Because of his theatrical roots and the long hours spent in the makeup chair, Chris Sarandon helped apply his own vampire makeup and often worked on the finger extensions while the makeup artists were putting appliances on his face.
It was Chris Sarandon's idea to have Jerry eating apples throughout the film. While researching vampire lore, Sarandon looked at information about bats and concluded, "Jerry had a lot of fruit bat in his DNA."
Although the part of Peter Vincent was based upon and originally written for Vincent Price to play, Roddy McDowall decided Peter Vincent was not in the same league as Price. "My part is that of an old ham actor, I mean a dreadful actor," McDowall commented in a 1985 interview with Monster Land magazine. "He had a moderate success in an isolated film here and there, but all very bad product. Basically, he played one character for 8 or 10 films, for which he probably got paid next to nothing. Unlike stars of horror films who are very good actors and played lots of different roles, such as Peter Lorre and Vincent Price or Boris Karloff, this poor sonofabitch just played the same character all the time, which was awful."
The film's genesis came in Tom Holland wanting to do a vampire story crossbred with The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Avoiding using special effects at the expense of good acting, Holland included plenty of humor, warmth, and relationships. He also wanted to make it valid to a modern audience by rooting it in reality, hence the suburbia setting.
One of the life-masks of Roddy McDowall taken for the Planet of the Apes franchise is visible in Peter Vincent's apartment.
Tom Holland: [supernatural dis-belief] character sees something supernatural, but can't get anyone else to believe them. See also Child's Play (1988) and Cloak & Dagger (1984).