Great Moments In Television History #27: The Final Scene of Dark Shadows

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

After five years of enthralling audiences with the story of Barnabas Collins and his family, Dark Shadows came to an end on April 2nd, 1971. By this point, the show itself had tried to return to its gothic roots by setting its latest storyline in 1841. During the show’s final episodes, Jonathan Frid played not Barnabas but instead, Bramwell Collins. Unfortunately, this didn’t help the show’s once strong ratings and ABC abruptly canceled Dark Shadows in 1971.

When the show ended, it did so in typical tongue-in-cheek fashion. With Bramwell and his love, Catharine Harridge, preparing to leave Collinsport, news suddenly came that there had been a vampire attack!

Or was it?

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Horror Film Review: House of Dark Shadows (dir by Dan Curtis)

Posted on October 28, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s a lot that you can say about this vampire film from 1970 but I think it can all be summed up with one word: relentless.

A lot of this is because House of Dark Shadows is a film adaptation of a daytime drama. Over the course of six sesons, Dark Shadows ran for a total of 1,220 episodes. That’s a lot of story to cram into a 97-minute film but director Dan Curtis does just that. The end result is an incredibly busy film and I mean that in the best way possible.

Seriously, there are so many twists and turns in this film’s plot that it’s difficult to even know where to begin. This is one of the most incident-filled horror films that I’ve ever seen. No sooner does one plotline resolve itself than another begins. Meanwhile, a surprisingly large cast wanders through the shadows and tries not to get transformed into a vampire. Most of them do not succeed.

See if you can keep all of this straight:

In Maine, a lowlife handyman named Willie (John Karlen, giving the film’s best performance) breaks into a mausoleum and approaches a coffin that’s covered with chains. Willie thinks that there’s a treasure hidden in the coffin but, after he removes the chains, he instead discovers that he’s stumbled across the home of a vampire! Barnabas Collin (Jonathan Frid, who perfectly combines old world manners with thinly veiled menace) has spent 175 years trapped in that coffin and now that he’s been released, he’s not in a very good mood.

Soon, Barnabas has introduced himself to his descendants (including Joan Bennett, as Elizabeth, the family matriarch) as a cousin from England. Everyone is impressed with Barnabas’s charm and courtly style. Of course, some people are a little bit skeptical. Prof. Stokes (Thayer David) notices that Barnabas doesn’t seem to know much about London while Dr. Hoffman (Grayson Hall) flat out accuses Barnabas of being a vampire. Barnabas admits that this is true but fear not! Dr. Hoffman’s fallen in love with him and wants to help cure him.

Meanwhile, everyone in town is growing concerned about all of the bloodless bodies that are showing up. They especially get worried after Elizabeth’s daughter, Carolyn (Nancy Barrett), dies and then promptly comes back to life, complete with her own set of fangs….

While the town concerns itself with what to do about Carolyn, Barnabas has fallen in love with a nanny named Maggie (Kathryn Leigh Scott), who he thinks is the reincarnation of his former lover. Unfortunately, Maggie already has a boyfriend named Jeff (Roger Davis) but when has the ever been a problem for a vampire? Far more of a problem than Jeff is the fact that Willie is also in love with Maggie and Dr. Hoffman is so jealous of Barnabas’s love for Maggie that she’s willing to inject him with a formula that causes him to transform into an elderly man….

And all that’s just in the first hour!

Needless to say, it all leads to one final, gore-filled confrontation. When I say that this film is gory, I mean just that. Blood isn’t just spilled in House of Dark Shadows. Instead, it flows like water busting out of a cracked dam. When Barnabas bites a victim, he doesn’t just leave two neat little puncture marks. Instead, he literally rips their neck to shreds. Just how savage Barnabas and Carolyn get in this film is one of the things that sets House of Dark Shadows apart from other vampire films. As opposed to the type of tragic figure who shows up in so many vampire films, Barnabas is ruthless, cruel, and unforgiving. He’s a genuinely frightening creation.

House of Dark Shadows is a chaotic movie but it’s also a lot of fun. This is one of those films that you watch in amazement as it just keeps going and going, piling on one incident after another. Does the film always make sense? No, but it doesn’t have to. Quickly paced and featuring nonstop gore and fog, the film has a dream-like feel to it. Curtis and the cast attack the material with such unbridled enthusiasm that it doesn’t matter if the plot occasionally doesn’t always add up or if the dialogue is occasionally a bit clumsy. It’s impossible not to get swept along with the film’s insanity.

