The first color episode of "Dark Shadows" turns 50

A post shared by Wallace McBride (@collinsporthistory) on Aug 11, 2017 at 11:47am PDT

"Good news! This program, Dark Shadows, is now being presented in color!"

Those were the words that greeted audiences during the upgraded opening credits for DARK SHADOWS 50 years ago today. Granted, anyone with a color television set would have figured that out, having already seen a dazed Maggie Evans wander into the Blue Whale during the cold open. Still, it was a not-so-subtle reminder that audiences still watching their old black and white sets needed to get with the program.

The first color episode, #295, was taped July 31, 1967, following a week-long break to allow the production to make whatever technical changes were necessary. Sadly, the show's second color episode has been lost, and has been replaced in syndication and home video with a B&W Kinescope copy.

Dark Shadows: A 50th Anniversary Appreciation

The Best of Fiends

By ROB MORRIS

My aversion to soap operas probably began when I was a child visiting my grandparents’ house. We didn’t go often, mind, but this was a house where some of our British soaps were a mainstay of primetime viewing. Every time I went I found myself subjected to far more Crossroads or Coronation Street than should be inflicted on any child - at least without social services becoming involved.

So when Joe Lidster, esteemed producer of the Big Finish Dark Shadows audios, first exhorted me to give the series a try (“oh, and by the way, how about buying these two CDs - only a tenner to you”) you’d have thought I’d take more convincing. But I’d somehow heard of the show before and despite my natural instincts toward soaps I kind of liked the “time-travelling vampire” premise so I decided to start at episode 1 and see where it took me.

Now I’m no stranger to entertainment where ambition exceeds resources (I enjoy such British institutions as Doctor Who, Blake’s Seven and Bananarama after all) and so the early glacial pace and production wobbles didn’t put me off at all. Soon I found myself munching through episodes like popcorn, my rate increasing as the writers increasingly went for broke with ever more literary pillaging and a number of lead actors who could lift a scene simply by managing to be in shot. But of course, on one happy day, a wonderful thing happened: they paired Jonathan Frid with Grayson Hall.

Obviously the series turned a corner when Barnabas popped out of the box, but for me it was only when Julia joined him on screen that the enjoyable melodrama was elevated to be the delicious concoction I now adore. All their sparring is a delight to watch but I think I fell truly in love when Julia lit her cigarette from one of Barnabas’ candles. It was such a simple character moment: calculatedly care-free, defiant and provocative. In short: so very Julia.

My fate was sealed when Barnabas staked Tom Jennings to save his new best friend. One day I found myself raving to Joe about the line “you’ve saved my life so often that I don’t deserve thanks” - how touching and perfect it was, and how the writers had so cleverly turned their enmity into friendship.

So perhaps it’s not entirely coincidental that soon after Joe asked if I wanted to pitch a Barnabas and Julia story for Big Finish and that later “Dark Shadows: The Curse of Shurafa” came into existence. Nor is it a surprise that very scene was in my thoughts as I wrote it. To cling to the coat-tails of Gordon Russell, Violet Welles, Sam Hall and others for just a short while was a massive privilege. To be honest, I’m still not able to believe my luck.

But despite this unlikely development, what keeps me coming back to Dark Shadows is the scale of its ambition. Everyone involved is working toward a common goal: to create a story that will surprise and captivate. And captivate and surprise they do - even my jaded modern eyes can’t quite believe what they got away with. And the fact that they did makes me ridiculously happy.

Dark Shadows has turned out to be an incredibly positive force in my life. Not only has my first work of fiction now been published but the show still holds a powerful fascination for me. On a dull, dispiriting day I can look at the Rectory scene between Angelique and Julia in episode 842 and all my troubles float away. Not even Revenge or Ugly Betty have seen so much shade thrown in one scene, which - frankly - is something of an achievement.

So, Happy Birthday Dark Shadows. You have enriched my life in so many ways and I think by now your magic is burned deep within my bones - and I, for one, pray it will never leave.

Rob Morris is the writer of Big Finish’s “Dark Shadows: The Curse of Shurafa” and is one of the writers of this year’s forthcoming thirteen-part serial “Dark Shadows: Bloodline”. He has also contributed articles to the book “1001 TV Shows You Must Watch Before You Die” (sadly he didn’t write the Dark Shadows entry, but at least there is one). He can be found on Twitter @lemonfreshrob.

Dark Shadows: A 50th Anniversary Appreciation

By MARIE MAGINITY

It’s 1967, and I am 10 years old. Wandering the neighborhood, I discover my teenage cousin and her friends huddled on the front porch, all staring wide-eyed through the window at the television set in the living room.

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Watchin’ a soap opera.” Oh. I hate boring soap operas and start to leave. “It’s about a vampire and he’s gonna kill this girl.” Oh! I love horror movies and join them, squeezing in amongst the bigger kids to take a look.

On the screen is a distraught young man sitting by a fountain, agonizing over whether or not to warn the young woman of her impending doom. At that moment I forgot all about my undying devotion to Davy Jones of the Monkees, and Willie Loomis became my drug of choice. Five shots are fired off camera and we all jump, grabbing each other with a communal scream that was heard several blocks away.

Around the time of Victoria Winters’ witchcraft trial, I was kicked out of girl scouts for missing too many meetings. That came as a relief because after-school activities were interfering with my soap opera.

It is 1977; I am 20 years old and a theatre major at a university that looked down its academic nose at my love of musical comedy. I submitted a proposal to write and direct an original piece (well, not completely original) for the black box theatre, a venue reserved for undergraduates.

Dark Shadows was in late-night reruns in tandem with Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and the combo was very popular on campus, so that was to be my source material. The result was a musical parody titled The Late Shows, and Act I was Dank Shadows (or the Flight of the Fledermaus). It had cheap jokes, Mad Magazine-style song lyrics and featured characters like Barnacle Coffins and Victorian Spinsters.

My friend, who owned one of the first video recorders (reel-to-reel), taped the episodes every night and played them the following day to the crowds that gathered in the lobby of the Student Activities Center.

A year later, a fellow student asked me if I would be interested in going with him to a Dark Shadows convention in Los Angeles. He suggested I might be able to publish and sell my musical parody. Well, I never actually pursued that but I donned my 18th century gown, and he his cape and cane, and we flew to LA.

