Audrey Fox
During the 1980s, you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a horror comedy, many of which are well regarded to this day. But one of the most underrated is the vampire flick Fright Night, which sees a teenager square up against the sexy vampire who has moved in next door. And within Fright Night, amidst multiple standout performances, the humble teen sidekick Evil Eds is criminally overlooked. The performance of Stephen Geoffreys goes a long way in establishing the tone of Fright Night, which is where so many similar horror comedies struggle. With each off-the-wall line reading, Evil Ed further cements the reputation of Fright Night in camp horror history. And does he ever get a thank you? Of course not. So here we are, 40 years after the film’s release, to draw a line in the sand demanding justice for Evil Ed.
Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) is a pretty typical teenage boy: He stays up way too late watching old horror movies, he hangs out with his incredibly obnoxious friend Evil Ed (Stephen Geoffreys), and spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to make a move on his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse). But his life takes a turn for the strange and unusual when, while spying on his new next-door neighbor Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon) – you know, as one does – he sees Jerry with a beautiful woman, who he promptly kills. Real Rear Window stuff. But good luck being the teenager trying to convince anyone that your aggressively charming neighbor is actually a bloodthirsty monster. At a certain point, you just have to take matters into your own hands – which, after Jerry sets his sights on Amy, Charley does, enlisting the aid of famed TV vampire hunter Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) and none other than our boy Evil Ed.
So what does Evil Ed bring to the table, aside from the ability to irritate everyone within a five-mile radius? It’s hard to know where to start. Evil Ed has some of the most memorable lines in the film, not because of the way that they’re written, but because of how Geoffreys finds the weirdest possible way to say them. You wouldn’t, for example, think that the line “His dinner’s in the oven!” on paper would be intensely quotable, but that’s because you’re not hearing the manic energy that fuels a teenage dork who has been turned into a vampire and is trying to be scary. His unhinged qualities – which begin well before he’s actually turned, mind you – remind us of what Fright Night is at its heart: a campy horror film that should not be taken too seriously. Ironically, he’s creepily morbid when he’s alive but pitiable once he’s a member of the undead, his over-the-top villainy as a foot soldier for Jerry a reminder that even in death he’s just the goofy sidekick.
Would the character as written be half as effective without Stephen Geoffreys in the role? Probably not. It’s certainly his eccentric screen presence that makes Evil Ed so memorable. The actor has certainly spent plenty of time being stopped on the street and asked to say, “Oh, you’re so COOL, Brewster!,” so it’s clearly something about his delivery that immortalized the character. And looking back, it’s a shame that Geoffreys didn’t wind up getting more quality roles in the wake of his iconic horror performance. (The man got a Tony nomination the year before it came out, after all, so his acting credentials are genuine.)
He was unable to reprise his role in the 1988 sequel Fright Night 2 due to scheduling conflicts with 976-EVIL, the directorial debut of Freddy Krueger actor Robert Englund. And after a few more horror films during the late 1980s, none of which had the same impact as Fright Night, he spent most of the 1990s taking a break from mainstream cinema. In the mid-2000s, he made his triumphant return to horror, appearing in films such as Sick Girl and Do Not Disturb, making a nice bookend to a turbulent career but one peppered with stand-out roles.
It’s possible that Stephen Geoffreys’s particular screen presence was uniquely suited to the quirky horror comedies of the 1980s, and once the genre transitioned into more cynical, meta horror there wasn’t a place for him. But although his moment in the sun as Evil Ed was all-too-brief, and we certainly wish that we had been treated to more of his bizarre energy in other films, none of that takes away from how much fun he makes Fright Night. Chris Sarandon is charismatic and incredibly seductive, William Ragsdale has an everyman quality as Charley, but you really need Evil Ed in the mix to bring the whole thing together.
“Fright Night” is available for digital rental or purchase.
