All in the Family: Night of Dark Shadows

After the slaughter of the Collins family as we know it at the hands of the cousin from England, Collinwood is inherited by Quentin Collins – no, not the Quentin Collins who suffered the curse of the werewolf, but a moody painter from New York City. Elizabeth probably left the house to Roger or Carolyn in her will, and after a lengthy inheritance battle it probably should have gone to David who, if memory serves correct, was the lone Collins survivor at the end of House of Dark Shadows.

So much for continuity, and continuity, or the lack thereof, is what Night of Dark Shadows is all about. If you sat through the recent Warner’s DVD release of the 1971 follow up to House of Dark Shadows, you might have scratched your head a few times wondering why plot elements fit together like a puzzle without all the pieces.

Dark Shadows loyalists know this story well – the original cut of Night of Dark Shadows ran just over two hours. Director Dan Curtis was forced to trim the movie to a brisk 90 minutes just prior to release – allegedly with only 24 hours in which to do it.

Which is a shame because Night of Dark Shadows has a lot going for it. With gauzy dream sequences, rain drenched funerals, candelabras, cobwebs, and billowing curtains, Night of Dark Shadows plays out a peculiarly violent variation on the familiar gothic reincarnation drama.

No sooner has Quentin Collins arrived at Collinwood than he begins to experience nightmares and visions from the past. Creepy housekeeper Carlotta (played to the hilt by Grayson Hall) Drake informs Quentin that not only is he the reincarnation of scar-faced Charles Collins, but also that she is the reincarnation of Sarah Castle, a little girl who lived at Collinwood two hundred years before. It is through Carlotta that the spirits of the past are kept alive at Collinwood.

I’m still not sure how Gerard, the stuttering groundskeeper, fits into the picture. Is he the reincarnation of Charles Collins’ brother, Gabriel? Gabriel was married to Angelique who was having an affair with Charles, who was married to Laura (I think). I’m also not sure if Tracy, Quentin’s wife, is supposed to be the reincarnation of Laura or not, but when Quentin is possessed by Charles he is alternately smitten with her and on the verge of killing her. Implied marital rape and drowning by swimming pool ensue.

Then there are the neighbors, a husband and wife writing team who specialize in Gothic Romance novels who happen to pick up a painting of Charles Collins in New York and in the blink of an eye have pieced the whole thing together. It’s still pretty confusing, but I’ll blame the various plot holes on the cutting room floor.

Is Night of Dark Shadows an incomprehensible mess? Yes, indeed. Is it as bad as Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows? Heck, no. Nothing is that bad. Night of Dark Shadows as it exists may be a bloody mess of a plot. Night of Dark Shadows as it was meant to be might have been a more visceral nightmare for mature audiences. But only the restoration of 30 minutes of lostfootage can provide the answer. After years of restorative work, Warner Brothers in their infinite wisdom has only released the original theatrical cut to DVD so the public at large may never know the answer.

After House of Dark Shadows’ cinematic retread of the show, it’s refreshing to see Dan Curtis attempt an original storyline, something the 1990 revival series, an unaired 2004 pilot for a reboot for the WB, and the Burton/Depp fiasco failed to do. For Dark Shadows to carry on successfully past the original TV series’ five years’ worth of crackerjack Gothic soap opera storylines, I think future producers should consider creating new material “inspired” by the original series. With its forays back, forward, and sideways through time, the world of Collinwood had no boundaries. If the Collins family is to be revived for future generations, let’s start thinking outside the box.

Vampire Season: House of Dark Shadows

You know you really love a movie when you can watch it a thousand times and still find something new to appreciate. The VHS copy of House of Dark Shadows sits on the shelf next to about one year's worth of episodes of the TV show (whatever storyline I happen to be watching this year). Compared to the MPI volumes, the top of the cardboard box of HODS is covered in dust. It’s been awhile since I’ve watched it.

One of the most distinctive features of the movie I noticed when I watched the newly released Warner’s DVD this past week was how sleek and compact the screenplay is. Primary episode scribes Sam Hall and Gordon Russell distilled months of daily storyline into 95 minutes that combines characters and reduces story arcs to their lowest common denominator, something the Tim Burton adaptation failed to do.

Those not familiar with the television show may not fully grasp the familial relationships – Elizabeth owns Collinwood manor, Roger is her brother, David is Roger’s son, and Carolyn Elizabeth’s daughter – but it isn’t necessary to follow the storyline. We don’t even need twenty minutes of prologue telling us how Barnabas came to be cursed, who Josette is and why he plans to give governess Maggie Evans her music box.