I had never been to con before, knew nothing about the creature, but it was a blast. We met lots of fellow fans and got to talk to the actors. Actually, I don’t remember talking that much to anyone except John Karlen and Dennis Patrick, but I know who was there because in a caption-writing contest, I won a poster autographed by Michael Stroka, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Karlen, Lara Parker and Jerry Lacy.

It is 2011, and I am — older. While browsing through Netflix, I came across old episodes of Dark Shadows. Hey, cool, I used to love that show, and there was bad boy Willie, my favorite.

When I had watched every available episode, I started over and watched them again. Soon I was supplementing my addiction on the Internet and discovered that I was not alone. There was a DS community, alive and kicking, with enough websites, forums, photos, stories and videos to keep me from ever cleaning my house again.

Well, I didn’t care much for the fanfiction. My older daughter’s obsession with fanfic, anime and manga caused her to flunk all her classes, lose her scholarship and get kicked out of college after the first year. Yet, her devotion to those genres did not wane, and she tried to suck me into the black hole of fandom by telling me about other kinds of fan-authored publications, like Dark Shadows, for instance. Then Demon Spawn (an affectionate nickname) introduced me to a site called Willie Loomis Saves Collinsport, authored by SaraMonster. It is a temple to John Karlen and, among its resources, is a listing of Williefic by some of the old masters. I clicked on one — just out of curiosity.

It was a story about Willie at a hardware store picking out paint chips for the Old House. Seemed silly to me, but I finished the story and went on to the next.

There were also love stories, in which Willie mated with Vickie, Carolyn, Maggie, an OC (original character) or the author herself. I can’t count how many times Maggie has begged him to take her virginity and, of course, he always obliges, because he’s a such a nice guy.

Yes, I initially scoffed at fanfiction, but later came to understand its appeal. Then I started to write a little. That turned into writing a lot. My daughter acts as my fanfic consultant and beta reader. Like a good kid, she walked her technology-challenged parent through the confusing process of posting my fics at their first home on Fanfiction.net.

2012. The remake film is released, and this family looked forward with great anticipation. A Tim Burton treatment promised to be awesome and adolescent Daughter #2 had a major crush on Johnny Depp. When the topic of this movie comes up now, my constant comment is, “Really nice art direction.”

Not long after, I befriended a woman on the internet who, as it turns out, grew up down the street from John Karlen and family, and was still friends with his son, Adam. She then introduced me to Adam and with his permission, gave me John’s address of the nursing home he was at.

That was when I wrote my first fan letter. I don’t remember what it said, but it was four pages long. A few days later my phone rang and it was Adam Karlen, who called to tell me how much his dad enjoyed the letter and that John wanted to meet me. Then John got on the line and called me sweetheart. I booked the flight.

My editor at Collinsport Historical Society heard of it and jumped in to ask if I would do a podcast interview with John. It was not the greatest piece; I was so nervous, but we had lunch in his room and watched a ballgame on TV. We keep in touch by phone and every Christmas and birthday I send him something Polish.

Later I attended my second fest in 2014 and scored interviews with Sharon Smyth, Christopher Pennock and James Storm. I’ll just keep practicing till they better.

Marie Maginity and Dennis Patrick.

Marie Maginity is the author of the Willie Loomis World Series, writing under the name Mad Margaret. She freelances for several publications and blogs, including The Collinsport Historical Society. She now works as an actor, director and acting teacher. Previous jobs have included facepainter, bartender, film projectionist, opera singer and legal journalist. She once conned her way into a newspaper job as a reporter and later became a feature writer and assistant editor. Marie lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia with one husband, two daughters and two cats. 

Dark Shadows: A 50th Anniversary Appreciation

By JOSEPH LIDSTER

Dark Shadows is such a huge part of my life that it seems strange to think that just a few years ago I’d never even heard of it.

In 2006, my then-flatmate Stuart Manning told me how he had been approved by Big Finish Productions to produce a series of audios based on some old television series Dark Shadows. I congratulated him but had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. I listened to those first few releases and enjoyed them even if I was unsure as to who the characters in it were. I got the basics and enjoyed the atmosphere so I asked to watch episode one of the TV series. And… I didn’t get it. I’ve since gone back and watched it and I think it’s a genuinely brilliant piece of television but back then I just must not have been in the right mood. A while later I asked him to show me an episode that was a bit more… fun. Maybe in colour? He showed me Episode 701.

And it’s no exaggeration to say that it changed my life. I loved it. All I needed to know was that this vampire Barnabas had gone back in time to stop this guy Quentin from becoming an evil ghost (which is already a plot summary every television series should be aiming for). Magda and Sandor were amazing. I instantly fell in love with Quentin. I loved Judith and Edward. I especially loved Edward’s moustache acting. And so we kept watching. Night after night. And now, ten years later, I’ve nearly seen all of the TV series once and more than half of it twice.

I think the joy of Dark Shadows is that the imagination behind it is astonishing. They never play it safe. Actors play more than one role (sometimes in the same episode). What are we going to do with Quentin so he’s not a ghost? Let’s make him a werewolf! No, let’s make him immortal! Let’s do both! And give him a girlfriend who’s actually a painting come to life? Yeah! Bit bored of 1897 now… No problem, we’ll send Barnabas back to the present day… but we’ll do Invasion of the Bodysnatchers while we’re there! But won’t we still be trying to find out if that bloke really is Quentin? Don’t worry, Julia can cope with more than one storyline at the same time! Bit bored of the current set-up? We’ll open an upstairs door and reveal a parallel universe in the next room. Should we just go through the door? No, we’ll finish off these storylines (remember, we still need to find and get rid of ex-antiques shop owner, Leviathan possessed vampire Megan Todd) but we’ll have characters watch the beginnings of the parallel universe storyline over a few episodes before stepping through…

Scott Haran as Harry Cunningham, Walles Hamonde as Cody Hill, Alexandra Donnachie as Jacqueline Tate and Michael Shon as Tom Cunningham

It’s just brilliant. But obviously it couldn’t last. I sometimes dream about there being a modern-day television version of Dark Shadows but I’m just not sure it could work. Executives would be worried about confusing the audience. People would expect higher production values. (My attitude is sod production values - look at Joan Bennett having a whale of a time playing an evil possessed Elizabeth or Nancy Barrett playing Charity Trask possessed by Pansy Faye! Who cares if there’s a boom in shot?) You just wouldn’t get a performance like Grayson Hall as Julia Hoffman on television today. I quite enjoy the 90s remake of Dark Shadows but it’s not the same. I think the problem is it feels like lots of other television shows in a way that the original doesn’t. The original is a unique, brilliant, bonkers thing and I adore it.

