Point Pleasant: The Complete Series (DVD)
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It took longer than I thought it would, but Fox’s horror soap opera Point Pleasant was canceled after airing eight episodes. The story centered on sexy Christina Nickson (Elisabeth Harnois) who’s the offspring of a mortal woman and the Devil. While the nubile blonde stole other girls’ boyfriends, wore push-up bras, and struggled to control the demon inside her, the seaside town of
But now on DVD without commercial interruption, and with the unaired episodes to round out the experience, fans of this sort of thing might care enough to set aside a few hours to see what they missed. Very much like Dark Shadows meets The O.C. (or Wes Craven’s Summer of Fear meets Shaun Cassidy’s American Gothic, if you prefer),
The completely humorless characters do jaw-droppingly dumb things, right from the first episode (which is actually where I signed off when it aired originally on the Fox network). It starts off with Christina being found floating in the surf of
The series took an abrupt turn in a desperate attempt to save itself from ratings hell after about four weeks, but it was too late. If you’re willing to stick with it that long, you’ll be treated to more supernatural intrigue and less vamping and primping. The final five episodes, which never saw the light of day before now, do wrap up many loose ends (but not all of them).
The additional release material consists of a frothy promo featurette, showing the actors blithely blathering on about how happy and excited they are to be a part of the series. It would have been ballsy and certainly welcome to have had an exit-interview with the series creators, John McLaughlin (whose previous credits include Carnivale and Touching Evil) and Marti Noxon (whose previous credits include Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel), but there’s nothing like that included.
If you enjoy episodic television, the supernatural in super-lite doses, and like to see pretty teens strutting their stuff, then
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson