Halloween starts on TCM Dark Shadows, The Haunting

[Steve C.]

Posted: 10/2/15 at 9:14pm

TCM has started the Halloween movies for this month. They are showing a lot of old scary classics like Two On A Guillotine with Dean Jones; The Haunting with Julie Harris, House On Haunted Hill with Vincent Price. They're also showing a Dark Shadows movie, House Of Dark Shadows. I kind of watched that on PBS for a while. That show was so good and so campy. Movies like these are so entertaining without gore and buckets of blood. They scare you in your head. BOO!

Updated On: 10/2/15 at 09:14 PM

[ArtMan]

Posted: 10/2/15 at 9:49pm

Steve, House of Dark Shadows is fantastic.  There was another movie made Night of Dark Shadows, not so much.  If you enjoyed Dark Shadows and have never seen House of Dark Shadows,  watch it. I don't have TCM, so I don't know if they edit.  It is very gory compared to the tv show.  It was released on dvd some years ago, for a cheap price.

[Steve C.]

Posted: 10/2/15 at 9:58pm

Thanks, ArtMan ; TCM does not edit; no commercials and uncut. The Dark Shadows movie is on in a few hours.Sounds like fun!.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 10/2/15 at 10:23pm

I have the entire Dark Shadows series on DVD. It came in a coffin shaped box and when you opened it the DVD's jewel cases where printed as if Barnabas was laying in it. Every October I bring it out and watch from where I left off. I am up to his ring.

 I have never seen the movies though! Something I am loath to admit being a die hard Dark Shadows fan!

 

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 10/2/15 at 10:30pm

House of Dark Shadows opened at the movie theater when I was in grade school.  My entire class was obsessed with the soap opera.  It was all we talked about.  The line was so long for the first Saturday matinee that the theater opened its balcony, which we had never seen before.  So we sat up there.  It's more violent than the TV show was, and Barnabas Collins more malevolent.  There's a scene where somebody pulls him off somebody he's biting and the flesh of the victim's neck tears.  You have never heard so many tweens scream in your life.  I wish I had TCM.

[ArtMan]

Posted: 10/2/15 at 10:31pm

SNAFU, My brother has the same collection.  He bought it when he was on a kick,  watching the reruns.  I think he got bored of it after several hours.  You have to watch House of Dark Shadows.  Growing up, I found a really cool ring and wooden box in my grandparent's house.  I stuffed a glove and put the ring on one of the fingers.  That was my hand of Count Petoffi.  (sp)  Remember that plotline?

[SNAFU]

Posted: 10/2/15 at 11:06pm

Artman , yes it is slow, like most Soap Operas. But oh "The Dream CUUUUUURSE!". Open the next door!

Oh and the good Count and the i Ching! Campy goodness.

I love watching for the monofil that opened Josette's music box and the occasional boom mic operator caught in a shot.

Updated On: 10/3/15 at 11:06 PM

[Auggie27]

Posted: 10/2/15 at 11:43pm

Wise's (well, Jackson's) "The Haunting" is the gold standard.  Julie Harris, Claire Bloom.  One might say, "say no more," but in fact, both are particularly brilliant here, even considering stellar (and more praised) work elsewhere.  Bloom's performance is so effortlessly spot-on, a smug, complex, maddeningly  narcissistic yet oddly compassionate era-specific bohemian, devoid of a whiff of caricature.  But Julie is the heartbeat, and once you settle into her eccentric outre rhythms early on, you get quite a ride.