Fright Night Part 2 '88)**

I have already written a very extensively and exhaustively detailed review on the blog way back in 2014 (March 8th, to be exact), but I did get the chance to revisit it thanks to a high quality upload on YouTube. This still hasn't gotten a decent Blu release and I continue to be puzzled by its lack of recognition or exposure. Yes, it just got railroaded during the marketing and distribution phase and dumped unceremoniously to rental shelves. I definitely would have been in the theater in 1988 if I were old enough and able. This has been cursed with an unheralded rep and is due a serious reprisal. It's got cult following written all over it. The first film just has this cast shadow the sequel never seemed to escape from but I personally think "Fright Night Part 2" stands on its own and works as a favorable second (and final) chapter in the complicated life of Charley Brewster and vampire hunter midnight movie host, Peter Vincent. Tommy Wallace had already been dealt a walloping blow with his 1982 "Halloween: Season of the Witch", but this sequel to "Fright Night" just got even more shafted after completion. What could have been potentially a hit was abandoned and tossed aside, left to remain tragically obscure. I never saw it at any rental store I haunted or I would have definitely dropped a few bucks for the VHS. It wasn't even until the early 2000s when renting from Netflix that I got to see it. It has a mixed reaction in the user comments on IMDb with some considering it a failure, others a minor success as a sequel, with that vocal minority really supportive of it. I think it's got a lot of potential as a cult film if it can ever just reach the right audience at the right time. 

Admittedly, I didn't watch this one completely in one sitting. This week has sort of been Fright Night II week, truth be told. I have prolonged the experience by watching a little here one night, some more another. I think that's a testament to the film's entertainment value and my desire to make it last. I really liked that Charley was in college, had a new girlfriend played by the very pretty Lind, who I thought had better chemistry with him than Bearse. McDowell is just as fun as Peter Vincent, horror show host and would-be vampire hunter, replaced by Dandrige's sister, a provocative artist and performer, and actual vampire with a posse than includes Gries (as another werewolf, getting to crawl up a wall of a building), Thompson (eating moths after naming their genus), and enigmatic fellow bloodsucker Clark (on roller blades) on his show. Carmen is just a revelation. I find her seductively captivating. She actually arrives in Charley's dorm from a swirling mist. She's also a bat. And Tommy Wallace made sure plenty of eye contacts were used. I had forgotten about this incredible moment where Carmen's face changes from human to vampire during an implied trance placed on Charley. Some of the makeup effects are dated and not as convincing. But forgiven because in their time a prosthetic werewolf head steaming after a mouthful of roses that isn't quite realistic still blew us kids away in the early 90s. Carmen with her eyes, even without contacts, are so alluring but how she carries herself, that sultry presence and voice, just captures me and I am hers. The film convinces us, I think, that she can easily seduce men, particularly young men, just as Sarandon did with women in the first Fright Night film. McDowell getting up the courage to try and stake Carmen at his former stage show, after being a fraidy-cat the previous night upon a visit from her, while everyone he tries to inform of her being a vampire thinks he's a loon cracks me up every time. Each time I watch this, it draws closer and closer to the original. Never thought I'd feel that way. Why this wasn't available when I used to rent movies I'll never know. You'd think this would have at least been a rental hit.