Creatures of the dark

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Johnny Depp portrays Barnabas Collins in a scene from "Dark Shadows." (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS / WARNER BROS.)

LOS ANGELES — For their initial famous/infamous collaborations, director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp tended to original stories, including their first union, Edward Scissorhands, or the bizarro biopic Ed Wood. More recently, the two pooled their talents on more familiar commodities: the Broadway musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street; the remake Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; and the slightly revisionist take on the children’s classic Alice in Wonderland.

To some, their latest movie, Dark Shadows, feels like that most hackneyed of Hollywood projects, a remake of a property that is now only remembered by middle-aged baby boomers.

A more generous view is that the film represents a re-imagining of an odd but important cultural milestone. With that in mind, here are a few things you might want to know before becoming enveloped by… Dark Shadows.

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The original Barnabas Collins, Jonathan Frid. (CP)

1. The movie is based on a ’60s soap opera

Producer Dan Curtis’s daytime TV series ran from 1966 to 1971 (although there were a couple of movies and new iterations of the series) totalling more than 1,200 episodes. Most of the movie’s cast members were too young to remember it, but Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer and director Tim Burton all shared warm memories of a series that was, truth be told, utterly strange and groundbreaking in the convention-bound realm of daytime soaps.

The soap series was filled to its gothic rafters with ghosts, mad scientists, and the usual horror movie suspects, but the show took off in earnest with the introduction of the blood-sucking Barnabas Collins, a long-buried vampire who returned to the Collins estate to claim his lost heritage.

Many of the cast members of the soap, including the original Barnabas, Canadian actor Jonathan Frid, appeared for cameos during a ball scene. Frid died just a few weeks ago, but Depp testifies he was personally excited to meet him and Frid was gracious in handing over the role.

"It was like having the Pope come visit," Depp says, joking: "He had his cane with him, his original Barnabas cane, and I wasn’t sure when he actually saw me if he was going to attack me with it, but he didn’t."

In fact, Frid had actually written to Depp two years earlier, welcoming Depp the role that established him, or as Depp describes it: "passing the baton of Barnabas."

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Director Tim Burton (left) and Johnny Depp on set. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS / WARNER BROS.)

2. Usually, Tim Burton brings Johnny Depp to his projects. This was the other way around.

Johnny Depp was actually the first to come on as a producer, and he felt Burton’s gothic sensibilities were a nice fit with the material. Certainly, Depp knew Burton would be agreeable to his notion that Barnabas Collins be "a vampire that actually looks like a vampire.

"We talked about how it should be shaped, we riffed and it dictated what it wanted to be," says Depp, explaining that their vampire is "a rebellion against vampires that look like underwear models."

"It’s a strange thing, I certainly had a fascination with vampires and monsters and as you get older, you recognize the erotic nature of the vampire," Depp says, acknowledging the challenge of making "an obvious vampire fit back into this odd society and this dysfunctional family. And I think (Tim) did it rather seamlessly."

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Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS / WARNER BROS.)

3. The new Dark Shadows is both a fish-out-of-water culture-clash comedy and a satire of the ’70s.

After being buried alive by the witch (Eva Green) who cursed him with vampirism, Barnabas, "a well-schooled gentleman in the 18th century," as Depp describes him, finds himself in the future world of 1972, an era when "actual items of enjoyment for people included pet rocks, fake flowers, troll dolls, lava lamps, and macramé owls, my favourite."

Burton turned to novelist Seth Grahame-Smith to embellish the tone for the film. Grahame-Smith wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and offered up that book’s blend of genteel civility and horror. Barnabas may kill and suck blood, but he has an admirable sense of family loyalty. In that, he is in high contrast to the loutish, thieving, womanizing Roger Collins (Jonny Lee Miller), the movie’s self-centred embodiment of the Me Decade.

"The thing I loved about Roger is he’s unaware he’s in a world of horror," says Miller, perhaps best known as Sick Boy in Trainspotting.

"He’s an idiot ... and I’m the man for the job."

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Tim Burton and Michelle Pfeiffer.

4. Burton and Depp weren’t the only reunion on Dark Shadows.

Michelle Pfeiffer was sufficiently excited about the fact Burton was doing a Dark Shadows project that she personally called him about it.

Pfeiffer played Catwoman in Burton’s Batman Returns 20 years ago, but admits to being such a fan of the series, she actually solicited Burton about it. (The last time an actress tried to get Burton to cast her was Sean Young’s campaign to play Catwoman. It didn’t work out.) "I shamelessly called him and said, ‘Give me a job after 20 years,’" Pfeiffer says. "It was really horrible."

5. Wearing long, pointy vampire finger extensions can be a dangerous business.

"I had a troop of people who would help me go to the bathroom," Depp deadpans.

Dark Shadows opens in theatres tomorrow.