My Rating
“Dead By Dawn – Part 03”
The 55th anniversary showing of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula is about to begin. As the fearless “Vampire Hunter” takes the stage, the roar of motorcycle engines erupts from the theater lobby. Heads turn in shock as several members of an outlaw biker gang crash through the doors and storm the stage with fangs bared. Peter Vincent’s jaw drops when he recognizes the vampire leading the attack.
Evil Ed? But how?
Elsewhere
Across town at the Brewster house, Amy Peterson has decided to bite the bullet and make amends with her estranged boyfriend. She had distanced herself from Charlie for obvious reasons, but she still cares about him. Their first reunion in some time is about to feel strangely familiar—in more ways than one.
As Charlie and Amy settle into his bedroom to watch the latest episode of Fright Night, something strange begins unfolding across the yard. Through the window of the old Dandrige house, Charlie spots two mysterious women and a man engaged in a ménage à trois. Naturally, Charlie’s attention immediately shifts from the television to the window. Then he sees something that makes his blood run cold.
He swears their eyes just glowed red!
How did Evil Ed survive being staked through the heart? Why is the Vampire Queen immune to the cross? Can Danny break Elaha’s thrall over Charlie and Amy? Collect the series to find out!
Reviewer Notes
My interest in this series is beginning to wane. I’ll set aside the diminishing quality of the artwork and the annoying barrage of 1980s pop-culture references—because no kids I knew back then talked like walking trivia books—and focus instead on the direction of the writing. If these comics are supposed to fit into the continuity of the films, James Kuhoric has some serious explaining to do. By Fright Night Part 2 (1988), Charlie and Peter apparently remember none of these events. The deeper this series digs into the period between the two movies, the more difficult that becomes to explain without some serious shoehorning.
Now let’s talk about Evil Ed. In the original Fright Night, Peter Vincent kills Ed by driving a broken kitchen table leg through his heart. Apparently, this comic wants us to believe Ed survived because the table leg was made from pressed wood rather than solid wood. Really? The table in the movie certainly looked like real wood to me. More importantly, this twist feels remarkably similar to Vamp (1986). In that movie, one of three college students visiting a vampire-infested strip club gets turned and later staked with the leg of a Formica chair. Because the stake isn’t real wood, he eventually returns. Evil Ed’s resurrection here follows almost the same logic, and it feels less like a clever loophole than a recycled vampire gag.
Since Tom Holland’s Fright Night has essentially become an annual release, I suppose the producers have plenty of time to figure out where all of this is heading. I’m also in the process of collecting the old NOW Comics Fright Night series, and I’m interested to see how those story arcs compare with what American Mythology is doing today. I hate giving a Fright Night comic a poor rating because I genuinely love this universe, but this issue left me with more questions than excitement. Hopefully, the next installment can pull everything together.
I give Tom Holland’s Fright Night #3 three out of five stars.