These days, I’m co-producing the audio continuation of that bonkers thing. It’s honestly the best (and hardest) job. I don’t think we could ever hope to quite match the television series but I know we try our hardest to. We’ve continued the storylines of various characters and we’ve moved things on and I think we’re doing rather okay actually. However, I think the one time we’ve come closest to matching the craziness of the television series was when we were devising our miniseries Bloodlust. We’d featured the character of Amy Jennings in our 1970s set stories and we wanted to bring her into the main 1980s set series. We also wanted to bring some more teenagers into the ongoing stories. We created a Sheriff and gave her a daughter. Through that daughter we could meet another kid so that gave us two. But if we could give Amy kids that would be perfect! We could create the next generation of the Jennings’ family! Just one problem, she wouldn’t be old enough. So we gave her a stepson - which gave us three teenagers but we really wanted a fourth. And we sat trying to think of sensible logical ways we could give Amy another teenager to be a mother to. Perhaps a long-lost cousin, something like that?. We got close to giving up and nearly gave the Sheriff two kids.

Then we remembered that this is Dark Shadows. Dark Shadows doesn’t do sensible. Dark Shadows doesn’t do bland. Dark Shadows doesn't do what the other drama serials do! So we gave Amy an 18-month-old baby and had Angelique age him up to 18-years-old because she was annoyed with his Dad. Baby Tommy became Tom Cunningham. A new teenager for Collinsport. A new generation for the Collins/Jennings family. Oh, and of course, as the first born son of one of Quentin’s descendants, Tom would have the werewolf’s curse. It was silly. It made us laugh. But if we played it straight it would have so much dramatic potential. And we realized it was something they hadn’t done in the TV series but that it was exactly the sort of thing they would have done.

I like to think that Dan Curtis, without who none of this would have happened, would have approved of that.

Joseph has written scripts for radio and television, including episodes of Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Wizards Vs. Aliens and Millie, Inbetween. In 2012 his first stage play, Nice Sally, made it to the finals of the Off Cut Theatre Festival. He has also written a number of Doctor Who, Torchwood and Dark Shadows audio dramas. You can find him on twitter at twitter.com/joelidster

Dark Shadows: A 50th Anniversary Appreciation

By BROOKE PERRIN

A young girl fresh out of college abandons the small town life she’s always known to fulfill her dreams in the big city. Cliché, I know, but this is where my story begins. Growing up in a tiny town in the Pacific Northwest, I had made tight bonds at our local community theatre, but few anywhere else. Since I was a small child, my passion had been film and the performing arts. My passions led to my parents taking me to New York City the summer before my senior year of high school. My path became clear…this was where I belonged. I was enraptured by the idea of making my living working with what I loved. I went on to get my degree in Theatre from the University of Montana. The summer I graduated from college I wasted no time. Within four weeks of my final class I was on a plane. I came to New York City at the age of 23 with two suitcases and the vague promise of a temporary job. I knew almost no one in my new home and for many months I didn’t have much in the way of friends or social outlets.

So I found solace in one place I had managed to find it a few times in the past: the messages boards on the Internet Movie Data Base. I grew up loving fantasy and horror films. I felt a connection to the so-called “monsters” and outcasts they characterized. I saw myself in these creatures who were loners, or were ostracized by their communities. As I child I could often be found in the corner of a room dressed all in black reading Shakespeare or Edgar Allen Poe while the other kids played sports or joined the student council. These influences led me, and I can only imagine many the other lonely outcasts of my generation, to the films of Tim Burton. He had been an outcast himself and so eloquently depicted our own feelings of loneliness and isolation through the ionic characters created in his films. In an attempt to connect with others of my kind, I developed a rapport on these IMDB message boards with other fans. It seemed as though I had discovered a safe haven for kids who felt different and excluded amongst their peers. I looked forward to seeing the familiar usernames on those first threads when Burton’s next film was announced. Shortly after I moved to New York in 2010, my message board friends and I were all eagerly anticipating production to begin on Burton’s newest project: a big screen adaptation of the classic gothic soap opera Dark Shadows.

Until the film had been announced, I knew little about the show aside from seeing its iconic crashing waves appear as a dated piece of set dressing in a few movies. Once I had studied up on the series and its supernatural tendencies, I suspected this show was for me. At this time I was temping at my first job in New York as an evening receptionist in Lincoln Center. The long, quiet hours left me on my own and afforded me plenty of downtime. I remember my eyes feeling glued to my tiny iPhone screen as Barnabas Collins held Maggie Evans captive in the old house. I had real empathy for Willie Loomis torn between his obligations to his master and his love for this young girl. I became totally invested in the world of Collinsport. I devoured every episode available on Netflix and eventually began purchasing the DVD volumes to continue the series. As I delved deeper into the series, I again found a comforting sense of integration and community amongst others who took to these message boards. A new mixture of fans had melted together between the familiar faces I had seen return with each new Burton film and fans who came to the IMBD boards out of love for the original series and its 1991 revival. They too were passionate about the series and looked forward to its return to the big screen. We all shared in the excitement as entertainment magazines began printing photos of Burton’s work in progress. My often lonely evenings and weekends were now filled with conversations about Dark Shadows. I spent hours scouring the internet for new info to share with my comrades.

Eventually we migrated from message boards to Facebook. We created our own Dark Shadows group and began to learn more about who each other really were. For instance my friend who I had previously known only as JDK017, I now knew as Jeff. A few of us even began discussing possible plans to meet in person the weekend the new Dark Shadows film opened. In the beginning it seemed to be mostly a nice thought that was never going to happen, but to my surprise a couple of the closest of my new friends, Carl and Megan, really did make the pilgrimage and flew to New York. The prospect of meeting them in person left me nervous and excited. I had to acknowledge to myself how crazy meeting these people I had only know online sounded and truthfully probably was. To my relief they both arrived as the friends I had come to know over the past two years. There were the awkward moments of hesitation before we finally fell into the rhythm we had developed online. We had a great time really getting to know each other in person. They felt like true friends now as opposed to internet acquaintances.

