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Welcome, Popversians, to another edition of The Coldest Open, the column where I, your humble horror host, examine the history of scary cinema through the first moments of its standout entries. As I write this, we are approaching the 40th anniversary of one of the most talked-about vampire movies of the 1980s, one that have us a sequel, a reboot, and is currently on track for more chapters. I'm talking about Tom Holland's Fright Night.

The way Coldest Open works is this: I'm going to be breaking down five different hallmarks of every great cold open in horror, then judging whether the movie in question pulls them off. If so, that hallmark will get ranked with a "Cold" verdict; if not, it'll get ranked with a "warm." At the end, we'll tally up those verdicts and determine a temperature, ranging all the way from Lukewarm to Absolute Zero.

Make sense? Alright great, then go ahead and grab your crosses (and maybe your creep-repellent; we'll talk about that in a moment).

Fright Night's Cold-Blooded Killer

The plot of Fright Night has much to do with Dracula, in that both hinge on a real-estate savvy vampire. In this case, that vampire is Jerry Dandridge, played by Chris Sarandon. Our first glimpse of Jerry is from the window of protagonist Charley (William Ragsdale), who catches sight of him while making out with his girlfriend, Amy (Amanda Bearse). Jerry is carrying a coffin on a full moon-lit night, which in theory would be scary... if what was going on with Amy and Charley wasn't so distracting.

Now look, I know that media verging on half a century old is going to feel a little dated, but the way that Charley tries coercing Amy into sex feels downright archaic, and is deeply uncomfortable. After Charley yells at Amy for saying no (big yikes), Amy apologizes, making the whole thing even creepier, and not in the way you want out of a horror movie. The end result is that the already shadowy into to the movie's central villain is greatly overshadowed by the protagonist's general sleaziness. 

Verdict: Warm

Fright Night's First Person to Get Iced

Also happening in the background is the first death of the movie, which isn't seen but is mentioned in a TV broadcast that Charley's mom (Dorothy Fielding) is watching. This, too, gets muffled by what's going on with Charley, who, after rejecting Amy's eventual agreement to have sex, rudely ignores her in favor of staring out the window toward his new neighbor. To be fair, the announcement of this first death was clearly never meant to be anything but a quick portent of doom for our main character... but when our main character starts off so unlikable, how nervous about his doom are we supposed to be?

Verdict: Warm

Fright Night's Polar Plot Intro

Fortunately, Charley won't be the only vampire hunter we track with through this movie - there's also Peter Vincent, the Vincent Price-esque horror host and classic horror movie star whose film plays in the background of the opening moments. Played by Roddy McDowall, Peter will eventually charm us as a retired actor-turned real-life paranormal investigator, but there's no way of knowing that in the first few moments of the movie. Once again, Charley's unrelatable character (who both seems to care too much about the movie he's watching and not enough) obfuscates the connection that could've been made here.

I do love the fake horror movie that Peter Vincent stars in, though.

Verdict: Warm

Fright Night's Frozen Snapshots

In fact, I think the inclusion of that fake horror movie is the one thing that this opening scene really has going for it. The choice of director Tom Holland (the other one, not Spider-Man) to put it on in the background as the Charley/Amy scene plays out is a great one - when the characters in the movie kiss, so do Charley and Amy; when Charley spots the coffin outside his bedroom window, Amy sees one on the screen and rolls her eyes. 

This snippet of fake film footage tells us that we're headed into a horror story that's very aware of horror in popular culture, setting us up to have our expectations of the latter challenged later on. Think of it like Casey Becker chatting about old slashers with Ghostface in the opening of Scream - there's a fun level of metaness to it that tells watching horror fans, "Hey, this one is for you." 

Verdict: Cold

Fright Night's Bone-Chilling Music

And by extension, the music that plays in the background as Peter's film ("Blood Castle," it's called) has the same effect of inviting fright fans into the movie's story. No, it's not a terribly original backing track, and it doesn't come back into the film's score at all. But hey, I'm a sucker for Midnight Movie fare, and since Tom Holland spent the first couple of moments telling his audience he is, too, I'll give him the props.

Verdict: Cold

Fright Night's Cold Open Temperature: Slight Chill

Looking back on older horror movies often means bumping into some social content that makes us uncomfortable. Which is not to say we shouldn't do it - we should! But at the same time, we've got to be honest about what we're looking at. The flippantness with which the opening moments of this movie treat sexual coercion not only make us feel gross, they actively confuse the story, raising questions the movie doesn't answer. 

Cheif among those is: If Charley is so horny that he ignores multiple pleas for him to not touch Amy, why is he all of a sudden not interested when he sees something strange outside? That doesn't just make him unlikable - it makes the plot feel incomplete.

Fortunately, there's a lot more movie up ahead after these first couple of moments, and some of that movie is absolutely stellar makeup effects, the likes of which are still copied today. But we're only here to talk about the beginnings, I'm gonna have to give this vampiric introduction the old Silver Cross treatment.

Unless anybody has garlic pepper spray hanging around.

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." Join Popverse's weekly explorations of the best opening moments of horror cinema in The Coldest Open, and then check out:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.