Director: Dan Curtis
Writers: Sam Hall, Gordon Russell
Stars: Jonathan Frid, Grayson Hall, Kathryn Leigh Scott
Run Time: 1 Hour, 37 Minutes
Link:
Synopsis
David Collins has gone missing. Maggie evans goes off looking for Willie, the groundskeeper, who hasn’t seen David. Willie has a poem that tells where the legendary jewels are hidden. Roger Collins fires Willie for being disrespectful, but Willie swears he’ll find more. Willie keeps snooping and comes upon a tomb in the Collins cemetery. He goes down inside and finds a locked coffin in a secret room. An arm reaches out and grabs him…
Mrs. Stoddard tells her assistant Daphne to go home, they work’s done for today. She walks alone out on the deserted road in the dark. She hears dogs (werewolves?) howling as she walks. She runs to her car. Someone opens the car door and pulls her out.
Meanwhile, David has locked Maggie in a bedroom inside the old house on the estate. Except it wasn’t David. Roger Collins can’t be found but turns up after all the action starts to settle down. Doctor Grayson and Sheriff George Patterson examine Daphne’s neck wound. The next day, the police find another victim, bitten in the same way.
Todd and Carolyn spot Willie in the pub, and he’s acting a lot calmer and more reasonable; he says he has a new job, working for the mysterious stranger. That same stranger rings the bell at Collinwood, and he introduces himself as Barnabas Collins, a cousin from England. He looks just like his “grandfather’s” portrait on the wall. The original Barnabas was said have went back to England from America in 1787. He gives Mrs. Stoddard an expensive heirloom necklace, and all questions are ignored.
Time passes, and Barnabas takes up residence in the “old house” on the property, and he and Willie set up restoring the long-abandoned place. We see that Barnabas has moved his coffin in to the basement of the old place with Willie as his daytime servant. Carolyn starts getting suspicious, and one bite from Barnabas takes away her curiosity.
Barnabas spots Maggie, and she looks just like his lost love. She’s wearing Josette’s dress from back in “his ancestor’s day.” They were to be married before he was cursed. “Josette, you have come back to me,” he says stalkingly. The real Josette jumped off a cliff when she learned what he had become. Carolyn storms in cause trouble, and Barnabas almost kills her until Willie intervenes. She dies before morning anyway.
Drs. Hoffman and Stokes discuss science and vampirism. Stokes believes in vampires, and he wants proof. David sees Carolyn wandering in the must outside, and Stokes wants to hear all about it. David thinks Carolyn wanted to hurt him. Todd goes to the family crypt, and he sees Carolyn as well. Carolyn bites him, and later, Todd tells everyone what happened.
Dr. Hoffman sees that Barnabas doesn’t show up in a mirror, and that convinces her. Caroline starts going on a bit of a rampage, and she lures Todd out to the old house, where the police corner her with crosses while Stokes gets her with a stake. Pretty much everyone is there when it happens, so Roger, Stokes, and the police all know exactly what the real danger is. They don’t know about Barnabas.
Julia Hoffman confronts Barnabas. She thinks she can cure him with science. As she continues her research, Barnabas starts courting Maggie. Willie keeps warning her that she’s in danger, and she tells Barnabas all about it. Stokes suspects Barnabas, but suddenly, Barnabas can go out in the daylight; it’s Julia’s cure. Stokes is confused because Barnabas is up in the daylight, but he remembers his conversation with Julia.
Julia starts getting jealous of Maggie, and she starts messing with the dosage. Suddenly, Barnabas looks hundreds of years old. He kills Julia and bites Maggie. Stokes, Roger, Jeff, and the sheriff discuss what they know, and it seems clear that Barnabas will be coming back to finish off Maggie soon. They lay a trap. Barnabas knocks out the guard, drinks from Maggie, and is rejuvenated.
The sheriff hands out silver bullets and says that’ll kill a vampire if you shoot him in the heart. Jeff takes one, but is lured out to an isolated island where Stokes awaits; Stokes has been turned into a vampire as well. Jeff shoots him with the silver bullet, and that seems to do the job. Jeff then walks to the old house, where he finds Roger, who has also been turned. Jeff stakes him then picks up an old crossbow from the mantle.
Jeff shoots Willie in the back with the crossbow, and then Barnabas demands that Jeff come down and face him; Jeff has no choice but to obey. Willie, who isn’t quite dead yet, impales Barnabas with a crossbow bolt, and with the hypnosis broken, Jeff finishes him off. After the fog rolls in, a bat flies out of the fog; could Barnabas have escaped?
Commentary
This was filmed concurrently with the TV series, and actors had to take time off from the series to film this. This is also the basic plot that was used for the 2012 Johnny Depp parody. The quality is about what you’d expect for a low budget film using existing storylines and characters from a TV soap opera.
The basic storyline was essentially the same story, with the same actors, several years after the story aired on the TV show. The only serious difference is that this was edited together into a faster-paced movie and this one was done in color rather than the 25-minute black and white TV episodes. And the ending is very different than anything I saw in the old series. Although all the material here was on TV, but combining so much material, the film feels really rushed. Barnabas was introduced, and less than an hour later, he’s outside walking in the daylight with Maggie, then he gets old for a few minutes, and then suddenly he’s getting married. I can only imagine what it would be like watching this if you weren’t already familiar with the characters and story; it’s like watching the Cliff Notes version of the series, which may have been the actual purpose of the film: to get new viewers caught up and garner attention to the series. Back in the day, there were no reruns of these episodes, but now you can get the whole series and binge it if you want.
There’s really not much in the way of special effects here, although Jonathan Frid’s makeup is really good when Barnabas gets old. I’d say if you are a fan of the series or want to see what the story was about, it’s worth two hours to catch up or introduce the characters to someone. Then again, it’s full of spoilers.