On the night of May 10, 2012, the big moment had arrived. We made our way to the Lincoln Square AMC with its daunting IMAX screen for the midnight premiere of the new film. There was a sort of nervous but excited energy amongst us. Would the movie we had so long awaited disappoint us in devastating ways? For two hours we sat absorbed in the experience of watching these beloved characters reborn. I remember feeling completely blown away by Eva Green’s performance. Until that moment I had never thought anyone could touch Lara Parker’s iconic portrayal of Angelique Bouchard but was happy to be mistaken. I also was delighted to see a much more proactive Elizabeth Stoddard in Michelle Pfieffer. We left the theater that night with a sense of satisfaction at the culmination of two years of eager anticipation. Although my opinion of the film has definitely evolved over the years I do find it satisfactory many of the female characters were given meatier roles. On the other hand I remain disappointed ,with what the screenwriter chose to do to my beloved Julia Hoffman. Despite these issues it remains one the most significant cinematic experiences of my life. I had spent ,years of my life building up to the excitement of that moment. Being able to share the experience of seeing the film for the first time with my new friends was unique and extraordinary.

That same year I attended my first Dark Shadows Festival. I met more friends (including the above mentioned Jeff) I had made over the previous years online and made many new ones. I was fortunate to meet genuine people who really were the friends I had imagined as I got to know them through the internet. I was able to join this unique community of people who came together every year to celebrate their love of the show and its legacy. The festival was an entirely different but equally moving experience. At first I felt intimidated by this established group of friends who already knew each other. They had formed relationships that spanned decades. To my relief and surprise, I was embraced by many these wonderful people. I wasn’t treated as an outsider or new kid to be shunned from their clique. I was one of them and they were welcoming. I began looking forward to these annual gatherings and haven’t missed one since. Each year it becomes more about a reunion of friends and less about Dark Shadows itself. Since then, Carl, Jeff, and I have been on various road trips to the locations used in the original series, in addition to annual festivals and reunions. A few times we have even met just to catch up with each other without the fandom providing a motive.

Looking back on it now, I realize how significant discovering Dark Shadows has been to my life. For me, the Dark Shadows fandom has been about the wonderful human beings I’ve encountered and how these friends provided comfort and companionship during a difficult transition in my life. For that, this gothic soap opera will always hold a singular place in my heart.

Dark Shadows: A 50th Anniversary Appreciation

My Descent into Dark Shadows

By MARK GILLMAN

A warm humid day has overtaken the small community known as Chauncey, WV, in the year 1996. The ringing of the bell has signaled the end of another school day for a particular sophomore student who was gathering his books to start his usual walk home by the old cemetery located next to his school. Unknown to him this evening, his brother will bring home a VCR cassette that, upon his viewing, will begin to fill the days and nights of his next twenty years with experiences and friends that will define who he will become...an insatiable fanboy of a series known as Dark Shadows…

Growing up in the tiny Coalfield/Bible-belt community of Chauncey, WV, there wasn’t much we had as far as television other than about a dozen channels. Thankfully, I was lucky that my parents were able to get a VCR and a Nintendo to occupy my time when I wasn’t playing outside. My parents were not really horror fans, but they didn’t seem to mind my enjoyment of scary stories and mysteries through venues of Nintendo games like Shadowgate and Ghosts’n’Goblins. I also watched Ghostbusters, It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t, and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken constantly, regardless of what time of year it was. Later in grade school, I became obsessed with the Hardy Boys books and loved mystery stories. Of those, the titles and cover-art featuring ghosts and creatures were always the first ones I would read and re-read.

Fast-forward to 1996, a year after cable came to my area. My brother was visiting a friend and brought home a VCR tape of a TV show that he recorded while I was in school during the day. His friend’s dad recommended the show to him, and he started recording it when it aired from 11:00am-12:00pm on the Sci-Fi channel. I was still into all of the same things, and mystery/horror was my favorite genre of EVERYTHING. I walked home from school (and yes, it’s true, my school was right next to an old cemetery that I walked by every day). When I saw this show that he was watching, I sat down and started snacking on what was left of my lunch from the day.

My first glimpse of the show (971) was of a man standing inside an old abandoned room inside a large dark castle. A flute was playing an eerie tune as he stood holding a book called The Life and Death of Barnabas Collins. Paraphrasing my brother’s explanation to catch me up on what was going on, it was something like this:

“Okay, so he looked in this room and saw another dimension of people he knew living different lives. He could watch them, but they couldn’t hear him. The room disappeared and he found a book written about his life and death. His name is Barnabas Collins. He lives in this castle. There is a couple that lives there too that just got married, and a witch just placed a curse on the husband that whenever a light comes on, a shadow demon appears and will keep growing larger until it kills him. Oh, and that Barnabas guy, he’s a vampire.”

THIS…WAS... AWESOME! This was everything I had grown up loving packed inside one TV show! I was immediately sucked in by the amazing stories, beautiful sets and music, and, not to mention, the gorgeous actresses. I thought about the show and the stories all day at school and couldn’t wait to get home to see the new episodes that my brother had taped for the day. While all my friends went home to watch Real World and Road Rules, I was a lone fan who walked home quickly to pop in the VHS tape of MY show. This continued for me all the way until the show’s end. When the series started over on Sci-Fi, I admit I was confused at first by the Beginning episodes because NOTHING was similar to what I had been watching. There were no mentions of parallel time, potions that would mutate genetic codes and change someone’s appearance, shadow demons, severed warlock heads, or vampires. There was a beautiful girl coming to a haunted house that held a dark secret in the basement. That was completely fine with me, though! I was still in love with all the mystery and horror of what was going on.

Unfortunately, when my brother moved, I had no way of taping the show and lost touch with it. The VCR tapes that I watched moved with him. No video stores in the area had any of the MPI tapes. Sadly, for the last year or so of the 90s and decade following, Dark Shadows became a fond memory that I looked back on often and remembered so many of the episodes and stories with many smiles.

