Fright Night Versus The Lost Boys, Which is the Better 80s Vampire Movie?

 I love vampire movies and while most of my favorites were made before I was born, two of them were from my 1980s childhood, Fright Night (1985) and The Lost Boys (1987).

Today, for reasons I can’t even begin to explain, I asked myself “which is the better of the two?” So, I decided to do an analysis based on five categories:

 

Category 1 – The cast.

I think the thing that stands out for me most when I think of The Lost Boys is the list of actors that could be considered who’s who of the 80s and 90s. There are the “two Coreys” Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. Joining them are Kiefer Sutherland and Alex Winter with Jason Patric and Dianne Wiest having significant roles.

Fright Night also has some recognizable names, like Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowall and William Ragsdale. However, as far as star power goes, I think they are simply outnumbered.

Winner: The Lost Boys

Category 2 – The main protagonist.

While I get why people loved Haim (rest in peace) and I wouldn’t consider myself someone who disliked him, I just am not a huge fan of Sam in The Lost Boys. There’s a memorable bath scene with him but when it comes to the vampire parts, he’s sort of just there. Feldman’s Edgar Frog is the first character that always comes to mind when I think about the movie and Sam’s half-vampire brother Michael (Patric) gets as much, if not more, screen time.

To be fair, Charley Brewster (Ragsdale) also doesn’t exactly make my list of best horror movie protagonists either. However, there’s no doubt he’s supposed to be the star of the film, even though Peter Vincent (McDowall) plays a significant role too, and unlike Sam, he is the one who kills the bad guy in the end.

Winner (by a small margin): Fright Night.

Category 3 – The vampire villain.

Fright Night’s Jerry Dandrige (Sarandon) is a solid antagonist and everything I would expect from a vampire living next door. He looks the part, he acts the part, and the way he always stays one step ahead of Charley, tormenting and practically torturing the boy next door, is just plain evil.

The Lost Boys, however, doesn’t just have one vampire, it has multiple. Even if you dismiss the great supporting performance by Winter as Marko and focus just on the lead vampire, you’re still doubling the fun with Sutherland’s performance as David and the surprise vampire that outranks him.

Winner (by quantity as well as quality): The Lost Boys

Category 4 – The sidekick

I’ve already mentioned Feldman’s Edgar Frog, one half of the Frog brothers, as stealing scenes in The Lost Boys. He is as solid as a sidekick comes, to the point you could even consider him the unofficial star of the movie.

It’s a little trickier with Fright Night because Charley’s friend, Evil Ed (Stephen Geoffreys) probably is technically the sidekick in the movie. However, I would lean more toward Peter Vincent in that role, primarily since the movie is named after him (or at least the show he hosts). I think Vincent and Frog are neck-and-neck throughout, but I’ll give the tie breaker to Vincent because he assists in killing the main bad guy, something that can't be said about Frog.

Winner: Fright Night

Category 5 – Believability

Obviously, I am willing to suspend some of my disbelief because these are vampire movies, and they are going to have a supernatural/magical element to them. However, even after doing that, there are still some considerations.

When it comes to The Lost Boys, for example, I find it a little difficult to believe a gang like that wouldn’t draw attention, even if they had a secret ally. Perhaps the local authorities wouldn’t immediately think they were vampires but certainly the hoodlum element would result in someone keeping a watchful eye on them, especially since it wasn’t as though they were going out of their way to hide their abilities.

Along those same lines, Fright Night’s Danridge is a seemingly respectable citizen that, like many well-known real-life serial killers, could easily fool his neighbors and the police into believing he was wrongfully accused by his teenage neighbor. In fact, if it weren’t for turning into a bat, etc., he probably could just be a normal killer and not a supernatural being.

In other words, I’m more likely to believe Danridge could get away with being a vampire a whole lot longer than the fanged gang in The Lost Boys, giving Fright Night the slight edge.

Winner: Fright Night.

So, in conclusion, Fright Night beats out The Lost Boys by a 3-2 score, but the margin is close enough where it could easily flip if I added more categories or if someone interpreted one of these categories slightly different than I did.

With that in mind, maybe I’ll just say it’s too close to call and recommend watching both one evening.