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.

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.  

Gothique a la Tim

No one does Gothic quite like Team Tim. For a guy like me, that’s the deciding factor. In visual terms, Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows tips the Gothic scale, from the crumbling majesty of Collinwood Manor to the shots of Widow’s Hill and the raging sea below, to the seacoast village of Collinsport, and the Collins family graveyard that makes its appearance in the final frames of the film, this IS the world of Dark Shadows.

For the most part, the movies takes the plot of the first year and a half or so from the original TV show and compresses it into 115 minutes: young woman with mysterious past comes to Collinwood to be governess to troubled little boy and runs afoul of morose family in a dank mansion which has seen better days. Enter vampire whose presence sends the ratings through the roof, and the writers send the entire cast back to the 18^th Century to explore the beginnings of the vampire’s curse. All of this is dispatched in the first twenty minutes or so of the film. It is easily the best part.

But what about the Collins family themselves? Michelle Pfeiffer’s Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and Chloe Mertz’s scene-stealing Carolyn Stoddard remain the most faithful to the series’ characters while riffing and expanding on the original ideas. On the show, little David was a cross between a brat and a true creep (mostly, I think, due to the fact that the actor, David Hennessy, who allegedly does not have fond memories of being a child actor, must have loathed every excruciating day of it). Gulliver McGrath’s David is a sweet natured child with alleged psychiatric problems, but the character as written is sadly underdeveloped. The writers missed a terrific opportunity to riff on that other classic dark haired five-year-old, Damien Thorne. And then there is Roger Collins whose written character and performance by Jonny Lee Miller are so far off the mark he should have been one of Barnabas’s first victims.

Which brings us to the star of the show, Mr. Depp. Johnny IS Barnabas Collins, even with the Nosferatu hands (which are one of the best additions to the character). He is handsome, pasty, stylish, courtly, bewildered, romantic, sexy, and ruthless… everything the character of Barnabas Collins should be.

Out of the extended family, I enjoyed housekeeper Mrs. Johnson the most. She’s only onscreen in a few short scenes and speaks not a word, but every time I saw her I burst out with a robust guffaw. Jackie Earle Haley turned in a fun performance as Willie Loomis but, like other characters, wasn’t given enough to do. John Karlen’s reading of Willie on the original show was one of the most nuanced performances, especially when compared to the relentless scene-chewing of Grayson Hall’s Dr. Julia Hoffman. Helena Bonham Carter looks the part, but she would have turned in a better performance if she had watched several week’s worth of Hall’s TV version and expanded on that hamminess. Even her drunk scenes (which are most of them) are uninspired. I’m a big fan of HBC, but this is one of her least interesting performances.

But the biggest misstep of character reinvention is Angelique Bouchard. The power struggle between witch Angelique and vampire Barnabas is the core of the movie’s plot, as well it should be, but here the producers decided to turn her into a high camp vamp straight out of True Blood. That’s fine in Bon Temps, but this is Collinsport. I’m easily bored with special effects fight scenes in movies, and the final showdown between Elizabeth’s shotgun and Angelique was too much for me… and was a poorly executed steal from Death Becomes Her to boot.

There were two drafts of the script, the first by John August who shares the “story by” credit with final script writer Seth Grahame-Smith. The production would have benefited from a bit more fleshing out of the minor characters and less emphasis on Hollywood spectacle FX. Dark Shadows does not require explosions and car crashes, but that, metaphorically speaking, is exactly how this movie ends. A third script might have given this viewer more satisfaction.

Other hard core Dark Shadows fans are hating all over Tim Burton for “ruining” their sacred cow. I’ve run through lists of current directors who could possibly do the series justice. Robert Altman is dead, that leaves someone like Paul Thomas Anderson who excels at the type of ensemble story telling the tale of Dark Shadows requires.

Ten years ago I made a wish list for a big screen adaptation, and it always was a Tim and Johnny Show. In reinterpreting the Gothic world of the Collins family for a new generation, they have succeeded. Tim just needed a better script. 