Finally, in 2012, the internet became available to my hometown, and I discovered the show on Netflix in limited episode quantities. There was a new movie on the way, and I couldn’t get enough Dark Shadows! It was everywhere for me. I joined Twitter and found some wonderful fans and fan sites, I watched the episodes available on Netflix many times over, and I bought The Vampire Curse and House/Night of Dark Shadows on PlayStation network. My favorite show was back!

Now, in 2016, because of Dark Shadows, I’ve enjoyed meeting some of the cast at the 2014 festival (including my celebrity crush since day one, Lara Parker), collecting memorabilia, writing fanfiction stories and articles about the show and festival, and meeting an extra special fan that loves the show as much as I do. We have since become happily inseparable.

Happy 50th birthday, Dark Shadows, and thank you for the last twenty years and more years to come! My life has been made infinitely happier because of you!

Mark Gillman has been a very devoted fan of DARK SHADOWS since he was first introduced to the show in 1996 on the Sci-Fi Channel during his sophomore year in high school. Born in West Virginia and now living in North Carolina, he continues to watch the shows and films regularly and enjoys interaction with other DARK SHADOWS fans. He has recently graduated college with a degree in health sciences, but he most enjoys spending his time writing and talking about his passion for the series through Twitter, Wordpress, and Fanfiction.net.  

Dark Shadows: A 50th Anniversary Appreciation

Life from a Coffin
How Dark Shadows Has Affected My Life over the Decades

By JEFF THOMPSON

“My name is” Jeff Thompson. In 1966, I was seven years old, and what a fantastic year for television 1966 was! Fifty years ago, the three TV networks premiered Batman, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., The Green Hornet, It’s About Time, Mission: Impossible, The Monkees, That Girl, The Time Tunnel, Star Trek, and, of course, Dark Shadows. Many of those classic shows are back on our TV screens today by way of DVDs, Netflix, and the dozen new nostalgia TV channels, such as Retro TV, Decades, and ME-TV.

I saw the actual telecasts of the first episodes of Batman and many of those TV shows mentioned above, but I am sorry to say that I came to Dark Shadows late. It was not until Friday 22 September 1967 when I, a second-grader, was home sick from school and happened to be turning the TV dial among the three commercial networks and NET. I stumbled upon Dark Shadows—and the first scene that I ever saw is the first scene on the 1989 MPI Home Video VHS tape The Best of Dark Shadows. Lying in his bed, David Collins dreams that he and Sarah are in the basement of the Old House. The children spy a coffin, whose lid creaks open, and out comes the vampire Barnabas Collins. Needless to say, I was hooked instantly! Seeing kids my own age in an old, dark house inhabited by a vampire sold me on Dark Shadows, and I have been a diehard fan ever since. F.I.A.W.O.L. (Fandom Is A Way Of Life)!

Dark Shadows immediately captivated me and began my lifelong interests in writing, acting, history, film music, and time travel. My favorite characters were Barnabas, Julia, Nicholas, Angelique, Stokes, Maggie, and Quentin. I liked all of the various time periods, but my favorites were 1967, 1795, 1968, 1970 Parallel Time, 1840, and 1841 Parallel Time. The astonishing, two-week-long 1995 interlude (seen 20-31 July 1970) made a huge impression on me and began my lifelong fascination with ruins. Seeing Collinwood in ruins shocked me—just as seeing Julia imprisoned by Angelique in the sub-basement of Collinwood during 1970 Parallel Time had shocked and upset me. I always wanted Barnabas to love Julia, so I am glad that—according to writer Sam Hall in TV Guide—he finally did.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I ran home from school to watch Dark Shadows at 3:30 PM Nashville time on WSIX-TV 8 (ABC). When the show moved to 3:00, I was not home from school yet, so my mother Sonia Thompson, also a fan, watched the show and told me about the episode (in those pre-VCR days). Then, I began reading Dan “Marilyn” Ross’s 32 Gothic novels based on Dark Shadows, as well as his House of Dark Shadows novelization and many of Ross’s other Gothic, historical, and romance novels. Over the decades, I read 120 of Dan Ross’s 358 novels; I used three of his 600 short stories in my English classes at Tennessee State University; and I wrote my master’s thesis (TSU, 1991) about four of Ross’s finest historical-romance novels (including China Shadow and Moscow Mists). I met and became friends with Dan “Clarissa” Ross (1912-1995), and I still keep in touch with his widow, Marilyn Ross, who lives in Canada.

Also during, and just after, the run of Dark Shadows on ABC-TV, I read Gold Key Comics’ 35 issues of Dark Shadows, as well as the one-shot Dark Shadows Story Digest Magazine. I wrote letters to Gold Key editor Wallace I. Green (expressing my pleasure or my displeasure over particular issues of the comic book), and I later wrote two editions (1984, 1988) of my own fan-press book critiquing the comics.

I spent the later 1970s, as well as the 1980s and some of the 1990s, writing articles for Kathy Resch’s World of Dark Shadows fanzine, as well as other ‘zines such as The Collinsport Call, Collinwood Revisited, Lone Star Shadows, The Parallel Times, Shadows of the Night, and ten others. I also was enjoying my large collection of Dark Shadows memorabilia, as well as adding to my collection through mail orders, garage sales, and other means (in those pre-Internet, pre-eBay days).

As Barnabas Collins in a Collinsport Players production at the Dark Shadows Festival.

In 1983, I began attending the Dark Shadows Festival fan conventions held yearly in Newark, Los Angeles, New York City, and occasionally elsewhere. I served as the emcee of many of the conventions, and I wrote humorous one-act plays based on Dark Shadows to be performed there by other fans and me. We called ourselves the Collinsport Players. Also for the Festivals, I turned my Dark Shadows collection into The Dark Shadows Memorabilia Slide Show, and (in 1985) Mr. & Mrs. Ross and I presented An Evening with Marilyn and Dan Ross.

Also in the eighties, as a result of my attending the Dark Shadows Festivals, I met and became pen pals and friends with Dark Shadows fans from all over the country. I corresponded with them all year long and then saw them in person at the conventions. Occasionally, a fan-friend and I would visit each other’s hometown or meet up at another convention such as Fanex in Baltimore, Maryland. A few of my pen pals and I still write letters to each other, but most of us keep up with each other via e-mail and Facebook.

