Editorials
[It Came From the ‘80s] Vampires, Werewolves, and Flaming Death in ‘Fright Night Part 2’
With horror industry heavy hitters already in place from the 1970s, the 1980s built upon that with the rise of brilliant minds in makeup and effects artists, as well as advances in technology. Artists like Rick Baker, Rob Bottin, Alec Gillis, Tom Woodruff Jr., Tom Savini, Stan Winston, and countless other artists that delivered groundbreaking, mind-blowing practical effects that ushered in the pre-CGI Golden Age of Cinema. Which meant a glorious glut of creatures in horror. More than just a technical marvel, the creatures on display in ‘80s horror meant tangible texture that still holds up decades later. Grotesque slimy skin to brutal transformation sequences, there wasn’t anything the artists couldn’t create. It Came From the ‘80s is a series that will pay homage to the monstrous, deadly, and often slimy creatures that made the ‘80s such a fantastic decade in horror.
One of the ‘80s most beloved vampire films is the Tom Holland’s directorial debut Fright Night. The horror comedy followed teen horror fan Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale), who discovers his new neighbor Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire responsible for the disappearances of multiple people. When no one believes him, he turns to local horror host Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) for help. Throw in werewolves, monstrous bats, and melting, oozing deaths in the midge of the golden era of practical effects, and Fright Night became a hit. The inevitable sequel that followed four years later saw Jerry’s vampiric sister out for revenge against Charley and Peter, except Charley has since stopped believing in vampires. Though the plot structure is closely aligned with its predecessor, the special makeup and creature effects has a much bigger role to play.
The biggest change for this sequel is the gender swapping. With Charley now the skeptic, it’s his girlfriend Alex (Traci Lind) that teams up with Peter Vincent to save him from the big bad vampire’s clutches. That vampire is Regine (In the Mouth of Madness’ Julie Carmen), an eccentric performance artist turned new horror host of Fright Night. Regine is dead set on a slow revenge upon Charley for killing her brother, Jerry, and she comes with a bigger entourage. There’s the roller skating right-hand vampire Belle (Russell Clark), bug-eating enforcer Bozworth (Brian Thompson), and flirtatious werewolf Louie (Jon Gries).
Between the larger cast of monsters and the performance artist aspect of Regine’s character, that meant a lot more room to play for the special makeup effects team. The large scope of work was a big undertaking for special makeup and creature effects artist Bart Mixon (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), stepping into the supervisor role for a major effects-driven film for the first time. He enlisted a core team of artists made up of key sculptor Brian Wade, key painter Aaron Sims, Norman Cabrera, and moldmaker Jim McLoughlin. He was also able to pull in artists Gabe Bartalos, Barney Burman, Matt Rose, and more for periods of time to work on the film.
The crew had a lot of effects to handle, from the decapitation of the bowling alley owner, Bozworth’s chest getting sliced open, Belle’s melting demise, and even Louie’s transformation sequences. It paled in comparison to the epic final battle between Regine and our plucky heroes. Pissed off, Regine transforms into a monstrous bat creature and attacks. What was originally designed to only feature a stop motion puppet eventually evolved into a full-sized bat crashing through the floor. The epic bat attack became a splicing of both stop-motion animation of the miniature bat and a massive bat puppet secured on a rod and pushed through the elevator floor.
From there, the movie has Regine transforming back to her original form to finish off Charley before suffering a gruesome death by sunlight. Mixon’s original designs for this death proved much too disgusting for director Tommy Lee Wallace (Halloween III: Season of the Witch), so Mixon and team scaled back to a more traditional gelatin burn makeup application. For the spectacular flaming death scene, it was actress Dinah Cancer in makeup and prosthetics, undergoing three hours of makeup application to look somewhere halfway between giant bat and human.
Despite how successful the original film was, the sequel only saw a limited release in the U.S. and didn’t fare as well as a result. From a narrative standpoint, Fright Night Part 2 most sticks to the same story beats of its predecessor. It’s the visual element that makes this underseen sequel shine, though. Mixon and his crew made a fun effects-heavy sequel that’s an improvement over the original, and Carmen is a compelling villain as Regine.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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