ParaNorman is “John Carpenter Meets John Hughes” & Other ‘80s Coolness

If Para­Nor­man , the upcom­ing stop-motion ani­mated zom­bie film from the same pro­duc­tion com­pany that did Cora­line , didn’t already seem like some­thing you want to watch imme­di­ately, the cre­ators have given us some new bits of cool to chew on:

In a recent press inter­view , writer/director Chris But­ler and co-director Sam Fell said the orig­i­nal idea for Para­Nor­man was “John Car­pen­ter meets John Hughes, and it spi­raled out from there.”

The small New Eng­land town of Blithe Hol­low comes under siege by the undead. Only a mis­un­der­stood local boy, Nor­man Bab­cock, who has the abil­ity to speak with the dead, is able to pre­vent the destruc­tion of his town from a centuries-old witch’s curse. He’ll also have to take on ghosts, witches, zom­bies and worst of all, the moronic grown-ups. But this young ghoul whis­perer may find his para­nor­mal activ­i­ties pushed to their oth­er­worldly lim­its.

The idea for Para­Nor­man came to But­ler over ten years ago, as he was inspired by films and tele­vi­sion shows from his child­hood like The Goonies , Scooby-Doo , Ghost­busters and Pol­ter­geist .

The film, which pays homage to the many won­der­ful, kid-friendly ‘80s films that blended hor­ror with com­ing of age, is set in “a small, working-class East Coast town that’s not quite right and it’s kind of rot­ten at the edges, so it’s not a per­fect ani­mated town. We’ve got peel­ing paint and graf­fiti and trash on the ground,” But­ler said.

“I wanted to tell the story of this kid who didn’t fit in, and I wanted it to feel real. Cer­tainly to have a film that is told from the point of view of kids, there has to be hon­esty to it.”

So, if you’re keep­ing score, Para­Nor­man has going for it:

• John Hughes-style angst
• A clas­sic John Car­pen­ter ‘80s hor­ror vibe
• Dreary, driz­zly East Coast small town aesthetic
• Gor­geous, painstak­ingly hand­crafted stop motion
• Zombies!

My advice is to run, don’t walk, to see Para­Nor­man when it opens in the­aters August 17. You can watch the offi­cial teaser trailer here:

Are you offended by this tentacle rape card game? [Updated]

So appar­ently there’s a crowd­funded card game on Kick­Starter called Ten­ta­cle Bento , which recently sur­passed and more than dou­bled its $13,000 fundrais­ing goal and still has 24 days left in the cam­paign. Why is it so pop­u­lar? Well for one thing, it’s got plenty of super cute anime girls for you to ogle, and oh yeah–it’s about (implied) ten­ta­cle rape!

Note  the “implied.” That’s key for the point I’ll make in a bit.

In Ten­ta­cle Bento, a trick tak­ing card game by Soda Pop Minia­tures , you play as an alien mon­ster dis­guised as a stu­dent at an all-girl uni­ver­sity whose mis­sion is to “get your slimy ten­ta­cles on as many of the stu­dent body as you can before time runs out.” You do so by cor­ner­ing girls (who are rep­re­sented by the four suits of Cute, Sexy, Sporty and Smart) in loca­tions such as The Fresh­man Dorm and by lay­ing down “Sneaky Snatch Action” cards.

I heard about the game on Twit­ter when @stillgray tweeted a link to this rather assertive post by Bran­don at Insert Credit that pretty much dis­misses the game as noth­ing but offen­sive, rape-glorification mate­r­ial that shouldn’t be allowed on KickStarter:

“The style is a cute, light­hearted, pastel-colored look at the won­der­ful world of forc­ing your way inside a female against her will. There are, to my mind, a lot of things wrong with this.

For one thing, rape is not cute.  Amnesty Inter­na­tional states  that 1 in 3 women is molested, sex­u­ally assaulted, or oth­er­wise beaten in her life­time. I’ve heard many advo­cates say this num­ber is low, due to under-reporting. And it’s not cute, and should never be depicted with such sac­cha­rine sweet­ness as Ten­ta­cle Bento does. It is ter­ri­bly dam­ag­ing to any­one it hap­pens to.

The more trou­bling thing is how many peo­ple are sup­port­ing it with­out think­ing about it. Or even worse, maybe they  are  think­ing about it.”