In the early 1990s (1989-1994), my parents and I rewatched Dark Shadows on MPI Home Video VHS tapes, and I wrote articles about various TV shows and movies for Midnight Marquee, Movie Club, Scarlet Street, and other magazines—including a 1995 interview with Lara Parker for Femme Fatales magazine (vol. 4, no. 1). In 1998, I moved to a brand-new house in Bellevue (west Nashville), and I turned the guest bedroom into a Dark Shadows room—a showcase for my Dark Shadows books, videotapes, posters, models, games, puzzles, View-Master reels, music boxes, masks, gum cards, bobble-heads, autographs, action figures, and more. Adjoining the Dark Shadows room is a wall of framed pictures of Dark Shadows star Joan Bennett in Trade Winds, Scarlet Street, The Macomber Affair, For Heaven’s Sake, and House of Dark Shadows. I call my upstairs room the Playroom (after the 1840 storyline), and I keep many of my other popular-culture collections there. Adjoining the Playroom is my Psycho bathroom, complete with posters, videos, DVDs, Robert Bloch books, movie stills, a “bloody” bathmat, and a shower curtain featuring the silhouette of “Mother.”

In the 2000s, I continued to teach English at Tennessee State University (where I have taught since 1985) while I was working on my Ph.D. (in English and popular culture) at Middle Tennessee State University. I wrote my doctoral dissertation (MTSU, 2007) about Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis’s horror productions. I also wrote entries about five of Curtis’s horror movies (including Night of Dark Shadows and Trilogy of Terror) for a 2008 Midnight Marquee multi-author book, You’re Next! Loss of Identity in the Horror Film.

In the 2010s, I enthusiastically wrote the introductions to eight Dark Shadows-related books published by Hermes Press. Five of the books together reprinted all 35 issues of Gold Key’s Dark Shadows comic book; another one was a best-of book reprinting the twelve best Dark Shadows issues, as chosen by Hermes publisher Daniel Herman and me; still another reprinted the aforementioned Story Digest Magazine; and the last book, yet to be released, reprints the 1971-1972 Dark Shadows newspaper comic strip. My memorabilia collection includes Kenneth Bruce Bald’s original art for one daily strip (9-18-1971) and one Sunday strip (2-6-1972). The framed artwork hangs in the Dark Shadows room.

Jeff's guest bedroom.

Later in the 2010s, I wrote single chapters for the multi-author books Fan Culture and Remembering Jonathan Frid, as well as for three multi-author books that will be released in 2017 or 2018—Finale: Considering the Ends of Television Series (I wrote about the 2 April 1971 final episode of Dark Shadows); TV’s Top Male Icons of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s (I wrote about Jonathan Frid, David Selby, Adam West, and nine other TV stars); and an untitled book about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in literature, film, television, and comic books (I wrote about the Jekyll & Hyde TV productions starring Michael Rennie, Jack Palance, and Michael Caine). Plus, I associate-produced the 2-CD set of Robert Cobert’s music for the 1991 Dark Shadows revival series, and I associate-produced-and wrote the liner notes for—the soundtrack CDs of Cobert’s music for Burnt Offerings (Counterpoint, 2011) and Dracula (Varese Sarabande, 2014).

The latest way that Dark Shadows has affected my life is in my moving beyond writing single chapters (for books about Peter Lorre, Peter Cushing, loss of identity, fandom, et al.) and beginning to write entire books about—what else?—Dark Shadows and all four dozen Dan Curtis productions. First, I reshaped my doctoral dissertation into the Rondo Award-nominated 2009 McFarland book The Television Horrors of Dan Curtis: Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker, and Other Productions, 1966-2006. My 2010 follow-up was House of Dan Curtis: The Television Mysteries of the Dark Shadows Auteur. Now, in 2016, my new book—completing the trilogy of Curtis, as it were—is Nights of Dan Curtis: The Television Epics of the Dark Shadows Auteur: Horror, Western, and War. All three books feature long career-overview chapters in which I write about each Dan Curtis production, in order, from Challenge Golf and The CBS Golf Classic in 1963 to Saving Milly and Our Fathers in 2005. My first book offers more in-depth looks at Curtis’s horror productions (including The Norliss Tapes and Curse of the Black Widow). House of Dan Curtis features more detailed examinations of Curtis’s mysteries (e.g. Come Die with Me, Shadow of Fear) and crime dramas (e.g. The Great Ice Rip-Off, The Kansas City Massacre). The new Nights of Dan Curtis book devotes whole chapters to Curtis’s epic productions of Dracula, The Last Ride of the Dalton Gang, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.

I last rewatched the 1991 Dark Shadows in January 2016 (for the 25th anniversary). I last rewatched the original series—one episode every single day—between June 2010 and late 2013. On Monday 27 June 2016 (of course), I shall begin watching Dark Shadows (1966-1971) all over again and once more lose myself in the mysteries of Collinwood. Over the decades, those eerie mysteries have never left my mind and have informed my thinking, my collecting, my traveling, my writing, and even my teaching. Happy 50th anniversary, Dark Shadows!

Dr. Jeff Thompson teaches English at Tennessee State University in Nashville. He is the Rondo Award-nominated author of The Television Horrors of Dan Curtis: Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker, and Other Productions, 1966-2006(McFarland, 2009); House of Dan Curtis: The Television Mysteries of the Dark Shadows Auteur (Westview, 2010); and Nights of Dan Curtis: The Television Epics of the Dark Shadows Auteur (Ideas, 2016). He writes about the Gold KeyDark Shadows comic books for Hermes Press. At home, Jeff has a Dark Shadows guest bedroom, aJoan Bennett wall of pictures, and a Psycho bathroom.

Dark Shadows: A 50th Anniversary Appreciation

My journey to Collinsport…

By ROY GILL

I discovered Dark Shadows about ten years ago. It’s not hugely well known in the UK, but a friend with an encyclopedic knowledge of vintage TV recommended it to me, and I imported some DVDs out of curiosity. I soon became drawn into this epic and twisted family saga of magic and monsters, told in a heightened, theatrical style by great actors performing as live in a tiny New York studio.

