Making television safe for the "V Word"

It took a while for television’s most famous vampire to be identified as such.

Barnabas Collins was introduced to the world on episode 210 of Dark Shadows, which aired on April 17, 1967. Barnabas and actor Jonathan Frid didn’t show their face(s) until the next episode, but audiences had probably figured out that the “cousin from England” was a vampire before he spoke his first line. For a while, the word simply wasn’t necessary.

For reasons or taste (or, more likely, because of broadcast standards and practices) there were a handful of words that Dark Shadows tended to avoid. Words like “murder” and “kill” weren’t used very often in the early episodes, with writers usually substituting “destroy” in their places as if it had the same meaning. This habit became less necessary once Barnabas Collins’ bloody path became impossible to ignore. While ABC didn’t especially want characters in its programs speaking openly of murdering each other, the aversion to suggested violence waned as the actual violence was ramped up. It's difficult to tell producers not to use the word "murder" once headless corpses became part of the cast of characters.

But the writers were also probably worried about crossing the line into camp by having their once staid characters begin chatting about nosferatu. Nobody was in any rush to become the first writer to include the word “vampire” in a script.

Sam Hall became of the show’s writers to flinch … nine months after the first appearance of Barnabas Collins. And it happened in a way that nobody would have predicted when the vampire made his first visit to Collinwood the previous April.

When Frid agreed to take the role, Barnabas Collins was already living on borrowed time. The show’s previous supernatural threat, Laura Collins/The Phoenix, stuck around about 70 episodes. The idea was to create a series of Big Bads, and follow the child-murdering Phoenix with something a little less disturbing: a vampire. Frid was told that he’d work on Dark Shadows for just a few months, and that plans were already in place for Barnabas to be staked and/or beheaded by the time the next school year began.

Instead, Barnabas Collins became a national sensation. Frid would remain a part of Dark Shadows until the end of the series in 1971, during which the series went to some very weird places.

Such as TIGER BEAT.

The first stop was a time travelling jaunt back to the year 1796. During one of the most disastrous séances this side of a Sam Raimi movie, governess was Victoria Winters was thrown backward in time, where she met a younger Barnabas Collins. We learn during this lengthy storyline how he became a vampire, a curse delivered courtesy of Caribbean witch Angelique Bouchard.

It’s fitting, then, that Angelique (and actress Lara Parker) became the first person to use the word “vampire” on Dark Shadows. On episode #410, first broadcast Jan. 19, 1968, she drags perpetually indentured servant Ben Stokes into a secret crypt to drive a stake into Barnabas.

Ben is rightfully confused. Probably because he didn’t hear what Angelique had to say to Barnabas on an episode broadcast a week earlier:

“You will never rest, Barnabas, and you will never be able to love anyone. For whoever loves you will die. That is my curse, and you will live with it through all eternity.”

As you can see, the writers were still avoiding the obvious phrasing. This all came to an end on episode #410, when Angelique tells Ben:

“Do you know the word 'vampire,' Ben?”

While Barnabas Collins is discussed frequently throughout this episode, Frid is actually absent. When Angelique opens his coffin, she becomes the first victim of her own curse: "For whoever loves you will die."

Once actress Parker released the V-Word into the wild, all bets were off on Dark Shadows. A television series that spent almost a year avoiding the word was about to welcome werewolves, Frankenstein monsters, warlocks, Lovecraftian menaces and Craig Slocum into their midst. And there would be no turning back.

ClickBait: Kansas hates FRANKENSTEIN

In 1931, Frankenstein and his monster were more welcome in Karlstaad than in the state of Kansas.

Arguably one of the greatest monster movies ever made was banned in Kansas that year on the grounds that it promoted “cruelty and tended to debase morals.” It wasn’t a decision that the Kansas State Board of Review rushed toward, though. The board submitted a list of cuts to Universal Studios that would allow FRANKENSTEIN to be shown in the state. Here’s a sample: 

Shorten scene in graveyard when Frankenstein and aid are digging up body. This eliminates scene of them hoisting casket from grave and Frankenstein’s words: ‘Here he comes.’ And following views of casket of Frankenstein patting side of casket, inside grave, of them lifting and dialogue as follows:

Frankenstein: ‘He is just resting, waiting for a new life to come.'

Here we are — ’

And it gets worse from there. In all, Kansas demanded that 32 scenes in the film be cut or trimmed, which would have reduced FRANKENSTEIN’s 71-minute running time in half. “Banned in Kansas: Motion Picture Censorship, 1915-1966” contains a mostly complete transcript of the Kansas State Board of Review’s notes, and they show a perverse attention to detail. Members of the board almost certainly watched the film more than once in order to compile their exhaustive notes. It was a right they didn’t believe extended to anyone else in Kansas, though.

Other states took a more surgical approach to censorship. While Kansas wanted to essentially turn FRANKENSTEIN into mulch, states such as New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts were content to simply eliminate a scene or two. Frankenstein’s line, “Now I know what it feels like to be God,” was frequently excised, as was the scene where the monster tosses a child into a lake.

