First of all, mea culpa. I misunderstood the original instructions and thought the double length DVD episode 1 was split into two eps and ended up watching the whole thing. If I stray into second part of the pilot details here, apologies in advance.
As I indicated in a previous thread, I was away from home last night and ended up watching the episode with a
complete virgin. Not only had he never watched or heard of the Revival, he was surprised when I told him this was a retelling of a storyline from the original series! He had not heard of that either!
In a way that helps, because I had a "controlled" watching experience. I will give his reactions first.
He liked the atmosphere at first, the misty almost dreamlike quality that suffused the episode. However, when mist/fog was present in even interior scenes, (floating behind Mrs. Johnson’s head when she is rebuking Willie) it broke the spell for him and he starting mocking it. He also commented on how stereotypical the scary movie/vampire movie set pieces were. Personally, as a fan of the Dracula story in the series Cliffhangers, unlike my friend, I rather liked the old set pieces put into a modern setting.
By the end point of the first part of the pilot, about the only person he liked was Barnabas. Willie was so in contrast with the rest of the relatively cleancut cast that he stood out even more, not even as comic relief but as just slimy, dirty, almost joke bad teeth and offputting and the rest of the cast were rather bland. He suggested a continuity game at one point. Seeing the zits/moles on Willie’s face, he suggested that sharp-eyed viewers might want to check those blemishes in every scene to see if they moved!
Below are the notes I jotted as I watched part 1 of the pilot again this morning.
- Upthread it’s mentioned that Willie doesn’t have the intelligence to decipher code rhymes that have stumped far cleverer people for 200 years. However, I like that bit. There’s a line in the film Rear Window where Jeff’s detective friend says, “Morons have committed murder so shrewdly that it took a dozen detectives to figure it out.” Willie, unencumbered by the belief that the stories and legends are untrue, coupled with his greed, IMO makes him uniquely qualified to discover the truth when no one else gives it a second thought.
- However, what did pull me out of the narrative were three things: 1) the ring in the lions’ mouth looked like it was attached with to the opening mechanism with rope and an amazingly resilient length of rope it must be to have stood the rigors of 200 years of coastal humidity and bugs and vermin; 2) a sealed tomb has live bats living in it? 3) 200 years later the wall mounted torch still works?
- The POV shot, showing the lace cuffed hand reaching up to grab Willie’s throat is a cool cliffhanger, spoiled only by the jump cut zooms in the editing suite where the film gets grainier and grainier.
- Is that a voodoo doll on the David’s bedside table?
- The 80s fashions didn’t jar as much as I thought it would, possibly because in my last two jobs the older women I worked with, still dress that way!
- As also mentioned upthread, I like that the sheriff is already on top of the attacks and consulting a “Mulder” who’s not afraid to suggest there is a madman loose who believes he is a vampire and stealing blood. In fact, IIRC that might be a theme lifted from the first Night Stalker movie.
- Sheriff Patterson is one of the only characters trying to sound like he grew up in Maine. Cute. And thank all the forgotten gods no one else did.
- GORGEOUS MANSION!
- It might be me, but were full body portraits de rigueur in 1790s America? Also, the painting style doesn’t look very 18th century.
End of Notes
Taking this episode on its own terms, character-wise, apart from Willie, Barnabas and possibly David, the rest of the cast were all ciphers. The VHS adds more insight to Roger or at least hints at places his character might go. But confining myself to this one part of the story, I didn’t find any of the characters apart the three above of much interest. Victoria’s opening voiceover hints that she is looking to find out about her past but nothing else in this episode deals with even so much as a hint of any other mystery. She is there only to take care of David and be a beauty that catches Barn’s eye. At this point no one else is anything special. The writers focus on the scary set pieces and vampire story to the detriment of everything and everyone else. Even other nighttime soaps of the time spent time on developing several ongoing storylines/characters and did so right out of the gate.
To be brutally frank, if I didn’t already know what was in store, on the basis of this one part of the pilot alone, I probably wouldn’t watch any more.
