FIERCELY ANTICIPATING On Friday, Dark Shadows is officially opening and I’m going to be sitting in a theatre sometime that day, watching the big horror offering of the summer movie season. Probably on an Imax screen. My tiny bit of ambivalence is swamped by fierce anticipation. While quick to say I don’t like horror movies, is this really a horror movie? Seems to me, from watching the trailer a number of times – and reading up a bit to try to sort this out – that Dark Shadows is closer to another billing given it: comedy and fantasy. Isn’t this new production going to be more like Rocky Horror Picture Show? This suspicion is strengthened by learning that TV Guide lists Dark Shadows as one of the Top Cult Shows Ever. Come on. This is a Tim Burton movie which stars Johnny Depp. The trailer has that polished, campy look of current movies looking back to the 1960s or 1970s, a sheen of high production values, and a cast of beauties including Helena Bonham Carter, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Chloé Grace Moretz and Bella Heathcote. Surely these ladies will lift the tone, at least a little. All this is very seductive, never mind the faultlessly charming Mr. Depp, or should I say the vampire Barnabas Collins? Never saw the soap opera produced by Dan Curtis on ABC in the late 1960s. Reading now about the series, I recognize a classic setup, beginning an involved plot with a young girl on a train heading to a gloomy seacoast town in Maine and a mixed reception from residents and family. This blend of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Turn of the Screw, and plots increasingly driven by mystery and the supernatural were a perfect foil for paperbacks...