DARK SHADOWS PHOTOS
For veteran makeup artist Todd McIntosh, working on the new DARK SHADOWS was a childhood dream come true. A devoted fan of the original series, McIntosh, who finished a six-year stint on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER not long ago, was delighted to work on the recent WB pilot, which failed to be picked up for the networks fall schedule.
I dont know what the final reason was that they nixed it, says McIntosh, who provided FANGORIA with the above never-before-seen photos from the pilot. The way it was explained to me, almost everyone making the decisions didnt like the show, but no one could say what they didnt like. One person wouldnt like an actor, another person didnt like this choice or the lighting or whatever, but nobody could come to a cohesive, point-the-finger-at-one-element and say, Thats whats wrong with it. It probably would have been better if they could. If they could have pointed at one actor and say, That guy is ruining this whole pilot; replace him and lets go! theyd have been able to make a decision. But the different factions were looking at it and saying, Well, its not right, but I dont know why. Lets just not put the energy into itand besides, it costs $5 million!
McIntosh headed up the makeup department, with prosthetics built by Andrew Clements of Creative Characters. Their collaborations included Barnabas Collins (Alec Newman) in varying stages of decomposition as hes brought back to life, and the equally cadaverous demon (HELLBOYs Doug Jones) seen in the opening sequence. According to McIntosh, Victoria Winters [Marley Shelton] is on the train to Collinwood when she falls asleep and has a dream where a kid in a Halloween costume suddenly becomes a monster. It made sense to me that if the kid is in a red devil costume, the monster should be a devil or demon of some kind.
The director [PETER PANs P.J. Hogan, below with Shelton and Jones in the demon getup] waffled on this a couple of times, and what he came back with was that the creature she sees in her dream, which gives her a bit of a warning, is some victim of Barnabas from the past. At the same time, we still had to build the corpse of Old Barnabas in the coffin, and to save time and moneywe still didnt have an actor cast for Barnabas at that pointwe used Doug Jones for both makeups. We tried to make them look different, but I believe the director held on the train demon a little too long. It should have been just a quick scare, but because we had the same actor in both makeups, there is a bit of a resemblance.
McIntosh is particularly pleased with his work on Ivana Milicevic, who portrayed the evil Angelique, as well as Shelton as Victoria, whom he turned into a latter-day Tippi Hedren. Sadly, it now appears that a television audience may never see his work. Maybe theyll put it out on DVD, it might find a life at DARK SHADOWS conventions, so its not dead, McIntosh muses. I know theyre shopping it around, but the further away it gets from when it was made, the harder its going to be to tie anybody back together again because theyll be working on other shows. But to be standing there on set, and be able to look in my hand and say, Hey, Im holding Barnabas teeth!that was pretty amazing. Associate producer Jim Pierson has promised some kind of preview of the pilot at the upcoming DARK SHADOWS Festival to be held at the Westchester Marriott in Tarrytown, NY; further info can be found at www.darkshadowsfestival.com.
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Courtesy of Fangoria
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