All right, I have a question. Make it yours.
Bill, are we doing it as we did it? I mean, no, do you know what I mean? We just saw the movie. Do we want to emulate exactly? Whatever.
However you want to bring it is how we want to get it. So...
Well, I'm just wondering what the expectation might be. Do the voice like this.
How do you know? Okay, shut the talk up. Rosario, how are you? I'm well, how are you? I didn't recognize you with a hat.
I know, the silly hair. Who did you finally end up bringing? My mom.
Your mom. Mothers will always be there.
Thank you for doing this, dear. Absolutely, thanks for having me.
Can I get this to put on my Facebook page? It's so nice of you. Thank you so much.
All right, ladies and gentlemen. Hello.
I've met all of you. I'm Mark, executive producer Sean, executive producer Jack, executive producer.
We're here for Tom, just as you are. He brought this idea to us.
And as you guys do, we love this guy. So thank you all for helping to make this day what it is going to be.
We're doing a little reporter thing here. So we've got some questions that we might throw out.
Shootout answers. This is Saruthi.
Saruthi works for our PR department, Manifest Media's PR department. I'm going to step out of the way.
She's going to do what she does. So this is Bill from Dread Central.
He's just going to be asking a few questions. Hi, everyone.

Hello.

I'm Bill.

Hey, what's up?

Hello all the way

from Beverly Hills.

Congratulations on today

and congratulations

on the reunion.

I've been a fan

of Fright Night

ever since I saw it

in college

way back when.

And it's,

to me,

maybe,

no, no,

I'm not going to even

say maybe,

the best vampire movie ever made. Yes! Yes! Thank you, Tom Holland.
Heck yeah. Sir, Tom, what is it like for you to, nearly 40 years after the release of that film, to see it have still such a life to it in a way that so many non-cinematic universe, non-franchise films do.
What's your take on its enduring popularity? Oh, it's incredibly moving. Personally, I've had some other big successes, but nobody, what's happened to Fright Night has become multi-generational.
People will say to their grandchildren, I want to introduce you to a family movie called Fright Night and introduce you to monsters. And so it's become, you know, I get three generations at a time telling me how much they love the movie.
And I don't, that doesn't happen with Psycho 2. And they don't say that with child's Play.
With Frightened Night, yes, and they love

the characters. And I think

it's because it's my love letter

to the horror movies that

I grew up with. When they had

horror hosts, like

Elvira and Stagger Lee,

and that's who Peter

Vincent is.

It's just...

I couldn't...

I wanted to be Charlie Brewster.

I couldn't think of anything greater

I'm sorry. Vincent is.
And it's just, I couldn't, I wanted to be Charlie Brewster. I couldn't think of anything greater than becoming convinced as a mad horror fan that there was a vampire living next door.
And it's funny. You can hear them laughing now, but it has humor.
And Fright Night is laced with humor, and at the same time it has heart. Peter

Vincent is

the heart. Charlie Brewster,

Bill Ragsdale,

is the engine that drives it.

it's just a warm, fun,

loving movie.

And people

love horror who love

Fright Night because

Thank you. It's just a warm, fun, loving movie.
And people love horror who love Fright Night because it's just a wonderfully entertaining, fun experience and I am blessed. I am so lucky.
You know, I really am. Bravo.
Yeah, bravo. Congratulations.
I also saw on your IMDb that you did a Fright Night in 2011, but not as Jerry Dandridge. As a victim? This was the Colin Farrell one.
Oh. Yeah.
It was a remake, but his word of, it was more of a reimagining. Because you really can't.
It was totally different. Yeah.
It did. Same plot.
It was close. Same character.
Yeah, same characters. Same character names and rough outline of the plot.
Why have I never heard of it? Probably because this one just eclipses everything. Oh, well, David Tennant played Peter Vinson.
Oh. It's set in Vegas.
And he did it as a Criss Angel type of Vegas magician. He's a wonderful actor.
Yeah. Colin Farrell played Jerry.
Yeah. And Toni Collette played Dorothy.
Judy. Judy.
Played Judy. What's the young woman's name? Yelich.
No. Yelich.
Right? What was the actor who passed away? Yelich. Yelich? Yelich.
Yeah, Anton Yelich. Anton.
Anton, yeah. So you were in that one, but as a victim.
I did a cameo. That was funny.
My daughter and I went to see it because we thought, you know, let's go see it. And then all of a sudden, he shows up and he's playing drunk.
Charlie jumps up to help Peter as the bat turns and sinks his fangs deep into a screaming Charlie's arm. Peter pulls it back into an errant shift of light coming from the shattered window.
Can you take that sentence again? Peter pulls it back into an errant shaft of light. So just Peter pulls it, yes? Into a shaft? Take it from Charlie.
Take it from Charlie. Yeah, yeah, gotcha.
All right. Charlie jumps up to help Peter as the bat turns and sinks his fangs deep into a screaming Charlie's arm.
Ah! Peter pulls it back into an errant shaft of light coming from the shattered window. Oh! No, no, no! Wait a minute.
Is Evil Ed really not dead and that's the sequel line?

