BEFORE: Now that I'm over that stomach bug, I got my final birthday present today from my wife, which was a visit to the German store, where I got a loaf of pumpernickel and a variety of deli meats - head cheese, kassler liverwurst, tongue blutwurst, bierwurst and schinkenspeck (smoked ham). A few mix-and-match sandwiches with some Muenster cheese and brown mustard or horseradish sauce, and I'm back in my Gram's kitchen. A nice dark German beer, watch the Red Sox game (something my grandfather was always doing) and it's a recipe for nostalgia.
Back-to-back Tim Burton, and I start the "vampire trilogy" that will close out my Halloween chain, and I DON'T mean the Twilight franchise. It's an easy leap from "Frankenweenie", because Christopher Lee made a cameo in both films (OK, one used old movie footage of him, but that counts)
THE PLOT: An imprisoned vampire, Barnabas Collins, is set free and returns to his ancestral home, where his dysfunctional descendants are in need of his protection.
AFTER: I think this is another film that just set out to be a bit of fun, with no overarching message attached, or really much of a point at all. The original "Dark Shadows" was a long-running soap opera that happened to have a vampire in it (speaking of "Twilight"...) but I never followed it. I'm aware of it, sure, but that's about it. My geek knowledge does not extend into all corners of sci-fi and fantasy fandom.
There's something very soap opera-like about this film, for sure - the lead vampire has an witchy ex-lover who imprisoned him for 200 years, and when he gets out, she's still around and putting the screws to his descendants with a rival fishing business. Barnabas returns and gets the business going again - hey, if Dracula can run a hotel I suppose another vampire can own a few fishing boats.
But I think they bend the rules quite a bit when a vampire is allowed to go outside during the day, with just an umbrella for protection. OK, maybe it was a cloudy day, those Maine fishing villages probably have more than their share - but I seem to remember that the rules used to be that a vampire had to stay in his coffin all day long, and could only come out at night time. Jeez, why do we have these rules if the vampires don't seem to follow them?
I almost said "today's vampires", but this film is set in 1972. There are some fun bits as Barnabas hangs out with a colony of hippies (he probably got super wasted drinking their blood...) and coming to terms with equal rights (he's shocked to learn a woman can also be a doctor). There's some great classic rock on the soundtrack, like the Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin" and Donovan's "Season of the Witch". Good use of costuming too, since there's quite a similarity between some of the "mod" fashions of the early 1970's, and some of the more colonial clothing of the 1700's.
After Barnabas meets a young governess who looks exactly like his lost true love from the 1700's, he sets out to restore his family's greatness and win her heart, assuming that's she's some kind of reincarnation or is otherwise possessed by the woman he once knew. And he's determined that this time their relationship will have a better ending. This is really the only real direction that the film has, everything else just sort of devolves into random fight scenes or sex scenes.
Also starring Johnny Depp (last seen in "21 Jump Street"), Michelle Pfeiffer (last seen in "The Fabulous Baker Boys"), Helena Bonham Carter (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"), Eva Green (last seen in "Casino Royale"), Jackie Earle Haley (last seen in "All the King's Men"), Jonny Lee Miller (last seen in "Hackers"), Bella Heathcote, Chloe Grace Moretz (last seen in "Kick-Ass"), Gulliver McGrath, with cameo from Alice Cooper.
RATING: 5 out of 10 secret passages
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