No Big Deal at Creaky Hall - One Star

A few weeks ago while trolling the internet for signs of the Gothic Revival, I learned that the BBC is shooting a mini-series based on a James Herbert novel, The Secret of Crickley Hall. The premise sounds right up my Gothic alley: family moves into creaky old house, mysterious manifestations ensue, family discovers decades old secret; all is well (or not well, depending on the outcome.)

But what a god-awful piece of crap this book is. I normally would not review a book on this blog if it doesn’t have anything to offer readers jonesing for a Gothic fix. Have you ever seen those one star reviews on Amazon where customers rant about how much they hated the product? That’s what this is going to be, but I’m doing it here, instead of on Amazon. If you’re not into that sort of thing, check back next weekend when I will have something to say about Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows (in theaters May 11). If you’re down for some bestseller bashing, read on.

James Herbert is trumpeted as Britain’s Number One Bestselling Horror Author. Really? I thought it was Clive Barker. Whatever. The Secret of Crickley Hall reads like a John Saul novel – middle class, white Anglo Saxon family, Mom and Dad, two kids and a dog, move into a “haunted” house. Slightly nerve-wracking events happen. The characters have no depth, no issues, no character. The prose is heavily padded with repetitive information (how many times do we have to be reminded that Dad is an engineer in scene after scene that have nothing to do with the fact that he is an engineer? Same with Lili the psychic. She’s a psychic.) Any suspense is created mechanically by switching scenes at the next chapter. When the mystery of the past (and reason for the haunting) is gradually revealed, it’s more disgusting than horrifying. Overall, The Secret of Crickley Hall is a young adult novel (as are John Saul’s) but the events of the past are adult in nature, and would not be appropriate for most readers under the age of sixteen. It’s just not scary, and it’s certainly not horror. It’s set in an old house and there are lots of thunderstorms. That makes it Gothic. But just a little. And Lili is psychic. 

Here’s what really pisses me off. The Secret of Crickley Hall is in dire need of a content editor. There just aren’t 600 pages of story in its 600 pages. As a struggling writer who can’t get an agent to request a full or partial, I can’t help but feel if I had submitted The Secret of Crickley Hall and was lucky enough to have an agent or editor read the entire manuscript, it would have been sent back for cuts and rewrites.

Which brings me to this point: in the writing business, the publishing houses that control 99% of what you see on bookstore shelves (and include every name brand author you can think of) are referred to as The Big Six. This includes folks like Random House and Simon and Schuster, names even a casual reader is familiar with. One of the many problems with Big Six publishers is they apparently are no longer insisting on content editing for their authors, meaning that authors as diverse as James Lee Burke, Jonathan Kellerman, and Anne Rice are turning in manuscripts inferior to their early output. The books are proofread, backed with million dollar marketing campaigns, and people go to the bookstores and pay upwards of $30 USD for a name brand product. It’s no different than buying the new Nickleback CD just because you still hear a ten year old song on the radio that you like.

The Secret of Crickley Hall could have been so much better and worth the $20 USD trade paperback price ($8.99 mass market is due in August). But neither Mr. Herbert nor Macmillan Publishing care about presenting a quality product to their target market.

In all fairness, while reading The Secret of Crickley Hall I see a decent story desperate to be let out. The producers of the forthcoming BBC film see it too. Film adaptations can often be an opportunity to improve upon the source material. Here’s hoping the BBC seizes that opportunity. 

Jonathan Frid, Exit Stage Left

I’m not certain how it began, but I imagine it went something like this:

It was late afternoon on a sunny, spring day and I had gone to another fourth-grade friend’s house to play after school. His mama was sitting in the recliner in the living room, smoking, watching a soap opera on the color TV. In those days, that’s what moms did. They stayed home all day. At my house, we didn’t have a color TV, my parents didn’t smoke, and my mother didn’t watch soap operas. Spooky music rattled out of the tinny TV speaker and people with anxious faces moped glumly around the living room of an immense, old mansion. And who was the scary guy with the weird haircut and the wolf’s head cane? Some people on the show were afraid of him. Others seemed to love him. His name was Barnabas Collins. What kind of name was that?

