The Lady K Academy Film Awards Day 6 - Best Fight

You might have thought that award season was over but as the recent Grammy's and Brit awards have proved, we're still very much in the midst of all the crying and speeches!

Tonight's triple bill of awards was supposed to be posted on Valentines Day as they are themed to coincide with that day, Best Fight, Best Kiss and Most Heartbreaking End To A Film EVER. But with one thing and another I didn't get around to posting them so I'm posting them tonight instead, in honor of my friend Jen's birthday today. Birthdays are often emotional occasions and can be the cause of fights and heartbreak but mostly kisses. I hope Jen will have more of the latter. Happy Birthday!

Without further delay I present the Best Fight award to... Fright Night

I have struggled to decide winners of quite a few of my award categories owing to the great examples available in those categories. Best Fight however really wasn't one of them. While the big blockbusters of summer all had impressive fights in them, Thor, Captain America, X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern, Transformers etc etc I didn't really feel that any of those films were worthy of the award for Best Fight. In some the fight scenes were too short (Transformers), in others there were too many to narrow it down (Thor) and others just seemed pointless (X-Men/Green Lantern). But Fright Night just nailed it for me. 

Take one friendly neighbourhood vampire, Jerry: 

Add in a splash of terrorising the neighbours:

Mix the wimpy neighbour with the cool vampire hunter played by none other than David 'Dr Who' Tennant:

Throw in a cross bow, stakes, stake shooting guns and some fire and et voila, you have the ingredients for a well planned out horror movie ending.

The scene in question is not available (to my knowledge - I did spend hours scouring You Tube) so you have to make do with the trailer but believe me when I say that it's a worthy winner.

Runners Up:

See above.

What would you have classed as last years best fight scene? Answers on a postcard please. Or you could just put it in the box below...

Fright Night

http://www.frightnightmovie.co.uk/

As a huge horror/vampire fan from a very young age (I must have been well under the age of 10 when I started watching Hammer Horrors with my mum) I couldn't wait to watch the original 1985 version of Fright Night when my mum deemed me old enough to watch it. I was around 15 when I did eventually see it and I wasn't impressed. So much so that I can barely remember the original now that another 15 years have passed since I saw it. I just remember not liking it very much.

So when I heard that Fright Night was being remade, I had a reaction I don't normally have to remakes, I was really looking forward to seeing it. Mainly to see if the original would be improved on. Then I heard who'd been cast. Colin Farrell as the deliciously arrogant vampire Jerry, Anton Yelchin as Charlie, the geeky neighbour turned vampire killer, and David Tennant as Peter Vincent, supposed vampire hunter who turns out to be all talk. A dream cast if ever there was one. But what about the finished film...

Fright Night, for those who haven't seen the original, is a story of Charlie (Anton Yelchin), who lives in Las Vegas with his mom Jane (Toni Collette). A new neighbour has just moved in next door to them who they never see and who seems to be remodelising his house, he's blacked out his windows and seems to be removing a lot of concrete from inside. At school Charlie is faced with the reality that a growing number of students are not turning up for class and then disappearing altogether. He goes to investigate this with his one time childhood friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who has now become an embarrassment to Charlie now that Charlie's made it into the 'in' crowd and has a hot girlfriend, Amy (Imogen Poots). Ed soon meets a sticky end at the hands of Charlie's neighbour Jerry (Colin Farrell) who we discover pretty early on is indeed a vampire. When Charlie realises that Ed was telling the truth all along, he enlists the help of vegas showman Peter Vincent (David Tennant) to help him save his mom and his girlfriend from the neighbour from hell.

As I mentioned earlier, I don't really remember what the original was like, I just remember not liking it. And as much as One Day made me want to read the book on which the film was based, Fright Night has made me want to re-watch the original just to see if I like it better now that I'm a bit older? However, rather than this reflecting badly on the remake, I think this speaks volumes about how good the remake is. To make me willing to give a second chance to a film I wrote off 15 years ago is no mean feat.

But anyway, back to the remake. As I mentioned, the cast is a dream. Farrell clearly relishes playing a role like Jerry. And it does feel like he was perfectly chosen for the part with his womanising past and cocksure attitude. He has beefed up for the role and feels both intimidating and sexy in equal measure. It is also obvious how much fun Tennant had with his role. Effectively playing two parts, one of Peter Vincent, confident Las Vegas showman with more swagger than you could shake a stick at, then the real Peter, terrified of vampires which he knows are real. Finally Anton Yelchin, who is always an absolute pleasure to watch, as the geeky but endlessly brave Charlie. He is the perfect nemesis to Farrell's Jerry as you'd never think him capable of putting up a fight.

While we're on the subject of casting I would like to add that there is a cameo from a cast member of the original Fright Night. I won't say who it is but look out for it as it's a real treat for fans of the original film.

As far as I remember, the new film sticks pretty close to the plot of the original and I would say that for me, the only thing that lets the new film down are the CGI effects, as I actually don't think they're as good as the original effects from '85. This is one of the reasons I'm quite looking forward to another 80s film remake 'The Thing' as I've heard that they're not going down the CGI route, preferring instead to use the same methods adopted to make the original film. I don't know if that would have worked here, using old school make up and prosthetics but I remember being impressed with the effects in the original Fright Night (one of the only things I was impressed with) and the facial effects in this were just a little too fake. 

That said, I would still recommend Fright Night, not only to fans of the original, but also to those who didn't like it, as you might be pleasantly surprised! 8 out of 10.

Viewing Date - 2nd September 2011

UK Release Date - 2nd September 2011

Cast Overview

Anton Yelchin ~ Charley Brewster

Colin Farrell ~ Jerry

Toni Collette ~ Jane Brewster

David Tennant ~ Peter Vincent

Imogen Poots ~ Amy

Christopher Mintz-Plasse ~ Ed

Director ~ Craig Gillespie

Writer(s) ~ Marti Noxon (Screenplay) and Tom Holland (Story)