Tom?

Yeah.

Is Evil dead at the end when Evil Ed's red eyes appear next door?

Does that mean he's not dead and you're setting up a sequel?

He said he's still alive.

Oh, all right.

Peter Vincent inadvertently pulled the stake out of him to go fight Jerry and Billy Cole. Oh.
And if you turn into the next chapter, you'll find out that evil has come back. Ah.
He's pissed off. There's also a question between when you held out the crucifix and Jerry crushes it, meaning you didn't have faith, but later you do it and you've gained faith.

Is that what it is?

Well, Peter holds it out and gets it crushed.

He crushes the one Peter has in his hand.

So I don't have faith.

You didn't then, but later you do.

Later you do.

Later you do stop it.

Especially with Evil Ed, because when you put it on the head. Yes, exactly.
Okay. You need to talk with the Fright Night fans more.
They know more than any of us. Sure.
That's better. Billy Cole is not a vampire.
But he must be inhuman.

Because all the green goo and all that.

Do you know what he is?

I get, you know, the fans ask me all the time.

I say, ask the writer.

Ask the writer because I have no idea.

Hey, Tom, if Billy Cole isn't a vampire,

what is he with goo dripping down as?

Well, you can argue it.

You can argue the general term is a ghoul,

which is somebody who's been bit by the vampire but hasn't been turned. Oh, okay.
So he can be his protection during the day. Gotcha.
Which means he had no idea what he was writing it, really. He's a familiar.
He's a familiar slave. He's Renfield in Bram Stover's Dracula.
Wow. But he's insane.
Wow. And he's crazy vicious.
Are we talking about... He can commute by...
Lines are getting blurred. The only prior vampire experience I have was on what we do in the shadows.
They sent me a script. They said they want you to play a part and I thought, oh, it's going to be like the high school principal, the next door neighbor.
Jerry the vampire. It sort of exemplifies their humor you know something as grand as a vampire instead of calling him Vlad.
Unless Jerry gives Billy Cole some of his blood, Billy Billy Cole's not a vampire. He's a familiar who has only one thing in life.
He wants to be a vampire. Protect his master.
But Jerry Dandridge won't give it to him. He wants a slave.
Nice vamping. Who wouldn't want a slave? I love what you just said there about this story, this movie, this table read, whatever form it takes, being a celebration of not just the horror genre, but the horror fan.
And Charlie, especially as our hero, is somebody who is obviously a horror fan. And when this film came out in 1985, it was still a little rare to have a horror fan not be treated as like the weirdo around the block who nobody wants to talk to.
obviously things have changed in the 40 years since do you think it would be easier in you know today's world today's horror fandom world for a Peter Vincent to be more easily convinced that vampires are real for a Charlie to be more easily accepted or even evil Ed yes I mean that when I was when I was when I was in high school back in the dark ages there was if there Maybe there were three or four other guys, there were no women, maybe three or four guys in high school who were into horror. We'd stay up on Friday nights and watch the Friday night frights, which is at the local television channel at 11 o'clock.
That was the only place you could see anything and then we had we had ec comics which got banned yeah in 1954 or 5. anybody who remembers god yeah yeah okay they were banned they were banned you couldn't we we used to take ec comic books and we put them in plastic wrappers and hide them around the high school so you could go out behind the trees or whatever and read the newest issue of whatever EC comics were.
This is Stephen King. This is all of Stephen King's short stories.
Same thing. It wasn't.
When I came out with Fright Night, which is the first movie that I directed, everybody in Hollywood told me I had to get out of horror right away. Because it was considered, this is 1984-5, it was considered the red-headed stepchild.
Nobody wanted to be associated with horror. Now, as everybody knows, it is the most renumerating, the biggest independent genre that's supporting movies today.
The most interesting movies are made in the horror genre, and they're coming out all the time, and people are creating them, and some of them really, really work, and they get a chance to get into the mainstream.