More than anything else, Dark Shadows was a product of its time. It was the mid-to-late 1960s. The Viet Nam War was in full sway, with gore being broadcast into living rooms on the evening news with frightening regularity. There was unrest on the home front as well in the form of race riots and campus rebellions. Teenagers, much to the horror of their parents, were tuning in, dropping out, and turning on. “What’s your sign?” was a common pick-up line and indicative of a movement where everyone seemed to be into Astrology and other more insidious manifestations of the occult.

It’s no small wonder that in the midst of all the madness, Dark Shadows became a runaway phenomenon with grade-schoolers and their moms. Who else would be found glued to the TV at 4:00 on even the sunniest of days, the curtains drawn, being sucked into the gloomy world of Collinwood? Today, ask anyone over the age of fifty about Dark Shadows and the first words out of their mouth will be, “I used to run home from school…” and once I was hooked, so did I.

Dark Shadows fans know this story well, but it bears repeating. Dark Shadows went on the air in June 1966, but despite being a Gothic novelty act on daytime TV, the ratings flagged. The story began as a television retread of the popular Gothic Romance novels of the time with a governess, Victoria Winters, taking a post at mysterious Collinwood which had no more menace than any other old house with creaky floorboards and drafts near the windows that sometimes made the curtains billow inexplicably. But about six months into the first year, with the threat of cancellation looming, producer Dan Curtis decided to shift the focus from Jane Eyre to Dracula.

Enter Jonathan Frid, a classically trained Shakespearean actor who had one prior TV credit as a psychiatrist on another soap opera. The cousin from England, Barnabas Collins, was only meant to be in the series for a month of weekday afternoons, but once he started sneaking into bedrooms and biting the necks of the female members of the cast, the ratings soared.

And soared, and soared. Looking back at the craggy face of Jonathan Frid in makeup, it is somewhat hard to believe that Frid became a sex symbol, but consider that in his day, Bela Lugosi was a sex symbol as well. And given the continued success of Barnabas’ grandchildren, Lestat de Lioncourt and Edward the Sparkler, it is clear that women are eternally and irresistibly drawn to a bloodsucker.

But what about the boys? At my school, other little boys on the playground played at being Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock during recess. I played Barnabas and bit the little girls on the neck. Who do you think had his priorities in the right place?

It is no secret that Dark Shadows has had a lasting influence on my life and art. I proudly display all 33 of the vintage Dark Shadows paperbacks in an old fashioned wire bookrack. I have all 1,125 episodes on VHS and DVD, I have the Robert Cobert soundtrack CDs, and I have autographs from three of the show’s stars, including Frid’s, from book signings.

My early experiences with Dark Shadows eventually led to harder things. I discovered Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. In my teen years I discovered Hammer Films and began to read Gothic writers such as Shirley Jackson, Lovecraft, and Poe. Today I am a writing a style of Gothic fiction which has its roots in the stories which inspired the plot arcs on Dark Shadows.

Jonathan Frid passed away quietly at the age of 87 on Friday, April 13^th. There was no funeral, and there is no memorial service planned by the family. The news was withheld from the media for seven days, breaking on the internet early this morning, Thursday, April 19^th.

Tonight, fans across the country will be lighting candles, holding séances, donning their vampire capes, popping tapes in the VCR, and remembering one of the 1960s quintessential pop icons.

Thank you, Jonathan Frid, for a lifetime of terror, intrigue, and a boat load of unintentional laughs. You had a good run.

Something Burton This Way Comes

In the late 1990s, when we were all just learning to crawl around the Internet, I got involved with an online group of Dark Shadows fans. One of our favorite discussions was to pick our dream cast for a big screen remake. I chose Tim Burton to direct, Johnny Depp to play Barnabas, Christina Ricci as Angelique, and Helen Bonham Carter as Dr. Hoffman. I'll settle for two out of three. Tim Burton's Dark Shadows arrives in theaters Friday, May 11.

