Alternate Character Interpretation: Was the Ghost of Quentin Collins aware of Vickie's time traveling, and hoping Barnabas would go back to prevent his death to save David? There are times when he arranges for information to fall very easily into the hands of the protagonists. It's unlikely he expected to end up immortal, but he might have hoped to live to old age in the new timeline. Alternatively, it wasn't his original goal, but once the possibility presented itself he quickly pulled a round of Xanatos Speed Chess and shifted gears.
At face value a lot of the changes in Willie Loomis' personality after Barnabas began controlling him make little sense. He becomes far less violent, and a much nicer person, but maintains these traits even when it goes against Barnabas' goals (ie helping Maggie Evans and trying to use Barnabas' jewels to bribe Jason into leaving town). However, he remains loyal to Barnabas even when no longer being controlled by him, despite Barnabas' abuse. This all makes sense if you assume Jason was using a drug addiction to control him, and Barnabas forced him to get clean. It would imply his more thuggish actions were the result of a decent person not in his right mind, and he was loyal to Barnabas because he saw the drugs as worse than the abuse he suffered.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Buzz Hackett was only in four episodes, but there's an almost universal consensus among fans that he should have stayed on. A biker who seemed to have wandered into a Gothic soap opera. It didn't hurt that his actor was very good, and played Buzz as a nice young man being looked down upon because he dressed and acted differently from the Collins family.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The show had a huge following in Mexico, and, due to its tendency to create completely new settings every few months, is sometimes acknowledged as an influence in the development of the telenovela.
Narm: The forgotten or flubbed lines and general Ham and Cheese are major contributors. However...
Narm Charm: The series still has a fanbase forty years after ending for a reason.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: While Roger is generally portrayed as a JerkassSupernatural-Proof Father, some of his suggestions would have actually saved the family a great deal of grief. Notably, if he'd been able to ship David off to military school it would likely have kept the boy safe from Barnabas, in addition to providing the boy with structure and a chance to socialize with other people his own age. Elizabeth dismisses this idea out of hand without even bothering to ask David's opinion. The boy was so terrified of Barnabas at that point that he likely would have packed his bags without protest.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The fandom's view of Adam is somewhat complicated. Depending on whom you ask he's either a child in the body of an adult struggling with urges he doesn't understand and can't manage, or an incel stalker with no regard for boundaries or anyone else's wants or needs.
The portrayal of Roma during the 1897 storyline has not aged well. Although they are portrayed sympathetically, the series uses the now-outmoded term "Gypsy", depicts them stereotypically (fortunetelling, curses, and the like), and has non-Romani actors portray them with ruddy-colored makeup, all of which wouldn't go over well nowadays. Although, in all fairness, the term "Gypsy" would realistically have been used in the 1897 setting.
During the 1841 Parallel Time storyline, Bramwell invites Catherine to his home, where he locks her in a room and won't let her leave. During this time, the two have sex. At the time of airing, this was depicted as a romantic gesture, Catherine clearly doesn't have a problem with it, and the two end up as a One True Pairing who live Happily Ever After (a rare example for this series). However, modern viewers would regard Bramwell's actions as rape.
Win Back the Crowd: Episodes 915 — known by fans as the Emergency Leviathan Rescue Episode — and 938 were efforts by the writers to defuse the fandom backlash against Barnabas' villainous actions during the Leviathan arc.
The Woobie: Although he's not completely innocent, the suffering Willie Loomis goes through after releasing Barnabas from his coffin is well out of proportion with the severity of his misdeeds, and it's hard not to feel sympathy for the guy. The movie House of Dark Shadows seems to realize this and majorly Throw the Dog a Bone. Even though Willie dies at the end, he finally is able to do the right thing he always wanted to do and be Maggie's hero when he helps save her from Barnabas.
This sentiment only works if you've not seen the pre-Barnabas episodes (as Willie was introduced in episode 199). Willie spent his first elevens as a Kick the Dog-style henchman who threatened and terrorized every character in sight. Which made his treatment at Barnabas' hands very much karmatic given his earlier actions.
The film:
Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Roger's final abandonment of David simply just the nadir of his deadbeat dad status? Or is it possible he thought David would truly be better off without him and figured removing himself from his son's life was the only course of action?
Cry for the Devil: One may feel sympathy towards Angelique. Sure, her actions are downright evil and she's a Manipulative Bitch, but she's also been repeatedly rejected by Barnabas and, according to him, she "cannot love."
Designated Hero: Sure, Angelique is an Ax-CrazyWicked WitchYandere who is definitely evil, but Barnabas doesn't come off as very 'heroic' when he used her for sex knowing that she loved him, considered a few dead peasants a year a small price to pay for keeping the family business running, boasted about how many craftsmen suffered and died to build his fancy house, murdered a lot of people upon reawakening including the hippies who were nice to him, had sex with both Angelique and Hoffman after declaring "Victoria" to be his true love, mind-controlled anyone who got in his way, etc. He's basically as villainous as she is, but he gets a happy ending?
Draco in Leather Pants: Angelique is a cold-blooded murderer who killed innocent people and ruined Barnabas' life because he didn't love her back, yet there are many examples on this page alone that try to paint her in a much more sympathetic light because she's good looking.
Dry Docking: One look at AO3 and Tumblr will show that a lot of the film's fandom refuse to pair Angelique with any character and instead prefer to write fanfics where she ends up with their Author Avatar. This is mainly due to her being played by the beautiful Eva Green and the charisma she brings to the role.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Would have been an outright Box Office Bomb if not for overseas grosses. (Its domestic gross was $79 million while its worldwide take was well over $200 million.)
