“One well-known producer insisted on recasting Dark Shadows with stars,” Curtis remembers with a smirk. “Stars? Selby draws half a million kids to shopping centers but, no, this guy wanted real stars.”
It took two long, persistent years to find a backer—the newly-installed president of MGM James Aubrey, who took a look at the attractive, minimally projected costs and the strong identity from TV and said, “Let’s go - what the devil are we waiting for?” Former head of CBS, Aubrey understood the power of the small screen and had no problem with translating that power to the big screen. Curtis promised, with his usual gift for understatement, “This will make Bela Lugosi and his pictures look like a bunch of high school kids.”
It was decided that the Dark Shadows film would center on the Barnabas storyline that had marked the program’s initial popularity. Curtis would return to his initial Barnabas character: the essence of all-evil. But that concept would be mitigated by Frid’s personal portrayal of Barnabas as an angst- ridden anyman.
Curtis was given a motion picture-sized budget, albeit a relatively small one, and the project—now titled House of Dark Shadows—was on. Curtis not only agreed to the small budget, but promised to film it within five weeks. The average motion picture is filmed in eight to ten weeks and does not have the special effects or outsized cast of House of Dark Shadows. Once again, Curtis was working miracles on a shoestring.
Though the script was written by Dark Shadows writers, Sam Hall and Gordon Russell, what evolved was a very different vision than what the series presented. This was a darker, more-Hammeresque vampire Barnabas with no mitigating providence to steer him from his eventual end. The movie is entirely the child of its creator, Dan Curtis.
The TV Collinwood was Seaview Terrace in Newport, Rhode Island, an eerie house but one with a certain spectral warmth to it. It is at once haunting and romantic. Curtis wanted an entirely different kind of Collinwood for the cinematic Dark Shadows. Perhaps he hoped to underscore more dramatically that House of Dark Shadows was based in an alternate, parallel Collinwood.
He found his new Collinwood in Lyndhurst, once the home of robber baron Jay Gould, in Tarrytown, New York. The 1830-vintage Gothic revival architecture of Alexander Jackson Davis, with its crenelated walls and the brooding Hudson River in the background, provided an almost sinister effect. As Sam Hall put it, “It’s a wild house. I’d hate like hell to live in it.”
One of the factors in Lyndhurst’s favor was that the house was filled with antiques that no set dresser could duplicate, let alone afford on Curtis’ allowance. The house’s decor and interior design would give the movie an aura of elegance that belied its relatively low budget.
“Millions wouldn’t build the sets and locations we’ve got,” remarked Roger Davis (Jeff Clark in both the series and film). “There’s no back lot. No phony sets. We’ve got a 132- year-old great estate and it’s loaded with atmosphere.”
Jonathan Frid, Joan Bennett, Louis Edmonds, Grayson Hall, Kathryn Leigh Scott, John Karlen, Roger Davis, Nancy Barrett and Thayer David were cast in the roles that they originated in the series. Other actors from the series, whose characters could not be accommodated within the film’s storyline, were given cameo roles. Part of the fun of the film, for many fans, is trying to pick out Jerry Lacy, (a minister), Michael Stroka (a pallbearer), Terry Crawford (a nurse), Humbert Allen Astredo (a doctor), and Lisa Richards (Elizabeth’s secretary and the first vampire victim). Marie Wallace was to play Nancy Hodiak, scripted to be Barnabas’ second victim. When Wallace left the series, her part was written out of the film.
The Hall/Russell script used the basic TV story of Barnabas Collins’ arrival at Collinwood. Barnabas is set free once again by the simple-minded larceny of Willie Loomis—but the film Willie is a colder, more bitter, and arguably more a heroic figure. As in the series, Willie becomes Barnabas’ blood slave and servant, regularly terrorized and (in a very graphic scene) severely beaten. In the series, Willie eventually becomes Barnabas’ friend and equal. In House of Dark Shadows, Barnabas and Willie could never be friends.