An Appreciation of Barbara Michaels Part III of III - The Dark on the Other Side

”Well, Babs,” Barbara Michaels’ agent said one stormy afternoon in New York City, “Quentin Collins is the hottest thing on television; how about writing something with werewolves, only make it more Gothic this time. Throw in a good thunderstorm and a big old house.”

Barbara went away, and after a shot of vodka or two, sat down and wrote The Dark on the Other Side, her third and final foray into the occult themes so popular in the late 1960s.

2006 Berkley Reprint

This is Barbara Michaels subverting the Gothic Romance as far as she can, with once again predictably mixed results. Again the role of the Innocent thrust into situations beyond his control is played by a male, this time Michael Collins, a writer who becomes involved in the lives of Gordon and Linda Randolph when he visits the estate to interview Gordon for a forthcoming biography. And what an estate it is, a lavish house modeled on a British country estate complete with towers and gardens, servants and a particularly unctuous personal secretary.

Charles Geer jacket painting for the original 1970 hardback edition.

Gordon's wife, Linda, assumes the role of Byronic hero, a brooding, dark haired beauty ravaged by alcoholism and a tendency toward paranoid schizophrenia. In the first chapter alone, the house and its furnishings speak to Linda, commanding her to kill Gordon, and at my count she consumes at least six cocktails before dinner, numerous glasses of wine during dinner, and finally collapses in a drunken stupor and has to be carried to her room, all within the first twenty pages.

But Linda may not be as crazy as she seems. Michael's investigation into the life and career of Gordon Randolph begins to uncover a number of former students and other acolytes whose lives have been shattered by psychosis, drug abuse, and suicide. Remember we're in Barbara Michaels' country and it's not long before Collins begins to suspect that Randolph is flirting with something dark and dangerous, namely getting in touch with his inner beast, or in Michaels' own words, the dark on the other side, a reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Fire.

The Dark on the Other Side is one of Michaels' most interesting works, and also one of her most frustrating. Her attempt at constructing a psychological thriller is weakened by undeveloped characters. Randolph is not nearly interesting enough to merit someone writing a full length biography, or nearly as sinister in his role of Gothic villain as he should be. Like Prince of Darkness' quasi-satanic hooey, it's pretty tame stuff. But how often in the late 60s Gothic Romances did the novelists flirt with not only adultery, overt or implied, female alcoholism, or bondage scenes? Yes, there is a startling moment late in the book when our hero keeps our heroine gagged and tied to a bed allegedly to keep her from doing harm to herself or others.

Harry Bennett's illustration for the 1971 paperback reprint gives away the ending, much like the beginning of this blog post.

Following Michael’s late 60s occult trilogy she returned to less experimental forms of Gothic writing, the ghost stories for which she is most remembered (The Crying Child, The Walker in Shadows) and the historical Gothic Romance (Greygallows, Black Rainbow) before abandoning the pseudonym altogether as her Elizabeth Peters Amelia Peabody mysteries soared to the top of international best seller lists.

Fans of the genre seem to either love or hate Michaels' works with passion either way. For me the experimentalism, edginess, and deliberate subversion of the genre in these early gems make them enjoyable to return to every few years.

2012: Year of the Gothic

And it’s long overdue. There has been a renaissance among traditional horror creatures the past few years. Vampires, even the sparkly ones, are all over cinemas with that wretched teen romance series that shall not be named (call it Gothic Ultra Lite) and television with HBO’s deliriously hyper sexual True Blood; the zombie invasion continues unabated with the wildly popular AMC series The Walking Dead leading the pack; and 2010 saw Universal’s flawed but valiant effort at re-imagining The Wolfman as a lean, mean killing machine.

