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Every time I read such-and-such about the reality of depicting Barnabas Collins struggling with the modern world I think of the scene in ED WOOD (I think Tim Burton's best film) when Tor Johnson as Lobo bangs into a set wall as he lumbers through a doorway and Wood, when asked if he wants another take, refuses, replying that in real life Lobo would struggle with that awkwardness every day. Maybe so, but...

Emphasizing Barnabas as a fish out of water misses the mark of a key aspect that contributed to the singular atmosphere that is DARK SHADOWS. The point was that Barnabas Collins had no difficulty fitting within the Collins household because the family was essentially locked into a nineteenth century existence.

The tiny-songstress-within-the-television gag of Burton's version aptly illustrates this disconnect with the original series, as does the scene showing David playing with toy dinosaurs. The point was that there was no television in Collinwood. You might see David with a throwback wooden soldier but he never let a slinky cascade down the Collinwood staircase. The point was that David's bedroom was not that dissimilar from his ancestors' bedrooms. It is these and other cues that lend to the overwhelming sense of melancholy that cast its shadow over Collinwood.

While the Collins family was certainly dysfunctional, it would be more correct to describe it as paralyzed. As viewers we realized there was something wrong but it would take the historical storylines to understand the generational layers of secrecy and supernatural malediction that practically penetrated the family's DNA and resulted in a Collinwood estate that became a prison of the Collins' own construction.