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
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