The first half of 2012 will see a trio of Gothic tinged releases from major studios, hopefully reviving the Gothic tradition at the movies for awhile so we may be seeing more lonely isolated houses, midnight rides through misty graveyards, and dysfunctional, agoraphobic families with enough skeletons in the closet to put Dynasty and Dallas to shame.

First up is the UK’s Hammer Films long awaited big screen adaptation of Susan Hill’s classic ghost story The Woman in Black. Yes, that Hammer Films. A stage production of The Woman in Black has been terrifying London audiences for more than twenty years. Hammer’s version offers Daniel Radcliffe his first adult leading film role which should bring the Potterheads out in droves. Watch for it in US theaters on February 3^rd.

March 9^th brings us John Cusak as Edgar Allan Poe in the action packed detective mystery The Raven, wherein the killer recreates scenes from Poe’s classic stories. Overall, this film may stretch the borders of Gothic a bit, but judging from the production design evident in the trailer, the Gothic eye candy appears to be in visual overdrive.

Dark Shadows fans are chomping at the bit to catch the first glimpses of Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins in Tim Burton’s version of the cult classic 1960s TV series, but the studio isn’t teasing with a trailer anytime soon. Fan boards have recently pointed out that Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland didn’t offer a trailer until close to that film’s release. In that case, we may not see anything until a few weeks prior to the Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows still confirmed May 11^th release. Until then we have to make due with this ensemble photo taken on the first day of shooting last spring.

As we all know, Hollywood has a hard time coming up with anything new, so I’m anticipating a slew of imitators to begin arriving during the second half of 2012, but for the sake of originality, might I suggest an adaptation of Diane Setterfield’s intriguing 2006 Gothic pastiche, The Thirteenth Tale?

Here’s to a very Gothic 2012!

A Pentagram Is Born

During the recession of 2008, I found myself unemployed for seven months, and after I ran out of books to read I figured it was a good time to try, yet again, to write a novel. I stumbled on a few library books of the “outline your novel in 30 days” variety. Outlining? Wouldn’t that take all the fun out of the creative process? As it turns out it was just the kick in the head I needed to finally get the job done.

For the sake of experiment I thought I would construct a Gothic Romance. I started with an actress committed to a private mental hospital on the misty Oregon coast where a mysterious doctor conducted experiments with a suspicious hallucinogenic drug which ostensibly facilitated ease of dream recall and worked out the basic gist of the plot with most of its secrets and revelations in place. After I had a short synopsis / outline I reviewed it with a friend with an eye toward identifying plot holes and leaps of logic. She said, “Why don’t you set it in Hollywood?”

From then on, everything fell into place. The story quickly became a hybrid of two favorite genres, the Gothic Romance and the 70s Drive In B Horror Movie: the mysterious house on the cliffs overlooking the beaches at Malibu, two romantic interests, a good guy and a bad guy for our heroine to choose from, devil worshippers lurking around every corner, more occult trappings than you can shake a stick at, and enough blood to fill a bathtub. Choosing to set the story in 1968 helped me to flesh out the novel with period details, the clothes, the cars, the music, the slang, and the Hollywood setting worked well too with allusions to old Hollywood grandeur, character names derived from Alfred Hitchcock movies, and fictionalized references to well known actors and actresses of the era.

Anyone who struggles to become a published author these days knows what a long, difficult road it is. Three years and several revisions later, Night of the Pentagram has been unleashed upon the unsuspecting world as an independently published eBook, currently available for the Kindle though Amazon and the Nook through Barnesand Noble. Followers of The Midnight Room will likely enjoy this fast paced thriller, and if not, you probably know someone who does. So tell your Mom who used to watch Dark Shadows, your Dad who still listens to Black Sabbath, your kids who are into Twilight and True Blood, that weird chick you know who wears lots of black and may or may not be Goth, and that weird guy you work with who everyone suspects might be a serial killer. Spread the word. And if you do read it, please leave a short review on Amazon or B&N!

And yes I made the awesome cover myself.