snipett
None of Ross’s novels really have much to do with each other or with the television series, outside of using certain series-favourite horror sex symbols. Other than that, it’s a gaggle of random gals of the week for Barnabas to lust over and occasionally nibble on. When it came to cashing in on the film’s relative popularity however, who better to helm this novelization but the author of the pulp novels that had continued throughout the show's run?
So here we have it. A novel about a film about a soap, where the novel is just as strange and different as the film it’s adapting. Ross is obviously making heavy use of the script as written, rather than the film as seen on screen, with the inclusion of deleted scenes, over exaggerations of “panic” on the actor’s faces, and a completely different ending.....
Ross certainly has an interesting way of describing the DARK SHADOWS inhabitants. Every young woman is described by appeals to her beauty even in times of great distress. “Maggie Evans, pretty young governess to David Collins,” for example, is the first description we get of anyone in the novel and sets the stage for the many adjectives to come.
If you’re Barnabas Collins—and practically Barnabas Collins exclusively—you are adorned with the adjective “handsome” in all circumstances. Even as you viciously destroy your family and start your creepy ritual to get your dead fiancée back.