As I mentioned with the first volume of this new series, I am not overly thrilled with them. I miss the full, or even partial, cast audio stories. These short stories feature the actors merely reading the scripts, as if reading an audio book, and sadly, they just don't have the same feel for me that the prior audio tales did. Before, when I listened to the stories, it was like I were simply standing just outside the view of the show, but I could still hear everything that is going on. With these, it's like I am simply listening to someone read the book (or short story, as the case may be). Yes, some of the actors do try to vary their voice for the different characters; but hearing them simply read the action, rather than actually "hearing" the action - well, it takes away some of the joy I had in listening to the further adventures of Dark Shadows...
Regardless, the stories stayed somewhat true to the Dark Shadows world of darkness and supernatural. The first tale, "Last Orders at the Blue Whale," featured Harry Johnson - who, I will admit, I had no clue who he was. I had to look him up on line to discovery that he was Mrs. Johnson's son who had spent time in jail before coming to visit his mother at Collinwood. He was featured in the pre-Barnabas episodes, and quite frankly, I have not yet seen all of those stories, which is why I didn't recognize him. Read by Matthew Waterhouse (of Dr. Who fame), "Last Orders" basically provides the events of what happened to Harry after he left Collinwood. When he attempts to steal from a stranger, he finds himself facing a life or death choice - give up his soul, or turn over one of the Collins' family in his place! Harry has always through of himself first, so what choice will he make, and what will that choice cost him?
The second story, "The Scarlet Bride," features Andrew Collins once again assuming the role of Barnabas. It is bookended by Barnabas reading letters from a young bride-to-be, and tells the story of young Agnes, who is about to be married into a family that has a very dark secret. When a supernatural creature begins to come into the house, it is assumed it is Barnabas, the vampire - but not all is as it seems. While the "mystery" as to the identity of the creature is not hard to figure out, the one thing I enjoyed about this story was the continuing friendship of Barnabas and Julia Hoffman.
The third story, "On the Line," is the only tale that I thoroughly enjoyed listening to. Nancy Barrett resumes her role as Carolyn, who gets a very unusual phone call - from her own future self! Future Carolyn knows something is going to happen, so she begins to lead her younger self on a very specific path to prevent the coming destruction. But Carolyn of the present is not one easily duped, and she begins to suspect that something is not right - so she begins to question her future self and realizes that the path she is being led down is not one she would ever take! Barrett shines in this story - it's pretty hard to pull off a story with only one actor, but she does it amazingly well - could almost picture this one in my head as she talked to "herself" throughout the story.
The final story, "In a Broken Dream," brings Stephanie Ellyne back as Amy Jennings, who has headed off to Paris to visit Roger and Elizabeth - only to discovery that they are missing! Instead, she meets a mysterious Frenchman and starts to feel an unexplained attraction to him. Something is amiss, but she can't quite put her finger on it. This final tale fell rather short of the Dark Shadows' lore and felt extremely lackluster. It never really caught my interest, and I had to force myself to sit through it to the end. I liked the fact that Roger and Elizabeth were in it (it seems they are always out of town for most, if not all, of the audios), even if they were only read by Stephanie and not voiced by other actors.
Overall, this was definitely not one of the best audios in the series to date - I'm hoping these short story collections improve as the series continues - since I skipped volume 2, I'll have to go back and listen to it, and hope I find it more to my liking!
RATING: 5 shadowy figures outside the window out of 10 for, at the very least, keeping the legend alive for fans like me!
No comments:
Post a Comment