TheRetroCritic

Fright Night was certainly a rarity: a vampire comedy that actually works both as a vamp flick and as a horror movie satire. The film had an irresistible charm with its cool 80's score, its turtle neck-wearing villain and its genius Peter Cushing/Hammer homage. This sequel takes the same formula and introduces new dastardly vampires to add to the mix. It's years later, Charlie (William Ragsdale again) has undergone a lot of therapy and has accepted that everything that happened in the first film had been the result of group hypnosis and never actually happened. Peter Vincent (the ever-reliable Roddy McDowall), however, still remembers the truth of the events that unfolded but being the only one who believes that reality, it's hurting his work to say the least. Basically, the first half of the film is nothing but build-up to resuming the status quo of the first movie: Charlie being a douche to his girlfriend, Peter Vincent losing his job, vampires orgy-biting victims

If you're going into this movie expecting something NOT silly, you're not paying attention. Read the title again. Ok? Good. Yes, as it turns out good old Abe Lincoln spent his time in Springfield not only working on his speeches and ageing into a rubber prosthetic but also wielding an axe, slicing vampires in half. Fair enough. You gotta hand it to the guy: he kept busy. The movie starts off sort of like a superhero movie with a young Lincoln defending his friend from those cruel vampiric-looking slave traders. But just when you think the film might pause and take a subtle, interesting look at the hellishly divided society of the time... the other kid gets whipped in the face with the whip snapping right in our faces with some of the best 3D effects I've seen in a while. From then on, you know that slavery, the Civil War etc. those aren't events we'll be studying with any sort of intellectual validity in this flick. After all, this is a movie where

So you've got Lucy Liu and vampires... In other words: you've got a film. It should have been so straight-forward: Liu in Underworld -style leather catsuits battling vampires as a rebellious blood-sucker herself. Nothing too original, granted, but hell, I would have been happy with that. Alas it's all up to the iconic writer of Snakes On A Plane (and director of Elektra Luxx ) to handle that challenging premise and things are not looking good... The film starts fine with ominous goings-on, the THREAT (*gasp*) of lesbian sexual interaction and Liu's prompt transformation into the vamp we all wanted to see. Then, I'm sad to say, the rest is a blur. It really is criminal that a vampire film starring Lucy Liu would mostly involve the actress walking around badly-lit rooms and following a plot that, frankly, is about as memorable as The Monkees' drummer. It's a mess and Liu's revenge quest never feels urgent or involving. Basically there is no act