At the time I first watched those episodes, I was studying for a Creative Writing Masters, working on a fantasy novel for smart kids (of all ages) about a loner boy and his strange grandmother, his ambiguous werewolf friend, and a spell to bring back his father from the dead. I often felt a little out of step with those running the M.A., who didn’t necessarily understand why anyone would aspire to write such a thing. Dark Shadows became one of the worlds I regularly escaped into, where the weird felt both normal and desirable…

Fast-forward a few years, and I’d watched the entire Dark Shadows run, looping round to catch the very first episodes last. I was delighted to discover the earliest appearance of Laura the Phoenix. I knew the character already, thanks to the time-twisting DVD release order, but I had assumed her introduction - and that of the full-blooded supernatural aspect of the show, often thought to begin with Barnabas - would be gradual and subtle. Not a bit of it - there she is, brought brilliantly to life by Diana Millay: mad and magical, tragic and powerful, right from the start…

By then my first novel, Daemon Parallel, had gone through many, many drafts, got me an agent, and finally been published. I’d also started writing for radio drama producers Big Finish, thanks to Scott Handcock and his modern-gothic series The Confessions of Dorian Gray. Joe Lidster soon brought me on board the Dark Shadows range (which he co-produces with David Darlington).

Joe was used to having to explain Dark Shadows to his new writers, I think, but as a fan of several years I was able to hit the ground running! It was more than a little surreal for me, to be asked to write for the current incarnation of the show. The first play I wrote was to star David Selby: another delight, as his charming but dangerous Quentin is one of my personal highlights of the series. I was given the task of creating a new sparring partner for Quentin, and so Lela Quick (do you see what we did there?) was brought to ferocious, sparky life by Susan Sullivan.

Panic seemed to go down well, and it’s soon to be joined by my second Dark Shadows adventure: the 50th anniversary special Blood and Fire. This is a two disc, two-and-half hour extravaganza featuring many Dark Shadows actors, drawn not only from the original series but also from the 1991 revival (the fabulous Joanna Going) and the Big Finish adventures.

It would be a lie to say the prospect of writing such a play was not intimidating: there are so many different arcs and eras of Dark Shadows I knew it would be impossible to pay tribute to them all. But I’ve tried to stay true - to offer a new historical flashback to 1767, a time referenced by the show but never actually seen. I’ve tried to capture some of the mad energy and epic feel of my favourite storylines - while offering something fast-paced, exciting and accessible for new Dark Shadows fans too…

I hope you’ll enjoy it. It’s been an absolute privilege for me, to unleash Angelique from the very depths of hell, to uncover more of the secret history of the Collins, and to introduce friends and enemies old and new (sometimes with new faces). It’s been a complete thrill these past months as each new edit has appeared in my inbox. I’ve frequently been blown away by the performances of this talented cast. And I know that a fair bit of blood, sweat (and maybe even fire) has gone into the behind-the-scenes production, pulling it all together in time for the 50th Anniversary...

And soon now, so very soon - the phoenix lives…

Here’s to the next fifty years of Dark Shadows!  

Roy Gill is an author and scriptwriter. His work includes the novels Daemon Parallel and Werewolf Parallel, and for Big Finish Dark Shadows: Blood & Fire and Panic, plus four episodes of The Confessions of Dorian Gray. You can find out more at www.roygill.com or say hello on twitter @roy_gill 

Dark Shadows: A 50th Anniversary Appreciation

Trapped in the House of Dark Shadows
By FRANK JAY GRUBER

Although officially a child at the time, I never ran home from school to watch Dark Shadows during its original ABC network run. I was a wee bit too young. The show premiered in 1966 and I premiered in 1965. While Barnabas had Willy renovating the entire Old House I was busy strategically piling multi-colored Fisher Price plastic donuts on a stick. My sister Sue, however, is ten and a half years older than me. She not only ran home from school to watch the show, but likely outran the practicing track team to do it.

She and my Mom, who was chain smoking herself into a crypt of her own, would perch on the edge of the sofa and watch the gothic goings on and frequent character swapping without a scorecard—no easy feat in the days before DVD, streaming and Wikipedia.

Me? I sat on our cheap carpet honing my future Scrabble skills with wooden blocks and leaving Lego booby-traps all over the floor, sipping my Bosco chocolate milk and trying to ignore the creepy music and dishwashing liquid commercials (“Palmolive? Your hand is soaking in it!”) I was used to being shushed and otherwise ignored for 30 minutes each weekday until I was almost six.

Sue not only watched the show, but she had the magazines (“Win a Dream Date with Quentin’s Sideburn Comber!”) and the paperbacks (Barnabas Collins and the Zombie from Bayonne, New Jersey) and I even recall a pink-bordered trading card or two pinned to the window frame or Scotch-taped to the edges of her mirror right next to Bobby Sherman. She was a fan.

Me again? My sole lingering critical observation from those hallowed early network days is “Boring. Too much talking, not enough biting. Is it over yet? Mom needs to get up and make me more Bosco.”
In any case, I was tangentially familiar with the show. Even though everybody talked ENDLESSLY, Barnabas the “vampire guy” still had neat bangs, Maggie was pretty for a girl, and witchy Angelique had big eyes and easy to draw cheeks. (Decades later I confirmed the loveliness of the two ladies at my first of many DS Festivals and stick to my youthful contention that Kathryn and Lara are worthy of a cavalcade of wolf whistles. I believe they hastened me into puberty, definitely by 2011.)

When my sister’s boyfriend invited her to the drive-in to see House of Dark Shadows I didn’t object. Sue had just recently started dating, and Mom and Dad frequently sent me to chaperone. They figured it was much harder for her to get in trouble with her kid brother in tow. Yes, at five I was a defender of righteousness and a staunch guardian of morality and virtue. Little did my parents know that all the guy had to do was hand me a dollar and I’d be at the drive-in’s snack bar and playground for at least an hour. Good thing my sister was basically a good kid or I’d conceivably (pun fully intended) have gone broke buying holiday gifts for 37 nieces and nephews over the subsequent years.

Anyway, when they putt-putted off to the Hackensack Drive-In one night in late October or early November of 1970 to see a double feature of House of Dark Shadows and Movie Title Lost in the Mists of Time, five year-old Frankie was peering over the back seat hoping there might be some biting. You know, at least on the screen.

After my snack bar run and fully sugar-fueled, I assumed my position on the roof of the car with a speaker of my own. I even brought my cuvvie blanket from home to wrap myself in to ward off the autumn cold. I had my popcorn tub and a can of Purple Passion soda.

