Warner Bros. has released a set of deleted scenes teasing the upcoming Blu-ray release of Dark Shadows.
In the film, Johnny Depp takes on the role of Barnabas Collins, a vampire who has been trapped in a box underground for two centuries. The film combines man-out-of-time humor with Addams Family sensibilities. It released earlier this year to not-so-stellar reviews and a lower than expected box office take.
I liked the film, however, and the only glowing point on my radar to the contrary was the absence of a few key character development moments, especially for Chloe Grace Moretz’s character, which was disappointing, since I loved her performance in Kick-Ass.
Now we’ve got some idea of what happened to some of that missing character development, as apparently several key scenes were cut in favor of other more dramatic scenes, or perhaps more humorous scenes – as these all seem like they were perhaps meant to be funny, but didn’t quite turn out.
In this one, we see an important interaction between Barnabus and young David, a dynamic which was left mostly unexplored in the final cut. Also, dinosaurs are cool:
In this extension, Doctor Hoffman is shown to hold some concern for Victoria:
Here, Hoffman and Elizabeth discuss Barnabus’s eccentricities, which not only deepens the relationship between these two characters, but also shows a little more of the distrust for Barnabus’s story that any rational person would have had in their situations:
Here we get the conversation between Carolyn and Victoria which is hinted at later, but we never see. It also foreshadows the transformation of her character at the film’s climax, something that was sorely lacking in the final cut:
Finally, this scene shows that the towns people actually noticed that people were getting killed out in the woods, answering a question I had when watching:
These five scenes are outstanding, and I question the decision to remove any of them. Perhaps they showed poor pacing where they sat – it’d be hard to tell without rewatching the film with them in it – or perhaps it wasn’t Burton’s decision to remove them. Either way, even just watching them after the fact, they improve the film immensely, and make the greater vision of Dark Shadows more apparent. Perhaps a ‘director’s cut’ is in order.
Dark Shadows on Blu-ray hits shelves October 2nd, 2012. It can be preordered now over on Amazon.