No other genre is doing that.

Rom-com is dead.

Comedy is dead.

You can't do comedy in your room.

You've got to see comedy with a whole audience

to really get it.

You know, so my lifetime has been watching

the horror genre grow to where now it's just huge. And I'm so happy.
And it's also one of the reasons that Fright Night has become increasingly popular. We're talking about a movie that's 40 years old.
I mean, nobody can remember a movie from last year. And here we are with Fright Night.
I'm blessed. We we're all blessed thank you to the public out there for this and for loving fright night absolutely in that uh in that vein obviously one of the enduring things about as i said earlier it's the best movie.
But the vampire as a horror creature is obviously enduringly popular, so evergreen.

In your own words, and this is anyone who wants to answer, but certainly you, Tom,

why do you think the vampire is still so popular these days?

Well, I don't know.

I wrote a movie called Cloak and Dagger, which was a remake of The Window. And I said, if you really want to do a movie with a kid seeing something out the window next door, make them a mad horror fan and do it with vampires.
Have them see a vampire next door. And Universal threw me out of the office.
Okay? I mean, vampires in 1985 were dead, dead, dead. And I don't mean just the undead.
I mean dead. I mean vampires in 1985 were dead dead dead and I don't need just the on dead I mean dead I mean the black the last gas that then the George Hamilton movie love at first bite which is a which is a spoof and when they start doing when they start doing comedies about the genre it means the genres exhausted and that's where a fright nightight Night came in.
And I just got very, very lucky that Guy McElwain at Columbia gave me the go ahead, but it was because I was so hot as a writer. But, you know, I like to think that Fright Night began the resuscitation of the vampire genre, which now, of course, is absolutely huge.

But so is any monster.

But anyway, it's been a hell of a trip.

My wife said, when will you be home?

I said, it's 80 pages.

We start at 11.

We'll be done by 12.30.

You'll see it at noon.

Meanwhile, who knew? We only have 17 pages left, though. I mean, it's an event.
It's turned into an epic. It is.
And thank God you're a good storyteller. Oh.
Because you'll be able to remind us when we're all losing our minds. Of how great it was.
Yeah, countdown to me losing mine. And we appreciate crosstalk, we appreciate overlap on lines.
If you can't. We want as natural a...
Do you want sound effects with kissing and moaning as well? Please. Whatever you wanna do.
I'm just gonna use you. Whoever needs assistance.

Lunch is back out where we had charcuterie, so we'll do a longer break, have some lunch. We're gonna do a little toast and we're gonna get wild.

Sweet.

But not too wild because you gotta come back and get it.

It's 420, be careful.

Well, we know, yes.

But I didn't bring any of that.

We're going to do that.

420?

No, it's 118.

And if everybody hasn't met Jack Daniel, our narrator, Jack has done a few of these for us.

When you hear his voice in the finished product, you're going to go, holy crap, that guy sounded like that?

When you hear it now, though, it's going to sound awful.

No, I sounded like you when I woke up this morning.

Oh, I remember.

I know the tune.

It's the whistler that's not working.

Anybody.

I got it. I can.
Go for it. Very good.
Too high. Now I'm worn out.
Now I'm worn out. Okay.
Remember. Thank you.
Who's doing that? Daniel. Daniel, baby.
Brilliant. Bravo.
Bravo. A little lyric to it and everything.
Nice. No, that was a song.
You can do it all. Mm-hmm.
Originally, the whistle song was going to be whistle while you work. No.
Remember that? Remember that? No, I didn't. And Disney wanted $50,000.
Huh. Oh, is that it? Yeah.
And that's why we use Strangers in the Night. That's a very good version.
That's all. Whistle While You Work was really funny, too.
Oh, Whistle While You Work was my original idea. Something loud.
Yeah. God, everywhere I look, I gotta tell you, I think all of you are just wonderful.
I mean,

I had cast this not just for horror, but also because you could do comedy.

Every one of you made me laugh at something in the reading. And that's why you're here 40 years later and you're still making me laugh.