Filmed in 1970 when old school vampires were at their cinematic peak (think Count Yorga and Christopher Lee’s Dracula popping up in A.D. 1972), Jonathan Frid’s suave, European cousin Barnabas is re-imagined with a visceral taste for blood not possible on afternoon television. The television Barnabas was a bit of a whiney-butt. After all, he is the grandfather of Anne Rice’s reluctant Louis and, whether we like it or not, great-grandfather to Stephanie Meyer’s glittery Edward., two reasons why I applaud House of Dark Shadows. This is a bosom-heaving, blood thirsty vampire movie to rival the best of Hammer Films, complete with savagely bitten throats and fonts of blood when the stakes are hammered home. It’s no wonder when I saw House of Dark Shadows at the theater in 1970 at age 11, the lobby was filled with whimpering grade-schoolers. Barnabas Collins is pee-your-pants scary. If you don’t believe me, watch what happens when Dr. Hoffman takes her revenge and Barnabas shows his true age.

Hyperactive storyline aside, free from the restraints of daytime studio video work, House of Dark Shadows features frenetic cinematography. The camera zooms, tracks, swirls, and sometimes makes the viewer sick with handheld moments. The transfer from film to DVD, while not perfect, at least presents the films murky, dark colors with more clarity, the reds more precise, than was ever possible with VHS. The cast, especially Frid, deliver fever-pitched performances, making this a classic vampire film to be reckoned with.

If you’re new to Dark Shadows (and if you follow this blog, I doubt that you are) and ready to dip your foot into the bloodbath, leave the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp debacle on the video shelf, and spend the night with this lusty demise of the Collins family as we know it.

And as always, fang me later. 

Satanic Madmen: Nicholas Blair

In which I try to recap one hundred episodes of Dark Shadows in one thousand words or less.

June 25, 1968. In the great foyer at Collinwood, three knocks are heard at the door, signaling to the audience that a new character has arrived.

What ho! What have we here - a dapper looking man in a tailored three piece suit sporting a Snidely Whiplash mustache, introducing himself as Nicholas Blair, cousin to the recently disappeared Cassandra (whom everyone at home knows is really Angelique in a smart black wig). Roger Collins does the noble thing and invites him in for a drink. Right away, Barnabas suspects this one is up to no good. His eyebrows raise and he gives Julia the eye. You know, that eye, the one they always give each other when the other actors are mugging for the camera. Then Julia does that thing with her nose, that “I smell a rat” thing, and we just know this one’s a bad apple.

In spite of all the supernatural hokum which was rolled out at four o’clock every day for more than five years, producer Dan Curtis knew what he was doing when it came to casting. Dan had fed us ghosts, witches, vampires, a thing called a phoenix and even a Frankenstein monster, what can he throw in the pot next?

Enter Nicholas Blair, Warlock Extraordinaire, In League with the Dark One and making no bones about it. Besides, he’s a snappy dresser, so he can’t be all bad, can he? Remember the ZZ Top song about the Sharp Dressed Man? It works. Trust me. I’ve been there.

Years ago when I first joined the internet and didn’t know what else to do with it I got involved in a Dark Shadows roleplaying group and picked Nicholas Blair as my character. The girls in the group took to calling me Nicky B. Somehow that took all the menace out of it. But I digress.

Meanwhile, back at the Collinwood estate, Nicholas has High Satanic Priest Fun with Angelique, turning her into one of those Hammer style vamps complete with flowing white dress and low neckline. Well, not too low. It’s daytime television after all. And being In League with the Dark One, Nicholas immediately sets about trying to destroy mankind by creating a superhuman race to…um, destroy mankind. I never have figured out why Satanic Madmen always want to destroy the human race, like all those guys in Lovecraft Country, Wilbur Whately et al. Nevertheless, Nicholas needs a woman to mate with Adam, the aforementioned Frankenstein monster in order to create these superhumans.

Adam was rather clumsy and had lots of scars. He is a Frankenstein Monster after all, even if he does wear a nice green sweater, but he needs a mate. Nick pulls off something really stellar – he summons the spirit of a 17^th Century murderess, Danielle Roget, and through Satanic Ingenuity, brings to life Eve. Still with me? Good. Eve is this full figured, gorgeous red head who flits around the cemetery in a stunning black evening gown, occasionally snagging it on one of the many artificial trees. It doesn't slow down Eve one bit, but the actress does stammer her lines a bit.

