'Dark Shadows' Rises From Dead
January/13/1991 Filed in: The Pittsburgh Press
The Pittsburgh Press
Sunday, January 13, 1991
Section J, Page 1 (continued on J6)
Entertainment
'Dark Shadows' Rises From Dead
By Robert Bianco
LOS ANGELES — It walks among us, a blood-sucking creature of the night. Try though you might to kill it, IT KEEPS COMING BACK TO LIFE!
A vampire? Of course not — "Dark Shadows."
Yes, neckbiters, that Gothic groaner, that classic '60s soap concoction of witches, werewolves and weirdness, is coming back for a nighttime run. The vamping starts tonight at 9 with the arrival of a two-part NBC mini-series (part two airs tomorrow at 9), and continues Friday at 9 p.m. on NBC with the regular premiere of the "Dark Shadows" series.
In this bigger budget, big-name remake, Ben Cross ("Chariots of Fire") takes over from Jonathan Frid as vampire extraordinaire Barnabas Collins, America's Phantom of the Soap Opera. Hollywood
great Jean Simmons lends class as matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, played in the original by the late Joan Bennett.
The force behind the show is producer Dan Curtis, who created the original series before going on to produce such TV classics as "The Night Stalker," "The Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance." Considering some of his casting choices in "War," you might think Curtis enjoyed working with the living dead, but he says it took NBC officials two years to convince him to return to the "Shadows."
"It was never my idea," Curtis says. "I never intended to do it again. But it wouldn't die, for all these years it stayed alive... It is more popular today than it was even then."
Well, maybe not more popular in terms of mass appeal; the original ABC soap opera was a pretty big deal there for a while in the late '60s. But certainly the intensity of its popularity with its core cult has done nothing but increase. "Dark Shadows" videocassettes are best sellers and fan clubs abound. And when cable's Sci-Fi network debuts this spring, it will air the original "Shadows" twice a day.
Began in 1966
Not bad, considering the show's inauspicious 1966 beginning.
"It started off as an attempt at a Gothic romance/mystery. It was never intended to show or actively be involved with the supernatural. There were a lot of conversations about locked rooms and howling in towers, but you never saw anything.
The show was rapidly going down the tubes."
As "Shadows" neared the end of its 26-week order, it became clear to Curtis that ABC would not extend its run.
"My kids, who were 9-10 years old then, said to me, 'Daddy, if it's going to go off the air, why don't you at least make it scary?' And I said, 'All right, why not?'"
So he scrapped the Gothic plot in mid-story and wrote a new story around "some jerky kind of a ghost." When the ratings immediately picked up, he decided to go for broke.
"I decided I would find out how far we could go, what would the audience accept. Now for me, as a kid, the scariest thing was always a vampire; that was my personal scary monster. I decided, I'll put a vampire on this show, and then we'll kill him off."
Frid was added to the cast as Barnabas, and a star was born — or unearthed, maybe. And if there's one thing that's harder to kill than a vampire, it's a star.
"We couldn't kill him off. He became an instant matinée idol. This guy was out there ripping throats out, he was doing everything awful, and they all went crazy over him. The women went insane; the kids went crazy."
I can't testify for the women, but I will admit to being one of those kids who ran home from school to see who Barnabas would put the bite on next. We made Curtis' life prosperous but difficult.
"Now I had to solve the biggest problem: How do I perpetuate a vampire? So we made him a reluctant vampire."
High hopes for show
In his own way, Barnabas was a precursor to all those sensitive '70s heroes. A romantic at heart, he didn’t mean to treat women so badly. He just had these, well, urges.
Who knows if Barnabas' ratings magic can strike twice, but if there was ever a season that could use some new blood, it's this one. The network has been frantically promoting the series, a show that NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield hopes will be the season's first "break-out" hit.
Actually, NBC first became interested in "Dark Shadows" during the 1988 writers' strike; the network figured the show had five years worth of scripts just waiting to be remade. Curtis, however, was busy completing "War and Remembrance" and the idea got shelved.
A year later, Littlefield says, "We sat down with Dan Curtis and we screened the 'Dark Shadows' feature, and we loved it.
We just felt it was different. It was fun. It was sexy. It was scary. And we just kind of said this would be great television."
Producing great television turned out to be a bit more complicated than NBC first thought. Curtis says he couldn't use any of the old scripts; they were too repetitious. He's rewritten the show, keeping the same tone and most of the same characters, but changing some of the plot specifics.
"The basic parameters of the story are the same," Curtis says. "The incidents within have all been replotted. So there are new and different ways of getting to some of the same places that we got to."
Unlike those old ABC soap viewers, we won't have to wait a year for Barnabas to arrive. He makes it to Collinwood by the end of the miniseries' first half-hour -- still bemoaning his extended existence, and still pining for his first love, Josette. But there is one change in his love life, Curtis says.
Character change
"The difference between this and the old show is that the Victoria Winters character, the governess, is now the reincarnation of Josette, something we would have done then if we'd known what the story was going to be."
Now Curtis not only knows where the story is going, he knows how to get there. He won't stick in any normal, everyday plot devices because he tried those in the original and they didn't work; every plot has to deal with the supernatural.
Under today's TV standards, he could make the new show more violent, but he’s not interested in that path, either. "We see no reason to show any more blood than we show.... This is not going to be a terrifying show. It never was."
And that's the key. For all its vampires, for all its ghosts, for all its strange music heralding visitors from beyond the grave, "Shadows" is at heart a romance. A scary romance, perhaps, but a romance nonetheless.
Curtis may have put it best: "This is not a horror story. This is basically a fantasy."
Will a '90s audience be interested in a '60s fantasy? Only the shadow knows.
