Depp/Burton DARK SHADOWS Is In Release!!

last night i watched a movie called 'The Legend of Hell House' filmed in 1973...


it was set at a Gothic style mansion similar to Collinwood. i really think much of the 2012 art direction and set design was at least in part inspired by the look of this film. Burton has to have seen it. the gloomy Gothic setting with touches of early 1970's decor. lamps and other small decorative items seen throughout the house were definitely evoked in Burton's film.

and lead actress Pamela Franklin's overall look definitely inspired the costuming for Vicki in the 2012 film as well. wide collars. capelets. blouses worn under jumper style dresses. some of the outfits were almost identical.

if you watch it you'll see what i mean. it was certainly a source of visual inspiration.

there was also some big clunky early 1970s machinery incongruously dropped into this setting that reminded me of Julia's lab setup.

LOHH is perhaps my all-time favorite haunted house film. As I've mentioned before, I love to watch it alone at like 1am with all the lights off - and then by the time it's done I'm going around turning all the lights in the house on. 

As for LOHH possibly being a visual inspiration for the Depp/DS film, I haven't watched either in a while, so one of these nights I'll have to watch them together...

last night i watched a movie called 'The Legend of Hell House' filmed in 1973...


it was set at a Gothic style mansion similar to Collinwood. i really think much of the 2012 art direction and set design was at least in part inspired by the look of this film. Burton has to have seen it. the gloomy Gothic setting with touches of early 1970's decor. lamps and other small decorative items seen throughout the house were definitely evoked in Burton's film.

and lead actress Pamela Franklin's overall look definitely inspired the costuming for Vicki in the 2012 film as well. wide collars. capelets. blouses worn under jumper style dresses. some of the outfits were almost identical.

if you watch it you'll see what i mean. it was certainly a source of visual inspiration.

I looked at pictures of the house. Burton's Collinwood is obvously based on Seaview. The house in LoHH looks something like Seaview as well, but it looks darker and more sinister. I can't really put what I mean into words, but there's a quality about it that reminds me of Burton's Collinwood. I find it easy to believe that his vision of the house was influenced by the house in the movie.

the exteriors of the houses is somewhat different. it was more the interiors.

Burton's vision certainly took things in a campier direction...there are no macrame owls or troll dolls in LOHH...but some early 1970s design elements imposed on the Gothic setting brought DS to mind. and like i said Pamela Franklin's style was very evocative of Vicki in the Burton film (although the hairdo was different).

Burton creates a visual pastiche of multiple sources but i definitely think this film was swirling around somewhere when he was laying out his vision for DS.

last night i watched a movie called 'The Legend of Hell House' filmed in 1973...

This is definitely off topic, but I should have mentioned earlier that I hope you got to see an unedited version of LOHH. TV showings tend to cut a good 10 to even 15 minutes out of the film, stuff that never should be sacrificed because it's central to the plot.

The original book by Richard Matheson is even better. It is even more explicit. And just as riveting.

the exteriors of the houses is somewhat different. it was more the interiors.

Really? The images I saw were of the exterior. Now maybe I was reading too much into it, but I thought I saw a similarity. I'll have to watch the movie again and look at the interior design.

Come to think of it, I need to look at the exteriors shots again. I googled LoHH and looked at the images given to me, but maybe they weren't even from that movie. That sometimes happens. It's been so many  years since I've seen that movie, I hardly remember it. In fact, I'd forgotten Roddy McDowall was in it until I saw some pictures of him.  I did see the outfit on one of the women that was definately similar to Victoria's. Although to be honest, her outfit kind of made me think of Tuesday Addams. I'll need to check out that movie again.

Maybe I was reading into it, but when I saw this house earlier, the towers reminded me of the ones in the Burton film. They don't seem as strikingly similar to me now though.

OK - now I'm beginning to think I'm in some sort of a time warp. Not only did I just post something from a Pennsylvania newspaper's Web site that thinks it's already the 27, but I just received a new Google alert to this:

Five Incredibly Handsome Actors You Haven’t Heard of Yet

And that article is, in part, about how Thomas McDonell, who it says "is slated to play the younger version of Depp's character on the new "Dark Shadows" film that's coming out." And that article is dated June 25, 2017...

 

Though one thing I do wish is that we knew whatever happened to McDonell's part in the film. One might think that these 5 years later we might know by now - but no...  But then, after his last appearance on the CW's The 100 last year, McDonell himself seems to have dropped from view...

on some of the FB pages there has recently been a lot of people "hearing" or "reading" about a sequel to the Depp film that ends up being based on misinformation like this.

old articles reposted. out-of-context quotes. for some reason the film is getting chatter on the internet lately.


after 5 years i think we can safely assume the Depp/Burton association with the "franchise" is dead and buried.

It never even dawned on me that someone might read that and think it's about a sequel. But considering that it is currently dated (instead of being from 2011-2012, when the info for McDonell was originally all over the Internet) and the info for some of the other guys in the article is also current, I can see where someone could think that...

Who knows how/why the person who wrote the article could possibly think that DS info for McDonell is anywhere near current?! But then, as we've often lamented in the past, so few Internet writers bother to check their facts...

I saw the article that michaelc is referring to and the brouhaha that has accompanied it. While the DS related quote did indeed come from an email that Johnny Depp had written, it was actually written before the movie even began. There's a certain group of people, certainly not limited to DS, that see something on the internet and jump to major conclusions.

I totally agree that Eva Green "blew up the screen" in the Depp/DS film:

Eva Green, ... To Star In Tim Burton's 'Dumbo'

Apparently the film was on some other European TV outlet on the 26th at 19:10 (apparently they use a 24 hour clock). Even after having my browser translate the Web page listing the showing, I still have no idea what country it was because I didn't see any clues. But this was the listing:

"Dark Shadows

Wednesday
26.07.2017
19:10
ONET
110 min

Dark Shadows (2012) is a horror comedy directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer. Barnabas Collins is a rich, powerful nobleman who has the reputation for being a lady-killer. He breaks Angelique Bouchard's heart and this turns out to be a fatal mistake. The girl applies black magic and turns him into a vampire who is buried alive. Two centuries later Barnabas is accidentally set free and finds himself in a completely different world."

The part about Barnabas being a "lady-killer" would seem to come from early press releases because there really isn't evidence in the film as it stands. Though in the lead up to the film's release there were definitely hints of scenes to that effect - and there would also appear to be a storyboard for one such scene in the DS Visual Companion book. But apparently, if they were ever shot, they all ended up on the cutting room floor when the prologue was trimmed...