Dan Curtis

(On Cable TV, September 2022) It’s about time that I face reality: I’m in an abusive relationship with haunted-house movies. I keep making a point of watching them, expecting thrills and chills, and they keep disappointing me by flying off in all directions but the ones I want to see. For all of the atmosphere, twist ending (well, “twist” ending), historical backstory, possessed characters and better-than-average filming location, Night of Dark Shadows merely settles for being a weak shade of okay. It is, admittedly, a sequel to a film I haven’t seen (House of Dark Shadows) based on a TV series I haven’t seen either (Dark Shadows), but that doesn’t seem to matter much: the problem here is one of limp execution rather than incomprehensible back-story. A look at the film’s production history reveals a more interesting issue: the cutting of about 35 minutes of material from the first cut of the film, leaving a neutered and less coherent 94-minute final cut. The result delivers the bare bones of a haunted house film without going much beyond the strict minimum even if the early-1970s cinematographic style adds period interest. There was some potential in having genre-aware characters (the supporting couple are writers who specialize in horror, meaning that they understand what’s happening well before the lead couple), but that goes largely untapped. While writer-director-producer Dan Curtis’s Night of Dark Shadows should be good enough for undemanding audiences, it’s not exactly a reference in the genre.