In the movie, Barnabas again finds his beloved Josette reincarnated as governess Maggie Evans. He meets up with Dr Julia Hoffman (who also has a more remote relationship with Barnabas than in the series) who offers him a cure for his vampirism. Again she falls into unrequited love with Barnabas, while he falls into equally unrequited love with Maggie Evans. The consequences of their respective choices—departing sharply from the series’ storyline—change the outcome of the film.
The dramatic aging of Barnabas from his normal appearance to that of a “175-year-old” man came about in the serial as the result of an accident. In the cinema version, Julia overinjects Barnabas in a jealous rage, knowing that he has fallen in love with Maggie Evans and that he plans on winning her away from Jeff Clark. Barnabas engages in dubious ethics as he manipulates Maggie. As a result of Julia’s injection, Barnabas ages drastically into Old Barnabas, who attacks and kills Julia Hoffman. Barnabas is then doomed. There will be no blossoming of a human conscience as happened in the TV program. Barnabas remains essentially a monster, denied the bridge of his relationships with the other characters. Professor T. Eliot Stokes, on the series Barnabas’ friend and ally, becomes the screen Barnabas’ chief nemesis and Van Helsing.
Filming began on March 23,1970. One week of exterior shots at Lyndhurst was followed by three weeks of interiors. Another week was spent filming in Norwalk, Connecticut.
The logistics of simultaneously shooting a TV series as well as filming a major motion picture in the span of five weeks seemed an almost impossible task. Tarrytown, New York, where Lyndhurst was located, was 25 miles north of Manhattan, where the series was taped. Several of the TV roles were scaled down, giving the actors time to work on House of Dark Shadows. Jonathan Frid recalls that the television storyline trapped Barnabas in a chained coffin for several weeks, enabling him to be on location for the movie. Actors were shuttled to and from the ABC studio to Tarrytown. Scenes were shot in spare moments, on days off, whenever chance and careful calculation would make fortune smile. The only thing that kept them all from total exhaustion was an eight-day hiatus from the series, in which “all” they had to do was film the movie.
Joan Bennett, who has appeared in more than seventy motion pictures during her long and distinguished career, confessed, “I have never worked in a film as hectic as this!”
“The pressure was just incredible,” Grayson Hall recalled several years later. “My dog barked when I walked in my house. My son Matt mused nostalgically on the times when he ‘had a mother’. The whole fiasco was dumb. One night when we were standing around that immense, drafty mausoleum of a house—Lyndhurst—poor, dear Jonathan turned to me and said, ‘Remember the good old days, Grayson, when we used to have a life?”’
Filming a major motion picture in a century-old house filled with priceless paintings, Tiffany glass, and objets d’art, among which yards of snarled cables had to be negotiated, gave the technical people as much grief as the capricious schedule, weather, and script changes gave the actors. The weather was a particular problem, even though it was early spring.
“That spring was freezing cold,” recalls Kathryn Leigh Scott. “A horrible blizzard had kept us from filming for a few days. I’m running around in this thin little dress and we couldn’t have puffs of steam coming out of our mouths, so Arthur [Ornitz, director of photography] taught Johnny Karlen and me a trick. Just before the camera started rolling, we stood there panting so that when they actually started the scene and we started talking, it didn’t look like it was as cold as it was.”
Tempers were flaring. Cast, crew, and production people were equally unhappy. Unseasonable rain pelted down on the huge, drafty, inadequately-heated mansion and there were promises of imminent snow. The days seemed endless.
“The weather is killing us,” said Dan Curtis bleakly, a muscular presence in blue jeans and a black shirt, his black boots pacing the soggy ground of Sleepy
Hollow Cemetery, final resting place of Washington Irving, Thoreau and Emerson, which was used for Carolyn’s funeral. As if his words were prophetic, two days later the area was hit by the snowstorm that brought filming to a standstill.
“It’s like we’re haunted,” Curtis said with a smile.
It was a good thing that the cast had worked together for four years, remarked one of the actors.
Despite all the difficulties, House of Dark Shadows was delivered on schedule and under-budget.
Curtis’ House of Dark Shadows, with no restrictions on gore or violence, went much further in depicting scenes of graphic horror than the series had.
