Typed by Marlene MacKinnon

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BATTLING BARNABASES.
Or is that Barnabi? Either way, Ben Cross and Jonathan Frid had their own individual interpretations of the "Dark Shadows" vampire.
By Robert Pegg

Horror fans always like to compare favorites: Who was the scarier Dracula , Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee? Which was funnier , THE ADDAMS FAMILY or THE MUNSTERS? Who was the best Scrooge , Alistair Sim or Mr. Magoo? Now, DARK SHADOWS fans have their own dilemma: Who do they prefer as that charming vampire, Jonathan Frid, or the more recent Ben Cross?

In all fairness, that's a question for minds greater than ours. Let's just say that both actors brought their own unique interpretations to the role, and both managed to humanize the concept of the vampire on television. They also made their own indelible marks on pop culture in the process , the middle-aged Frid became a teen idol and appeared on bubblegum cards and lunchboxes; the 44-year-old Cross' Barnabas was also hyped as a sex symbol and graces Innovation's lushly romantic DARK SHADOWS comic book. For what greater celebrity could either man ask?
Two years ago, when DARK SHADOWS creator/producer Dan Curtis announced plans to resurrect his original creation with an all-new cast for NBC primetime, fans wondered if Curtis would tamper with Frid's original concept of the character and if the show would resemble the DARK SHADOWS they ran home from school to watch 25 years ago. Not to worry: When fans tuned into the two-hour pilot movie, they were reassured to see that Curtis hadn't tampered with anything. Indeed, he had lifted entire scenes and whole chunks of dialogue from the original soap and the HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS film.

But what was different was Cross' contribution to the new series. To his credit, he brought a fresh and original interpretation to the Barnabas role, keeping the show from becoming a mere remake. And like Frid, he alone CARRIED the entire series.

Whereas Frid's Barnabas was tragic and sympathetic, Cross' creation was intense and arrogant; where Frid's vampire was repressed, looking as guilty and secretive as a closet junkie or alcoholic, Cross' was sensuous and animalistic, taking a savage delight in the act of sucking blood.

Today, Cross says he deliberately took a different approach to the character simply because that was his job as an actor. "I'm an interpreter," he claims. "Someone else writes the script, someone else costumes me and I interpret that role. I'm like a conductor or a musician who is playing someone else's notes. I don't think it makes me a pure artist. It's a job, it's a skill, it's more artifice than art."

He adds that he deliberately chose not to watch any of the old episodes to see how Frid played Barnabas. "Some people have asked why I didn't just carry on with Jonathan's interpretation, and I have to laugh because, of course, I'm NOT Jonathan," Cross explains. "I understand what he did with the part, and that's all fine and good, but if you put us together and we both played Hamlet, we'd give completely different interpretations.

"But no, I didn't look at any of the old episodes," he continues. "I decided it would be counterproductive, in a sense. After all, it was a daytime half-hour black-and-white soap, and the new product was a one-hour show in color with plenty of production values. It was a much more high-gloss sort of thing. It was to be a Gothic ROMANCE. We were making a supernatural drama, not a soap.

"A lot of people who were avid fans of the original were possibly disappointed that I had perhaps not been faithful to the original , I've no idea, and really, that's not my concern. But Dan Curtis certainly had definite ideas about the character. For instance, he insisted that Barnabas not have a sense of humor. Now, I understand that he can't be cute or flip, and I definitely wouldn't have camped him up. But I would have liked to see some scenes of Barnabas coming to grips with the 20th century , maybe learning how to drive. You know, there's a difference between observing him in a humorous situation and actually seeing him smile or wink into the camera."

Had Curtis acquiesced to Cross' desires, it wouldn't have been the actor's first time playing a vampire in a funny vein. His introduction to bloodsucker roles was in the 1989 made-for-cable comedy NIGHTLIFE. "Now THAT was camp," recalls Cross. "It was pure, high camp and I really liked it , plus the fact that it took me to Mexico for the first time, which I really enjoyed."

His only previous venture into the world of the supernatural was in 1988's THE UNHOLY. When the film was mentioned, Cross laughs in an ironic and self-deprecating way, although there was nothing intentionally funny about the movie. "I'll tell you about the film: The director, Camilo Vila, is a very good friend of mine," he states. "What happened was that the film was taken away from him and there were two different endings shot by two special effects companies, neither of which actually served the film. I think everyone involved would agree on that.

"In hindsight, Camilo later realized that the ultimate temptation would actually have been to give me, as the priest, the chance to liberate the tortured souls in hell if I would give myself over. If you remember, the floors of the church open up and you can see into hell, so the ultimate temptation would have simply been for me to give in and release those people from hell to go to heaven. That should have been the climax of the movie, but no one knew it at the time, and that's why we had little dwarves in rubber suits crucifying me to the alter, and so forth."
 

For better or worse, Cross' part in THE UNHOLY is consistent with the pattern of roles he has played over the years. Superficially, they may seem like a diverse group , an Olympic runner in the Oscar-winning CHARIOTS OF FIRE, a jewel thief in the recent caper film DIAMOND FLEECE and the TV-movie STEAL THE SKY, where he played an Iraqi pilot opposite Mariel Hemingway as a femme-fatale Israeli spy.
 

But one thing his characters have in common is that they are obsessives with a tendency towards moral ambiguity. In THE UNHOLY, he's a priest fighting fleshly and other temptations; in CHARIOTS, he's driven to win a gold medal for running, yet admits he's unsure of what he's actually pursuing; and in DARK SHADOWS, he's a vampire who loathes what he has become and yet knows he has no choice but to kill in order to live.
 

