It's a few years later, and Charlie Brewster (William Ragsdale) has been in therapy, attempting to recover from the incidents of the original film.  Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) is still the host of "Fright Night", and an adamant believer in the undead since the vanquishing of Jerry Dandridge.  Charlie is attending college and has new girlfriend in the beautiful and attractive Alex (Tracy Lin).  Charlie has attempted to put the events of four years ago far behind him, but the past has just caught up to our two heroes.  Meet Regine Dandridge (Julie Carmen).  Sexy, seductive, alluring, just like her brother Jerry.  Regine has come to avenge her brother's death upon Charlie and "the Great Vampire Killer", Mr. Vincent.  Regine ensnares Charlie with her blindingly seductive aura, and good 'ol Charlie can't resist her mesmerizing beauty.  Brewster tries to deny what's happening around him, but Regine wishes to make Charlie into one of the undead to eternally torture him.  The story goes about a similar path of the original as Peter Vincent, despite his true believer status, is still somewhat cowardly and skeptical as to Charlie's eventual claims.  The tables turn quickly as they do in the original Fright Night.  Charlie is truly dissuaded in his claims only for Mr. Vincent to peer into his pocket mirror once again to reveal the non-reflection of their vampiric adversaries.  Some things vary from the original's plot path, but much parallel's it such as Peter Vincent getting fired as host of "Fright Night".

Fright Night, Part II is directed and co-written by Tommy Lee Wallace (Halloween III, Vampires: Los Muertos), and I see much of what I've seen from his other films I've reviewed here on FOREVER HORROR (though, it's gotten better with time).  Wallace simply doesn't have any sort of visual style, and most of what he attempts to create (or re-create) in these sequels seems to fall flat or simply short.  He seemingly attempts to recapture the feeling of the previous film in the series, but never pulls it off nearly as well.  With Halloween III, it was already once removed from Carpenter's original visual style of filmmaking, and Wallace's Season of the Witch was more trying to match the style of Halloween II.  As for Vampires?  He has better luck there, but with a direct-to-video production budget, he just fell short of reaching the quality of Carpenter's original.  This sequel goes more for more gore, but loses the humor and charm of the original.  Plus, Regine Dandridge is joined by an even more offbeat small band of creatures of the night that are easily more comical than scary.  The male vampire seems more werewolf like, but it's quite implied that he is a long-toothed bloodsucker.  The black female vampire, in my honest opinion, looks like a middle-aged black man in drag.  She's that ugly, and plus, her rollerskate gimmick seems quite stupid.  Then, there's Brian Thompson (The X-Files, Cobra) who is some bug eating brawn of the bunch.  He never happens to be anything of note as he hasn't anything more to do than to say "You're supposed to bite her on the neck" and munch on moths and bugs.  Julie Carmen is quite beautiful, and seductive.  She fills her part well, but doesn't reach to levels of Chris Sarandon's Jerry Dandridge.  Sarandon just oozed a sexy and seductive charisma, and not to mention, a fine level of charm.  Though, both Ragsdale and the late Roddy McDowall are quite on-par with their performances.  They had the characters locked in for the first film, and four years later, they still did.  It's a fine thing to witness, but there's not as much fun to be had here as there was in the original Fright Night.

The script seems fine, despite it mimicking a lot of scenes from the first film, and the film doesn't end in a much different way than the first.  In fact, the ending may leave you a bit unsatisfied.  It's slightly clever, but doesn't equal the dramatic build up in the basement of Jerry Dandridge's house from the first film.  It's as I said, director Tommy Lee Wallace simply doesn't showcase any visual style, and Fright Night had some beautifully rich 80's style.  I guess, this being the end of the 80's, and the mainstream popularity of horror films quickly dying down, there wasn't much 80's style left to interject and not much budget to enhance the film.  The makeup effects certainly don't rival those of the original's.  Fright Night, Part II only made a few small million at the box office in '89, and it doesn't surprise me at all given the time it was released and the quality of the film.  It provides some extra gore, but lacks in the fun factor that the original was so rich with.  Now, let's not kid ourselves here, with the original Fright Night being such a rich success, a sequel should've hit, at least, two years prior.  Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers all suffered bad box office in this year with their respective sequels, and so, why should this late arriving sequel have been any different?

The film's stars, McDowall & Ragsdale don't lose anything from part one to part two, but everything else falls down, at least, one notch.  The effects, the direction, the script, the fun / humor factor, and certainly the villains fall below the quality of Tom Holland's original Fright Night.  It's worth, at least, a rent, but the first Fright Night is where all the gold lies.  Part II simply isn't as fun, fresh, or nearly as satisfying as its predecessor.

Also, both film's respective DVDs reflect my comparisons between the film's themselves.  Columbia Pictures has released a nice, albeit, bare bones DVD of Fright Night with a very fine anamorphic widescreen transfer, a solid Dolby 2.0 Stereo Surround track, and the film's original theatrical trailer to boot.  Whereas Artisan Entertainment (now Lion's Gate) released Fright Night, Part II with a very, very poor pan-and-scan transfer (from a film shot in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio), a Dolby 2.0 track that's probably not much better, and no special features, not even a trailer.  If you watch this movie (as pan-and-scan is the only way it's ever been released), you can quickly tell that it was filmed in "scope" widescreen because a lot of the framing is very tight, claustrophobic even.  Even though TriStar Pictures released the film theatrically, they were never the video distributors.  If they had those rights, I'm certain (as Columbia & TriStar have both been owned by Sony for quite some time now) we would've gotten a DVD on-par with that of the first Fright Night.  Sadly, it's best you pass up Artisan's rotten digital video disc release of this film, and pray for a MUCH higher quality edition in the future.  Same goes for their recent double feature releases such as Waxwork & Waxwork II, The Howling V & VI,, The Watchers & The Watchers II, and the latter two Prom Night sequels.  A fair warning from your friends at FOREVER HORROR and Fridaythe13thforums.com.