2019 - THE MASTER OF DARK SHADOWS, a look at the gothic/horror soap opera

Well you would be hard pressed to say the world really needed a documentary on the cult soap opera  Dark Shadows and it's creator and producer Dan Curtis but here it is.  Dark Shadows was a soap opera where the gimmick was that it was a gothic romantic novel in the soap opera format.  The show was created by Dan Curtis who to put it nicely was a "type A" Hollywood personality in the best tradition.

The show was cheaply done and had that soap opera touch of dragging out story lines episode after episode where essentially nothing really ever happened.  Initially filmed in black and white it had a not that bad cast which featured Joan Bennett who had been a star in Hollywood during the 1940's working for director Fritz Lang.  This show really revolved around a performer named Alexandra Moltke who played the damsel in distress.  Moltke may not have been much of an actress but she certainly had a very interesting personal life.  She was the mistress of a German millionaire named Claus von Bulow who was accused of murdering his wife by administering an overdose of insulin.  Von Bulow was put on trial not one but twice where he was eventually acquitted.

Dark Shadows struggled along for a while and was on the verge of cancellation when producer Dan Curtis hit on the idea of actually adding a horror element to the show.  Enter the character of Barnabas Collins who turned out to be a vampire and also a very popular character.  Dark Shadows was off and running while reworking just about every horror movie plot Curtis and his writers could think of.

Producer Dan Curtis

This documentary does a fairly good job of recounting the Dark Shadows phenomenon.  It was a very hot show for a while.  Dark Shadows aired in the late afternoon and was extremely popular with kids getting home from school.  This film has the usual archival film clips and interviews with the remaining cast members.  It's certainly a lot more entertaining than the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movie version that showed up in 2012.  The Master of Dark Shadows  turns out to be a real nostalgia wallow for people who remember the show.

The running time is 92 minutes.

2014 - LOST SOUL: THE DOOMED JOURNEY OF RICHARD STANLEY'S ISLAND OF DR MOREAU

This kind of ordinary documentary has a great subject matter, the attempt to make another film version of The Island of Dr. Moreau by a first time director named Richard Stanley who seems to have a screw or two loose. 

A film where about everything went wrong from the selection of a location which was an hour from civilization to the cast while involved Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer two shall we say difficult actors.  Naturally with these two characters and a relatively novice director things fell apart almost immediately.  The production came to a grinding halt while the director Richard Stanley was fired and a replacement was sought.

The replacement turned out to be John Frankenheimer a guy who had not been involved in a good project since 1973's The Iceman Cometh.  Frankenheimer bullied his cast and crew to get through the production but meet his match in Brando who was clearly in it for the paycheck and probably realized the film was essentially a hopeless mess. 

The documentary has interviews with Richard Stanley, members of the cast and crew with the exception of Brando and Frankenheimer who have passed away.  Val Kilmer refused to be interviewed.  The documentary is essential viewing and demonstrates how difficult it is to make a film and in particular a decent film when the odds of it being any good are stacked against it from the outset.

96 minutes.