I wouldn’t say Child’s Play was a slasher film. I
always thought of it as a story about a woman trying to save her little boy. I thought of it more as a thriller. I’m being very picayune here, of course. When I did Fright Night, it had become rote. The slasher brilliance was Halloween, the first one – Car- penter’s. Then it became very successful, and it couldn’t be a good ol’ horror movie unless it was a slasher film. You had the Friday the 13th films, you had the Weinsteins’ first movie, which was The Burning, a slasher film. Everybody and their brother flooded the market, and they just got boring. Fright Night was my reaction to how boring the slasher genre was at the time. But right now, no, I have nothing against it. And God knows, if anybody can refresh anything and bring it back, it’s the slasher genre. It’s hard to figure out what a slasher film would be right now, isn’t it?
Now that vampires are everywhere, do you think it’s a good time to remake Fright Night, or does it make it a more chal- lenging endeavour? That’s hard for me to figure out. I would think that it’s a good time. I don’t think the genre’s exhausted itself yet, but it certainly
S
TEPHEN GEOFFREYS IS TOUGH TO PIN DOWN. AFTER BEING NOMINATED FOR A TONY AWARD IN 1984, AT AGE 20, HE LAUNCHED A HOLLYWOOD CAREER THAT, OF COURSE, INCLUDED HIS DEFINING ROLE AS EVIL ED IN FRIGHT NIGHT. HE DID A FEW MORE GENRE FILMS, INCLUDING THE ROBERT ENGLUND-DIRECTED 976-EVIL, BEFORE DISAPPEARING FOR A FEW YEARS AND THEN SPENDING A DECADE AND A HALF WORKING IN GAY ADULT MOVIES.
However, approximately five years ago he started appearing in (indie) horror films again and at the
odd genre convention. After an enthusiastic email introduction, he lives up to his elusive reputation, as a couple of weeks pass with several unanswered emails and phone calls. Finally, I get him on the phone to talk Fright Night. “From the first time I read the script, it was something that I could envision having a lot of fun
with,” he recalls in that familiar, nervous-sounding voice. “There were obvious aspects of the character that pointed towards somebody playing it such as myself – the obvious surface stuff, the guy’s a little off and kooky. But I saw the truth of this guy and his life and I identified with that. In a nutshell, it was already written and I just kinda had to memorize the lines and show up sober in front of the camera.” Geoffreys comes across as very self-deprecating, crediting writer/director Tom Holland, his co-
stars and the effects crew for the film’s success. He even plays down the marathon makeup sessions required to turn him into a werewolf/vampire. “You’re sitting in a chair for hour upon hour,” he says. “It gets a little weird having people put their
hands all over you for that length of time. But I knew from what I expected the end result to be, it was well worth it.” The actor literally threw himself into the role during his very physical scenes with Roddy McDowall,
who apparently couldn’t stand him. After some prompting with a couple of on-set stories related by other Fright Night alumni, Geoffreys admits to going a little overboard. “The scene where I jump on Roddy McDowall’s back after he burns the cross on my forehead, I
think I was a little rough, and Roddy was a little bit delicate, which is fine. ... In the end it definitely turned out good, and if I can remember correctly, we had a discussion after one of the takes, and Tom said, ‘Just keep doing it.’” [Laugs] “Poor Roddy had to suffer my wrath for a couple more takes.” It paid off, and Columbia pushed ahead with a Fright Night sequel, despite the absence of Holland.
Though there was a part written for Geoffreys initially, and he was contractually obligated to do it, after reading the script he had his lawyer get him out of the film. “I remember that my part in it was to show up out of nowhere, laughing arbitrarily for no reason,
à la the same laugh I did in the first one, just because it worked the first time,” he recalls. “Which is kind of the reason they’re remaking Fright Night now. Tom Holland definitely doesn’t go for that and he mentioned several times during shooting that he had no intention of doing a second one. I think, creatively, he got everything out in the first one that he wanted to get out, and did it extraordinarily well, and that was that. The book was closed.” Seconds later, Geoffreys closes the book on our interview when I ask why he left Hollywood while
his star was rising, to work in adult films. (In a 1998 he acknowledges this part of his past; in a more recent one he said he’d been doing live theatre; while an online search brings up someone asserting that it was actually Geoffreys’ brother who did porn.) I want to know about his return to the genre, in- cluding his latest movie, The Weeping Woman, based on the story by acclaimed British author Paul Kane. But as soon as the words “adult film” are spoken, he hangs up on me, and that’s that. So, Stephen Geoffreys remains elusive. If he reads this, I hope he knows that, while us horror fans are curious about his career, we’re mostly just happy to have him back.
sit, boy!: RM24 Tom Holland (centre) oversees the famous werewolf effects.
is headed in that direction. They can’t do very much more with vampires, so maybe the two Twilight sequels that Bill Condon is directing at the same time, maybe that will be the end of it for a while. I don’t know. I feel like Fright Night, the remake, is still going to catch the wave because it’s so different from any of the stuff that’s out there. But it certainly does feel like vampires have been pumped a lot at this point.
How do you feel about the Twilight take on vampires – wist- ful, romantic, sparkly? Terrific. It’s sort of the Stephen King impulse to make horror ac- cessible to the middle class. It somehow feels like Twilight grew out of Salem’s Lot, because what that gal [Stephenie Meyer] did was tape it together with bodice-ripper romances. So all of a sud- den, vampires take over more genres that have a broad appeal, and I think that’s what Twilight does – puts it in the realm of ro- mance.
Why do you think we’re still talking about Fright Night, more than a quarter of a century after it first hit theatres? Back when it was released in ’85, Fright Night was given an R rating. Now it seems more like a PG film. It’s become this thing that two and three generations are sharing. Back in 1978 or what- ever, when you saw Halloween, it was considered shocking. Par- ents would never look at anything like that. “Oh, my God, how terrible it was.” Now, 30 years later, parents have grown up with slasher films, so it’s become sort of accepted. In other words, hor- ror as we understood it is spreading out through two or three gen- erations. The audience continues to grow for it, and that includes older people, as well. What makes Fright Night so terrific – and it makes me sound like an asshole to say this – is that it had a hu- mour and a warmth in it. Even though it has ripples in it that were daring at the time, it’s still a family film. I swear to God I don’t know how I did it, but everything came together.
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