A second relay of viewing notes from the final reel:
Old Barnabas really is one of the most fabulous ghouls of the silver age of horror (the Sixties/Seventies period, which pretty much ends with Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the takeover of the genre by splatter nasties). Frid's body movements in this role are so subtle, and add to the menace, as does Arthur Ornitz's camerawork. There are signs here of DC's love of excess starting to take over, which really kicks in once we get to Lockwood Matthews.
I'm stunned at what the art director was permitted to do at Lockwood. I mean, he dragged what seems to be an early 19th century cannon into the drawing room! It all looks as if days, if not weeks, must have been required for cleanup. But the results look superb on screen. What I recall so well was being completely confused at this point in the story as to where we were. They needed at least a snippet of dialogue about their having been an abandoned monastery on the island. There's only a brief establishing shot of the house, with an ominous sting on the soundtrack. I had no idea what that house was or why Barnabas et al had retreated there, on my first viewing.
Josette's wedding dress always looks more Spanish than French to me. I love how her dreamlike descent to the waiting Barnabs is filmed. And his line, when he takes her hand and speaks of how long he has waited for her, is a very poignant moment. It would have helped a lot if the character had been allowed any time to speak about his motives, or express remorse for some of his obviously disastrous temper tantrums (the whole Carolyn thing--when you think about it, Barn seems to have been acting out of pure headstrong impulse with no consideration at all for consequences).
My biggest complaint about the big showdown is the same now as it was forty years ago. That overdone use of echo chamber FX and the Sam Peckinpah slo-mo thing makes this sequence so very cheesy. The one element that I thought gave it an air of tragedy was the beautiful "lament for Barnabas" composed by Cobert, I think originally for this scene (and re-used subsequently in the Jack Palance Dracula and I think a number of other DC projects). Even as a 12 year old I was very disappointed in the cheesiness of how the climax was filmed and edited. I can understand why Frid felt he had been doing "pornography" once the project had been completed--and why he strenuously refused to do a sequel.
I had missed one final flourish of FX at the very end of the credits roll. When the bat flies up, there's actually a camera trick where Barn's corpse disappears, leaving only the mist weaving around the coffin.
It's really too bad that the tag scene, included in the novelization, wasn't filmed. It would have helped give more of an air of resolution to the proceedings. That feels very badly needed in the wake of how the picture wound up ending in the final cut.
G.
