how $14 and a writers strike got me to 1991

[michael c]

for whatever reason i've never had much interest in the 1991 revival series...

however i found the dvd set at a local record/video store priced at a cool $14 so i just couldn't resist.plus all my favorite shows at the moment are in reruns/pre-emptions due to this seemingly interminal writers stike.

i'm only four episodes in so i can't say i dislike it but what i can say is it has me dumfounded.baffled.perplexed.

let's get the most glaring implausibilities out of the way first.for a show set in maine it's obviously shot i the blazing california sun(and no amount of dry ice can disguise this fact).what's more there are numerous shots of barnabas wandering around in said blinding sunlight.

a few fashion notes of course.even though this is technically a product of the 1990's it looks 1980's to me.three things i hoped to never see i my life.joe haskell with a mullett.david collins in 'coogi' sweaters and 'members only' jackets.barnabas collins in tight black t-shirts.and 91' maggie evans needs some serious hair conditioning...talk about frizz!the fashions,hairdos and make-up trends of the 1960's hold alot of charm for me.the early 90's not so much.

what i found most astounding is the pacing.why on earth did they try and cram an entire year's worth of storyline into a twelve episode season???why before they even established the present day characters did they thrust the show back to 1795?talk about blowing your wad.what were they going to do in season two?1897?

major characters like carolyn,maggie and liz are woefully underwritten.i'm not sure why maggie's original storyline went to this unknown "daphne" character.willie loomis is an idiot and seems to be a composit character of the original willie,matthew morgan and harry johnson.

that said i am getting sort of a kick out of it.i do think that if i wasn't familiar with the original material i would think this was the dumbest thing i had ever seen...there's just too much crammed in.the 1960's version get slammed for it's "campiness" but sixteen years later this "big budget" version is looking almost just as dated and cheesy.

like i said i'm only on episode four so i'll have more to say i'm sure.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

what's more there are numerous shots of barnabas wandering around in said blinding sunlight.

Perhaps the first time around you never read all the posts in the topics dealing with the '91 series' DVD release, so you may want to check out:

Review of DS Revival Series DVD as seen in 2006 Videoscope

starting with that particular post, and

1991 Series To Be Released On DVD

starting with that post.

Sadly, they will completely explain why, say, scenes in Ep #2 look like this on DVD:

while they look like this on MPI VHS and the original broadcast:

As for many of your other questions, they are also answered in several different '91 series topics. However, I will briefly mention here that ...

what were they going to do in season two?1897?

... something like that was indeed the plan. They were going to drop the whole Adam/Eve storyline in favor of introducing Quentin (played by Adrian Paul) and combining Peter Bradford's appearance with the Chris Jennings/werewolf storyline, with that character being played by Michael T. Weiss.

[Gerard]

Those palm trees!  Don't forget those palm trees!  How those things drove me nuts!  They still do just thinking about them!  Paaalllmmm tttrrreeesss!!!   Aaaaaaaaaagh!

Gerard

[B.Collins]

THIS is the version that got me hooked on "DS"  i had NEVER even seen the original at the time. just saw the VHS tapes in stores. & my dad making brief mentions of it being on the air for a few years in the 60's. & early 70's, other than that i had NEVER seen it.  me & him were both hooked on it. & than they went & Cancelled it & pissed US OFF cause it left ya's on a cliff-hanger!  i do agree they did RUSH To fast to go back in time. & i remember watching i prefer the standard timeline. just like the 60's show i prefer the standard time line buuut the 1897 of course if my favorite time line, & so is the 1795 one coming in a close 2nd. buut

when i 1st started watching  it in (1998) i think it was? on sci-fi channel the 1st episode THAT they aired was #189 & It took me bloody FOREVER to get into the show cause i had NO CLUE On what was going on. i think they & STILL think they SHOULD have started with episode one. for years i thought THAT was the 1st episode.

least for a couple of years anyways.  MAINLY cause i had no way of finding out otherwise. i had no books nor did i have any sites to find this stuff out. i also had no puter.  & it also took me awhile to get used to it's cast NOT being the (1991) cast. & NOW when i have caught the (1991) cast i have to get used to it's cast as well.

buut in short i STILL think they should bring a NEW version back. buut NOT cram everything together like you said. & find the right director & right script & cast WHO THAT can make a good show ya know? since the last time they tried it i hear it was pretty bad. i HAVE YET to still see it though. 

