Depp and Burton revisit a cult classic

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Neither Tim Burton nor Johnny Depp is sure when they mutually agreed to make a film based on the '60s gothic soap opera Dark Shadows.

But Depp does remember being drawn to rebel "against vampires that look like underwear models.

"A vampire should look like a vampire," he says at a press conference with Burton, fellow cast members (nearly all dressed in black), and "genre mash-up" novelist Seth Grahame-Smith (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter).

Scripter Grahame-Smith was the architect of the mash-up of TV's Dark Shadows, which took itself very seriously, and the movie's '70s milieu, which is very silly.

What's clear is they began talking Dark Shadows in earnest while filming another mordant project, Sweeney Todd. Both were childhood Dark Shadows fans, though Depp was more obsessed with the show about the fictional town of Collinsport, Maine, home to vampires, witches and werewolves.

"It's almost impossible to consider myself a producer," says Depp, who nonetheless has that credit.

"I can barely produce an English muffin in the morning. But when Tim and I got together and started figuring out how it should be shaped, and Seth came on board, the three of us just riffed and it basically dictated to us what it wanted to be."

Which is? "The idea of this very elegant sort of well-schooled gentleman who's cursed in the 18th century and is brought back to probably the most surreal era of our time, the 1970s, and how he'd react to things. (It's about) how radically different things were -- not just the technology of automobiles and such, but items of kind of enjoyment, pet rocks, fake flowers, troll dolls, lava lamps."

In Burton's "reboot" of Dark Shadows, opening Thursday, Depp is Barnabas (originally played by the late Canadian actor Jonathan Frid), heir to an 18th Century fishing empire, who spurns a witch named Angelique (Eva Green), whose revenge consists of murdering Barnabas's love Josette (Bella Heathcote), cursing Barnabas with vampirism and inciting a mob to bury him alive.

In 1972, he is unearthed by an ill-fated construction crew, and discovers the remaining dysfunctional Collinses: an imperious matriarch (Michelle Pfeiffer), her surly, hippie daughter (Chloe Grace Moretz), her wastrel brother (Jonny Lee Miller), his ghost-conscious son (Gully McGrath) and an alcoholic, live-in psychiatrist (Burton's wife Helena Bonham Carter).

He also discovers Angelique is alive, and maybe Josette too. Vampire Vs. Witch. Get ready to rumble, against a background of 1972 pop and rock hits like Steve Miller's The Joker and The Carpenters' Top Of The World (with a concert appearance by Alice Cooper).

The music was Burton's idea.

"Setting it in 1972 was important because of the music," Burton says. "I remember that music from the AM radio. It felt strange at the time, and it still feels strange. That was the weird thing about the quality of music kind of going through everything, like really cheesy pop to really cool hardcore "¦

"I remember Alice Cooper being a strong influence for me. And he looks exactly the same now, which is really scary. (Living in) Arizona must do wonders."

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