While I’m in total agree­ment with Brandon’s posi­tion on rape, I can’t say I agree that Ten­ta­cle Bento is as bad as he’s mak­ing it out be–which is a shame because I had my pitch­fork all cleaned up and ready to go.

After read­ing the Kick­Starter project page, watch­ing the video and look­ing closely at the cards, I’ve come to the con­clu­sion Ten­ta­cle Bento is a rel­a­tively harm­less slice of tongue-in-cheek humor aimed at anime fans and yes, those weirdos with a ten­ta­cle fetish who are gen­uinely turned on by the idea of being sex­u­ally probed by ten­ta­cles (which, frankly, I will never under­stand, but if that’s your thing, hey).  How­ever, I’d wager that for most of the world ten­ta­cle rape fetish is a fringe curiosity–just one more biz­zarre thing to come out of Japan, like used panties vend­ing machines .

Like Munchkin or Killer Bun­nies , this is the type of par­ody card game you whip out at a party to play with your nerdy friends while drink­ing and hav­ing a good laugh about ter­ri­ble anime. Because it’s a card game, and not say, a film or videogame, if there’s any actual “rape” in this game, it exists solely in the player’s imag­i­na­tion. The project descrip­tion and video don’t use the word “rape” either, but even as implied rape  I’m not offended. There’s a major dif­fer­ence between the real­ity of being bru­tally raped by another human being and this breed of bizarre alien fetish porn that is the stuff of fantasies.

Look­ing through the com­ments sec­tion, I’m inclined to believe the peo­ple who are donat­ing money to this project are not the pro-rape, women-hating, sex­ual assault apol­o­gists the arti­cle above would have you believe. They’re just a bunch of dorks who want a cute, funny, mildly-inappropriate card game to play–and some of them are even women.

Update 5/16 — Well, looks like Kick­Starter has given in to the few overly sen­si­tive peo­ple out there cry­ing “rape!” because the Ten­ta­cle Bento project has now been pulled–which I’m sure has a lot to do with Luke Plunkett’s hit piece for Kotaku. I’m really dis­ap­pointed in KickStarter’s deci­sion to cen­sor this project. What will they cen­sor next? Leisure Suit Larry ?

‘Dark Shadows’ Trailer is a Big Pile of Suck

Well, I was   look­ing for­ward to Tim Burton’s upcom­ing film Dark Shad­ows …

After wait­ing months and months for any hint of a teaser, the full blown trailer arrived out of nowhere last night. And man what a fuck­ing dis­ap­point­ment it is.

Ok seri­ously, Tim Bur­ton, what the hell? This was your chance to make a seri­ous film for Dark Shad­ows fans and you’ve com­pletely blown it.

I mean this has to be some kind of joke, right? Nobody asked for  “Austin Pow­ers with Fangs,”  as the Boston Her­ald puts it.

Yes, we know Dark Shad­ows was a campy, low-budget soap opera, but it wasn’t this ( what­ever the hell “this” is).  The orig­i­nal TV show had more integrity than that.

Despite its lim­i­ta­tions, Dark Shad­ows  at least tried to be a seri­ous show and stuck to its unique (at the time) for­mula of hor­ror, mys­tery and romance. It was never con­sid­ered a com­edy (well, at least not inten­tion­ally) and never had to resort to cheap jokes.

I love Tim Bur­ton and all, but this makes two films in a row now ( Alice in Won­der­land ) where he’s com­pletely missed the mark and ruined beloved char­ac­ters and fan­doms with his flam­boy­ant, style-over-substance treat­ment of the material.

Oh well. I guess we’ll always have the orig­i­nal Dark Shad­ows  to fall back on.

‘Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir’ Trailer Drops, Yay for More Horror Games on 3DS!

Today Nin­tendo unleashed a load of shiny new 3DS trail­ers in their  Nin­tendo Direct presentation.

The game that most caught my eye was Spirit Cam­era: The Cursed Mem­oir, which is the newest addi­tion to the Fatal Frame series of games.  It also has the dis­tinc­tion of being one of the only few hor­ror titles soon to be avail­able on the 3DS plat­form (in the US, at least).

Spirit Cam­era: The Cursed Mem­oir intro­duces a mys­te­ri­ous girl named Maya who has been hid­ing in the shad­ows of an old house. Play­ers must help Maya break free from a ter­ri­fy­ing curse by aid­ing her escape from the clutches of a malev­o­lent woman in black. By using the Nin­tendo 3DS system’s built-in cam­era, play­ers can view Maya in their own sur­round­ings as the game’s eerie events unfold.

