For those of you wh are wondering just why I'm not regaling you with any opinions of Dark Shadows and the tresses of Bramwell, Catherine, Morgan, and co., well, the truth is that there is just so much that I can say about bad hair. Yes, it is true, that even I, fashion critic extraordinaire (badly dressed fashion critic extraordinaire), have my limits.
But, alas for those of you, who are now falling on your knees and thanking various higher powers, Midnite has kindly given me permission to branch out a bit and spew my vitriol on other equally worthy subjects. Heh.
So for my first little foray into the not strictly DS-waters, I thought I would turn my attention to another little item in the Dan Curtis oeuvre (no, it's not Winds of War and you can all relax, it will never be Winds of War). I speak, of course, of A Darkness at Blaisedon, which I chose for four reasons:
1. It boasts a large number of DS alums.
2. It borrows heavily from DS thematically and narratively.
3. I happen to own it.
4. And well, the good people at MPI saw fit to append ads for the damn thing on the beginning or end of half of their DS VHS tapes "If you liked Dark Shadows, then you'll scream for A Darkness at Blaisedon, so hell:
If you liked my Idle Thoughts column, then you'll scream for my review of A Darkness at Blaisedon
There be spoilers
The plot is yet another version of every cheesy paperback gothic romance you've read and by extension, a good portion of the Barnabas/Josette plot of DS.
It's a souped-up version of DS though. More money was spent on the sets. Sam Hall put a fair amount of effort into the script and it shows--there are more than unfortunate attempts at witty banter, but it's got a strong creepy flavor at times too. The music is from Bob Cobert and I suspect they borrowed the sound guy from DS as well because it's all the same stuff. Performances are pretty solid and it's clear the actors actually got to, well rehearse (what a concept!). DC even reprised his old trick of shooting actual location footage and then interspersing it with the videotaped stock.
Unfortunately, I think that lighting person was also involved because the highlights on the hair of the cast go quite punk at times--the ingenue looks like she's got some sort of violet highlights and the second lead gets green and purple in his hair. And the greenish tinge to the faces--that's there too.
Sensible (and beautiful) Angela Martin, as played by the very talented, and then very young Marj Dusay, has inherited a decaying, taxed to the hilt, mansion on the Hudson, by way of some relatives she's never heard of. She doesn't want the house. She can't afford the house. But she can't sell it either, because every time the realtor tries to take prospective buyers up to Blaisedon, supernatural nastiness ensues and the buyers run screaming for suburban tract homes in Jersey (I made that part up, but you get the idea). So Angela has come to the unlikely team of psychic investigators played by Kerwin Mathews and Cal Bellini in the hope that they can debunk the unsavory reputation her house has picked up.
The psychic investigators are headquartered in a supposedly swank pad with leather furniture, zebra rugs, bad art over the fireplace, and groovy music playing in the background.
Cal Bellini is doing the Michael Stroka part (not villainous, but slightly second banana/henchmanesque). I get the feeling that he's supposed to be the hip, sexy, swinging hottie. Kerwin Mathews is Jonathan Fletcher, Psychic Detective. Mathews, for those of you unfamiliar with his career, had a second-rate sort of career. If he'd arrived in Hollywood fifteen years earlier, he would have been the poor man's Errol Flynn. By 1968, the aura he's casting is that of an aging matinee idol who's not too picky about the jobs he took. He's not bad here, you understand, but he's not setting my world on fire either.
My comparative youth makes it hard for me to judge , but between our old friend Mostoller's costuming (the men wear ascots and what I think was supposed to be hip clothing at the time by way of Ohrbach's, the apparent equivalent of Target) and the whole "Bruce Wayne and his young ward" vibe, there's a vaguely homoerotic subtext wafting through the film. That's fine, but it makes the supposed romance between Jonathan Fletcher, Psychic Detective and Angela Martin, Gothic heroine and heiress flatter than it should have been.
Anyhow, Angela and the Dynamic Duo head on up to Blaisedon, which in addition to be haunted and a fixer-upper for This Old House also features the devoted family retainer/caretaker played by our old friend, Thayer David, compleat with Theodore Roosevelt coke bottle glasses. He's quite the hoot and lends the obligatory creepy air to this little effort. You know he's crackers after he nearly busts a gut laughing about how the last person to own the house (presumably a relative of Angela's) committed suicide.
Once in the house we're still in very familiar ground. Too familiar at times. There are some touches that were cliched back in the early 1900s that they've got going on here: Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor starts spontaneously bursting forth from the organ in the foyer. We've got a rather handsome portrait of the late Commodore Nicholas Blaise, the countenance of which was provided by Louis Edmonds. We've got cold spots. We've got spooky sobbing in the house. We've got shut off rooms. We've got the wrong bodies in the wrong graves. We've got some disinterments. Oh, what else... suits of armor in dust-covered hallways (last seen on Scooby-Doo, I believe), dead animal heads monted on walls, and your standard run of the mill possession, possession by the wearing of jewelry, seance-induced possession. It's all here.
The late Commodore, you see, was married to a much-younger woman, named Melinda (Angela's great-aunt). He was desperately in love with her, but unfortunately he also happened to be pathologically jealous (today it would have been done up as a stalker made-for-TV flick on Lifetime). Josette, pardon me, Melinda, died young and tragically--and here, I need to stop and give points to Hall, who had her die in the Influenza Pandemic of 1916 (except that I think it was 1918 in this country) as opposed to a stroll off a nearby cliff.
Guess who's a dead ringer for Melinda? And guess who would like to have Melinda or a reasonable facimile thereof back? Do I need to tell you more? I think not. Louis Edmonds has the briefest of roles, mostly audio, and then there's the homage to Rebecca for the dramatic finish.
I gather this was supposed to be the pilot for a series because the coda to the piece has Angela agreeing to try a new career as their medium (just thinking how that would look on the old c.v.:
1968- present Medium, Jonathan Fletcher Investigations
* Communicate with the dead.
* Conduct Tarot Readings.
* Provide witty banter for light-hearted sections of the episode.
1965 - 1968 Secretary, Acme Inc.
* Responsible for all correspondence for top sales executive.
All of my sarcasm aside, it's not as bad as I make it out to be. Marj Dusay, in particular, gives a very good performance, bringing intelligence to what is essentially a thankless part. She sells the character concept a lot better than KLS or Moltke ever would have been able to. I also find it interesting that for most of her career she's generally been cast as stronger or villainous women. The others are good too. Mathews, while not an A-list actor, far outclasses the production nonetheless. Bellini is pretty solid for the most part; I'm not sure how much of the character interpretation was his and how much just happened, but he's dependable.
What continues to frustrate me about this (and DS) is that I see how much better it all could have been. My chief complaint about Curtis is that he makes the obvious dramatic choices, even when he doesn't need to. People have been remaking The Old Dark House since before The Old Dark House so I can forgive the cliches; I just wish they'd developed what they had a little more.
You can find copies of A Darkness of Blaisedon around pretty inexpensively. If you have the disposable cash and the time, you might want to check it out.
