To Ian and others who have never seen house of DS--
be aware that it's much more like a late Sixties low budget vampire flick (with a gore quota comparable to, say, Hammer's Taste the blood of Dracula, but far less stylistic finesse) than it is the series we all know and love. The movie is populated by people with names like "Barnabas Collins," "Julia Hoffman" and "Eliot Stokes" who exist as characters only because of the superb non-verbal acting ability of the artists portraying them. Nearly every scene, dialogue sequence or set-piece that actually established the people in the movie as characters was axed in favor of a higher gore content (slo-mo stakings, close-ups of blood running, etc.) I well remember that as I walked into the theatre back in the Summer of 1970, I heard one person ask his friend "So, what'd you think?" and the other man's reply: "Lots of teeth, lots of blood." I still think of this single sentence as the ideal review of house of Dark Shadows. They could use it in the New York Times television section.
Grayson does look fabou throughout, of course. Love the bed-head do! And the costumes in the ball sequence, though we see everything far too briefly, are the most lavish and exquisite yet. The one for Barnabas was used on the show subsequently, and I think one or two others as well.
G.
