Forgotten Television: Dark Shadows the Revival 1991

• Victoria Winters: [voice-over] My name is Victoria Winters. My journey is just the beginning. A journey that I am hoping will somehow begin to reveal the mysteries of my past. It is a journey that will bring me to a strange and dark place… to a house high atop a stormy cliff at the edge of the sea… to a house called Collinwood. To a world I’ve never known, with people I’ve never met… people who tonight are only vague shadows in my mind, but who will soon fill all the days and nights of my tomorrows.

Victoria Winters (Joanna Going) arrives at Collinwood, the Gothic mansion housing the Collin’s family in the small Maine town of Collinsport.  She is to be the governess of 10-year-old David Collins (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).  Roger Collins (Roy Thinnes) is distrustful to Victoria, but his widowed sister, Elizabeth (Jean Simmons) is kinder to her.  The original Collin’s mansion is now in ruins on the estate and Willie Loomis (Jim Fyfe) goes searching for the legendary treasure that is rumored to be hidden within the Collins Family crypt, but instead Willie releases Barnabas Collins (Ben Cross) a 200-year-old vampire.  Barnabas convinces the family that he is a distant relative from England, and they allow him to live in the Old House where he begins to romance Victoria, who looks exactly like his fiancé, Josette Dupres, back in the 1790s. Soon after his arrival, the townsfolk of Collinsport begin to be attacked.  As the series progresses, Barnabas searches for a cure to his vampirism and the secret to how he became a vampire is revealed.

I suppose you could barely call Dark Shadows “forgotten”, as the original gothic daytime soap opera series ran for five years with 1225 episodes, but the revival of the series may not be as remembered.  The creator of the original show, Dan Curtis, had declined several times before in reviving his creation, but in 1987, Brandon Tartikoff, the then-head of programing for NBC relentlessly contacted Curtis who eventually was persuaded.  Updating the series from a daytime soap to a weekly series meant that the storyline would need to be simplified and condensed. Curtis explains, “The essential characters and relationships are the same, but the things they do are different. I thought I could rely on those old scripts, but I found that they were full of crazy plots that we couldn’t use. So all the incidents are different; we arrive at similar points through a much different route.”  Curtis included several major plot points from within the original show like Dr. Hoffman’s (Barbara Steele) attempt to cure Barnabas medically and Victoria’s time travel back to 1790.   Unfortunately, the show was on during the Gulf War and was often interrupted or moved causing the show to lose its audience.  Fans also blamed the promotional material for the series, which highlighted more of the horror aspect and less of the gothic romance.  By the time that the show got to the final episode of the season, the ratings had dropped significantly and NBC cancelled the program.  NBC was picketed by fans and the studio received over 7000 letters of protest.

In 1991, I was planning on directing my first full length play in college, Dracula.  The cast insisted we watch the revival of Dark Shadows as inspiration, and although I gleamed little to use from watching it, I absolutely loved the story.  Dan Curtis, did an amazing job condensing the material, reorganizing and updating the storylines and utilizing advancements in film technology to alter things in a way to make a lot more sense, like being able to have Josette and Victoria in the same room together, when they are both played by the same actress.  This could not be done easily and within budget on the original series, but was easy enough to do in the 1990s.  The casting was perfect with some major actors like Ben Cross who was best known for his roll in Chariots of Fire. Classic movie star, Jean Simmons.  Michael T. Weiss as Joe Haskell who would go on to star in his own series, The Pretender.  In addition to the fantastic cast, the use of the original music by Robert Cobert was inspired.  Although I never got into the original series, you cannot deny that it left its mark on vampire lore and elevated the vampire from monster to romantic lead leading to other vampires that are portrayed as sympathetic characters. Dark Shadows: The Revival is one of the best updates to a series taking all that was good from the source material and making it better!  Bravo!