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. 

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.

Things Are Looking Mighty Grimm

Little Red Riding Hood leaves her college dorm room dressed in pink running shoes and a tight red sweater, iPod cranked up to “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics, and sets out for an early morning jog through the forest primeval. Minutes later, amid snarls and thrashing underbrush, Little Red is torn limb from limb.

Goldilocks and her boyfriend break into a secluded house, looking like something out of a primitive Tiki bar, helping themselves to the contents of the wine bar, the fridge, and a little R and R in the homeowner’s bed. Little do they know they have stumbled into the lair of three “bears.”

If this sounds like the dark flip side of Disney, you’ve got it right. It’s NBC’s breakout new cop thriller, Grimm. Our hero, homicide detective Nick Burkhardt, recently learns that he is a “Grimm”, a descendant of the original Brothers, blessed or cursed with the ability to “see” our favorite storybook monsters for what they really are. Drawing on a long tradition of supernatural television from Rod Serling’s Night Gallery to The X Files, Grimm infuses new blood into that old standby, the TV cop show.

One of the best things about Grimm is its visual style, thanks to the producers decision to film the show in and around Portland, Oregon, where the woods possess a natural fairy-tale like quality not unlike Germany’s Black Forest. But this is network television, so the violence is nowhere near as graphic as, say HBO’s True Blood, and the 45 minute plots are not overly complex, nor is there any envelope pushing here.

Grimm airs in the perfect time slot, early Friday evenings after the gym and happy hour, and before more serious late night partying begins. For those of us whose tastes lean toward the Gothic and Supernatural, it’s a great way to kick off the weekend.

Grimm airs Friday nights at nine on the NBC network. The first two episodes are currently available for online viewing at Hulu dot com.