Just like in the movies, the Bride of Frankenstein - I mean Eve rejects our hand stitched homeboy and makes eyes at Jeff Clark, Vicki’s time tripping boyfriend. Who’s Vicki, you ask? Not important, so let’s move on. She’s about to abandon ship anyway, so who cares?

In grand soap opera style, Adam strangles Eve in a fit of jealousy and then throws himself off Widow’s Hill in a fit of despair, putting the kibosh on Nicholas’ superhuman race idea.

This is all hunky dory, Daytime Friendly Satanism and all. But Dan decides to push the envelope for once. Nicholas sets his sights on the lush Maggie Evans. (Don’t know who she is either? Just another simpering heroine with an annoying voice.) First, he has to get Joe Haskell, Maggie’s worthless, humorless boyfriend out of the way so he commands Angelique to bite Joe and make him start acting goofy. See, that whole Angelique as a vampire subplot came in handy. Now Maggie is free to date Nicholas. He’s suave, debonair, and independently wealthy, how could she resist?

Meanwhile, back to Angelique. We all know she’s a vengeful drama queen, so she takes a little side trip to Hell and tells The Man Downstairs that his faithful servant isn’t so faithful. He’s fallen in love for God’s sake…er, you know what I mean.

Nicholas gets summoned to the Principal’s Office and slapped on the wrist for this love business and is sent back upstairs to make the ultimate sacrifice - that would be Maggie Evans at a Black Mass complete with altar and black candles and Nicholas waving his arms and intoning just about my favorite line of the entire series, “let the Legions of the Damned salute you!” Cue red lights so we know things have gotten really out of control.

It’s all downhill after that. Dan needed to wrap up the Nicholas Blair storyline so he could start the werewolf stuff. Nick tries to revive Eve with Maggie’s life force, but Barnabas swoops in on his bat wings and saves the day. Nicholas goes up in a ball of flame, and that’s all she wrote. Which is a shame. I really like Nicholas Blair. That don’t make Satanic Madmen like they used to.

The Nicholas Blair storyline is available on the Dark Shadows DVD Collection volumes 8-10.

...speaking of Burnt Offerings (spoilers)

I hate this movie.

So why am I reviewing it? Because other people like it, and this blog is all about spreading the love for all things Gothic. One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure, so maybe you’re reading this and you decide to watch it tonight (US readers, it’s on Netflix) and find it’s the next best thing since sliced bread. Right on.

But I’ll tell you why I don’t like it. The story is lame and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Yeah, the Chauffeur is scary and all, but other than being a flashback from Ben Rolf’s childhood, what does it have to do with the Allardyce house, and Mother, and all that?

Speaking of Mother, wow she’s pretty scary too. I mean a house that rejuvenates itself on the pain and death of its inhabitants, that’s pretty freaky. Night Gallery freaky, not 115 minutes movie freaky. Which brings me to another gripe. This just isn’t a cinematic film, although it was. It’s a made for TV movie directed by one of the worst TV hacks ever, Dan Curtis. I know, I know. Dark Shadows, blah blah blah. Dark Shadows was a happy accident for which we’ll be forever grateful. But look at some of his other mid 70s output, The Norliss Tapes, and those dreadfully dry remakes of classics Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray et all. Do you know Dan Curtis actually claimed in a Fangoria interview that he could have made a better movie out of The Exorcist? Somebody pop that man’s bubble of a bloated ego.

Dan Curtis decided to shoot the movie through fog filters and with low camera angles. If any film students know what effect that was supposed to have on the viewer, please let me know. On the commentary track to the DVD, Curtis claims the novel was incomprensible, and that in adapting the book with William F. Nolan, they were able to make the story make more sense. Not much. I get the fact that it’s some sort of variation on the All Devouring Dark Mother Goddess, but couldn’t you have infused the screenplay with a few “real” scary scenes? Daddy trying to drown the kid in the pool just doesn’t make me squirm in my seat. I remember reading the book when I was fourteen (published in 1973) when publishers were still coasting on the diabolic fumes of Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. This looks like an old ladies’ garden party by comparison.

And speaking of old ladies, even Bette Davis doesn’t have enough to do to liven up the proceedings. She does do a good death scene, though. It goes on for twenty some minutes, which must be some kind of record for eye bulging and bed writhing.

Davis, along with Oliver Reed and Karen Black, were a good draw to bring people out to the cinemas in 1976, but aside from the fact that Reed can do the most terrified looks of any adult male every committed to film (see his camera mugging in 1963’s Paranoiac) neither he nor Black are given anything to sink their teeth into. This sort of subtle Gothic thriller requires characters with deeper psychological scars beyond a recurring nightmare from their childhood. The Rolfs are a normal American family, which I am sure was Curtis’ point… but it’s boring.