Thank you. You have assembled an incredible reading cast here.
Obviously, so many of the original cast members from the original film, as well as Mr. Mark Hamill, Ms.
Rosaria Dawson. One person, of course, who can't be here because he's the dearly departed Roddy McDowell is just such a key figure in the original movie.
He's such an amazing actor. He's got a rich history.
Do you have any special memories of him you might want to mention at this time? Well, I could go on for an hour. Roddy was greatdy Roddy was a walking film history he was an oral

he was an oral history of the of the film business because he started when he was like

eight years old I think he did he did Mark Hamill just told me he did how green was my valley when he was 10 yeah Roddy lived in perpetual fear he would never cross over from being a child actor to being an adult actor. And he felt that way when he was well in his 50s, you know? He was kind, he was giving.
He had me and my wife over so many nights to his house, and we met so many of my heroes, famous people, famous directors. You know, I asked Roddy, did you get nominated for Cleopatra? He said, you know, there's a funny story about that.
I was submitted by 20th Century Fox in the leading actor category. And when they realized their mistake, they tried to correct it, and the Academy said, it's too late.
They're past the process. So they took out a full-page ad, Fox did, in the trades, apologizing to him, saying, you know, your performance was lauded by critics all over the world as, you know, an essential part of the success of Cleopatra.
But I think he enjoyed, I knew so much about his career, because I was asking him stuff about, what was it like being on Batman? You know, I just fanboyed out. Because it was my only connection to the golden age of Hollywood.
Yeah, mine too. Where he was a little boy working on Lassie Come Home and with Elizabeth Taylor.
And oh my I mean he introduced me to Elizabeth oh yeah yeah the one I missed was Betty Davis okay because she would go over there but she would this is not I'm not being she was stroked out so you know so he was he kept but I kept asking about the directors right green was my valley. What was it like to work with him?

Yeah.

Can you imagine?

Was that John Ford?

Yeah, John Ford.

Yes.

You know?

Wow.

And you know he wasn't easy.

I heard he was a tyrant.

Yeah, John Wayne was scared of John Ford.

You know?

Yeah.

But Roddy had all those stories.

And as I said, I walked MGM the last day it was open with Roddy.

And Roddy told me he could tell me what movies had been filmed and what sound stages.

He could look at the prop shops.

There were two prop shops.

And he could say what props were made in what shop.

He could look at the dressing rooms and tell me who was in them,

and he could tell me about the assignations, about who was having an affair with whom, among the MGM stars. He showed me where Katharine Hepburn had met Spencer Tracy outside the Thalberg building.
And I kept saying, write an autobiography. And he said, I can't.
I really know where the bodies are buried. Yeah, and he did.
He did. I mean, I never met anybody like him.
He loved Hollywood as much as we did. Yeah.
And he was also an extraordinary friend. Wherever he was in the world, I remember once getting a birthday card from him from Prague.
Wow. Yeah.
Just on my birthday. Well, he adored, he adored Bill Ragsdale.
He gave him, he gave him his, the, the, the, the, the, the bench outs in the hallway. Didn't he give, he gave you that? That's mine.
That's yours? He gave it to you? Chris objected to him. He and Ethel Merman wrangled over this pew from a church on Hudson Street in New York City, and he got the pew, and he gave it to us just before he died.
Oh, God. I felt like I had a connection to him.
I mean, it really comes through. That's what I said to you before.
We did a TV movie together. Well, we did a TV movie together, and we wound up sharing the same trailer.
And Cindy Williams was the star, so we'd have an hour, 90 minutes, alone time. And I just couldn't stop asking about his career.
And he was forthcoming because he knew I was interested. And he would tell me stories about Elizabeth Taylor making Lasty come home.
He was 12 years old when he made How Green Was My Valley. Don't you wish you'd had a tape recorder? Oh, yeah.
Oh, my God. Because, I mean, I didn't really have a contact with the golden age of Hollywood.
Certainly not like him. No, and you started like him and Tam.
Yeah. And this would have been in the 80s, so he would have been probably in his 50s, early 50s.
So he was so personable. And I did the voice of the Joker on the animated Batman, and he had done Mad Hatter on the Adam West Batman, and then they brought him to the animated series.
He did four episodes. And I said to the writers, I said, you team me up with all of these other villains.
Team me up with the Mad Hatter. I want to work with Bobby McDowell.
But he had a good heart and I didn't think anybody could ever take his place. And then four years ago, we did a reading through Zoom and Mark Hamill was kind enough to stand in for Roddy and he worked with Roddy in Great Britain in a TV movie and he knew him and he somehow became Peter Vincent Mark Hamill and he made Peter Vincent work as work.
Part of it was Roddy, but it was also Mark being Mark. And that's why when I saw that, I realized that I had to get the cast back together again to do a reading that had really high sound quality that I got with Manifest Media and Jack Levy.
And then we worked, and I don't know, I've been working for four years to get this together. And this, what you see here in front of you, is the result of four years of work.
And I'm just thrilled. I'm so happy.
I'm nervous. Well, it looks like it's going to go off without a hitch.
How's that process been, putting this whole

show together? Has it been like putting together a radio show in a way?