Check out the game’s eerie trailer below:

I’m thrilled to see more upcom­ing hor­ror titles for 3DS, and frankly, it’s about time.  The DS plat­form sorely lacks hor­ror titles, but the few that exist are excep­tion­ally good games. I should really do a blog post about that…

First Look at ‘Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs’

Via  Scoop.it  -  Shezcrafti

Fric­tional Games, the devel­oper of Amne­sia: The Dark Descent— arguably one of the scari­est games ever made—has been teas­ing fans with hints at a sequel  for a while now.  Today we get our first look at some screen­shots, and later today there will be an inter­view with the game’s designers.

Joys­tiq has the very latest:

The power of two crowned indie devel­oper dar­lings have joined together to form one team, set to bring the Amne­sia fran­chise into a new era.

Speak­ing exclu­sively with Joys­tiq, Fric­tional Games and Dear Esther’s thechi­ne­se­room have revealed their lat­est project, Amne­sia: A Machine for Pigs.

Devel­oped by thechi­ne­se­room and pro­duced by Fric­tional Games, Amne­sia: A Machine for Pigs is planned for a debut on PC later this year. No firm date has been set, but inter­nally the two stu­dios hope to launch before Hal­loween. A recent alter­nate real­ity game has been teas­ing the the next Amnesia’s reveal, send­ing fans into a frenzy.

“It’s not a direct sequel, in terms of it doesn’t fol­low on from the story of Amne­sia. It doesn’t involve the same char­ac­ters,” Dear Esther writer Dan Pinch­beck told me. Instead, Amne­sia: A Machine for Pigs will be set in the same “alter­nate his­tory and set in the same uni­verse.” In short, the game will look to scare your pants off.

Via www.joystiq.com

Gaming to Death: 6 Woeful Tales of People Who Died Playing Video Games

Yesterday’s news of a young man found dead at an inter­net cafe in Tai­wan is just the lat­est case of an increas­ingly com­mon occur­rence: drop­ping dead while play­ing video games.

With the rise in pop­u­lar­ity of “never end­ing” games like World of War­craft , Star Wars: The Old Repub­lic , and other online games that design their entire busi­ness mod­els around keep­ing play­ers hooked, video game addic­tion is an issue that’s get­ting a lot of atten­tion lately .

But are the games them­selves to blame, or does it come down to indi­vid­ual gamers who just don’t know how to take care of them­selves?  While many of us are able to play a lot of games and still lead (rel­a­tively) nor­mal lives, it seems we’ve all known at least one other gamer who strug­gles to main­tain a healthy gaming/life balance.

In my for­mer WoW life, I never knew any­one who died as a direct result of play­ing the game—but I did wit­ness first­hand how play­ers’ addic­tions led to other ter­ri­ble things hap­pen­ing in their lives.  I knew peo­ple who lost their jobs, neglected their chil­dren, dropped out of col­lege, and got divorced.  And though they’d deny the root cause of these prob­lems, it wasn’t hard for the rest of us to under­stand the con­se­quences that go along with spend­ing 15+ hours of every day logged in to a vir­tual environment.

Below are six woe­ful tales of peo­ple who died play­ing video games:

Gamer’s Death at Inter­net Cafe Goes Unnoticed

Just yes­ter­day, Chen Rong-yu, a 23 year old Tai­wanese man,  died while play­ing League of Leg­ends , a free online MMORPG, at an inter­net cafe in New Taipei city this past Tues­day.  His body was found slumped over in a chair with his hands stretched out towards the key­board and mouse.  The most hor­ri­fy­ing part is that none of the cafe’s other patrons noticed until NINE HOURS LATER. The ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into his death reveals the gamer may have suf­fered from car­diac arrest trig­gered by a com­bi­na­tion of tired­ness, lack of move­ment, and cold temperatures.

Xbox Addict Dies from Blood Clot

Bud­ding com­puter pro­gram­mer Chris Stan­i­forth, who was only 20 years old, died from play­ing too much  Halo .   His 12-hour marathon Xbox ses­sions caused a fatal pul­monary embolism, a type of blood clot that can occur when some­one sits in the same posi­tion for sev­eral hours.  Chris had just been accepted to Leices­ter Uni­ver­sity to study game design when he col­lapsed out­side a UK Job­cen­tre after com­plain­ing of a low heart rate. He had no pre­vi­ous med­ical conditions.