This duality is what Cross claims he looks for in a character. "The basis of all good drama is some kind of conflict. All good stories have a dilemma, whether it's moral or sexual or whatever," he allows. "And I find that I'm attracted to a script because the story and the character will have all that, and then you say, 'Ok, there are choices to be made.'"
Cross found all sorts of conflicts , moral and sexual , to work on in DARK SHADOWS. "I tried to make Barnabas as interesting and complex as I could on every level," he says. "But the way a woman sees a vampire is different from the way a man does. So I tried to play it for as much sensuality and eroticism as I could.

"But then, there's Barnabas the vampire and Barnabas the man," he continues. "When you first see him in the series, he's kind of arrogant and distant , but then, too, you might be a bit insolent and angry if you had been buried alive for 200 years. And in order to make him more interesting, we jump back in time to the 1700s before any of this happened, and he's just a really nice guy with a very happy family.

"What happened to him then is a cautionary tale for all married men: he has a fling with the wrong woman and soon regrets it. Ironically, in becoming a vampire, he's as much a victim of his own condition as the people he finds himself biting."

That victimization aspect is the one thing Cross has in common with Frid's interpretation of the guilt-ridden vampire. Last year, during the new series' run, Frid talked about DARK SHADOWS old and new and how he approached the role.

"I always knew that I had a cadaverous, evil-looking face," Frid begins, "so I can afford to be as sympathetic in a villain's role as I want , that's what gives you depth and makes you believable. But I never thought of myself as being terribly SCARY when I played Barnabas. After all, I was playing him as sort of a pathetic man, not a scary monster.

"Barnabas was a full role, you know," he continues. "The only time I had to play the vampire was when I had to do the silly gnashing of the teeth, which was about once every six weeks. The rest of the time I was playing off other things.
"With the new show, you know where I think they were almost right on track? And it's ironic for me of all people to say this, but in the first episode of the new series, they show him biting a girl and then her boyfriend in a parking lot, and he plays it like an animal. And I thought, 'Now, there's the CLUE , there's nothing sexual about all this; he's just a predator, an animal, and that's the way he should be.' Well, of course, I did the very opposite of all that. But if they're going to go that way, they should GO that way and STAY with it.

"But I think all this sexuality about it really has nothing to do with it , for him to exist, he needs blood. Now, if you were to cut your hand, I'd probably faint, but blood on television has no effect on me. To me, the new show is too numbingly violent and just so much blood dripping down chins, and that's SO boring."

Although Frid is clearly dissatisfied with the new show, he finds no fault with the actor who succeeded him in the vampire lead role. "The problem isn't Ben Cross; I think he's a marvelous actor," Frid praises. "I was very impressed with him in CHARIOTS OF FIRE, and he's very good in this, too. But the show itself should have been more than just a reworking of the old HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS movie.

"I myself never expected to be asked to do Barnabas again for the new show," he points out. "After all, it's 20 years later and although vampires aren't supposed to age, actors do."

Although Frid has plenty of previously documented complaints about the old series, he admits that as bizarre and inconsistent as it was, it had its moments. "The show really did have something," the actor says. "It strived and reached for the stars quite a bit , and fell flat on its face a lot of times. But every once in a while it coalesced into something really quite beautiful. It was almost like BRIGADOON, very Never-never-land."

As Frid knows from his own experience, being too closely identified with one role is a double-edged sword when it comes to an acting career. Cross admits that he too had concerns of being typecast as the vampire , particularly since he had signed a five -year contract to play one.

"I did worry, frankly," Cross confirms. "I was concerned that if the show did go for five years that I would be in that pigeonhole. But in fact it didn't last, it was only the one season, and since then I've done three or four very different things, so being typecast as a vampire just didn't happen."

Cross doesn't like to speculate on what went wrong with the series, but he does acknowledge that having the last half of the season set in the 1700s probably didn't help hold the interest of a fickle, channel-hopping TV audience. He sums up the shows failure with succinct diplomacy: "Why was the show canceled? I suppose not enough people watched."

Cross reveals that he originally took the job on DARK SHADOWS as an opportunity to do American episodic television. "It was one of the things that I'd never done, and that I wanted to experience." he must have enjoyed it, because he's doing it again, currently appearing in a remake of TOPPER, a comedy series produced by John Landis for CBS. Tim Curry stars as Cosmo Topper, the one-time Leo G. Carroll role. And Cross? Once again, he's playing a dead guy , in this case, the male half of that elegant husband-and-wife team of ghosts, George and Marion Kirby.

But what about DARK SHADOWS? The original series, you may recall, ended with an epilogue on the final episode that read, "There was no vampire loose on the great estate that night ... and the dark shadows at Collinwood were but a memory of the distant past." yet 20 years later, it was resurrected; once again, crazy Willie let Barnabas out of his box. Face it, you can't keep a good vampire down. Today, rumors persist of a DARK SHADOWS feature film, although Dan Curtis' office continues to deny it. Would Cross be willing to reprise his role as Barnabas?

"I would certainly consider it," he says. "But I've heard nothing. It's in the hands of the gods and Dan Curtis really. It's something that we'll have to wait and see, but I certainly would consider it. If they were going to make a decent movie out of it and the script was good, sure."

Still, don't EVER count the TV version out. As Cross' Barnabas told his beloved Josette near the end of the recent series, "One day in another time, another world, you will glance across a room and see a stranger you have known forever , and it will be me."

So who knows? Maybe in a few years, Dan Curtis will have another of his infamous dreams and bring us COLLINWOOD 2000.
 
 

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