1970 - HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, the film version of the soap opera

Before Tim Burton and Johnny Depp get their hands on it and spoil it with their Gothic camp crap, a  review of the original Dark Shadows film. 

Producer/director Dan Curtis looking for a quick buck took his TV series and reworked the plot line into a low budget flick using the original cast from the soap opera.  The results were not that bad although they sure should have been.

Curtis shot a lot of the film on location which allowed for a certain verisimilitude to the film, the acting if it was a little hammy was probably about what you could expect from a bunch of soap opera actors.

Dark Shadows made a star out of Johnathan Frid as the tortured vampire Barnabas Collins.  Frid was almost a pioneer in the romantic vampire genre than has spawned such things as the Twilight series and god knows whatever teen romance crap about vampires that is currently floating around.

As usual Dan Curtis was way ahead of the curve when it came to taking horror themes and sticking them in a modern setting.

The fun thing about House of Dark Shadows was that it allowed Curtis to put some closeur on the Barnabas Collins storyline, something that the series could never do since Frid was the star.  In addition, the film has some pretty decent vampire kills in it.

House of Dark Shadows is an interesting relic, it has a nice gothic and 70's feel to it, you have ancient vampires and chicks in mini skirts running around all in one film.

95 minutes

1977 - CURSE OF THE BLACK WIDOW, made for TV horror and Anthony Franciosa

The father of the modern horror film, Dan Curtis directed Curse of the Black Widow with a fairly interesting 1970's cast which included, Patty Duke, Donna Mills, Vic Morrow, June Allyson, Sid Caesar, June Lockhart, Roz (Pinky Tuscadaro) Kelly and TV stalwart Anthony Franciosa.

Franciosa's private detective Mark Higbie is on the trail of some mysterious murders that appear to be the work of a giant black widow spider.  This is the kind of stuff Dan Curtis could pump out in his sleep, but the script is pretty lacking even for one of his productions.  Franciosa is basically playing Carl Kolchak from The Night Stalker.  I guess Darrin McGavin wasn't available when they filmed this. 

It appears that Curtis was trying to do a horror film and cross it with a psychological study of a person suffering from multiple personality disorder, but the whole thing comes off as a poor man's version of Val Lewton's Cat People.

Curtis does know how to do the creepy mood thing pretty well.  He had lots of time on his TV serial Dark Shadows to practice.  Curse of the Black Widow is entertaining but a little disappointing. 

100 minutes. 

1973 - THE NORLISS TAPES, ok horror film pilot

If you are looking for someone to blame for all of this Twilight, romantic vampire nonsense then producer/director Dan Curtis is your man.  Starting in 1966 with the Gothic daytime soap opera Dark Shadows which introduced the heart throb vampire Barnabas Collins.  Dan Curtis became a specialist in mixing old B movie horror film conventions with a more modern sensibility. 

The Norliss Tapes is a TV pilot for what was clearly going to be a horror anthology type of show the idea being that the writer David Norliss has left a series of tape recordings behind (cassette tapes no less) that would document his encounters with the supernatural.  The plan for the series was to begin each episode with his publisher listening to one of these tapes.

The Norliss Tapes is a perfectly entertaining time killer of a film.  It never really gets to the level of Curtis' previous modern horror films The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler.  Those films were written by Richard Matheson who was very good at achieving the right mood for a modern horror thriller. 

There is also nothing wrong with the actor Roy Thinnes as the writer David Norliss, but he could have really used a little bit of a sense of humor which was something Darren McGavin achieved as Carl Kolchak in the Stalker series. 

While blaming Dan Curtis for the Twilight series, he might as well also take the blame, for The X Files,  Lost, and just about an other quasi supernatural piece of modern day supernatural or horror garbage an audience has to sit through.

72 made for TV minutes.