Roddy McDowall's gray hair has a strange lacquered appearance in 'Fright Night.' I haven't seen him in any other films of the 1980s. So I've seen no comparison as to how his hair normally looked at the time. Was his hair specially sprayed for affect in 'Fright Night?'
shareyeah i'm pretty sure his hair and eyebrows were dyed to age him up more than he was at the time. they look very odd. he also seems to look a little older when we first see him compared to the rest of the movie so wondering if they used prosthetics as well and it was either downplayed or stopped as filming went along.
shareI'll look out for those possible prosthetics when I next watch the film. I think that Roddy looks quite vampire-like himself in some scenes.
shareIn both 1982's "Class of 1984" (the reason he was cast in "Fright Night" - same writer) and 1989's "Cutting Class," his hair was brown. When he finally let himself go gray in the '90s, it was a much darker shade (the glaring exception being 1996's "Unlikely Angel" with Dolly Parton, in which it was Peter Vincent white again... which is kinda ironic since he was portraying Saint Peter). In vintage interviews, McDowall stated that the reason he took the role in "Fright Night" is because it afforded him the opportunity to play a character at various stages of his life (from 30ish in the old movie clips to 60ish when he met Charley). No question that the color is unnatural.
I've never noticed any prosthetic work, I think it's probably makeup. A person can be drastically aged with the right lighting by simply darkening the natural contours of their face, and that's what it looks like to me.
Thanks for giving more information about Roddy McDowall's other films of the period and later in the 1990s. I look forward to catching those movies and to see how his hair was naturally allowed to turn gray. He does look youthful in those 'old movie clip' sequences in 'Fright Night.'
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