This weekend Tim Burton and Johnny Depp bring the long dead gothic soap opera Dark Shadows to back to life.
The 1960s era melodrama—which TV Guide included on their Top Cult Shows Ever list—hinged on the supernatural comings and goings at the Collins family’s Maine estate.
Werewolves, zombies and witches all appeared, but it was Barnabas Collins, a lovesick vampire troubled by his immortal existence—although it wasn’t until episode 410 that they actually used the “v” word. Until then they’d say, “He walks at night but he ain’t alive.”—who brought in upwards of 20 million afternoon viewers during the show’s heyday.
Collins, played by Canadian actor Jonathan Frid (who passed away last month at age 87), was the show’s biggest star and the reason Quentin Tarantino and Madonna never missed an episode.
Depp, who resurrects the character in the movie, was also a big fan.
“Jonathan Frid was the reason I used to run home from school to watch Dark Shadows,” he said, adding that as a child, he was so obsessed with Barnabas Collins that he wanted to be him.
The fame that came along with playing the lusty vampire was unexpected. When Frid won the role he was planning a move to San Diego to teach acting and only accepted the part as a three-week gig to make money for the move.
“Ever since Frid joined Dark Shadows in April 1967, the program’s ratings have zoomed,” wrote the Chicago Tribune, “and Frid’s popularity has soared so rapidly that not even television’s imagemakers, let alone the actor himself, can explain it.”
The character struck a chord with audiences—Frid suggested the show became successful because it offered an escape from the reality of the Vietnam war—but in his first weeks wearing Barnabas’s cape he had no idea of his popularity. When a producer handed him a piece of paper he only reluctantly accepted it, thinking it was a pink slip. It wasn’t. It was a piece of fan mail.
Frid also played the character on the big screen in House of Dark Shadows. Many other TV cast members also reprised their roles but be warned, the movie is much bloodier than the soap.
After Dark Shadows left the air in 1971 Frid worked primarily on stage, but his final performance, as a guest at a Collin’s Manor gala, is featured in Tim Burton’s movie.
Is she the 19 year old rebel played by Mia Wasikowska in this weekend’s 3-D Alice in Wonderland directed by Tim Burton? Or the insane character of America McGee’s video game Alice? Or the martial arts instructor of a recent Syfy channel adaptation?
In fact, she’s all those people and more.
Originally written in 1865 by Lewis Carroll, the little girl who found a world of wonder down the rabbit hole, has become one of the more enduring and malleable characters of literature and film.
“The books are a kind of Rorschach test, a screen onto which people project their own ideas,” says The Mystery of Lewis Carroll author Jenny Woolf.
Alice first got the big screen treatment in 1903 in a 12-minute silent version featuring rudimentary special effects of the hero changing sizes. Played by Mabel Clark, (who was also employed on the set as a “help-out girl,” making costumes and running errands), the look of this traditional retelling closely resembles the book’s original illustrations. Out of print for many years, it’s now available as a DVD extra on the recent reissue of the 1966 Alice starring Peter Sellers.
The Sellers version, a made-for-BBC television movie, is as mad as a hatter. Director Jonathan Miller sought to boil the production down to the essentials, to dispense with the “japing and game play” of earlier versions. To that end none of the strange creatures Alice meets along the way are played by actors in animal costumes. This approach could have fallen flat, but when you have actors like John Gielgud and Peter Cook accentuating the wonderful dialogue rather than the flashy production design, it works. Add a trippy soundtrack by Ravi Shankar and some veiled drug references and you get a film that could only have been made at the height of the Swingin’ Sixties.
It’s hard to know what Alice Liddell, the young girl who inspired the movie would have thought of any of the wild and wacky versions of the story, but we do know she enjoyed the 1933 Paramount version.
“I am delighted with the film and am now convinced that only through the medium of the talking picture art could this delicious fantasy be faithfully interpreted,” she told the New York Times. “Alice is a picture which represents a revolution in cinema history!”
I wonder if Tim Burton has a monkey butler at home. I ask this because I think anyone who can come up with the kind of flights of fancy he puts on screen probably has a monkey butler and other strange and wonderful things kicking around the house to feed his imagination. His latest film, a retelling of “Alice in Wonderland,” benefits from his rich visual style.
Using the original Lewis Carroll stories as a stepping stone, in this reimagined version of the classic tale Alice Kingsley (Mia Wasikowska) is 19 years old. She’s a dreamer in a world of pragmatists who, on the advice of her late father, tries to imagine six impossible things before breakfast each day. This sets her at odds with almost everyone, including her family who think marrying her off to the churlish and haughty Lord Hamish will settle her down. At their engagement party she flees his very public proposal, disappearing into the garden and falling down a rabbit hole into Underland. It’s her second trip to the place she calls Wonderland. Ten years previous she been there but has no memory of it. On this visit she meets an odd assortment of characters including the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen), Absolem, the Caterpillar (Alan Rickman) and the strangest one of all, the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp). They convince her she needs to help them overthrow the evil Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) by slaying the terrifying Jabberwock (Christopher Lee).
Burton has always made films about outsiders—think Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood Jr. and Willy Wonka—and in Alice he has found another one to focus his camera on. As a headstrong young woman who doesn’t quite fit the mold of Victorian England she a perfect character for Burton. Like his most famous characters she lives in a world of dreams but unlike his best realized characters she isn’t nearly as interesting. As a result, despite the beautiful visuals and the eye popping 3-D, “Alice in Wonderland” is a bit of a flat line.
Sadly much of the problem lies with Wasikowska. She is delicately beautiful in a way that would very likely leave Lewis Carroll weak in the knees and after her stint on the television show “In Treatment,” we know she can act, but she rarely looks really engaged with the character. Perhaps it is that she spent the entire time acting against a green screen and didn’t get to actually interact with her co-stars very often, but she’s a little too low key to be at the center of a large, fanciful film.
It’s not a complete wash, however. Burton overloads the screen with eccentric and interesting visuals and has succeeded in creating a dream-like version of “Alice in Wonderland.” Unfortunately, like most dreams, when it’s over it’s quickly forgotten.
This weekend Tim Burton and Johnny Depp bring the long dead gothic soap opera Dark Shadows to back to life.
