The Art of the TV Spin Off Movie

Lately, I've been contemplating the world of the TV spin-off movie - those theatrical features based on popular TV series, made during the series' TV run.  Here in the UK, these are most to familiar to us in the form of the various film versions of TV sitcoms that appeared during the seventies: the On The Buses trilogy, Dad's Army and Bless This House, spring to mind.  By and large, they retained the TV casts and writers, but featured bigger budgets, better production values and location filming, often 'opening up' the usually studio-bound action of their source material.  The approach taken by their makers varied considerably - some, like Dad's Army and the two Steptoe and Son movies, favoured basing their scripts closely on broadcast TV episodes, weaving three or four of them into a ninety minute story with an overarching plot.  Others, most notably the On The Buses spin offs and Bless This House, came up with more or less original scripts, tailor made for the movie format, often taking some liberties with their source material.  The On The Buses films, for instance, have their own continuity, separate from but parallel with that of the TV series and eventually take the main characters away from their original environments.  The Bless This House movie even goes so far as altering and recasting some regular characters while introducing new antagonists for the Abbot family.  Many of these films did very well at the box office in the seventies.  They were an easy sell, featuring already familiar characters and situations, catering to audiences wanting to see more of their favourite characters but on a bigger canvas and, for many still without colour TV, in colour.

Sitcoms seemed ideally suited for the transition to the big screen - their episodes tended to be self-contained and their 'situations' fixed and familiar, requiring little exposition or need to establish characters.  (Although, in the seventies, it wasn't only UK sitcoms that were adapted into movies - Man at the Top, a TV series derived from John Braine's novel 'Room at the Top', was adapted into a feature film, with its TV cast, as was cop drama The Sweeney, which spawned two movie versions while the series was still on the air).  Soap operas, though, would seem to be highly unsuitable for the onscreen treatment, with their complex, ongoing story lines and continuing characters, all with complex histories.  Yet, there have been attempts to produce film spin offs of soaps.  Back in the seventies, for instance, there was a film adaptation of the adult-themed Australian TV soap Number Sixty Nine, which upped the raunchiness and proved to be a local box office draw.  Better known, perhaps, are the feature film versions of the US day time Gothic supernatural soap Dark Shadows.  The first of these - House of Dark Shadows (1970) - was released during the series TV run and proved highly popular at the US box office, (even as the concurrently running TV series' ratings faltered).  

Seen today, in isolation from the TV series, it seems a curious beast. (I was recently able to see it via a streaming service).  On the one hand, it makes a good stab at presenting a stand alone movie, requiring no prior knowledge of the series, on the other, its meandering plot and plethora of characters give it an increasingly soapy feel.  The source TV series, while centering on the wealthy Collins family, ran through a number of relatively discreet (albeit linked) plot arcs, which encompassed a variety of Gothic horror tropes, including vampires, werewolves, witches, ghosts and reincarnation, with frequent trips back in time to meet the characters' ancestors (played by the same actors) and even parallel time lines.  The film, sensibly, chooses to focus on the best known and most popular story line - that of the vampire Barnabas Collins, which itself echoed much of the plot of Bram Stoker's Dracula.  While on TV Barnabas eventually became a sympathetic character and pretty much the series lead, here he is presented in his original, villainous guise, chronicling his arrival in the lives of the present-day Collins family and his lust for the reincarnation of his lost love.  The series; original cast are all present but, freed from the constraints of ongoing story lines, writer/director Dan Curtis takes the opportunity to kill many of them off, emphasising the film's status as an independent entity from the series.

House of Dark Shadows further establishes its cinematic pedigree by bringing far more explicit gore to the screen, not to mention more action, than the TV series could.  Nevertheless, the script's episodic origins are betrayed by its multiplying sub-plots, which, rather than being established or prefigured early on and then slowly developed, keep springing up every time the main plot starts to flag.  Consequently, the film has distinct phases, starting with Barnabas' arrival, the Lucy Westenra-like vampirisation of the Collins' daughter and her subsequent staking, his pursuit of his lost love, his quest for a cure for his affliction and the final hunting down of Barnabas by a disparate group of vampire hunters, being the main ones.  All of which simply succeeds in breaking u the narrative flow, giving the film a halting feel, as it moves through its phases.  Along the line, however, there is still much to enjoy: Jonathan Frid's performance as Barnabas, some excellent cinematography and some striking ideas, including vampire-hunting cops wielding crucifixes.  Indeed, along with the TV series, House of Dark Shadows represents one of the first serious attempts to relocate the traditional Gothic vampire in the modern world, predating (just) efforts such as the Count Yorga films and Hammer's Dracula AD 1972 and Satanic Rites of Dracula.  The success of the film resulted in a sequel in the form of Night of Dark Shadows.  

This was originally intended to be a direct sequel, featuring a resurrected Barnabas.  But, with the TV series having ended, Jonathan Frid decided that he'd had enough of Barnabas, so the new film instead built a stand alone story based on another popular story line, that of Quentin Collins, a reincarnated witch, (which owed something to H P Lovecraft's 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward').  In the spirit of the TV series having the main cast play multiple characters, the film features many of the regulars, but in new roles.  Night of Dark Shadows proved somewhat less successful than its predecessor, putting an end to the spin offs (if one doesn't count the more recent Tim Burton adaptation).   While House of Dark Shadows isn't a bad film, as intimated earlier, it makes for an odd watch nowadays, particularly here in the UK, where the source TV soap was never shown.  Although, by and large, it succeeds in standing on its own merits as a movie, the casual viewer can't help but feel that they are missing something - as with all TV adaptations, there is the feeling that you are supposed to know more about these characters than is presented in the film.  Many plot twists, such as the deaths of various characters, are clearly meant to feel more shocking and surprising than they do to those of us who weren't used to seeing these characters on a daily basis.  Ultimately, though, it is worth watching, even if you know nothing of its origins.  Somewhat overlong, it nonetheless does represent a pretty good attempt to contemporise the Gothic vampire story - certainly it does it better than either of the aforementioned Hammer efforts.