Two score and four years ago, I’d fly home from fourth grade for the 4 p.m. broadcast of Dark Shadows. In 1968, vampires and werewolves weren’t mainstream — the era’s horror films mostly played drive-ins — yet here on TV was a daily horror soap opera.
In 1966, creator Dan Curtis conceived of a show that was Gothic but nonsupernatural, like Jane Eyre. But after less than a year, with Dark Shadows on the verge of cancellation, he threw a Hail Mary pass, directing his writers to add a vampire. In came Barnabas Collins, played by Canadian actor Jonathan Frid, a villain meant to be staked through the heart after a few months.
But fan response went through the roof, and Barnabas became a lovelorn hero fighting against his curse, a predecessor to Twilight’s Edward Cullen — while the 40ish Frid became an unlikely teen-girl heartthrob alongside Shindig idol Bobby Sherman.
Frid, who died recently, routinely fluffed his lines at a time when it was too expensive to reshoot and edit the videotape. But many people — including the actor himself — thought his palpable discomfort worked for the character. His Barnabas seemed afflicted with a nervous melancholy. While the plotline was nonsensical, the pacing torturous and the budget tiny, Dark Shadows cast a spell.
It’s hard to suppress my preference for talking about the original over Tim Burton’s film, which isn’t a remake so much as a mostly unfunny camp sendup. The script by Seth Grahame-Smith is witless and meandering — and I wouldn’t mind the witless so much if it moved, or the meandering if it were droll.