Online Gamer Dies After 3-Day Session

An uniden­ti­fied 30 year old man in Bei­jing died after spend­ing three days immersed in an online game  at a local inter­net cafe.  He lost con­scious­ness and was rushed to a hos­pi­tal but could not be revived.  Accord­ing to reports, the man had spent more than 10,000 yuan (approx­i­mately $1,500) on gam­ing in the months before his death.

Man Loses Job, Dies After Gam­ing for 50 Hours

A 28 year old man from South Korea  died while play­ing Star­craft for 50 hours with only few short breaks. The cause of death was pre­sumed to be heart fail­ure stem­ming from exhaus­tion.  The man, who had eaten very lit­tle dur­ing his marathon gam­ing ses­sion, only stopped play­ing to go to the toi­let a few times and for brief peri­ods of sleep.  He had recently been fired from his job because he kept miss­ing work to play com­puter games.

WoW Gamer Kicked from Guild, Too Dead to Log In

Jer­ald Span­gen­berg, an avid World of War­craft player, died while raid­ing with his WoW guild after get­ting into a heated argu­ment dur­ing the raid. His cause of death was an abdom­i­nal aneurysm, pre­sum­ably brought about by long peri­ods of sit­ting at the com­puter com­bined with the stress of the argu­ment. After Jer­ald sud­denly went silent dur­ing the raid, he was auto-logged out of the game after 10 min­utes of inac­tiv­ity and did not log in again.  His guildies assumed he was  being child­ish and had deserted them, so they kicked him out of the guild and kept on raid­ing.  It wasn’t until three weeks later that they learned what hap­pened from Jerald’s daugh­ter (and felt hor­ri­ble about it).

Young Girl Dies After Play­ing WoW for Sev­eral Days Straight

A young Chi­nese girl known by her nick­name “Snowly” died after play­ing World of War­craft for sev­eral days straight dur­ing a national hol­i­day.  Snowly was a key mem­ber of her WoW guild, who said the girl had been prepar­ing for a very dif­fi­cult raid and had had very lit­tle rest in the days prior.  An in-game funeral was held for Snowly in the week after her death, but sadly the event was over­shad­owed by the death of another pop­u­lar WoW player dur­ing the same week.

Yes kids, it is pos­si­ble to lit­er­ally game your­self to death.  May these sto­ries serve as a warn­ing to you, fel­low gamers, to put down the con­troller every once in a while to eat and sleep.  And for shit’s sake, get some exercise!

The Big List of Horror-Themed Adventure Games

If you’ve been read­ing here lately, you already know that I’m on a big Pin­ter­est kick right now.  One of the things I love about Pin­ter­est is how eas­ily you can cre­ate and share curated lists about very spe­cific top­ics.  Horror-themed adven­ture games, for exam­ple (talk about a niche within a niche).

(To go straight to the list, click here .)

Scary point-and-click adven­ture games rank among my most favorite types of games to play; many of my most mem­o­rable gam­ing expe­ri­ences can be attrib­uted to this genre.  To that end, I’m always on the look­out for new adven­ture hor­ror games, scour­ing forums for rec­om­men­da­tions, and cruis­ing Google news feeds to get my fix.

That’s why I decided my first Pin­ter­est project would be to put together The Big List of Horror-Themed Adven­ture Games , to keep track of the games I’ve played or have an inter­est in play­ing.  Each of the games on my list includes the game’s title, cover art, plat­form, year released, and a link to its Wikipedia article.

I know there are oth­ers out there who love these types of games as much as I do, and so I thought this list might become a use­ful resource for dis­cov­er­ing sim­i­lar games.  Plus, I love how Pin­ter­est turns the games’ box art into an awesome-looking collage.

Do you know of any other great scary, horror-themed or dark adven­ture games that aren’t on my list?  Please leave a com­ment and let me know.  I’d love to keep this list growing!

Did I ever tell you about the time I watched all 1,225 episodes of ‘Dark Shadows’?

No?  Well that’s because I haven’t yet.  But I’m close!  I only have, like, 790 more episodes to go…

My Dark Shad­ows   pil­grim­age began back in 2009, a few months before Tim Bur­ton announced his film ver­sion.  It was on the rec­om­men­da­tion of my mom, who used to rush home from school to watch it with her sis­ter (and pre­sum­ably swoon over Quentin Collins, or some­thing like that).  At any rate,  I’m now 435 episodes in.  I fell off the view­ing wagon for a while last sum­mer, but started back up again ear­lier this month.  It’s now my new goal to com­plete all 1,225 episodes by May, when the new movie comes out.