1934’s Motion Picture Production Code damaged the film even further. The code was meant to create a uniform set of standards and values for U.S. cinema, and many of the films made before that year suffered deep cuts. While FRANKENSTEIN continued to appear in theaters for decades after its original 1931 release, these were versions altered by Universal in the master negative. Most of these cuts remained in place until the rise of home video in the 1980s.

There are no "zombies" in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

The word “zombie” is never used in George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

It comes as a surprise to some people that the world’s most famous zombie movie never once uses the word. It does make a appearance in the shooting script, though its use leaves a lot of room for interpretation. The Z-word is used to describe a moment of action about halfway through the script’s page count:

“The man’s face looks directly through the opening into the dead eyes beyond, the man struggling desperately to control the weapon and the zombie thing outside trying to pull it away by the barrel.”

So, if they aren't zombies, then what the hell are they?

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD’s science fiction subtext left Romero a lot of wiggle room, and it seems as though Romero didn't intend for his monsters to be literal zombies. There's some hoohah in the film about how the dead were being reanimated by "'radiation" emanating from a NASA space probe, but the story (wisely) refuses to commit to a particular explanation. The term “zombie thing” made for easy shorthand to explain to the cast and crew the mindless, glassy eyed dispositions of the monsters.

Regardless, the movie represented a massive semantic change in what “zombie” means in the United States. Zombies were originally a voodoo myth, one that had little to do with the flesh-eating ghouls seen in the Romero film. By the end of the 1970s, though, there had been so many rip-offs of Romero’s original film that the rules it established had — more or less — become the new canon. When Zach Snyder adapted DAWN OF THE DEAD in 2004, fans were wailing about the presence of “running zombies” as though he’d violated some cardinal rule ... forgetting that running, talking zombies took center stage in 1985’s RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD.

And also that Romero's monsters weren't intended to be zombies in the first place.

The Evolution of (Gill)Man

By WALLACE McBRIDE

At the start of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON we see a team of geologists unearth the fossil of a webbed, skeletal hand at an excavation somewhere in the Amazon. While we never really learn exactly where this excavation is taking place, an even more interesting bit of trivia is revealed: The fossil dates back to the Devonian Period. It was probably a WOW! moment for all of the paleontologists in the house, but was essentially meaningless to those of us in gen pop.

Universal Monsters movies aren't the best place to learn about any science other than the “mad” variety. All you're supposed to infer from the use of the word Devonian is that the fossil was old (something also implied by the word "fossil"). But the Creature from the Black Lagoon’s ancestor was a lot older — and tougher — than you might think.

The Earth was a very different place at the start of the Devonian Period, which began about 416 million years ago. Citing “creative differences,” the original supercontinent of Pangaea had divided into two supercontinents. One of them, named Gondwana, would continue to fragment, eventually creating South America and Africa.

The Devonian period was part of the Paleozoic era, sometimes referred to as the Age of Fishes. In this case, “Fishes” means “Bio-mechanical Nightmares,” because many of the sea creatures swimming around Earth’s oceans during this period were not to be fucked with. National Geographic describes a variety of armored placoderms that patrolled the waterways that had “powerful jaws lined with bladelike plates that acted as teeth.” After spending some quality time with evolution, these monsters grew as large as 33 feet in length.

If Devonian life wasn't shitty enough, the period ended on an extremely dour note: The Earth endured one of its five major extinction events during its final act. And it didn't happen all at once, either. Depending on who you ask, the gods went all George RR Martin on this planet for anywhere between 500,000 and 25 million years. The words “mass” and “extinction” are used frequently when discussing the Devonian period. Approximately 70 percent of all invertebrate life on Earth died during this time.

When the apocalyptic dust settled, though, our fictional Gillman (and his kin) must have spent the next few million of years on vacation. As the neighborhood Apex Predator, the Creature from the Black Lagoon appears to have had only two genuine threats: Man and himself. If the Black Lagoon’s modest “creature” population is evidence of anything, it’s that they either died off from boredom, depleted their food sources or had a Panda-esque aversion to reproduction.

The Gillman's fascination with Julie Adams suggests otherwise, though.

Had our intrepid archaeologists ventured further into the Amazon, they might have found a thriving community of Gillmen and Gillwomen. It’s even possible that the one we meet in this movie was kicked out of the tribe like so much Jar Jar Binks, and there are hundreds more living the Life of Riley somewhere deeper in the Amazon. But: These were tough, dangerous creatures that managed to survive millions of years against the meanest and nastiest lifeforms to ever roam the Earth. Because these creatures aren't popping up on beaches all over the world, we can assume there aren't many left by the time Julie Adams took her first dip in the Black Lagoon. When the Gillman is seen walking into the water at the end of 1956's THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US, it almost certainly marks the extinction of this rugged and unlikely life form.

ClickBait from Beyond the Grave: DARK SHADOWS Edition

When your website is anchored by a television show that was cancelled more than 40 years ago, the concept of a "slow news day" takes on a very special meaning. While I'm expecting two more podcasts (?!) to drop this week, there's not a lot happening today. So have some clickbait.

UPDATE: I didn't think anyone would think this was especially funny, so I half-assed the design of this features. Here's a better looking version (imo) of the same content. Click on the images to see larger versions!