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Looking for the "lost" diamonds of the Collins, the family's former caretaker Willie (John Karlen) accidently stumbles upon a hidden crypt, opens the chained shut coffin it contains, and frees vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), who promptly makes him his slave. After killing a few neighbourhood girls for their blood, Barnabas introduces himself into the family headed by matriarch Elizabeth (Joan Bennett), who are quick to accept him as their British cousin and let him take possession of a run-down house that has belonged to the family for centuries. One of Elizabeth's daughters, Carolyn (Nancy Barrett) takes an immediate liking in him, so much so that when she learns he's in love with the family gouverness Maggie (Kathryn Leigh Scott), she threatens to reveal his secret - upon which he kills her. But she returns as a vampire and soon enough attacks her boyfriend Todd (Don Briscoe). Fortunately there are two scientists in the Collins household, virologist Julia (Grayson Hall) and vampirologist Professor Stokes (Thayer David), and they soon devise a plan how to capture Carolyn and kill her for good that involves Todd adding as bait.

Julia finds out that Barnabas is a vampire, but instead of telling on him, she offers to cure him - and it seems successfully, too, as he loses his appetite for blood, can come out in the daylight, becomes more and more human. So much so that he plans to propose to Maggie - but when Julia hears that, she, having long fallen in love with him, sabotages his cure and turns him into a vampire more raging than ever. He quickly kills Julia, then even attacks Maggie in the need for blood, before making a retreat. Again, a plan is devised to capture the vampire, and again it involves using someone (Maggie) as bait. But as well guarded as she might be, Barnabas has no problems getting her out of the Collins home and into his house. And now it's up to Maggie's boyfriend Jeff (Roger Davis), who has hardly figured in the story before, to save her ...

On the plus side, this is a well-made old-fashioned vampire movie that really ticks all the boxes when it comes to what to expect from a movie of its ilk, and it's atmospheric and spooky in all the right places to at least entertain fans of the genre.

On the downside though, the film, a condensation of hundreds of episodes of the daily horror soap Dark Shadows, feels horribly rushed and convoluted, so much so that one doesn't get to know the main characters at all, much less their relations to one another, while key plot points are not properly worked into the plot but awkwardly placed, and the whole thing even seems repetitive at times.

It's still an ok watch though, but it could have profited from a more stringent script.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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