ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY:
The Vampire Strikes Back - (January 18th, 1991)
'Dark Shadows': The Review - (January 18th, 1991)

NEWSWEEK:
A Monster Revival - (January 7th, 1991)

THE PITTSBURGH PRESS:
'Dark Shadows' Rises From The Dead - (January 13th, 1991)
Good Gothic Fun Lurks In ‘Dark Shadows’ - (January 13th, 1991)

TV GUIDE:
Vamping It Up - (January 5th-11th, 1991)
With More Sex And Violence - (January 19th-25th, 1991)
Shadows Doesn't Have Enough Bite - (March 2nd-8th, 1991)
Letters Column: Ben Can Bite Me Any Time! - (March 30th-June 5th, 1991)

For Marvin Kitman to compare Ben Cross's interpretation of vampire Barnabas Collins to Jonathan Frid's and find Cross's lacking in "campy fun" is like comparing Michael Keaton's Batman to Adam West's and finding him lacking in POW! WHAM! and CRUNCH! Read More...

"Fangs a lot," loyal fans said when NBC exhumed Dark Shadows with a four-hour TV-movie in January. The Dan Curtis resuscitation of his original Gothic soap opera (which ran from 1966 to 1971 on ABC) had to be the major cultural event of the second season: I hear it got virtually 93 percent of the sets in use in vampires' homes.

A couch-potato vampire myself, I gave the revival four stakes. The remake, I thought, was well done, if you like vampire stories. It was a slice of surreal life, technically superior to the original. The cast actually memorized their lines.

Every cliché of every vampire story filmed was here -- the casket, the chains, the mist on the moor, the thunder cracking. You could fill in every word of dialogue and howl with laughter.

But the new, improved Dark Shadows didn't have the addictive quality of the original. I saw it once that Sunday night in January and had no real inclination to watch it anymore. One bit and you've seen them all.
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Dozens of people are gathered in the basement of a 55-room mansion for the filming of NBC's Dark Shadows as actor Roy Thinnes (playing an 18th-century witch hunter named Reverend Trask) is walled up behind a stack of bricks. Smoke and cobwebs fill the room. Thinnes's eyes flash with terror. Ben Cross, playing vampire Barnabas Collins, is about to complete his victim's makeshift tomb. “I beg you, I implore you – don't do this!” Trask screams as the last brick is put into place, sealing his fate forever.

It's a spine-chilling moment, but as far as Dan Curtis is concerned, it just isn't convincing enough. Curtis, the co-creator of the original Dark Shadows and the director and executive producer of NBC's new version of the cult-favorite soap opera, paces up and down, his patience wearing thin, becoming more and more unhappy with the way things are going.

“We can do better than this,” he barks. “Let's just stop messing around.” Read More...

The cult that developed around the original, 1966-71 Dark Shadows was based on a camp enjoyment of the afternoon soap opera's cheap production values, poor technical quality, and amateurish writing and acting. So how has the concept fared after all this time in the coffin? Well, the prime-time version is a lot more professionally done, and particularly well acted by Ben Cross. Read More...

Things look grim in the bowling alley beneath the abandoned 55-room Doheny mansion in Beverly Hills. The tomb-like room is painted black, hung with cobwebs, lit with flickering tapers, and filled with smoke. A woman with bloody hands is standing between an open coffin and a man sprawled face down with a knife in his back when in toddles a fellow carrying a lollipop. The woman snatches the knife from its inert sheath and stalks toward the baffled intruder; demonically muttering in French, “Imbecile! Cretin!”

“Cut!” barks director Dan Curtis. “Give me more smoke.”
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Fangs for the memories, Barnabas, but we do have a slight problem: Can a country facing Saddam Hussein still be scared by some English guy with a neck fetish?

Maybe not, but it could be fun watching him try.

In a season that has shown every intention of disappearing without a trace, this "Dynasty" in the dark is a welcome burst of silly style. The style may wobble a bit (all the humor is not intentional), and the show is hardly up to its "Jane Eyre" antecedents, but for four hours, at least, it's good Gothic fun.

Fans of the original will notice the change in scenery (production values have skyrocketed) and in our unhappy Prince of "Dark"-ness, Barnabas. Ben Cross makes Barnabas more somber and more overtly sensuous. Sex brings out the blood lust in him, don't you know.
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LOS ANGELES — It walks among us, a blood-sucking creature of the night. Try though you might to kill it, IT KEEPS COMING BACK TO LIFE!

A vampire? Of course not — "Dark Shadows."

Yes, neckbiters, that Gothic groaner, that classic '60s soap concoction of witches, werewolves and weirdness, is coming back for a nighttime run. The vamping starts tonight at 9 with the arrival of a two-part NBC mini-series (part two airs tomorrow at 9), and continues Friday at 9 p.m. on NBC with the regular premiere of the "Dark Shadows" series.
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Fueled by cult fever, 'Dark Shadows' vamps its way back into prime time

He's bad. He's batty. And (aieee!) he's back. As a matter of fact, his decision to come back may be the most convincing proof of his battiness. Now that we've driven a stake through the greed-is-good '80s, who wants another rich bloodsucker? Then again, no properly raised vampire would continue to lie low when so many pine so ardently for his return. Just listen to Helen Samaras, a 37-year-old travel agent in West Hempstead, N.Y.: "As a teenager, I watched Barnabas Collins almost every day for five years. So did all my girlfriends. We adored him. We all wanted to reform him, to help him out. Then suddenly he wasn't there anymore and I became one sad kid. For 20 years I've been hoping they'd bring him back. There never was a vampire like Barnabas."
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Dark Shadows fans, take note. The prime-time resurrection of the '60s daytime soap opera premiering Jan. 13 is "very much a modern update" and a lot sexier than it was before, according to costar Lysette Anthony. Read More...