No Darkness in the Shadows

If the recently released trailer for “Dark Shadows” is any indication of the overall film, Tim Burton has just driven a final nail into the lid of Dan Curtis’ coffin and made many die-hard fans of the original gothic soap opera want to be chained in theirs just to keep them away from the theatrical premiere.

Burton is either very clever and has used all of his tired and lame gags (normally needed in a film for comic relief after prolonged supsense) in the trailer in order to keep the film’s true gothic nature a surprise; or he’s sold his soul to the devil for the love of money, attempting to draw money from the "Dumb and Dumber" crowd into the Hollywood coffins - er - coffers.

The first 30 seconds of the trailer is actually quite good, with Johnny Depp, a.k.a, Barnabas Collins, reading from his journal about being cursed by the witch Angelique Bouchard.

CUT TO:
Ships on a foggy sea, or already in port at Collinsport, Maine. They have arrived from England with Joshua Collins, wife, and son Barnabas on board.

Alas, after the film's logo fades out we are introduced to a jazzed up, wanna be funny, twisted Burton abstract of what once was an entertaining and alluring story of a family followed by one seemingly supernatural tragedy after another.

Fans of the original "Dark Shadows" know that Barnabas Collins was a clever and tortured soul cursed by the witch Angelique to roam the night as a vampire for all eternity as revenge for his spurning of her love. It was not she who chained him in his coffin for nearly 200 years, but his father, Joshua Collins, because he couldn’t bring himself to kill his son with silver bullets. This running theme of Collinwood characters caring for each other, no matter what curse befell them, is part of what made the show so likeable.

Fans know that Barnabas Collins would never rip the back off a television set while screaming for a “tiny songstress” to come forth from her witchery, but would have asked someone how the image was made in the box. There were after all, paintings in the 1700s, and Barnabas was an educated man, so he wouldn’t be all that surprised to see a clearer image – possibly moving – in a box. Even if he did believe it to be an apparition of some kind, he would have suspected Angelique and confronted her, or even a ghost. He would never have gone into a slapstick routine that has been overplayed in too many films by traveler’s from the past struggling to get accustomed to a future time.

Fans also know that Angelique’s power came straight from the devil himself. She wasn’t a Disney witch, who needed to drop feathers into a bubbling cauldron to turn Barnabas into a creature of the night. She could do it with a mere incantation, an evil look, and just a hint of hell fire in her sparkling and beautiful eyes.

Parodies work for certain films, “The Brady Bunch” and “The Addams Family” for example, but those shows were already comedies on television. A parody of a show that was never played for comedy and whose fans are as loyal as "Star Trek” fans - following Dark Shadows Conventions and mingling with its former actors some forty years later - is somehow sacrilegious. The fun of the original soap wasn’t slapstick, low IQ gags, and one liners, but its over-the-top melodrama, forgotten lines, crew walking in front of a camera, and the actors who trooped onward when it happened on live TV. There were also cliffhangers at the end of each episode that made us want to tune in the next day to see what would happen next.

Burton's “Dark Shadows” appears at first glance to be just another Hollywood "re-imagining" with ridiculous looking cartoon characterizations and worn out gags that just aren't funny anymore. Depp looks like a "Twilight" vampire in goth wardrobe, which is a modern day Hollywood image. Let's not forget the over- played-to-ad-nauseam hissing of modern movie vampires rising on heels, arms outstretched from their coffins - as if magically by CGI. This doesn't seem like "Dark Shadows" and shouldn’t have been called that. It's more like "Hocus Pocus Meets Edward Scissorhands and the Three Stooges." It’s surprising Burton didn’t think to have Bette Midler play Angelique as Winifred Sanderson's twin sister. She would fit right in.

After years of anticipation, it appears “Dark Shadows” fans will not get to see their beloved characters roaming the dark shadows of Collinwood Manor on the big screen after all. It appears they won't be jumping in their seats when something unexpected lurks in the shadows, because there isn't anything in the shadows but frighteningly bad and overused one-liners.

I hope I’m wrong for the sake of "Dark Shadows" fans everywhere. I hope Burton is just playing a very clever hand and there are some real ghosts and things that go bump in the night in the darkness and shadows of this Collinwood.