, Dario Argento's Latest Terror Epic! CREEPERS IMAGINATION, INC.: A Fango Find . .6 POSTAL ZONE: Bub Speaks! Divorce Court-Fango Style! . .7 THE VAMPIRE NEXT DOOR: Fright Night's C hris Sa randon .......10 VAL GUEST: From Creeping Unknown to Fox M ystery Theatre . .. .14 FRIGHT NIGHT FX: The C reatures of Cook and Johnson .........19 BLOCH ON SCREEN: Film Career of Psycho author Robert Bl och .23 FREDDY'S REVENGE! Elm Street Killer Return s! ......... .. 27 VIDEO EYE OF DR. CYClOPS: Killer Babies! Mamie Va n Doren! .. .32 SILVER BULLET GALLERY: A Look at the Werewolf FX . ....34 TOXIC AVENGER: A Monster Vigilante in a Tutu! . ..37 PIT & THE PEN: A lex on the Great Robert Siod mak. .. .40 SCAR SEARCH! Fango Discovers New Makeup Talent!. ..... • .... .43 HOWLING 2: Werevvolves in Transylvania ... .46 CREEPERS! Dario A rgento's Latest Terror Epic. .. .51 RE-ANIMATOR CONTEST! Win a Head! .......... .......... .55 MORLOCK MAN: Sc riptor of Black Scorpion & Ti me Machine . .. .56 NIGHTMARE LIBRARY: The Living Dead Author's Latest. .. .. 61 MONSTER INVASIONS: Tobe Hooper's Invaders from Mars . ......62 ClASSIFIEDS. .......66 Norman Jacobs & Kerry O'Quinn, Publishers; Rita Eisenstein, Associate Publisher Milburn Smith, Assistant Publisher; Robert R. Rachai, Circulation Director WR. Mahalley, Creative Director; Robert M. Sacks, Production Director fANCORIA is publilht"d nine limes. 1"'.', in , ~n., r...t>., M ..." M.>y, June, Aug., Sept., Od. & Dec. by O'Quinn Studj.,.. Inc., 475 P.rk A~'mut Soulh, N~w Yo.k, N.Y. 10(116. This is is~ u e f49, \blurne 3, (I .... ()1{>4·2111). Enti.econtents is copy'ight @1985byO'Quinn Studios. I nCo All tights .e~rwd. Reprint or .ep.oduction o' ~Ily materia! in paft o. in whole without wdncn pe.mis<~on 'rom the publ'she. is stri(lly forbidden. Second d~ss ~Iage f>ilid al New yo.k, N. V. and additIonal mailing oIflCeS. 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By Ed Gross PHOTOS: @ 1965 OOLUMBIA PICTURES n the past, cinematic vampires have NOIN, Chris Sarandon has con tempo­ means to make sure that his secret re­ been portrayed as pale-ski nned rized this incarnation of evil to great ef­ mains safe, including killing Charley ghouls wandering around cemeter­ fect in Tom Holland's Fright Night, a film Brewster, his teenaged next door neigh­ Iies, draped. in cumbersome black which has more in common with the bor, w ho has learned the truth. capes, and threatening tosuck the blood Universal horror classics of the 30's and "The thing that appeals to me about out of any victims who happen' by. 40's than the current crop of slice-and­ Jerry;' explains Sarandon, "is that he's to- . Then in the late 1970's Frank l angella ro­ dice productions which have prolifer­ tally contemporary. That was something manticized Bram Stoker's Dracula in the ated in the genre. we all strived for, and something I found play and film of the same name, proving In this updati ng of "The Boy WhO very interesting about the character be­ that vampires could be, above all else, Cried Wolf;' 5arandon plays Jerry Dan­ cause he wasn't the Count of legend or charming. dridge, a vampire w~o will go to any Bram Stoker, but a guy who everybody 10 FANGORIA #49 knev.' and couldn't believe.....-as being ac­ cused of being a vampire. He isn't the personification of pure evil that vam­ pires are knONn to be." What impressed the actor most about the character, was his multi-dimensional facets. "Ju st think about this guy's problems," he says sincerely. " On the o ne hand you've got somebody who's got some­ thing which everybody would probably love to have, which is eternal life. Also, he's tremendously powerful, phys ically, and attractive sex ually. What he does, • people are, for some reason, attracted to. But at the same time, hONwould you like to know that if people found out about you, nobody would really want to hang around