
Grizzly Bomb 