House Of Dark Shadows (1970) Could there be any more perfect film to post about on the eve of Halloween?
......especially one hitting its 50th anniversary.
You can scan the record books all you like but we doubt you'll find another film that can boast of being the first horror movie based on a popular.......horror soap opera (??!!).
The ABC 'daytime drama', which ran from 1967 to 1971 became a major sensation, a campy gothic romp that had kids of all ages (from middle school to college) rushing home (or back to the dorm) to catch the daily, late afternoon episodes.
Front and center on the show was Canadian actor Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins, a conflicted, tortured romantic vampire, forever pining for this lost love Josette, who threw herself into the sea rather than marry an undead guy.
Hey, the girl set a pretty low bar for Barnabas, all things considered.......being alive.
Frid found himself as an unlikely national heartthrob......you could think of his Barnabas as 'Wuthering Heights' Heathcliff.......with fangs.
We stand in awe at the sheer accomplishment here.......a feature film that jams the storylines of probably hundreds of half hour TV episodes into a 100 minute movie.
So we're off and running to Collinwood and the huge New York state mansion where all the extended Collins family members are currently parked. Their goonish handyman Willie (John Karlen) searching for family treasure to loot, inadvertently frees Barnabas from his crypt coffin.
Enslaving Willie and ingratiating himself with the Collins' bunch by suddenly arriving as their long lost English cousin, the Barnan-ator falls hard for their governess Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott).
Wouldn't you know it, Maggie's a dead ringer for Barn-a-rama's long dead main squeeze, Josette. Do we hear wedding bells?
Let the neck biting and blood gushing commence!
And we're not kidding about the blood part. Producer-director Dan Curtis, liberated from the omnipresent censorship applied to the television show, now felt free to let the red stuff spurt, flow and drip with more frequency than a Saturday night at a hospital Emergency Room.
Even better, from our standpoint......the film defiantly existed separately from the characters and their story arcs on the TV show..... so.as the ultra-busy plot packs in dozens of subplots and horrific incidents,, it merrily kills off and/or vampire-izes almost the entire cast.
And there's nothing we admire more than a vampire movie with an extra-high body count.......(and easily achieved in Collinwood, where its police force treats the wave of vampiric deaths about the same as breaking and entering or DUI's......)
This Halloween, with most trick-or-treaters sidelined by COVID, we recommend a nostalgic trip down Malady Lane with Barnabas and the whole 'Dark Shadows' gang. It's a 3 star (***) treat at least equal to Reece's Peanut Butter Cups and Kit Kat Bars.......(with the same amount of biting involved.)
Fair warning......this one's NOT for the littlest Halloweeners.......movie audiences took along their kids to see this back in '70, unaware that the film freely slapped on the gore.......and that may have led to the TV show's rapidly decreasing ratings and popularity and its eventual demise.
For all of us immature adults and teens, however, it's a graveyard smash......
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