In
fact, “House” is essentially a Readers’ Digest version of the beginnings of the
Barnabas Collins story, following the vampire’s quest to find new blood and an
old love 200 years after he should have died. Jonathan Frid plays Barnabas, and
most of the TV cast reprise their well-established parts, including Joan
Bennett as the reclusive Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Grayson Hall as the scheming Dr. Julia
Hoffman and John Karlen as Willie Loomis, the greedy Collinwood groundskeeper
whose failed treasure hunt results in the unintentional opening of Barnabas’
coffin.
On TV, Barnabas was often quietly creepy, but in “House” he is less cultured and more malevolent. Still, he has a soft spot for Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott), a dead ringer for Josette, the woman Barnabas loved and lost centuries ago. In other respects, “House” takes major liberties with the basics of the series, revving up the gore and sensuality far beyond 1970s TV standards and allowing Barnabas to kill off or put his curse on many of the show’s key players.
Some of the plot of “House” has carried over to Burton’s
“Dark Shadows,” including the concepts of Julia testing an unproven cure for
vampirism on Barnabas. Of course, the same kinds of clothing and hairdos that
Burton’s movie ridicules were still considered quite fashionable in 1970, so
any laughs they might prompt in “House” are purely unintentional. While the
movie takes itself seriously, the marketing department apparently had some fun
with the ad campaign: “Come see how the vampires do it” was one of the taglines
they came up with.
“Night of Dark Shadows” qualifies as an offbeat spinoff of
the show, with Lara Parker retaining her role as Angelique, the vengeful 18th-century
man-trap, while other series regulars create entirely new characters; for
example, Hall plays Carlotta, the secretive housekeeper of Collinwood, while
David Selby, who portrayed Quentin Collins on TV, plays a completely different
guy named Quentin Collins in “Night.” (If you think you can apply the usual
rules of storytelling to “Dark Shadows,” you’re very wrong.)
In “Night,” artist Quentin brings his bride, Tracy (a perky
Kate Jackson, five years before becoming one of “Charlie’s Angels” and more
than a decade away from “Scarecrow and Mrs. King”) to his ancestral home of
Collinwood. Easygoing Tracy tries to embrace her new role as lady of the manor, but she’s
disturbed by the silent disapproval of Carlotta and Quentin’s surprising
outbursts of verbal viciousness and violence. Blame it on that meddling
Angelique, who was hanged as a sorceress 200 years ago and continues to work
her manipulative magic from the spirit world, proving that the only thing worse
than a wicked witch is the conniving ghost of a wicked witch.
Playing out like a cross between Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca" and
something along the lines of “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Night” is a fairly effective
little shocker that predates (and provides a pretty good blueprint for) “The
Exorcist,” “The Possession of Joel Delaney” and the rest of the demonic possession
flicks of the mid-1970s. If the film seems a bit choppy in places, particularly
in its last third, that’s easy to understand. Much to the dismay of distributor
MGM, director Dan Curtis reportedly turned in a feature that was over two hours
long. Studio bosses insisted he immediately trim it down to 90 minutes, which
resulted in some crucial scenes being sliced and slashed. A restored “director’s
cut” of “Night,” with a running time of 129 minutes, is tentatively slated to
be released on DVD and Bluray later this year.
Both movies are long out of print on video, but you can rent
or buy digital versions of "Night" and "House" at Amazon or iTunes.