(Robert Bianco is The Pittsburgh Press TV-radio editor.)
Sunday, January 13, 1991
Section J, Page 1 (continued on J6)
Entertainment
'Dark Shadows' Rises From Dead
By Robert Bianco
LOS ANGELES — It walks among us, a blood-sucking creature of the night. Try though you might to kill it, IT KEEPS COMING BACK TO LIFE!
A vampire? Of course not — "Dark Shadows."
Yes, neckbiters, that Gothic groaner, that classic '60s soap concoction of witches, werewolves and weirdness, is coming back for a nighttime run. The vamping starts tonight at 9 with the arrival of a two-part NBC mini-series (part two airs tomorrow at 9), and continues Friday at 9 p.m. on NBC with the regular premiere of the "Dark Shadows" series.
In this bigger budget, big-name remake, Ben Cross ("Chariots of Fire") takes over from Jonathan Frid as vampire extraordinaire Barnabas Collins, America's Phantom of the Soap Opera. Hollywood
great Jean Simmons lends class as matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, played in the original by the late Joan Bennett.
The force behind the show is producer Dan Curtis, who created the original series before going on to produce such TV classics as "The Night Stalker," "The Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance." Considering some of his casting choices in "War," you might think Curtis enjoyed working with the living dead, but he says it took NBC officials two years to convince him to return to the "Shadows."
"It was never my idea," Curtis says. "I never intended to do it again. But it wouldn't die, for all these years it stayed alive... It is more popular today than it was even then."
Well, maybe not more popular in terms of mass appeal; the original ABC soap opera was a pretty big deal there for a while in the late '60s. But certainly the intensity of its popularity with its core cult has done nothing but increase. "Dark Shadows" videocassettes are best sellers and fan clubs abound. And when cable's Sci-Fi network debuts this spring, it will air the original "Shadows" twice a day.
Began in 1966
Not bad, considering the show's inauspicious 1966 beginning.
"It started off as an attempt at a Gothic romance/mystery. It was never intended to show or actively be involved with the supernatural. There were a lot of conversations about locked rooms and howling in towers, but you never saw anything.
The show was rapidly going down the tubes."
As "Shadows" neared the end of its 26-week order, it became clear to Curtis that ABC would not extend its run.
"My kids, who were 9-10 years old then, said to me, 'Daddy, if it's going to go off the air, why don't you at least make it scary?' And I said, 'All right, why not?'"
So he scrapped the Gothic plot in mid-story and wrote a new story around "some jerky kind of a ghost." When the ratings immediately picked up, he decided to go for broke.
"I decided I would find out how far we could go, what would the audience accept. Now for me, as a kid, the scariest thing was always a vampire; that was my personal scary monster. I decided, I'll put a vampire on this show, and then we'll kill him off."
Frid was added to the cast as Barnabas, and a star was born — or unearthed, maybe. And if there's one thing that's harder to kill than a vampire, it's a star.
"We couldn't kill him off. He became an instant matinée idol. This guy was out there ripping throats out, he was doing everything awful, and they all went crazy over him. The women went insane; the kids went crazy."
I can't testify for the women, but I will admit to being one of those kids who ran home from school to see who Barnabas would put the bite on next. We made Curtis' life prosperous but difficult.
"Now I had to solve the biggest problem: How do I perpetuate a vampire? So we made him a reluctant vampire."
High hopes for show
In his own way, Barnabas was a precursor to all those sensitive '70s heroes. A romantic at heart, he didn’t mean to treat women so badly. He just had these, well, urges.
Who knows if Barnabas' ratings magic can strike twice, but if there was ever a season that could use some new blood, it's this one. The network has been frantically promoting the series, a show that NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield hopes will be the season's first "break-out" hit.
Actually, NBC first became interested in "Dark Shadows" during the 1988 writers' strike; the network figured the show had five years worth of scripts just waiting to be remade. Curtis, however, was busy completing "War and Remembrance" and the idea got shelved.
A year later, Littlefield says, "We sat down with Dan Curtis and we screened the 'Dark Shadows' feature, and we loved it.
We just felt it was different. It was fun. It was sexy. It was scary. And we just kind of said this would be great television."
Producing great television turned out to be a bit more complicated than NBC first thought. Curtis says he couldn't use any of the old scripts; they were too repetitious. He's rewritten the show, keeping the same tone and most of the same characters, but changing some of the plot specifics.
"The basic parameters of the story are the same," Curtis says. "The incidents within have all been replotted. So there are new and different ways of getting to some of the same places that we got to."
Unlike those old ABC soap viewers, we won't have to wait a year for Barnabas to arrive. He makes it to Collinwood by the end of the miniseries' first half-hour -- still bemoaning his extended existence, and still pining for his first love, Josette. But there is one change in his love life, Curtis says.
Character change
"The difference between this and the old show is that the Victoria Winters character, the governess, is now the reincarnation of Josette, something we would have done then if we'd known what the story was going to be."
Now Curtis not only knows where the story is going, he knows how to get there. He won't stick in any normal, everyday plot devices because he tried those in the original and they didn't work; every plot has to deal with the supernatural.
Under today's TV standards, he could make the new show more violent, but he’s not interested in that path, either. "We see no reason to show any more blood than we show.... This is not going to be a terrifying show. It never was."
And that's the key. For all its vampires, for all its ghosts, for all its strange music heralding visitors from beyond the grave, "Shadows" is at heart a romance. A scary romance, perhaps, but a romance nonetheless.
Curtis may have put it best: "This is not a horror story. This is basically a fantasy."
Will a '90s audience be interested in a '60s fantasy? Only the shadow knows.
(Robert Bianco is The Pittsburgh Press TV-radio editor.)