you? ,That is, to spend eternity­ but to spend eternity shunned by any normal kind of society; not being able to form any kind of normal human relation­ ship. To be, in a way, damned to eternity.' (There's a sense of this guy's Iragedy as well as his attractiveness." This obvious enthusiasm is surprising, especially when one considers thai the aClor nearly turned the role down. " I was sent the sc ript by my agent and immediately sort of got sucked in by the plot because ii'S wonderfully con­ structed and plotted:' explains Saran­ via his various screen personas, from AI ing a vampire, certainly one of the most don. "After I read it, I said 'Gee, this is Pacino's gay lover in Dog Day Afternoon bizarre roles he's been offered. going to make a great movie. It's a shame (which won him an Oscar nomination) " It wasn 't so much that;' he counters, Ihat I'm not really interested in playing and the rapi st of Lipstick, to a tool of the " but that the guy was such a bad guy. In a this part: The reasons for that are that devil in The Sen tinel and, finally, a lead­ way he was, but in away he wasn't. I think over the past couple of years I've played a ing role with Goldie Hawn in Protocol. that I carried in some of my prejudices few villains and didn't want to get locked Bearing this in mind, one \r\IO nders if when I first read the sc ript. Rather than into playing anolher one. I thought the he had any aversions"to the idea of play- reading it in a very objective way, I read it chara cter was an interesting one, though , I didn't think it was quite fleshed oul. Des pite my re se rvations, I had some conversations with Tom, we came up with some ideas, and I ended up doing W' " I made a promise to Chris;' adds Hoi­ land, "that I would make Jerry sensual and into a leading man; to show that side of him. Hedidn't wan t todoanotherwild and cra zy character role:' Sarandon felt that what was missing \\laS the character's haunted quality, part of which would come across in the play­ ing, and that there were a fev.' things needed in the script which would ex­ press this. "The charaCler's not so much the per­ sonifica tion of pu re evil, as he is a person who became a vampire by circum­ stances," he says. " We did all that groundwork for ourselves in terms of who this guy was and what happened; how it happened. Tom.....-as very encour­ aging about thai. To come up with that kind of life for the character so that he ultimately ends up more interesting for the audience:' Coming up with identifiable charac­ ters has been an objective of the·actor's sj nce graduat ing from the University of West Vi rginia, and, besid es numerous stage roles, he's tried to achieve this goal FANGORIA N49 11 in a much more 'what's it going to do fo~ one I d id just before this, I think I work. When I first read the script, I me?' way. Having played a couple of vil­ needn't have worried so much. I came to couldn't put it down. I don't mean that as lains in the past, I was a little worried realize that after a while:' a cliche, I mean that for real. When I read about it. One thing which came close to being a that sc ript, I remember si tting in the very, "I don't want to get locked into playing problem was the marathon makeup ses­ chair I'm sitting in as we speak, my wife anything;' he elaborates. "I don't want to sions which enabled Sarandon to go Sitting in bed knitting and I said, 'Sorry, be known as a heavy, or as anything in from being the suave and good looking honey, I knCMI it's time to go in and start particular but just a good actor who can Dandridge, to the snarling bat-l ike dinner, but I can't yet. I have to finish handle anything that comes along. Wish­ "spawn of Satan" during choice mo­ this.' I put it down like an hour and 10 ful thinking, but that's the image I would ments. minutes later and I figured "that it was hope to have in the industry.