“Blood flows,” observed Roger Davis. “It’s not like the serial. You have a few dabs of blood and the network brass has apoplexy. TV does a mock-up on life. This is in living color. And the vampires really bite.”
In House of Dark Shadows, the vampire bite is filmed close-up, in glorious technicolor; the sinking of fangs into white flesh and the eruption of very red blood is lovingly portrayed.
Now directing as well producing, Dan Curtis made splendid use of his cinematographer and set director in very convincing, remarkably well-structured fight scenes and stakings. A magnificently enacted scene, rich in visuals, shows Carolyn the vampire cornered in the barn and surrounded by a sea of silver crosses, then staked in full view of the audience by Professor Stokes. The effect in the words of one noted Science Fiction and horror critic, had “the kind of excellence not seen since the boom years over at Hammer.”
The film was to have yet one more obstacle in its path. When House of Dark Shadows was shown to a preview audience of selected fans, the initial reaction was loud and enthusiastic; however, there was one scene that clearly was a problem: the now infamous “hanging David” scene.
The movie begins with governess Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott), searching for her young charge, David Collins (David Henesy), who takes delight in escaping from supervision at any opportunity. In the version of the film released nationwide, Maggie eventually finds him back at Collinwood. But in the preview version she tracks him to the Old House. She opens a closet door and finds David dangling from a rope, having apparently hung himself. It was only a trick to scare his governess, of course, but the preview audience protested violently on the grounds that kids might try to copy David’s little “gag”. The scene was dropped.
Publicity releases had been sent all over North America, some referring to the “hanging David” sequence, but only the preview audience ever saw the actual scene.
The reaction to the “hanging David” scene caused concern over other scenes in the movie. Everyone knew Dark Shadows on television had little gore. Vampire bites were dabs of fake blood. Werewolf victims looked as if they’d tangled with a rosebush. Stakings were done off camera, with sometimes a glimpse of a trickle of blood from a dead vampire’s mouth.
But House of Dark Shadows was for the big screen and could show graphic violence. When Daphne Budd crumples from her car seat after Barnabas’ attack, her ravaged neck is clearly exposed. Carolyn staggers back to Collinwood after being munched on by Barnabas. Willie tries in vain to staunch the blood, but the woman’s neck is beyond repair, in vivid color. Barnabas’ ultimate staking is a dance of camera angles as the sharp spike rams into his back and bursts through his chest, with lots and lots of bright red blood.
The film opened to a producer’s dream: enthusiastic praise from many reviewers and full houses in theaters all over the country. Curtis’ gamble had paid off: his low-budget movie was raking it in. When House of Dark Shadows was made, MGM was in deep financial straits. The studios’ precarious situation convinced them to back Curtis. Only a wild-card payoff could drag MGM out of the hole, both artistically and financially. House of Dark Shadows, some insiders insist, helped save Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from bankruptcy.
To attract the horror buffs, MGM offered local theatre owners “Vampire Kits” with fangs, glow-in-the-dark stickers, pop art buttons and sidewalk stencils. Another suggested gimmick was an old wooden casket in the theater lobby filled with guest tickets to House of Dark Shadows. The one with the key that unlocked the casket won the tickets. The press packet also advised that some unknown delicacy called “vampire cocktails” could be served at the snack bar. And that “fainting pills” (in reality, “red hot” candies) might be handed out. The brochure recommended a “real vampire” to show up in the lobby and greet viewers (presumably only for evening showings). The hype included a “Miss American Vampire” beauty pageant held at a New Jersey amusement park.
“It was fun, for the first five minutes,” recalls Nancy Barrett (Carolyn), who was one of the pageant judges. “After that, it got terribly depressing. Some of the girls came in bikinis. Some came dressed as witches or vampires or dead bodies. One girl stood in front of me and just stared at me. ‘Am I supposed to smile at you?’ she asked. I gave a nervous laugh and said, ‘No, that’s all right. You can go on to the next judge.’ Another girl told us she was a witch. We all decided to make her a semi-finalist for fear she might ’get us’ afterward.”
