Seizure (1974)

          It would require someone more invested than me in the career of cinematic provocateur Oliver Stone to explain how the director’s first movie, Seizure, fits into a filmography that’s dominated by serious-minded dramas—because while Seizure certainly isn’t funny (at least not intentionally so), it’s a misguided, ridiculous mess. Seizure is ostensibly a horror film, complete with a few gory murder scenes and other shock-cinema signifiers (creepy musical score, knife-wielding psychos, morbid storyline). Yet Stone also tries for something more edifying, a probing journey into the torrid mental state of a doomed novelist (Jonathan Frid). Somehow, though, good intentions yield bad results, because Seizure is filled with laughable images: Picture a menacing little person (Hervé Villechaize) wearing some sort of court-jester costume while he knocks over normal-sized people with karate moves and goads a bikini-clad woman (Mary Woronov) through a knife fight with the aforementioned writer. And we haven’t even gotten to the Queen of Evil (Martine Beswick), an otherworldly temptress who slinks around with her cape draped across her outstretched arms, as if she’s channeling Bela Lugosi.

          Had the underlying story been strong enough to support such extreme images, the picture might have worked. Similarly, the picture might have worked had Stone simply made every scene frightening. Alas, Seizure feels like several mediocre movies stitched together. The simplest level of the film involves Edmund Blackstone (Frid) inviting several weird friends to a weekend getaway in the country. The next level involves Edmund’s recurring dreams of three strange creatures—the Queen, the Jackal (Henry Judd Baker), and Spider (Villechaize)—who threaten to hurt Edmund and his loved ones. And still another level involves these creatures coming to life and causing bloody mayhem. Think Fellini crossed with Ed Wood, then add a dash of obnoxiously overwritten dialogue about destiny and the soul, and you’re close. One suspects this material meant a lot to Stone, at least as an artistic/intellectual exercise, because he co-wrote and co-edited the film, in addition to providing voices for supernatural characters, and one hopes he learned a great deal from the failure of this project about how to channel his obsessions more effectively. As a viewing experience, however, Seizure is uniquely unsatisfying.

Seizure: LAME

House of Dark Shadows (1970) & Night of Dark Shadows (1971)

          Although the name of producer-director Dan Curtis looms large over small-screen ’70s horror—his projects from the era include the series The Night Stalker and the TV movie Trilogy of Terror—Curtis’ brand of melodramatic horror didn’t connect as strongly on the big screen, as evidenced by the fact that he only made one proper theatrical feature in his career, the 1976 Bette Davis shocker Burnt Offerings. Accordingly, it’s not surprising that the two big-screen spin-offs Curtis made from his cult-favorite supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows are unimpressive: The gimmicks that seemed bold and exciting in America’s living rooms weren’t enough to sustain interest in darkened theaters.

          Running from 1966 to 1971, Dark Shadows was an oddity in the milquetoast realm of daytime TV, mixing ghosts and werewolves and vampires into the usual soap tropes of domestic drama and doomed romance. Additionally, the show’s cheesy production values were part of its charm—so the fact that House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows are competently made actually works against their efficacy. Whereas the series had a quasi-intentional tongue-in-cheek quality thanks to actors flubbing lines and stagehands walking through shots, the features are presented without irony, so they feel dull and humorless.

          The narratives also move at a glacial pace, as long stretches of screen time are filled with characters wandering through forests or hallways while spooky music plays in the background. Furthermore, it doesn’t help that the both movies awkwardly rehash plot threads from the TV show. House of Dark Shadows is a sort of “origin story” adventure featuring the series’ beloved vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), and Night of Dark Shadows is a Gothic romance about Quentin Collins (David Selby), an artist haunted by the demons of his past lives; both main characters were regulars on the series. In the first picture, anguished bloodsucker Barnabas explores a possible cure for vampirism until a romantic triangle involving a reincarnated lover ruins his plans for a plasma-free future. In the second picture, Quentin moves into the haunted family estate in Collinsworth, Maine, where he’s seduced by the angry spirit of a witch he loved in a previous life, a turn of events that understandably creates tension in Quentin’s marriage to spunky Tracy Collins (Kate Jackson, pre-Charlie’s Angels).

          Both pictures deliver the familiar visual style of the series, which means lots of deep-focus camerawork juxtaposing background and foreground actors; super-low angles accentuating ornate castle walls; and waves upon waves of ominous music. The acting is enthusiastic but mediocre, with actors hamstrung by florid dialogue and turgid pacing. Another reason neither movie is particularly satisfying is that each has something the other lacks—House of Dark Shadows has a steady flow of action leading to an overwrought Grand Guignol finale, while Night of Dark Shadows boasts a more vivid love story. In fact, had these movies been the world’s first exposure to the Dark Shadows franchise, it’s unlikely anyone would remember Barnabas and his extended clan today.

House of Dark Shadows: FUNKY

Night of Dark Shadows: FUNKY