Oh, it's been like putting together a feature film.

Yeah, look at this. I mean, this is called

deficit financing. So you're

out there. People, watch this.
We're going to need the money to pay the debt. Before we all leave after this, I have a couple of things I'd like to get signed by the cast.
It's all right. I have very reasonable rates.
Master in goods of preferred. He's going to be selling these by a gas station in the corner.
As long as you don't ask me to sign your arm. I like when you sign at Universal and it's on eBay before you get home to Malibu.
And they say, don't put it to anybody, it's a gift. I might as well say it best wishes eBay.

Martin, your wife told me about that.

I said, we're going to make specific rules against that.

I don't take it because I'm so great.

It's become a merchandising entity.

So these people, anything you sign goes up in value.

So wherever you go out in public, you're besieged, not by fans, by fans by dealers and they are relentless they follow you right to your car and they're waiting no they chased him in a car the one time we left you alone oh they followed me all the way home i was afraid to see where my house was so i stopped just before the last turnoff and just pled with them i signed everything they had because I didn't want them mad at me. But I said, if I sign everything, will you go away? And they agreed.
So 45 minutes later, I did and they did. Wow.
Geez. What I want to know is where did the vampire kit go? Where did the vampire killing kit go? You talking about the one from God McElwain? Gosh, the one he carried.
No, the one from the movie. We were supposed to go to BU and receive him.
A lot of his stuff at BU, but I haven't gotten up there yet. Yeah, well, before we're gone, please do.
Take some pictures. What about having a Joseph Porro exhibit at the Academy where they have all the costumes and do a Fright.
They just did John Waters. They should do Joseph Poro and end the costumes for Fright Night 1 and 2.
Well, that'd be great. I don't know if we could assemble them because they've all been auctioned off.
I saw where your leather coat, Sherry Dandridge's leather coat, went for a lot of money to somebody in Canada. Oh, really? Who put it up on, up on, up, put it up in their screen.
I had a lot of that stuff for years and then I just, you know, it went away. A fan at a con had his coat, Peter's coat.
You have what? I have three of my outfits. Oh, you have your outfits? Well, you were smarter than the rest of us.
William, do you have yours? I have your silver medal. I don't know how I got it.
Oh, boy. Amanda? Amanda? Tom? They just sold your painting.
I bid up to $12,000. I wondered about who got the painting.
Yeah, I bid up to $12,000 on that painting about a year ago. It was sitting in a prop house.
Are you right? Sitting in a prop house. Mark, it went for $27,000 in Great Britain.
He knows that. I should get a commission.
I should get a commission. That was my idea.
Well, I'm the one who told him to paint it. I'm surprised you didn't keep that for yourself.
At that moment in time, there was no, people were not collecting screen-used props. I just saw a screen-used Chucky go for $85,000.
And finally, what do you think, is there, I know there's obviously been the 1988 you know not part two and then there's the 2011 remake and uh there's been various books and comics we have julie carmen here from fright night two oh friday part two yeah oh that's fantastic but what do you tom do you think uh might be more for Fright Night down the road? There sure is going to be coming from me, because I wrote this as an original, and I withheld and owned the rights to Fright Night, dramatic, literary, and musical. And yes, if you've been with us last night at the New Beverly and seen what happened there, yes, I've got more Fright Night stories with me.
You can find the first one on Amazon called Fright Night Origins. And that's there.
And we're coming out with a new one called Fright Night Aftermath. And I'm going into my dotage writing Fright Night stories.
And I'm so blessed.

I'm so lucky that I have it.

I think we're blessed too, Tom.

Thank you all so much.

Congrats on the show today.

Break legs.

As many as we have to.

Same to you.

Same to you.

God bless. God bless.

God bless. It's a complex, complex, complex.
It's a complex. Welcome to Fright Night.
For real? That was my favorite line.

Sorry.