Blood Show:
David Tennant as schlocky showman Peter Vincent, (below) Jerry Dandrige (Colin Farrell) feeds, and (opposite) Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) has an axe to grind.
anymore. Chris Sarandon’s Jerry was quite human, but this version of the character is completely without any sense of recognizable emotional drive, and he’s quite bored at this stage. Quite bored with being alive and being alone. But I loved the script so much that I really had to go, okay, man, check your own preconceptions and address this as its own thing. You bring your own stuff to it, of course, and in the end, the fact that this character is so different than my own notions of what a vampire should be actually freed me up to address the vampire that Marti has designed.” That vampire is notably more aggressive than the one horror fans remember so
fondly from the original. He doesn’t waste time trying to charm Charley’s mother (Toni Collette) into inviting him into the Brewster home; he simply digs up the gas pipes and blows up the house, reasoning that he doesn’t need an invitation to enter a house that doesn’t exist anymore. In April, journalists were shown approximately twenty minutes of the film, including a scene where Jerry attacks a girl he’s holding captive in his home (while Charley watches from an adjacent room). The sequence is undeniably creepy; it plays out more like a rape scene than a typical vampire attack. “That is one of the toughest scenes in the movie,” says Gillespie in a thick-as-
Vegemite Australian accent. “In very old versions of Dracula and other old horror pic- tures, vampires are very scary. This version of Jerry is very much like a serial killer. That sets up the horror element in the film, and adds gravity to what’s going on.” This reinterpretation of Tom Holland’s iconic character isn’t the only thing
that sets the remake apart from the original, of course. The challenge for the makers of 2011’s Fright Night is two-fold; not only must Jerry stand out from the fanged masses that have staked their claims in practically every medium imaginable, but the film must justify its own existence to genre audiences who are growing increasingly tired of less-than-successful “re-imaginings.” To that end, Noxon and Gillespie have taken a few sizeable liberties with the plot.
This time around it’s Evil Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse of Kick-Ass and Superbad fame), not his one-time best friend Charley Brewster (Star Trek’s Anton Yelchin), who first discovers Jerry Dandrige’s gruesome dietary restrictions. When Ed dis- appears, Charley comes to realize that his friend was onto something, and that it has now fallen to him to stop Jerry. He enlists the reluctant aid of Peter Vin- cent, now a posturing, Criss Angel-inspired stage magician played by Doctor Who’s David Tennant, to help him kill his neighbour. “There’s also a sense of fractured society,” adds Farrell. “A commu-
nity that’s sort of broken [apart] by lack of interest. It’s a perfect place for a vampire to live because people work all day, and then close their blinds at night. Which is very different from the original – it has its own take on the idea of community. Nobody really watches what anyone else is doing.” Gillespie was only vaguely familiar with Holland’s
film, opting not to watch it until he had a firm grasp on how he’d shoot his version. Only then did he go back and screen the source material, looking for ways he could pay homage to Holland’s opus while making Fright Night his own.
“I was not looking to do any sort of horror or vampire film,” Gillespie says. “If any-
thing, another vampire movie coming down the pike seemed like a negative thing to me. I was going to DreamWorks for a general meeting, and the script had been sent to me the night before because it was available. Before I read it, I was sure I wouldn’t be interested. And then I read it, and I thought, man, it’s really good. Marti wrote a really great script. I love this take on the vampire. He is singularly motivated by his own survival.” At first, Farrell was also reluctant to participate. “You certainly can’t accuse it of
being the most original notion,” he laughs. “We’re remaking a film from the ’80s, and it’s a vampire film. It’s like, wow, really? You can’t come up with anything original? I had to rationalize it to myself and say, ‘Okay, why are they doing this?’ I love the original. I had seen it ten or fifteen times by the time I was fifteen. When I heard they were doing a remake, my first thought was, oh, God, what a bunch of uncreative money-grabbers. And then I read the script and thought, oh, no, I really like it! I wanted to do it, but I could see that the fan base might be insulted or angered. But any story that’s worth telling once is possibly worth telling again from another perspective.” Yelchin, on the other hand, claims to have had no reservations about getting involved, citing his confidence in Gillespie, the script and the casting. “For me, the original is really about what was happening to the horror
genre in the ’80s,” says the 22-year-old actor, who is currently prepping for his role in the big-screen adaptation of Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas. “It was more than just a horror film. It was very self-conscious about
the transition from older genre filmmaking to ’80s filmmaking. It was re- ally smart in that way, and a great film, and I’m a big fan. This one sort of re-imagines what the original has to say.” Besides the cast and above-the-line talent, the new Fright Night also boasts a team of makeup artists and sculptors from KNB FX Group who transformed Farrell into the mon- strosity that Charley and Peter must ultimately face. (Farrell notes, “The idea of getting dressed up and getting to put on all this special makeup – it was just a laugh. It’s just glorified Halloween!”) So the elements for a successful remake are in place and
reactions to test screenings and previews have been gen- erally favourable, but the verdict will ultimately have to wait until Fright Night’s August 19 release. “Was it a money-making venture, deciding to do the film? Of course it was,” admits Farrell. “The studio’s asking, ‘How can we cash in on this vampire craze?’ But the two people who brought the film to the studio, Alison [Rosenzweig] and Mike [Gaeta], who are
producing the film, are real film fans, and real fans of horror films and of the original.” “If it’s good, it’s good,” Gillespie says with a shrug. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a remake or an original, it’s got to stand on its own two feet.”
21RM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72