STRANGE PARADISE-ep1 and 2:

 

STRANGE PARADISE-ep1 and 2:

 

WTF? See below for more info. Okay this is a Canadian soap opera with a long history for such a brief time (69 to 70). Some Dark Shadows people worked on this behind the scenes (writers?). Again, see below for specifics. It’s a curious mix of good and bad and some MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER worthy scenes. It feels both superior in some ways to DARK SHADOWS and yet, somehow totally inferior and awful to DARK SHADOWS, which is far more complex, entertaining and sustaining AND memorable.

 

The outside locations look great but perhaps this is unfair to compare to DARK SHADOWS’ outside locations. A lot happened in the years between those 1966 DARK SHADOWS outdoor location footage shoots and these 1969 STRANGE PARADISE ones. Perhaps comparing the two series IS unfair but for the most part, other than maybe EDGE OF NIGHT, this is the only other gothic supernatural soap opera designed to be that way and sure enough, this STRANGE stuff looks totally inspired by DARK SHADOWS.

 

There are differences. This takes place on a small Caribbean island. I didn’t see any boom mikes, on screen cameras, flubs by actors, or any bloopers at all. Not sure that’s compliment but I love DARK SHADOWS for that (even if Dan Curtis did not). While DARK SHADOWS could have moments of pure embarrassment in the realm of forgotten lines and wooden and slow performances, mostly it overcomes those and are few and far between. Here, though, the cast is entirely wooden that it’s almost laughable. Everything feels staged and phony. And slow. Slow. Very slow.

 

I hate to be mean but there’s an old doctor in the first episode who is terribly acted by the performer. I don’t see him in the second episode.

 

The whoever she is meant to be…a side note and a word here…ep1 just jumps right into the urhm, eh, “action” right away so we do not know who these people are…is a maid/old lady who supports a voodoo way of life but is well meaning and tries to re-insert the stopping of the curse seems patterned briefly on Mrs. Johnson of DARK SHADOWS, only Raxell as she seems to be called (or Rexell or Raxl), is more in the know of the supernatural.

 

She is flanked by a character who is Quito or Kimo or something. This bald headed giant gives the show a fond Universal black and white B or Z grade film feel. Think Tor Johnson and Rondo Hatten or even THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN’s Lon Chaney Jr “era.”

 

The show feels like a Universal classic movie mixed with a 1970s Blood Beast monster feel but it’s entirely shot on what feels like video tape…and that gives it a cheaper feel than DARK SHADOWS, which looks, despite also being on video tape for the most part, superior to this.

 

That, despite even the sets if they are sets, in STRANGE PARADISE. Despite looking like a real house inside (I wonder IF it was!?), the house is not as interesting as the sets in DARK SHADOWS and by ep2’s middle, is already staid and boring.

 

There are, OLD HOUSE like, catacombs under the house with coffins (at least two that I saw, one housing Erica, the wife of the main character and another housing….ehrm, a doll with a spike through it that cancels the curse). Yes, there is a curse and the main character romps through the first two episodes hilariously.

 

Okay let’s get to him. Colin Fox has been in FRIDAY THE 13^TH: THE SERIES and FOREVER KNIGHT as a guest star and in the wonderful PSI FACTOR as a regular for a time. He’s almost so young here he’s unrecognizable as being the same man as from those later roles. He’s not bad but he’s funny. He’s a bit over the top. He is Jean Paul Desmond / Jacques Eloi Des Monde. Jean is a sort of madman who wants to bring his dead wife back to life. He has dry ice in her coffin, hoping when others find the cure (the old man or others he plans to bring to the island …ALL scientists if he has to! I told you …he is mad), she will revive from death.

 

Erica, in an unprecedented move for this era, was pregnant when she died. Her baby seems to be talked about as unborn.

 

Jean also touches a portrait of his ancestor Jac and suddenly we are at a 1600s party of hilarious dialog and nature, some of it meant to be funny but just campy by today’s standards. He also returns to our time (all in the same rooms) and has on the clothing of the 1600s Jac and acts like it. In one slow but funny scene, he evaluates the room of the house, looking at things that are new and things are not and what has to go and what does not, including the wine. It all comes off as very campy.

 

The music. Ah, yes. At first I didn’t like it. It felt a poor cousin to the EXCELLENT Dark Shadows scores and it is. Yet, somehow, a few of the tracks resonate. Not much, mind you. There’s also a lot of slow moving, unscored sequences of long silence which do not help.

 

 Jean Paul Desmond brings a curse to himself and all who live on his private island by summoning his 300-year-old ancestor, Jacques Eloi des Mondes, to revive his recently departed wife from the dead. This 'Dark Shadows' clone from Canada changed plots halfway through its run when Desmond became the subject of a supernatural affliction that caused him to kill. While the plots changed, the synopsis for many of the already written but unused scripts, found their way to American TV guides!

 

Also, since Ian Martin, one of the writers, also later worked on the radio series CBS MYSTERY THEATER, many of these plot ideas from the aired and unaired scripts found their way there!

 

Erica’s sister accompanies a man that …well at first I thought they were married but they’re not…goes to the island somewhat regularly. She’s never been there but is worried because she hasn’t heard from Erica for over two weeks. His name is Dan and he’s not in the second episode (another actor might replace him later on?).

 

Erica’s sister, Allison, at a hotel (?) bar room music hall (think a larger and more hip BLUE WHALE?) meets an artist hottie named Tim who borrowed money from a criminal to fund help for his mother who was stricken with a disease (she may have died anyway?) in a sad storyline.

 

Erica’s sister and a female singer at the bar come up with a plan to save Tim from an enforcer that’s there to get the money from Tim …or kill him.

 

 

They will get Tim to sketch or paint Erica for Jean and Jean will pay him. Tim owes 3000 dollars plus some 600 dollars a month interest which the sister calls criminal. “So are they,” Tim quipped.

 

There’s also a hilarious scene early in ep1 as Dan re-fires his incompetent secretary for being on the phone with someone, a friend or sister. Her office or his office has a big white stone wall.

 

Well, all of this is off the wall TV. It’s such a mix of bad, good, DARK SHADOWS copied incompetently (I kept thinking of how Barnabas wanted to resurrect Josette and am on the ep in 1795/6 where he DOES bring her back to life and how compelling most of that was compared to THIS). The acting ranges from amateurish to competent and over the top funny (mostly Colin). There’s also one scene where Jean Paul is opening a coffin while the female singer is singing something about witchcraft and black magic.

 

The setting of an island is different enough from DARK SHADOWS to not be totally boring but the first two episodes are very slow moving, even compared to early DARK SHADOWS. Still, those hardly had any supernatural undertones. This is almost all supernatural and mad from the first episode. It hits the ground …well, not running but stalking and walking, with its supernatural stuff and mad, insane premise (a man who somehow thinks he can bring his dead wife back to life via science while the dead woman is on ice and having a housekeeper who uses voodoo to keep voodoo in check and a big bald mute servant?). It’s appropriately more Universal horror than Hammer.

 

MST3000 should acquire this series. They (and we) would have a ball. As it stands, I think I’ll watch more but slowly as it is mind numbingly slow and yet eye openingly different from just about everything we’ve ever seen before and after, yet borrowing from just about everything including Italian horror (BLACK SUNDAY and BLACK SABBATH come to mind as well as Italian horror movies and giallo even, though no one is yet murdered in the series). What curious mix of everything and nothing.  

 

 

  

 

 

 

 Strange Paradise, Episode 1: Dry Ice Burns | Dark Shadows Every Day

 Strange Paradise, Episode 2: Crypt Kicker | Dark Shadows Every Day

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Paradise