Night of Dark Shadows (1971)

Fantastic!

Did you people see the same film I saw?

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

'Dark Shadows', as was said in my review of 'House of Dark Shadows' and the relatively recent Tim Burton film (which despite some good things is the most disappointing of the lot), wholly deserved its popularity back when it was aired and it also deserves the high regard it is held in now.'House of Dark Shadows', the first film based on the show, is by far the best of the films based on the show and the only one to be just as good. Sure, some of the characters are given short shrift and Joan Bennett is underused which doesn't allow her to shine as much as she deserved. It looked absolutely great though (with improved production values over the show), was fun, tense and genuinely scary and the ending was unforgettable.'Night of Dark Shadows' is not an awful film, but it is a let down compared to 'Dark Shadows' and 'House of Dark Shadows'. There is a good deal to like. The production and costume design have a colourful and hauntingly Gothic look and it's mostly beautifully photographed. Bob Cobert once again provides an eerily spooky music score that is mostly used well, though his music for 'Dark Shadows' and 'House of Dark Shadows' fitted better.Some of the script is intriguing, there are some decent scares and shocks and Dan Curtis does what he can with what material is left in the film. Acting is decent considering, with Grayson Hall, David Selby, John Karlen and Nancy Barrett being the standouts. Kate Jackson is also at her most appealing, and is really very good in her role.Most of the cast however have very little to do and struggle to do much with their limited material, which does see relatively unexplored characterisation, characters coming and going and some corny dialogue. James Storm is pretty wasted really, and while it was evident one can't help wanting more of the great chemistry between the characters. And the film does suffer from the absence of the show's most iconic and interesting character Barnabas Collins, and of Jonathan Frid who could chill the bone just by being there, am aware there is a very good reason for why they weren't there but still.The film is badly hurt by its sloppy (often horrendously so) editing, too plodding pacing and a lack of consistency in the tension, suspense and horror (what there is is quite good but not as nerve-shredding or bone-chilling as in 'House of Dark Shadows'). Unfortunately, faring worst is the story which is a badly disjointed mess as a result of the editing and a lot of material having to be cut which gives the film a jumpy, incomplete and not always easy to follow feel, the final act is especially muddled. The ending is very abrupt and has none of the staying power of 'House of Dark Shadows' ending.All in all, not bad but a let down. 5/10 Bethany Cox

I probably rate this movie too low giving it 6/10 now that I know that they have cut some 40 minutes from it. This really shows in some sequences. However an over 2 hour version would probably have been too long. At 45 minutes of film the whole mystery behind the mansion and its previous inhabitants from over hundred years ago was clear by then. I think they better did cut a bit more in the second part as that was way less interesting than what happened after the whole revelation. The action scenes towards the ending were pretty awful. The solution seemed too easy and that's a sign that there is going to be some twist and indeed, a predictable one too. Enjoyable yes but the back story of the previous inhabitants was much more interesting than those of the new ones. I particularly liked how the story of the previous inhabitants was told in some kind of flashbacks.

. . . turns out to be crappier than the outhouse in SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. Referencing Manderley's housekeeper, "Mrs. Danvers," in its opening scene, NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS inadvertently highlights the only thing it has in common with 1940's Best Picture Oscar winner: a housekeeper. While Mrs. Danvers in truly creepy, SHADOWS' "Carlotta" is merely a creep. Since every cast member here alternates between hammy overstatement and stage-frightened minimalism, the film editor employs countless virtual freeze frames (which cuts down on the many live action snafus, while Cluelessly highlighting the fact that this cast looks like what the cat dragged in). The sappy film score is sorely inappropriate, grating like an outtake reel from a daytime TV soap opera or a Hallmark Channel romance flick. After about 10 minutes, every musical note sounds like nails on a blackboard. If the proverbial thousand blind monkeys actually could type out a Shakespeare play given an infinite amount of time, SHADOWS seems like ONE sightless chimp's lunchtime doodles. It's really hard to imagine how this film could have been any worse.

As has been pointed out over the years, the 2nd DS feature, "NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS", starts out as a loose variation of the show's "1970 Parallel Time" story. In that, Quentin & his new bride Maggie arrive at Collinwood, where everyone is obsessed with Quentin's late wife Angelique, and are convinced she will return from the dead. That story itself was a variation on "REBECCA"-- right down to a "Mrs. Danvers" character (mentioned in NODS), though with a supernatural twist, in that Quentin's dead wife actually does come back, murders her twin sister and takes her place. On the show, it was one of the best-structured and paced story lines they ever did... until its rather ABRUPT ending, which left me unsatisfied and frustrated.As for this movie... while elements of "REBECCA" and "1970 Parallel Time" definitely find their way in here, I find this is much more of a remake of the Roger Corman classic, "THE HAUNTED PALACE" with Vincent Price & Debra Paget as the married couple who inherit a mansion with a spooky housekeeper (Lon Chaney Jr.). Price's character, Charles Dexter Ward (the film was a very loose adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story) sees a portrait of an ancestor who he is a dead ringer of-- and the spirit of his ancestor spends most of the film trying to POSSESS his descendant. (There is a difference between reincarnation and possession, which sometimes got blurred on the DARK SHADOWS TV series.) The scene where David Selby roughly embraces his wife Tracy, leaving her in tears, then says, "I'll touch you ANY way I like, WHENEVER I like, and if you don't like it, you can always LEAVE!", is straight out of the Corman flick, when Price-- POSSESSED-- tells Debra Paget he wishes "to exercise my husbandly prerogative"-- and then almost RAPES her!! (I'm surprised no one else has brought up this blatant comparison before.) Another Corman POE film that found its way into this one is "THE TOMB OF LIGEIA", where Verden Fell (Price again) marries Rowena (Elisabeth Sheppard), but is haunted by the memory of his late wife Ligeia (also Sheppard). The multiple camera shots of the tower where Quentin is drawn by Angelique are almost IDENTICAL to the shots of the tower of the abbey where, each night, without his own knowledge, Fell goes to tend to his DEAD wife-- who placed him under hypnotism before she died.I've always thought "HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS" was too short, and should have been at least 2 hours long, to allow for better pacing and character development of its huge, complex cast. By comparison, the first time I saw "NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS", I thought it was painfully slow, dull and too long for its own good. When I discovered that a full 35 MINUTES had been cut from it before release, I could hardly believe what I was reading. But on further investigation, it appears this film would have been MUCH better if the story as originally written had been allowed to see release without being butchered.Even so, from reading in detail about what was missing, something tells me that EVEN the uncut version of this film is actually missing its "3rd act". If even the uncut version still ends with Angelique coming back, Quentin fully possessed, and everyone else DEAD, what's the point? Try watching this-- then "THE HAUNTED PALACE" back-to-back. The moment Price is about the leave the house-- but then stays for "one last thing"-- and becomes FULLY possessed-- is where that film REALLY starts to get interesting! "NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS", in either form, ends TOO SOON for its own good.