“But Jaime, that’s crazy!” you’re prob­a­bly think­ing.  Who would want to spend that much time watch­ing some old, low-budget soap opera?  Well, I am noth­ing if not a com­pletest.  I can never be the type of per­son who just watches only a few episodes of a TV show, or reads just a few chap­ters of a book–even when it turns out to suck.  For me to fully appre­ci­ate some­thing, I must see/do/read/absorb it all.

Thus, the Dark Shad­ows theme has become part of the sound­track of my daily life.  I like to put it on while I’m work­ing at the com­puter, doing house­work, and I’ll also get a few episodes in before I go to sleep.  I’m aver­ag­ing about 10–12 episodes per day.  It sounds like a lot, but it goes pretty quickly since the magic of DVD means there are no commercials.

You too can over-commit your life to the same mean­ing­less (but ulti­mately reward­ing?) cause with these help­ful Dark Shad­ows marathon view­ing tips!

1. If you want to get right to the meat-and-potatoes of the series, I rec­om­mend skip­ping Dark Shad­ows: The Begin­ning (episodes 1 — 209), which takes place before the intro­duc­tion of Barn­abas Collins.  While I don’t regret hav­ing started from the very begin­ning , I do agree with the gen­eral con­sen­sus that the pre-Barnabas episodes are some­thing of a gru­el­ing exer­cise in endurance.  There are some unmemorable/disposable char­ac­ters, rather thin and unin­ter­est­ing plot lines, and although the gen­eral atmos­phere is creepy, noth­ing overly hair rais­ing ever really hap­pens.  It’s under­stand­able why the show was on the verge of being can­celled.  One can only stand so much of David Collins cry­ing like a lit­tle bitch and storm­ing off to his bedroom.
2. The first 370 episodes are avail­able on Net­flix for instant stream­ing, and the rest of the episodes are avail­able for DVD-by-mail.  But if you decide to fol­low Tip #1, then you can safely start at episode #210.  If you have a smart­phone, some ear buds, and the Net­flix app, it’s a great way to get through long car trips, wait­ing at the doctor’s office, or stealth-watching at church/work/boring parties.
3. Fast-forward is your friend!  Often the first three min­utes of each episode repeats the last three min­utes of the pre­vi­ous episode (remem­ber, this was a 1960s soap opera).  You can also shave an addi­tional two min­utes from each episode by skip­ping the open­ing and end­ing cred­its (unless you really enjoy watch­ing waves crash into rocks…over and over again).
4. You don’t actu­ally have to  watch  Dark Shad­ows, as in, with your eyes.  You can pick up almost every­thing you need to know just by lis­ten­ing.  The scripts are very straight­for­ward, almost mad­den­ingly so, often requir­ing the char­ac­ters to repeat key dialogue/plot points  many times over.  But of course, just lis­ten­ing to Dark Shad­ows means you might miss out on the endear­ingly cheesy spe­cial effects like float­ing hands,  red corn syrup blood, my favorite plas­tic bat on a fish­ing line.

There’s plenty to enjoy about  Dark Shad­ows,  if you can look past the campy act­ing, out­landish plots, and fre­quent mis­takes .  Over time you may even come to love these qual­i­ties, as I do.  The impor­tant thing is to have fun and let your­self be entertained.

New ‘Asylum’ Trailer — Welcome to Hanwell Mental Institute

Asy­lum is the upcom­ing first-person hor­ror adven­ture title from from the cre­ator of Scratches, that to this day, I still con­sider the scari­est game I have ever played. Last year when I heard Sen­scape had a new game in the works, it imme­di­ately went to the top of my Most Wanted list.  Because I already do enough of it on Twit­ter & my favorite adven­ture game forums, I will spare you the copi­ous amounts of gush­ing I am capa­ble of doing when it comes to Sen­scape and just get straight to the point:

There’s a new Asy­lum trailer out that includes actual game­play footage. Check out this dis­turb­ing new glimpse into Han­well Men­tal Institute:

Midnight Son is an Indie Vampire Film You Should Know About

If you’re a hor­ror fan like me who enjoys vam­pire sto­ries with a dose of real­ism (a’la Let the Right One In ‚ The Reflect­ing Skin, Grace), then Mid­night Son should be on your radar.  It’s an inde­pen­dent film with a lim­ited release from writer/director/producer Scott Leberecht.

