"Such a thing simply couldn’t happen twice, Charlie."-- Peter Vincent

This sequel to the 80’s vampire gem “Fright Night” drops the dash of old school which the first one had to fully embrace the hip, colorful and glam 80’s vibe. We’re talking a transvestite vampire on roller-skates, puffy hair and tacky outfits. Although I did miss the more “classic” ingredients that the first Fright Night sported, the lack of them didn’t kill this sequel, it just made it less unique and more in tune with the likes of "The Lost Boys" or "Vamp".

This follow-up does suffer from a bad case of “sequelite” at times, but I still found lots of slick stuff to dig here. First off, it felt great to see the boyz back in human rodents killing action again. Charlie Brewster (Ragsdale) and Peter Vincent (McDowall) are in the house ya'll and they can do no wrong. The magic is still there. Second of all, the inclusion of the new lead vamp Regine (Carmen), brings with it a very interesting subplot in respect to Charlie. I really dug her “vengeance” angle and that scenario brought poor Charlie to places he didn’t visit in the original. It’s nice to see a sequel take its lead character further.

Regine (Carmen) herself is one hot little fanged number. Although she doesn’t have the incredible magnetism that Jerry Dandridge (played by Chris Sarandon) showcased in the first, she’s still extremely pleasant to the eye. I relished her erotic dance sequences (yes, I foamed), her impressive cleavage and every time the camera would close up on her face, I would get lost in her sultry gaze. Great piece of casting there. The flick itself looks way sharp, Wallace handles his directorial tasks like a champ, the awesome score by Brad Fiedel thankfully returns and the movie is very effect-heavy; well-done effects at that! No CGI can ever do what these dudes used to accomplish in the days. Nice!

On a negative vibe, this movie’s biggest fault has to be the tedious relationship between Charlie and Alex (Lind). Their love thang bored the crap out of me. Why is she dating this chump again? I mean, he stands her up big-time! He’s always trying to get in her pants! He dresses like shite! Why doesn’t she dump his neurotic ass? It didn’t make sense to me. Also, will Charlie ever date a girl that’s NOT a virgin? I felt echoes of the first “Fright Night” there. Which brings me to this sequel’s second biggest boo-boo: it’s too much like the first one at times. Any "connaisseur" of the original will spot many identical moments in this sequel. The screenwriters SHOULDN’T have watched the first "Fright Night" so many times before putting pen to paper.

My last pet peeve is that apart from wood-inducing Regine, the other baddies didn’t do much for me. The roller skating gender bender (Clark) was boring and the werewolf duder (Gries) was somewhat funny but kind of annoying at the same time. His werewolf get-up wuz also the only weak effect in the flick. The sole entertaining supporting hoodlum was the bug-eating ogre (Thompson) who spouted the names of the insects which he ate in Latin, before gobbling them up. He got a couple of chuckles out of me and his insect fetish eventually lead to one very gruesome demise.

I caught a little mistake here. When Regine picks up Charlie’s friend in her limo for a night of bloodsucking, she’s outside and it's daytime. She’s not even wearing sunglasses!

The character of Evil Ed was once included in the sequel but Stephen Geoffrey’s wasn’t too hip to doing the part again (saying it was too small) and got out of doing it to star in "976-EVIL" instead.

Jon Gries (Louis) played another werewolf in “The Monster Squad”.