Hilarious in Hindsight: Alice Cooper being repeatedly misgendered and outright called 'the world's ugliest woman' by Barnabas is this after the aging rocker came out as transphobic in 2023. Glass houses indeed.
Jerkass Woobie: As evil and manipulative as she might have been, it can still be hard not to feel a bit of sympathy for Angelique, given that all she wanted was Barnabas's love.
Angelique: Liz, your perfect Collins pedigree lacked a bit of substance. So, I sent the werewolf who bit Carolyn in her crib! Just like I made David no better than a bastard when I sent his mommy to the ocean floor to have tea with the tuna! (to Barnabas) And as for you, my love, I killed your mother and father. I cursed your family... my Barnabas.
Narm : When Angelique is breaking into pieces after she's defeated in the climax, she reaches into her chest and pulls out the fakest-looking CGI heart you can possibly imagine. And holds it out to Barnabas, who simply stares at it, no doubt as confused as the audience.
Strangled by the Red String: The film's first two acts focus on Barnabas adjusting to the modern era and rebuilding the family empire while dealing with Angelique, but come the third act, he and Victoria are declaring their love and embracing despite sharing all of three or four scenes beforehand.
The scenes of them together are inter-cut with scenes of Collinswood and the Fishery being rebuilt, giving an impression that a lot more time has passed than shown, restoration work takes, at the very least months to complete, seeing as Barnabas comes back in October, and there is no Christmas scene, it is possible that the Happening takes place in mid/late November if the money Barnabas was providing was enough to get priority and round-the-clock work done.
Tainted by the Preview: Some fans are less than thrilled about the film's emphasis on broad comedy.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Or rather, several. One of the film's major problems is that it has plenty of interesting plot threads (Barnabas's feud with Angelique, Barnabas trying to restore the family fortune and business; Maggie's struggles with her past, David's issues with his dead mother and his deadbeat dad; Barnabas's relationship with Maggie, Barnabas trying to get himself cured, Vicki's attempts to become a vampire, Carolyn's issues, Josette's attempts to communicate with the living), but there are just too many of them and there's only time to develop one or two properly in the relatively short amount of running time, rather than over a season's worth of episodes.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Angelique may be an evil bitch but Barnabas is a murderer several times over, although he's comedic and trying to help his family.
Trailer Joke Decay: "Are you stoned?" "They tried stoning me, my dear. It did not work."
David. His mother was killed at sea by Angelique before we meet him (he was only five years old at the time), and his father barely cares about him anymore. Carolyn also belittles him due to how David thinks he can still communicate with his dead mother. His father then leaves to satisfy his own greed without even saying goodbye to him, and is then almost hit seconds later by a falling disco ball. Poor kid...
Barnabas, possibly with a bit of Iron Woobie in there. His parents were killed by Angelique after he rejected her advances, and things went downhill fast after that. His beloved Josette was bewitched into falling to her death off Widow's Hill, then he was turned into a vampire and locked in a coffin for 200 (er, no, 196) years. Worst of all, when he finally is freed, he has to see a world that has drastically changed since he last saw it, and how his descendants have suffered all because of Angelique's machinations towards them over the years.
Given how Angelique has been doling out numerous Kick the Dog moments to the Collins family thanks to Barnabas rejecting her love, and they've done absolutely nothing to deserve it (they're just the descendants of the man she couldn't have), they count as well.
You could easily count Angelique herself as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. Yes, she has done a lot of deplorable things (murdering Josette and Barnabas's parents; turning Barnabas into a vampire and locking him in a box; and targeting Barnabas's innocent family members for almost two centuries after that). However, the fact she was a servant and a witch in a time when witches could be and often were hanged or burned at the stake gives her some sympathy points. It's quite obvious that, despite Angelique's sass, she has a serious inferiority complex. And her feelings for Barnabas do seem to be genuine given that she had a crush on him from when they were children. You can't help but feel sorry for her over Barnabas using and then discarding her for another woman, especially when he does it again in 1972, sleeping with her and then immediately telling her it can never happen again.
The vampire Lockwood was a Serial Killer in life before being attacked by Barnabas Collins. Surviving as a vampire and looking to sate his bruised ego, Lockwood begins turning children into vampires and has them murder their own families to "strengthen" them to serve as soldiers against Barnabas. After fleeing, Lockwood proceeds to slaughter more people and later allies with Barnabas's evil half, temporarily becoming human and celebrating by committing more murders just to see blood in the sunlight again. In the Bad Future, Lockwood helps butcher as much of the town of Collinport as he can while also trying to corrupt his former victim, the young vampire Emma. While Barnabas is a truly remorseful man looking to embrace his human side, Lockwood relishes in being a monster, whether as a human or as a vampire.
Elizabeth Báthory, when human, killed countless girls to bathe in their blood. After rising as a vampire, Báthory slaughters numerous innocents as "festivities", and when she meets Jack the Ripper, she kills his latest victim and makes him her pet. In modern day, Báthory allows Jack to function as a serial killer while bringing her young women. Turning others into vampires, Báthory kills her victims, attempting to force Vampirella and Barnabas Collins to kill one another before celebrating by trying to have her hostages torn apart for fun.
Jack the Ripper himself is a misogynist psychopath who slaughtered women in Whitechapel. Now serving Báthory, Jack brings her victims while operating as a Serial Killer through the ages. Garnering the name "The Big Apple Butcher" for his latest, Jack targets multiple innocents and relishes in their suffering, even trying to murder Vampirella and her friends to satisfy his lust for murder.