If first heard about Mid­night Son on Twit­ter ( @MidnightSonFilm ), which promises to be “a gritty, real­is­tic new look at the vam­pire genre.”  Of course it got my atten­tion right away.

Here’s the trailer:

From the film’s web­site :

MIDNIGHT SON is the story of Jacob, a young man con­fined to a life of iso­la­tion, due to a rare skin dis­or­der that pre­vents him from being exposed to sun­light. His world opens up when he meets Mary, a local bar­tender, and falls in love. Trag­i­cally, Jacob’s actions become increas­ingly bizarre as he strug­gles to cope with the effects of his wors­en­ing con­di­tion. Forced by the dis­ease to drink human blood for sus­te­nance, he must con­trol his increas­ingly vio­lent ten­den­cies as local law enforce­ment nar­row their focus on him as a sus­pect in a series of grisly mur­ders.

If you want to see this film as much as I do, you can help out by click­ing here to demand Mid­night Son in your area.

Tim Burton Confirms ‘Dark Shadows’

My name is Vic­to­ria Win­ters. My jour­ney is begin­ning. A jour­ney that I hope will open the doors of life to me and link my past with my future. A jour­ney that will bring me to a strange and dark place, to the edge of the sea high atop Wid­ows’ Hill — a house called Collinwood. A world I’ve never known, with peo­ple I’ve never met. Peo­ple who tonight are still only shad­ows in my mind, but who will soon fill the days and nights of my tomor­rows.

These are the words of Vic­to­ria Win­ters, and the open­ing to Dark Shad­ows , one of the most mem­o­rable TV shows of all time.  Today, vam­pire mania has sunken its fangs deep into pop­u­lar cul­ture.  Shows like True Blood dom­i­nate tele­vi­sion, while The Twi­light Saga is one of the best­selling book series.  But the Bill Comp­tons and Edward Cul­lens of the world owe their exis­tence to a vam­pire named Barn­abas Collins.

Dark Shad­ows is one of those old shows that makes you feel uncool if you’re unable to remem­ber it when it was on TV.  That’s totally me.  I was born in 1981, 10 years after the last episode of Dark Shad­ows aired.  Being drawn to all things hor­ror, cult, and vin­tage, I dis­cov­ered Dark Shad­ows some years ago dur­ing one of those casual “have you seen any­thing good lately?” con­ver­sa­tions with my par­ents, whom I am grate­ful for hav­ing passed down their good taste in movies and TV shows to me.  If there’s one true thing I can say about myself, it’s that I am never bored, because I always have a nev­erend­ing list of inter­est­ing things to watch, read, or play—and never enough time to do it all.  So some­how or another, through the fond sec­ond­hand rec­ol­lec­tions of my par­ents and at the rec­om­men­da­tions of oth­ers, Dark Shad­ows found its way onto my list.

And a few months ago I begun the long and ardu­ous (but highly enjoy­able) task of watch­ing all 1,225 episodes of Dark Shad­ows .  Yeah, you read that correctly—ONE THOUSDAND TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE!  For any­one else crazy enough to do the same, Net­flix has the entire Dark Shad­ows col­lec­tion on DVD.  I think I’m some­where in the early 300’s, but I can’t be sure.  And I am lov­ing every dark, shad­owy, and weird moment of it!

So I am absolutely THRILLED to learn that Tim Bur­ton has just con­firmed to MTV News that he will begin shoot­ing Dark Shad­ows next year, a fea­ture film based on the TV series.  And, shock­ing to no one, Johnny Depp will star as self-loathing vam­pire Barn­abas Collins, con­firm­ing rumors that have been cir­cu­lat­ing amongst Dark Shad­ows & Bur­ton fans for a long time now.  Both Bur­ton and Depp are known to be huge fans of the show, hav­ing grown up with the gothic soap opera.  I think Johnny Depp will be amaz­ing as Barn­abas Collins, and Burton’s campy, gothic style is per­fectly suited for the beloved TV show that was so deli­ciously strange.  Now if we can just get Danny Elf­man to score, I will be one happy (newly-initiated) Dark Shad­ows fangirl!