Dark Shadows

About a month ago a reader asked me to review this trailer.  While I viewed it, I said that I would review it closer to the release date.  During that time I found the remake TV soap opera, Dark Shadows, from 1991.  The original Dark Shadows TV show ran from 1966 to 1971.

While I couldn't sit through more than two episodes, the 1991 remake of the TV show was a big ball of camp stuffed with cheese and rolled in low-budget melodrama... I'm not sure if I was supposed to laugh, but I did, though not enough to warrant watching episode 3.

While Tim Burton is hit and miss for me,  Johnny Depp is always 'hit'.  He's another one of those actors that just makes everything he's in better by association.  I still can't believe that he has not won an Oscar.  If there was a Beerbohm Award for Best Actor in a Trailer, I think Depp would be the winner.

In a nutshell, the Dark Shadows story is: Dysfunctional man from a wealthy family scorns a woman who wants him.  Woman turns out to be a witch and puts a curse on him. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned..."  as Bill Shakespeare told us.  Anyhow, she puts a curse on him, turning him into a vampire, and buries him.  He is buried for many years (hundreds?) and when he is resurrected, his family (rather, descendants of) are still dysfunctional and he must save them from themselves while navigating through the turbulent... um... 1970's. 

Dark Shadows is gothic, but comical... maybe even cothic or gomical?

On the poster Depp looks a little like Eddie Munster standing in front of  the Addams Family.  The trailer was really entertaining.  It felt a bit like the Addams Family meets Beetlejuice meets The Nightmare Before Christmas and delivered in a kind of scary, fun, almost slapstick way... Tim Burton's way.

Depp also made me think of Count Chocula.  I haven't seen Count Chocula in the cereal section of the supermarket in years.  The other day I bought Lucky Charms.  I wonder if Count Chocula was taken off the market because it caused blindness in laboratory bats.

I love the way the trailer looked and felt, and Depp's comedic timing is usually brilliant.  Add the solid supporting cast and a story that I have no doubt Burton had fun with, and it's definitely a film that I'll see, either big screen or rental.