Probably because of its television roots, House of Dark Shadows is often dismissed by critics. (I’ve never seen any old episodes of the show so I can’t say how the movie compares to it.) Well, those dismissive critics are wrong. House of Dark Shadows is one of my favorite vampire films and it’s definitely one that deserves to be rediscovered.

(And yes, it’s a helluva lot better than that movie that Tim Burton made with Johnny Depp….)

Great Moments In Television History #23: Barnabas Collins Is Freed From His Coffin

Posted on October 2, 2022 by Jedadiah Leland

The year was 1967 and, in Collinsport, Maine, a petty criminal named Willie Loomis was about to make television history. Convinced that a fortune in jewelry was hidden in the Collins family’s mausoleum, Willie broke in and opened a coffin that, strangely, was covered in chains. Willie expected to find a fortune. Instead, he found Barnabas Collins, a 200 year-old vampire who transformed Willie into his servant and proceeded to spend the next five years masquerading as a cousin from Britain while searching for both a cure to his condition and for the reincarnation of the love of his life, Josette.

Played by stage actor Jonathan Frid, Barnabas Collins made his first appearance on the April 18th, 1967 episode of Dark Shadows. Though Barnabas was originally only meant to be a temporary addition to the show’s roster of characters, Frid proved to be popular with viewers, like my mother who not only watched the show when it first aired but also when reruns were broadcast in syndication many years later. The show soon came to center on the ruthless vampire.

In fact, Frid and Barnabas became some identified with the show that many are still shocked to learn that Dark Shadows had run for a full year before Barnabas was introduced as a character. When the show airs in syndication, it usually starts with Willie (played by John Karlen) opening Barnabas’s coffin and not with the earlier episodes in which the show’s nominal lead character, Victoria Winters, first arrived at Collinwood and met the members of the family.

Many future horror directors and writers have stated that their interest in the genre began with watching Jonathan Frid on Dark Shadows. And it all began with that one great moment when Willie Loomis opened the coffin and set Barnabas free.

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A Halloween Film Review: Seizure (1974, directed by Oliver Stone)

Posted on October 18, 2016 by Jedadiah Leland

seizure1 Everyone had to start somewhere and, long before he became one of the leading political provocateurs of American cinema, Oliver Stone was just another struggling film school grad who was looking for a chance to make a name for himself. Like many aspiring filmmakers, Stone made his directorial debut with a low-budget horror film.

Filmed in Quebec and featuring an eclectic cast that included a soap opera star, a former Warhol superstar, a faded teen idol, a past Bond girl, and a future Bond villain, Seizure stars Jonathan Frid (of Dark Shadows fame) as Edmund Blackstone. Edmund is a horror novelist who is described as being “a modern-day Edgar Allan Poe.” When Edmund’s rich friends get together for the weekend, they are terrorized by three maniacs: the Queen of Evil (Martine Beswick), a mute giant called the Jackal (Henry Judd Baker), and a psychotic dwarf named The Spider (Hervé Villechaize).

All of Edmund’s guests face the inevitability of death in a different way. Playboy Mark Frost (Troy Donahue) is too concerned with pursuing pleasure to realize that he’s in danger. Businessman Charlie Hughes (Joseph Sirola) gets out his wallet and tries to buy his way out of trouble. Mikki (Mary Woronov), Charlie’s much younger wife, strips down to her underwear and runs away. Eunice Kahn (Anne Meachem) jumps out of a window after the Spider ticks her into using an aging cream. Eunice’s husband, philosopher Serge (Roger de Koven), faces death with stoicism. Edmund’s brother-in-law, Gerald (Richard Cox), is a long-haired hippie who accidentally gets shot in the head by Edmund and dies saying, “You bastard!” Edmund’s wife (Christina Pickles) tries to protect her son (Timothy Ousey) and Edmund reveals himself to be the first of the many flawed father figures who would appear in Stone’s films.

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If not for the identity of its director, Seizure would be a forgotten film. In fact, it seems to be a film that Stone wishes was forgotten. He rarely mentions it in interviews and usually describes Seizure as being a “learning experience” and there’s really nothing about Seizure that would make you think the director would go on to win three Oscars. It’s a slow and talky movie that is just occasionally weird enough to be interesting. Seizure‘s philosophical digressions are pure Stone but otherwise, it’s hard to see any sign of the director that Stone would become in Seizure.

Still, what other movie features Jonathan Frid and Mary Woronov having a knife fight while Martine Beswick and Hervé Villechaize watch?

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