The film follows teenager Charley Brewster (played by William Ragsdale), who discovers that his next-door neighbor Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire.

When no one believes him, Charley decides to get Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall), a TV show host who acted in films as a vampire hunter, to stop Jerry's killing spree.

While writing the script for Cloak & Dagger,[5] Tom Holland amused himself when he conceived the idea of a horror-movie fan becoming convinced that his next-door neighbor was a vampire, but he did not initially think this premise was enough to sustain a story.

"[5] Holland wrote the film for himself to direct, in part because he was so disheartened by the film that was ultimately made from his previous screenplay, Scream for Help,[6][8][9] and he had developed enough clout from the successes of his screenplays for Class of 1984, Psycho II, and Cloak & Dagger that the head of Columbia Pictures said, "Let's take a chance on the hot screenwriter kid",[10] not figuring that Fright Night would be as successful as it ultimately became.

[14] Although he liked the screenplay, Sarandon was still leery of working with a first-time director, so he flew to Los Angeles to meet Tom Holland and producer Herb Jaffe.

Ragsdale auditioned several times and ultimately received the news that he had landed the part on Halloween night 1984,[12][15] beating out several other future-stars like Charlie Sheen.

[17] Due to a mix-up, Stephen Geoffreys had an awkward audition for Anthony Michael Hall's role in Weird Science,[9] and he made an indelible impression on Jackie Burch, who suggested him for Fright Night.

Having begun his career as a classically trained actor,[19] Holland encouraged the cast to write biographies of their characters so they would completely understand their motivations and be able to draw on that information while filming their scenes.

[7][8] As originally written, Jerry Dandrige was more villainous, so Sarandon tried to find various ways to humanize the vampire,[8] including suggesting the implication that the Amy character was the reincarnation of his long-lost love.

"[21] For the scene in which Jerry pulls down the window shade and it looks as though Billy is about to perform oral sex on him, Stark remembered, "I'm cleaning his hand and [Tom Holland] said, 'No, get down on your knees.'

"[15] Sarandon recalled that Holland collaborated with choreographer Dorain Grusman in shooting a disco dance scene to have Bearse's character physically changing so that "she goes from this rather dewey, innocent-looking girl to this femme fatale; she kind of grows up right before your eyes.

The interiors were filmed at Laird International Studios with the now defunct Walt Disney "Residential Street" set used as the exterior to both the Brewster and Dandrige Houses.

"They had made all of their mistakes with how to do the matte shots and everything on Ghostbusters, with their huge budget", Holland commented, "so they really knew how to do [the special effects] as inexpensively and efficiently as it could be done at the time.

[21] On Christmas Eve, during the shooting of a scene where he is running down a staircase, Ragsdale accidentally tripped and broke his ankle, resulting in the film being temporarily put on a hold until he could recover.

"Rod Martin, a trainer for the Los Angeles Raiders, came in every day to wrap the foot for me, and the shooting schedule was rearranged to put off the action sequences until it mended."

"So we go to the editing room", FX man Steve Johnson recalled of an early cut, "and Tom had put a reaction in the middle of it, ruined the entire shot!

"[21] The crew attempted to achieve the illusion of the cross-scar vanishing from Evil Ed's forehead live on-set, but the effect was a resounding failure.

The site's consensus reads: "Fright Night deftly combines thrills and humor in this ghostly tale about a man living next to a vampire.

"[32] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four and wrote, "Fright Night is not a distinguished movie, but it has a lot of fun being undistinguished".

[33] Variety praised Sarandon's performance, writing that he "is terrific as the vampire, quite affable and debonair until his fingernails start to grow and his eyes get that glow".

In 2008, the film was paired on DVD with Urban Legend,[36] and in 2013, it was issued again as part of the 4 Movie Thrills & Chills Collection, Volume 3 release alongside: The Craft, Monster High, and Brainscan.

[41] After the critical and financial success of Fright Night, producer Herb Jaffe retained the screen rights to the characters and pushed for a sequel to be made.

[9] Stephen Geoffreys was approached to reprise the role of Evil Ed, but he did not like the script and he was offered the lead in 976-EVIL, which was scheduled to shoot at the same time, so he opted to take that part, instead.

[43][44] Bearse read an early draft of the script that included the Amy character,[9] but she was busy with her TV series Married... with Children, so a new girlfriend (portrayed by Traci Lind) was written for Charley Brewster.

Charley (Anton Yelchin) and his mother (Toni Collette) are transplanted from Corvalis, Iowa, to a Las Vegas suburb; Amy (Imogen Poots) is feistier and sexually aggressive; Evil Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) has endured a falling out with Charley prior to the start of the film; Peter Vincent (David Tennant) is a horror magician modeled after Criss Angel; the Billy Cole character was omitted; and Jerry Dandrige (Colin Farrell) is no longer the lovelorn vampire.

[16] The discussion dragged on for so long that the audience roared with laughter when Sarandon sarcastically interrupted Ragsdale to declare "I'm sure there are some other questions about the original Fright Night.

This stopped another sequel, and also interfered with the release of Fright Night Part 2, which attained extremely limited theatrical distribution before being dumped on home video by Carolco's subsidiary, Live Entertainment.

[9][50] In January 2017, Tom Holland announced that he was writing a Fright Night 3 novel, noting that by 2019 he would obtain the rights to the franchise; after which he plans to develop a third movie.

Amy Peterson and Billy Cole only appeared in the first two issues, but Evil Ed returned to become a constant foil, and Jerry Dandrige was ultimately resurrected and had just begun to amass an army of Parisian vampire prostitutes when Now Comics filed for bankruptcy.

The original cast included Dan Finkel as Charley Brewster, Elena Cristina Lázaro as Amy Petersen, Greg Crawford as Peter Vincent, Ryan Ott as Billy Cole, Brian Ceponis as Jerry Dandrige, Amanda Anne Leight as Judy Brewster, Corey Shaffer as "Evil" Ed Thompson, Dave Joseph as Lieutenant Detective Lennox, Ryan Frank as Donny, and Edward Bates as Leon.