[michael c]

quentin in season two???

again blowing one's wad.

the weird thing about that(and this version in general)is that dan curtis tied to include too much of the original plot in too short an amount of time...and the only reason he did that would be to entertain himself and pacify long time fans who would demand that all of their favorite characters be included right off the bat.

the general public does not know who "quentin" or anyone else from the series is and to try and introduce too much to them is confusing.they're not expecting so-and-so because new viewers(and millions of them would be needed for a show to succeed)aren't familiar with the story.

it would have been wiser to flesh out the 'present time' characters and allow viewers to get to know them before getting into the time travel stuff so soon.

[Nelson Collins]

yap, reading about the really shoddy work done for the dvd (esp. the day for night scene's) is was encouraged me to get the VHS set instead...

[Nelson Collins]

quentin in season two???

again blowing one's wad.

the weird thing about that(and this version in general)is that dan curtis tied to include too much of the original plot in too short an amount of time...and the only reason he did that would be to entertain himself and pacify long time fans who would demand that all of their favorite characters be included right off the bat.

the general public does not know who "quentin" or anyone else from the series is and to try and introduce too much to them is confusing.they're not expecting so-and-so because new viewers(and millions of them would be needed for a show to succeed)aren't familiar with the story.

it would have been wiser to flesh out the 'present time' characters and allow viewers to get to know them before getting into the time travel stuff so soon.

Is it possible he was "speeding through" the popular storylines of the original series in order to get to some new stuff that would sort of pick up where the original series left off?

Or is it more likely, DC (rest his soul) was just looking to rehash his best cash crop?

[Nelson Collins]

MB,

Was there ever a satisfactory explanation from MPI about how poor the dvd mastering and (you could hardly call it) restoration came about?

[Gerard]

Weren't they going to do a Laura Collins storyline in season two as well?  They seemed to be hinting towards it - David's apparent but very subtle "abilities" (including what seemed to be an infatuation with fire), Maggie warning Vicki not only about David's "problems" but saying outright that his mother was a witch, and maybe a few other teasers.  If they did do a Laura plot, I think that the most perfect actress to have portayed her was another "Collins" and a queen of primetime soaps - Joan Collins.

Gerard

[michael c]

i watched another episode last night and i too was intrigued by the references to laura...they definitely seemed to be setting up a possible entrance for her in season two which to me would have made much more sense than getting into the quentin/chris jennings stuff so soon.for the laura storyline to have alot of impact david has to be quite young.it's odd that in the same episode that they introduced angelique they were referring to laura as a "witch".that's sort of confusing to viewers unfamiliar with the story.i would have been like "so who's this witch who cursed barnabas...laura or angelique?".maybe they thought that the whole "pheonix" thing was too obscure.

i do think that even in 1991 joan collins would have been much too old to play david's mother.

again i'll say most of the characters were woefully underwritten and underdeveloped.i don't know what to think of maggie as a "psychic" having an affair with roger.it's kind of random.i think maybe dan curtis wanted to include maggie but didn't really know how to so he just pulled this out of a hat.

one thing i really don't like is that by episode two everyone in collinsport is running around shouting "vampire!".it takes all the suspence and mystery out of it.in the original it was way cooler how no one knew what was going on just something strange and undefinable.if everyone in town knows there's a vampire it's sort of too much of a "spook show".oh,and those yellow contacts are so "thriller"!

[Gothick]

I revisited as much of the 1991 series as I could stand last year (I think the only episodes I didn't rewatch were 3 and 4).  My roomie watched too and was laughing his ass off at the horrendous 1980s fashions, particularly Carolyn's clothes--he opined that her true profession would have been as an after ten p.m. girl out in a certain area of Hollywood...  As for mullets, I really had never noticed until this recent version just how horrifying Ben Cross's hair was.  I'm sure they felt obliged to come up with something to help us forget the original spiked bangs but honestly...