So what’s good about this movie? The soundtrack. And for people of a certain age (i.e: younger than me who saw Burnt Offerings on TV at an impressionable age) the Chauffeur. And I have to admit, he has a creepy grin. And creepy is good.

The Sound of Gothic: The Music of Robert (Bob) Cobert

One of the often overlooked elements of film and television is the musical score. In the world of gothic and horror films, can you imagine Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho without Bernard Herrmann’s shrieking violins or Vertigo without the lush, romantic score? Or what about David Lynch’s ground breaking drama, Twin Peaks, without Angelo Badalamenti’s quirky jazz?

I can’t imagine Dark Shadows without the music of Robert Cobert. Outside of the Dark Shadows fan base, Bob Cobert may not be as well known as Herrmann and other status film composers, but when it comes to horror film music, his oeuvre is one of the strongest and most recognizable.

Aside from the fact that the opening theme from Dark Shadows with its octave jumping Theremin warble ranks with the Twilight Zone, Addams Family, and The Munsters as one of the most well known TV themes of all time, his work on all 1,225 episodes has been collected in four volumes by theme, and an exhaustive six CD set of cues, The Complete Dark Shadows Soundtrack Music Collection.

But wait, there’s more. Cobert also scored other TV shows throughout the 1970s, most notably The Night Stalker, as well as movies. As much as I love the music from Dark Shadows, his score to1976’s Burnt Offerings is, in my opinion, his masterwork, combining all the sounds, styles, and motifs he developed over five years of working on the daytime serial.

When I write, I mostly listen to film scores as well as 20^th Century classical music, and Robert Cobert CDs are always in the top of the stack. While the four volume set is a collection of themes by character (you get the moody themes Dr. Julia Hoffman, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, and David Collins alongside the lighter themes for Maggie Evans and Victoria Winters) and setting (The Old House, Eagle Hill Cemetery, Windcliff Sanitarium), what I have noticed is that the music often puts me in a state of high anxiety. If you’ve read my gothic stories, you know that my characters exist in an almost constant state of tension. Music of this sort is a great boon to creativity!

Like Herrmann’s Psycho, Cobert uses steady pulsing strings to produce these tension filled moments, while other themes are performed in the bass register with bassoons and cellos showcasing the weighty oppressiveness that life at Collinwood produces.

Some of the themes from the show are well known melodies, such as Josette’s Music Box, and Quentin’s Theme (aka Shadows of the Night), which was a popular piece on AM radio in the 1960s and early 1970s. I still have my 45 RPM tucked away in a box of old records.

Cobert improved and expanded on the music box motif with his score for Burnt Offerings. The theme is much more plaintive and melancholy this time around, and was better integrated into the rest of the film’s music. Anyone who has seen this movie will never forget the nightmarish sequences with The Chauffeur; the character’s theme presented here is one of the standout tracks.

Burnt Offerings was released in a limited edition of 1,000 in 2011, but can still be found at a hefty price on eBay. The Original Music From Dark Shadows (aka Volume One) is still in print and is an excellent starting point for beginners, featuring specially arranged instrumental tracks, as well as others with voiceovers by actors David Shelby and the late Jonathan Frid. The subsequent three volumes are rarer, but I was able to get them at decent prices after some patient hunting, so other avid collectors should be able to as well.

Another favorite which recently went out of print is the Rhino Records release of the score to the theatrical films House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows. House has many of the familiar themes from the show pumped up with a full orchestra, while Night recreates some of the music from Cobert’s earlier score for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Dan Curtis’ 1968 British television film). The 70s love themes (the theme for Joanna on the show reworked as the Love Theme for the movie) are schmaltzy by today’s standards, but Cobert outdid himself with some truly innovative tracks built around wild percussion motifs for scenes such as Angelique’s Attack and The Chase.

Bob Cobert scored other gothic collaborations with Dan Curtis, among them The Picture of Dorian Gray (1973), Dracula, and The Turn of the Screw (both 1974), as well as the cult favorite Trilogy of Terror(1975) which features the unforgettable scene with an African voodoo fetish chasing Karen Black around her apartment. Many of these themes are collected in The Night Stalker and Other Classic Chillers (out of print).

One of the (many) shortcomings of Tim Burton’s 2012 remake of Dark Shadows was the noticeable absence of Cobert’s original theme. Producer Dan Curtis may have died in 2006, but hopefully someone will grab Cobert for one last scoring of a great, gothic film. In the meantime, there’s always YouTube.