Fangs for the memories

Barnabas Collins is a fish out of water in 1972 Collinsport. The scion of the original Collins fishing family has been buried alive for two centuries, you see. He crawls out of his chained casket — unearthed by construction workers with modern equipment — and is immediately flummoxed by a glowing yellow sign nearby in the shape of an “M”: the golden arches, boasting “90 billion served.” Played by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s latest pop culture revamp, Dark Shadows, Barnabas is probably the most bemused vampire in recent screen history.

A bemused air is good for this kind of campy vampire homage. Dark Shadows itself, the TV soap opera that ran from 1966 to ’71, is itself a camp classic. Full disclosure here: I remember being vaguely drawn to its eerie opening credits as a youth, when it would show in the afternoons along with Days of Our Lives and General Hospital. A vampire soap opera? The goth lettering of the credits, the haunting Theremin-like theme (Quentin’s Song), the waves splashing in slo-mo against the rocks below Collinwood Manor: for a young kid into Frankenstein and Dracula movies, it was a hook. But I never caught the story thread, was too impatient for resident vampire Barnabas Collins to show up amid the soapy plots and wooden acting.

In a way, it’s good to have only a dim — or no — memory of Dark Shadows. Burton gives it his usual spin, casting Depp as his ever-faithful oddball amidst oddballs. The Collins family is in tatters: Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer) is the sole remaining Collins matriarch, her ne’er-do-well brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller) is a money-grubbing louse who doesn’t care about his own son David (Gulliver McGrath, last seen in Hugo); her daughter is Carolyn (Chloe Moretz), a troubled teen who listens to Bowie, Iggy and MC5 and wants to run away to Manhattan when she’s 16. There’s a resident alcoholic psychiatrist, Dr. Hoffman (Helena Bonham-Carter), because she’s Burton’s spouse and someone has to pick all these brains.

The folks of Collinwood Manor, including Helena Bonham Carter, Chloe Moretz, Gulliver McGrath, Bella Heathcote, Depp, Jonny Lee Miller and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Enter Barnabas, full of anachronistic quips about his modern-day surroundings. Seeing Carolyn in a short skirt, he refers to her as a “lady of the night.” “I’m pretty sure he called me a hooker,” she complains to Mom Elizabeth. Taunted by Karen Carpenter performing on TV, he rips away the back panel and decries: “Out, tiny songstress!”

But his choicest lines are reserved for Angelique (Eva Green), the witch who first turned him into a vampire and had him buried alive (or undead) 200 years ago. Angelique, a maid at Collinwood who once had a lusty fling with Barnabas, wants him forever, you see, so she compelled his true love Josette (Bella Heathcote) to leap off Collinwood Cliff, an embankment overlooking Collinsport’s rocky coast that is so dangerous, even back in 1772, they would have put a fence around the thing.

Now Angelique is the local hotshot CEO of Angelbay Seafood, having buried the Collins fishing business by literally burying Barnabas. With her blood-red lipstick, crazy eyes and blonde hair (all Burton vamps are blonde), Green bites into the role with extra hemoglobin. Her ardor for Barnabas has not dimmed in two centuries, as she seeks to gain his partnership by tearing his clothes off. “Succubus of Satan!” Barnabas spits out in disgust. “Whore of Beelzebub!” Still, it doesn’t stop him from strapping her on for another athletic sex romp.

But really, Barnabas has eyes for the new governess at Collinwood, Victoria (also Heathcote), who closely resembles his deceased love and, it turns out, is capable of seeing ghosts.

As with most Burton wind-up contraptions, Dark Shadows is all about the details. Barnabas arrives, not quite in modern times, but in the early ‘70s. Groovy, man! VW buses, lava lamps and hippies abound, as the soundtrack opens to the Moody Blues’ goth-rock classic, Nights in White Satin. Along with Danny Elfman’s requisite score (the opening to his Simpsons theme has always reminded me of Dark Shadows, interestingly), T.Rex, Iggy Pop, Donovan, The Carpenters, The Raspberries, a few verses of Steve Miller’s The Joker and Alice Cooper make an appearance. Yes, the Alice Cooper, looking pretty spry for 64. It’s a sign of Burton’s pop cultural instincts that Cooper looks perfectly normal singing No More Mr. Nice Guy at Collinwood Manor.

Succubus: Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) gets physical.

But the best moments belong to Depp, who plays his Barnabas as a perplexed gent who just happens to need to suck the townspeople’s blood once in a while. When he sinks his head down on the family’s electric organ in despair at seeing Angelique again, and the thing starts playing a primitive samba beat, you know you’re in good retro-reference hands. (Come on! What Filipino family doesn’t have that old electric organ with the pre-programmed bossa and samba beats?) Depp doesn’t do anything he hasn’t done many times before, though he’s more articulate than, say, Edward Scissorhands. In fact, Dark Shadows belongs to a long line of Burton films about domestic family dysfunction that includes Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, maybe even Ed Wood. The point for Burton seems to be to show that every family has its share of oddballs; the point is love and acceptance. And if that means accepting those who see dead people, or those who suck blood, then, hey, it’s all groovy, man.

Clearly, Burton was a fan of the original series. “The show had a specific vibe,” he says in a press statement. “It was a soap opera, but with a weird, supernatural undercurrent.” He could have easily gone for pure camp and kitsch with Dark Shadows, but instead Burton maintains an affectionate pulse (though, typically, his pacing sags a bit towards the end), ensuring that Dark Shadows does suck, but in a good way.