Jonathan was on hand to crown the winner and to give Dark Shadows games to the losers. The young Filipino woman who won the title of “Miss American Vampire” would later become known as the Indian actress “Sacheen Littlefeather”. She would act as Marlon Brando’s spokeswoman when he refused the Oscar for The Godfather, in protest of Hollywood’s “mistreatment of Native Americans”.
Although remembered fondly by today’s fans, and flocked-to by the Dark Shadows viewers of 1970, it has been suggested by some that House of Dark Shadows led to the series’ eventual demise. The TV ratings fell after the movie. No one is quite sure why. Perhaps it was the audience’s reaction to seeing their hero Barnabas in an evil light. Perhaps it was because parents attended House of Dark Shadows with their children and, seeing the amount of blood spilled across the screen, discouraged their children’s choice of television viewing material.
Others think that part of the charm of Dark Shadows was its live-on-tape awkwardness and its predisposition to incredible storylines and wonderfully overdrawn characters. There were a few bloopers in “House” (such as the boom mike appearing overhead and the reflection of the camera in the occasional panel of glass, not to mention the listing of Don Briscoe’s character as Todd Jennings in the credits while he was called Todd Blake throughout the film. But these were never of the endearing, theatrical, glued-together nature of the series’ mistakes. Its blunders only endeared Dark Shadows fans all the more. They added a sincerity and reality to the series that the budget and gloss of MGM, and the remote, forbidding luxury of the robber baron’s castle, could not duplicate in the film.
As Jonathan Frid put it, the film lacked the “charm and naivete of the soap opera. Every once in a while, the show coalesced into a Brigadoonish never-never-land. It wasn’t necessary to bring the rest of the world into Dark Shadows, which is what the film did.”
And that factor may have caused the ratings slump and cancellation of the series which, even as the film played to huge audiences and wild praise all over America, was only months away.
With the success of House of Dark Shadows, MGM was ready to support a second Dark Shadows movie. Night of Dark Shadows, released in 1971, faired less successfully despite its fine cast. Curtis once again cast the film with actors from the TV series: David Selby, Kate Jackson, Grayson Hall, Lara Parker, John Karlen, Nancy Barrett, James Storm, Christopher Pennock, Diana Millay and Thayer David. Also back was much of the House of Dark Shadows’ production crew with Dan Curtis at the helm.
“Night” was conceived as Selby’s turn at the big screen, just as House of Dark Shadows had been Frids’. The working title of the film had been “The Curse of Dark Shadows”, remaining long enough to have a few early publicity photographs released under the title.
The story concerns yet another Quentin Collins (David Selby), this time an artist, and his new wife Tracy (Kate Jackson). The movie opens with their
return to Collinwood. They are welcomed by the housekeeper Mrs Carlotta Drake (Grayson Hall) who seems more accustomed to a role as mistress of the house than caretaker. She tells the newlyweds a brief history of the house, then informs them that the former lady of the manor, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, has died, which places all of these events after both House of Dark Shadows and the series Dark Shadows.
It is soon revealed that this great house of Collinwood is haunted by the ghost of yet another Angélique (Lara Parker), hung for witchcraft and adultery almost two hundred years previously. This time, the charges of witchcraft are purportedly the false accusations of a scheming Reverend Strack (Thayer David). But the matter of adultery is well founded, as she has a lover named Charles Collins (David Selby, in flashback), much to her husband’s...and Charles’ wife’s...dismay.
It is revealed that Carlotta Drake is the reincarnation of a child named Sarah Castle (Monica Rich). Angélique had been fond of the girl while alive. Only Sarah remained faithful to Angélique, so Angéliquc is supposed to have “rewarded” this loyalty by giving her the gift of remembering her previous incarnations (how Angélique could have done this and not have been a witch is uncertain). So Sarah has been reborn as Carlotta. The reincarnation of Sarah is there to welcome home Quentin, who happens to be the reincarnation of Charles Collins. Quentin looks exactly like Charles, except for an unsightly scar on Charles’ cheek.
The Dark Shadows Companion: 25th Anniversary Collection Page 14