By Lisa Pool Content Manager | April 5, 2012 at 6:29 pm | No comments | Celeb Buzz, Latest News | Tags: 70's daytime TV, 70's movies, Dark Shadows, Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfieffer, pop culture, QG WD, Tim Burton
We like it already! As kids who were gee-lude to the TV tube, rushing home after school to savor every campy, ghoulish moment of the top rated daytime drama "Dark Shadows" knowing that the delicious Johnny Depp has teamed with the stunning Michelle Pfeiffer is too fabulous to imagine. The TV show was filled with bloopers and bats on visible wires, but the film promises macabre humor, and a visual retro-70′s feast according to the Hollywood Reporter. Take a sec and see if you agree…
Johnny Depp and Tim Burton's fans are salivating over their hero's remake of Dark Shadows, the long-running (1.225 episodes) cult favorite TV soap opera. But fans of the original show aren't quite sure what to expect.
The series ran from 1966 to 1971 and one of the most charming things about the daytime drama was the plethora of bloopers – wrong props, bats flitting about on visible wires, falling scenery, muffed dialogue, the crew seen walking through shots, the cast trying in vain to ignore them — in every episode.
The original Dark Shadows dialogue was very stilted and the show took itself very seriously. Still, due to the recurring onset mishaps, it was hilarious (in that so bad it's good way) and highly addictive. In contrast, Depp and Burton's take looks flat-out funny, over-the-top and very vampire tongue-in-cheek. Depp and Burton will no doubt bring the same zany macabre humor that they put into Edward Scissorhands (1990), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), and Alice in Wonderland (2010).
Not to mention that combined gothic/ '70s set décor, makeup and campy costumes are light years away from the plywood makeshift Collinwood manor and its denizens' frumpy fashions. Check out Vanity Fair's Dark Shadows gallery (amusingly titled "The Young and The Lifeless") to see new photos of the characters and costumes.
Depp has been dying (sorry) to play 200-year-old Barnabas Collins, a character first brought to life by the still-living actor Jonathan Frid, who was a boyhood hero of Depp's. Like Depp, we also used to run home from school to watch Dark Shadows and to be honest, Barnabas was considered by his fans — if not on Twilight hunk Robert Pattinson's hotness level – pretty darn sexy back then.
And with Michelle Pfeiffer, who portrays Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Helena Bonham Carter as the psychiatrist, Julia Hoffman, and the indominable Eva Green, (best known for being a Bond Girl in Casino Royale) as the witch Angelique, this movie will be worth skipping school (or work) to see.
Dark Shadows opens on May 11th.
Anyone else calling in sick? Catch the trailer and you'll be ready for Depp to take a bit out of your day and you'll be completely taken in with the wit and humor that Tim Burton always delivers.
