This is an excellent, flawed film spin-off of the classic TV serial "Dark Shadows". It captures Jonathan Frid, Joan Bennett, Grayson Hall and many of the cast on film, in character, during the time of the original Dark Shadows-mania. For that, we should be eternally grateful. Other favorites David Selby, Kate Jackson, and Lara Parker can be found in the next Dark Shadows movie.
What keeps this movie from becoming truly exceptional is that it overindulges. The thing you expect too happen in a vampire horror story happens over and over AND OVER again, to seemingly every character. It's all very stylish and well-done - but, it's OVERKILL. The production, by Dan Curtis is marvelous, but he takes the characters too, too far away from their television characterizations; at times, they seem like strangers.
If considered another in the band of Dark Shadows' "Parallel Time", it works. It's a surprise Dick Smith's make-up and Bob Cobert's music weren't Oscar-nominated.
******* House of Dark Shadows (1970) Dan Curtis ~ Jonathan Frid, Grayson Hall, Joan Bennett
What keeps this movie from becoming truly exceptional is that it overindulges. The thing you expect too happen in a vampire horror story happens over and over AND OVER again, to seemingly every character. It's all very stylish and well-done - but, it's OVERKILL. The production, by Dan Curtis is marvelous, but he takes the characters too, too far away from their television characterizations; at times, they seem like strangers.
If considered another in the band of Dark Shadows' "Parallel Time", it works. It's a surprise Dick Smith's make-up and Bob Cobert's music weren't Oscar-nominated.
******* House of Dark Shadows (1970) Dan Curtis ~ Jonathan Frid, Grayson Hall, Joan Bennett