DVD-Review: Dark Shadows
It had been Johnny Depp’s childhood dream to one day play Barnabas Collins, a vampire character from a popular daytime soap opera, but it took him and his old friend Tim Burton half a lifetime to make a movie version of Dark Shadows. The result is a delightful mix of horror and drama carefully sprinkled with bits of Burton’s particular brand of macabre and sarcastic humour, making it one of the most enjoyable recent movies of the director even if the script is slightly overloaded with plots and characters. Because the movie had not been a particular financial or critical success, Warner did not make much of an effort for the home video releases. The DVD is especially disappointing, containing only one short featurette as bonus material, but this does not make Dark Shadows less amazing.
DS is a cool movie. But does who know the original will be dissapointed ’cause the movie is much darker and bloodier.
One of the starstuded cast is the girl from “Kick Ass”. She has little screentime but makes the most of it.
Eva Green’s most notable appearance since “Casino Roayal” is hardly recognizable.
It has become fact that if you look for extras you have to turn to BR. DVD is effectly a dead format.
Well, the trailers really advertised the movie as a comedy, which it really isn’t. But it’s not that dark and bloody, especially in comparison with Sleepy Hollow. It’s more in the line of Beetlejuice or Nighmare before Christmas.
SH is much darker but not as bloody.
TB does’nt reach Tarantino or “Saw” standarts but for him and in review of his body of work DS stands out.
Especialy since the TV-show used dialoge and inuendo where TB shows all.
I’m fairly squeamisch when it comes to horror movies and even I don’t think Dark Shadows is particularly bad in that respect. Hey, DS even got FSK12 in Germany, BBFC12 in England and PG-13 in the USA. And of course they did get away with stuff that wasn’t possible on TV – Dark Shadows was a Daytime show!
Exactly whar I`m saying!
If this woul’nt have been a TB-movie the FSk would have never be so leaneand.
In Germay DS was only run like after 1 at night on RTL. These morons thought that alone the conent and storyline would be so disdurbing to the beerguzzling Marstow-morons they couldn’t inflict that on them – and then it was nothing!
There is more shown sex on shows like “Santa Barberra” or “Days of our lives” then on DS.
There was no viloence at all, only talk about what this one or that one had done again.
You could’ve shown that on Saturday morning it would’nt have made a difference.
Now compare that to the movie and what everyone led TB got away with, you really got to wonder what these ppl (at the ratingplaces) have been smoking.