And if you think you're horrified now, wait till you see what they make poor Lysette Anthony do in her episodes as Angelique.  I wish I could forget, but it's scarred permanently into my cerebellum now.

I heard there were quite a few bloopers in this version as well, including the purported fact that you can spot somebody wearing a wristwatch in one of the 1790 courtroom scenes, but I failed to catch the latter in my last viewing.  I did enjoy Roy Thinnes stratospherically over-the-top scenery-chewing as Trask, and Julianna McCarthy's version of Abigail.  And, of course, I'll watch Barbara Steele read from the Manhattan phonebook--I very much enjoyed her work here.

Look at it this way--you only paid $14, and maybe you'll be able to trade it in for store credit once you're done.

cheers, Steve

[Gothick]

I really feel for Jean Simmons too, being given so little to do as Elizabeth.  OTOH, after seeing what they made Blair Brown do in the WB pilot in the role, I realize now that it could have been so much worse.  Brown's turn in the part is like the Saturday Night Live skit on Dark Shadows.

The role of Laura was going to be played by Lysette Anthony and I believe the plan was to combine the characters of Laura and Cassandra (maybe they got the idea from the fact that the two wore the same dress successively in 1967 and '68?), which is why they describe Laura as a Witch rather than a Phoenix.

The character of Daphne came from hoDS (the movie) as does the jerky pacing of the first few episodes.

There's a lot of material available on the 1991 series, including a book, Dark Shadows Resurrected, with a companion video (which should have been included as an extra on the DVD set but wasn't because MGM was both cheap AND incredibly incompetent, hacking out visual content in the image to make the series convert to faux letterbox, as the Mysterious Benefactor's screen captures above show clearly).

cheers, Steve

[michael c]

yes gothick,

here we go on the fashion again(someday i'm going to get into trouble).

i haven't noticed carolyn's clothing too much because she hasn't been featured that heavily in episodes i've seen so far.she does wear skirts that are extremely short however...funny the miniskirts of the 1960's look cute and girlish but the one's from the 1980's look trampy.i'm not sure why that is.

a look that look me aback was one weird combo that they put vicki in.she's almost wearing a victorian-type outfit of a long,floral print skirt,a high-necked,lace-collared blouse worn with a cameo brooch but they topped it with this athletic looking jacket.i had forgotten that type of look.it's really bad.

[Gerard]

i do think that even in 1991 joan collins would have been much too old to play david's mother.

She might've been type-cast perfect for the part, considering the character is actually several hundred years old and still looked pretty darn good.  And wouldn't it've been rather neat when Elizabeth (Jean Simmons) has her face-off with her about taking David away, and instead of Laura (Joan Collins) casting a spell, the two of them have a good old fashioned, hair-pulling, furniture toppling, fall-into-the-pool cat fight with every other line being "you bitch! - you bitch!"

Gerard

[Lydia]

I watched the first episode yesterday, having bought the series during Deep Discount's latest sale.  I am pleased to report that I am every bit as squeamish as I was when I watched the episode on its original airing: the blood once again made me queasy.  Telling myself “It's too red for reality” didn't help.

I had trouble distinguishing the blonds, but was eventually able to sort them out, with Barnabas's help: shorter-haired blond was Maggie, healthy long-haired blond was Carolyn, sick long-haired blond was Daphne.  I never did get good at figuring out which older woman was Mrs. Stoddard and which was Mrs. Johnson.

I couldn't see much difference between the Old House and Collinwood, whereas in the original series there's never any doubt about which house you're in.  The size of the houses was sort of neat, however.  I liked imagining Joan Bennett's Elizabeth, in her evening gown, scrubbing floors as big as football fields and toting the laundry down those huge staircases to the basement – although Jean Simmons's Elizabeth wouldn't have had to worry about that because in her time band, Mrs. Johnson was established in the house right from the start.

Um...looking for something good to say...Joseph Gordon-Levitt's David was appropriately unpleasant, and I liked the passing reference to something that he had done to make himself persona non grata at the local public school  I liked Sheriff Patterson...or maybe I just liked his name tag.

But where is the humor that was in the original Dark Shadows?