given the characters. Who thought of it? [Laughs] The whole goddamned cast was gay, and I didn’t know! Who knew I would write that?


That was before any of them were out, right? Yeah! Well, Roddy, of course, was famous, but I didn’t have a clue about Amanda. I probably would have never picked up on it anyway. I didn’t even know that Stephen Geof- freys was gay, for that matter. I don’t even think I thought about it that much. Vampires are polymorphous – they don’t care who they bite.


One of the most memorable and affecting scenes in the film is when Peter kills Evil Ed. Given the stunts, makeup and special effects, tell us a bit about how difficult is was to shoot that sequence. It was very uncomfortable for Stephen. We had done it in rehearsal. We knew the tears were there, we knew the emotion was there. Roddy didn’t like Stephen. [Laughs] We had done that scene where Stephen flies out the win- dow after he’s been burned on the forehead with the cross. Because of the way I was shooting it, they had to do it themselves. Roddy got upset with Stephen and thought that Stephen was manhandling him during the fight. He made some remarks about method actors who weren’t disciplined. So that carried over, but it didn’t stop Roddy from giving a hell of a performance at Stephen’s death.


W


HEN WILLIAM RAGSDALE LANDED THE ROLE OF CHARLEY BREWSTER IN THE ORIGINAL FRIGHT NIGHT, HE WAS BUSY SPENDING HIS DAYS SHUCKING OYSTERS IN A SAN FRANCISCO RESTAURANT.


He’d finished acting school and had a few small roles in films and some leads in plays, but Tom Holland’s


Fright Night was his biggest gig yet. Of course, it helped that Ragsdale already worshipped at the altar of horror long before the vampire comedy came along. “I was a huge fan of the genre as a kid,” confesses the actor, who counts Frankenstein, Dracula, The


Abominable Dr Phibes, Count Yorga, The Legend of Boggy Creek, Dark Shadows and Night Gallery among his early favourites. “One of my favourite [Night Gallery] episodes involved a rich, spoiled Southern white brat who inherited his aunt’s big old plantation and her favourite hired African-American butler. Ossie Davis was the butler and Roddy McDowall was the rich guy. I loved the episode so much and told him so years later. I walked around the set calling for the butler in Roddy’s heavy Southern accent: ‘Portifoy! Portifoy!’” Ragsdale fondly remembers McDowall as a sweet, humble, dedicated guy who always treated him as an


equal and would regale him with personal tales of Hollywood legends he’d known and worked with. Stephen Geoffreys, however, proved to be slightly less amicable, taking a much more methodical approach to his role as weirdo outcast Evil Ed. “Stephen’s method was a bit quirky, from my point of view, but it clearly worked for him,” explains Rags-


dale. “I was coming at it from the perspective that we were best friends and tried to explore our connection. I think he saw his character – correctly, by the way – as more isolated and ostracized. Consequently, Stephen spent a lot of time alone exploring that, I think. I remember once we were trying to find him for a shot, and we couldn’t. Someone said they had last seen him hanging out up on the catwalk.... It’s dark, high, more than a little spooky. I think that’s where the Phantom of the Opera hung out.” Of course, much has been made of Fright Night’s intricate and surprisingly effective FX, but for Ragsdale


the most difficult scene of the shoot had absolutely nothing to do with makeup, prosthetics or grue. “We were shooting the scene where I’m running down the stairs to investigate a noise or something and


Tom Holland was asking me to go faster, to dramatize the panic,” recalls Ragsdale. “As I was running down the stairs, I slipped, sprang up and continued running out of the shot. Off-camera, I realized my ankle was injured. I thought it might be a minor sprain or something, as it was beginning to swell. As the medic was checking it out, the sound guy came over and shook his head: ‘No, it’s broken,’ he said. He had heard the bone ‘pop’ on his earphones.” So, after putting blood, sweat, tears and even a broken foot into the film, how does Ragsdale – who beat


out Matthew Broderick for the role, and then went on to a busy career in film and television, including a recent twelve-episode stint on the modern-day western Justified – feel about the remake? “In all honesty, I have mixed emotions,” he admits. “I love the original so much and am very protective of


it. ... I had also put out feelers about doing a cameo in the film. I had read the script and there were one or two parts that would have been really fun. In the end, no one even returned the phone call. I thought that was really bad form, even for a place like Hollywood!”


23RM


You turned down the chance to direct Fright Night Part 2. Do you ever wish you had done it? Well, I was busy with other things at the time, so Tommy Lee Wallace wrote and directed it. In some ways I wish I had done it, because then it could have gone on, maybe. We could have had three or four of them, I don’t know.


If you had been involved with the sequel, what would you have done with it? I would have done the resuscitation of Jerry Dandrige. I would have brought Chris back, I would’ve had it happen- ing in the house next door, and I would’ve had Charley Brewster getting involved again. If I were to do it now, I’d have Charley Brewster move back into the house next door with his children, and the house is once again used to bring back Jerry Dandrige, and it’s Evil Ed that does it. That’s the story.


Fright Night contains some not-so-subtle critiques of the slasher genre, but you went on to do a sort-of slasher film yourself with Child’s Play. What are your thoughts on slasher flicks?


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