I was all ready.

I was not at all ready.

First off, nobody told me this movie was in dying—er, living—color. Second, right behind the opening credits the story started with a missing kid. I fully contend there’s no better way to get a prepubescent viewer’s attention than to have a kid in the movie go missing.

As the next 97 minutes unreeled and rereeled I sat on the roof and reeled a bit myself. The vampire attacks were bloody and the staking was like nothing this almost six year-old had ever seen before. The fact that just about everyone who was anyone (SPOILER ALERT!) actually became a vampire totally traumatized me. I couldn’t even invade my sister and Junior Lothario of the Week’s privacy to beg more money for the snack bar. Why would I? The zit-encrusted kid behind the counter was probably a vampire himself by now. This was my last night on Earth. It was the end of the world as I knew it, but I certainly didn’t feel fine.

That memorable night in 1970 did not affect my sister and her date in the same way. This was probably because they were older, wiser, and also because neither of them likely saw the movie until it came out on VHS twenty years later. I was alone in the dark, a preteen pawn of Dan Curtis and money hungry MGM. If I had known the castle where they actually shot the movie actually existed a mere thirty miles away in Tarrytown my cuvvie blanket and little trousers would probably have needed to go in the garbage.

The movie ended. Sometime later, when my sister’s date finally noticed the climax had passed, he had to lift and stuff me back into the car. I was immobilized. I might as well have been chained up tight in a coffin or bricked up in a wall for all of the pliability I exhibited. My sister, in all of her sixteen year-old maturity, was suddenly in a state of panic.

She had broken her brother.

Even worse, Mom might find out he was relegated to roost on the roof for the whole movie. He might have caught a chill. He might get sick. You know, if he lived and didn’t die of fright. It was still touch and go.

She was doomed.

Of course she began a process of brainwashing and manipulation that Frankenheimered me more than The Manchurian Candidate. “You’re fine! It wasn’t that scary! It was actually kind of silly! Haha! Ha! I wouldn’t have taken you to see anything scary! You’re fine! FINE!” (repeat for five miles).

Here is the sum total of my side of the dialogue that night:

“……………………………………………….”

I arrived home whiter than Josette’s party shroud, still staring into the black abyss of a golf producer-turned-filmmaker’s soul. Although my catatonia passed, the next day my mother kept me home from school and called our faithful quack for an expensive house call. I have no idea what he thought I had, but he chased me around our living room with a needle. I kept screaming “It was just bloody!” Everyone present thought I meant the needle. Unconsciously echoing my sister, they kept telling me it was fine. FINE!

The next time my mother and sister put Dark Shadows on I ran shrieking to my room—which may have seemed a bit of an overreaction because the current storyline had a non-scary character named Leticia arguing with another non-scary character named Gerard and offering to take a mask into town to have it appraised (circa Episode 1120). I didn’t care. It was unquestionably safer in my room. People may start biting and gushing any moment.

A decade and a half later, after many years and at least a dozen late night Hammer films broadened my horizons, PBS reran the series. I was scared of this??

Even later, when all 1225 episodes were released on DVD (okay, 1224 and an afghan of fragments—you know, picture THAT afghan) I watched the whole run. As a community college literature instructor I this time appreciated subtle and sophisticated aspects of the show that bored me to tears in the late sixties. There were literary adaptations of varying quality and tenuous adherence to the source material—which I believe were Classics Illustrated comics consulted after writer Sam Hall’s dog ate the pages. The writers were truly skillful in keeping casual viewers in the loop while stringing regular viewers along until Friday with endurance-straining repetition and a glacial plot pace. The cast was to be applauded for some genuinely fine combat acting in the living merry-go-round hell of live-on-tape television. Over those 1224ish episodes there is much to love, to laugh at, to cherish and revel in. From Sy Tomashoff’s iconic Collinwood drawing room set and hallway to the exteriors that exist only in rumor after 1966, from Victoria’s endless confusion to Quentin’s silence for months, from time hopping with sticks to arguably the best bloopers in television history, it was a truly wonderful and unique program—one unlike anything else before, since, or likely to come.

The fiftieth anniversary of Dark Shadows is a time to rewatch and celebrate it all, from Alexandra Moltke’s arrival to Thayer David’s series-concluding monologue. Just let me know when you get to House of Dark Shadows.

I’ll visit the snack bar.

FRANK JAY GRUBER In addition to his freelance writing and editing gigs, Frank Jay Gruber teaches literature, composition and online course development at Bergen Community College in New Jersey. He sometimes covers New York and Philadelphia area events for TrekMovie.com, appears on convention panels and writes for genre websites like The Collinsport Historical Society. CNN interviewed him about Star Trek in his collectible-covered lair and consulted him about Dark Shadows after Jonathan Frid’s death in 2012. You can read his extremely infrequent musings atTheWearyProfessor.com and follow him on Twitter @FrankJayGruber.

Dark Shadows: A 50th Anniversary Appreciation

Dark Shadows - A Nifty, Fifty Years!

By WALLY WINGERT

Unlike a lot of the kids in my quaint South Dakota neighborhood, I wasn’t content to simply play wiffle ball in the backyard on sunny afternoons. I eschewed such useless frivolity for much more important recreational endeavors; those of which would ultimately play into my future career as an actor.

A friend of mine bought the “Barnabas Collins” board game and I couldn’t stop looking at the cool box art. I had been a fan of the show for quite some time, but without any access to local stores that sold stills from the show, this image alone served to captivate my imagination. Looking at the painting of Barnabas baring his fangs and displaying his ultra-cool ring and wolf’s head cane sent my young mind spinning. I was elated when he traded me the rubber fangs that came with the game for a few baseball cards I didn’t need. I didn’t even care who or how many people had put them in their mouth prior to my acquisition of them… when I shoved them in my mouth I became Barnabas! I couldn’t be bothered with mere germs! I had important playacting to do!

My next effort was to find a suitable cloak to wear for my vampiric volitions. Luckily my mom had a black fabric skirt she didn’t need any more (I think what I ended up using was actually the crepe lining to the skirt if I remember right). It draped around my shoulders perfectly. And the shorter length replicated Barnabas’ famous Inverness cloak in my mind perfectly. During one of our regular shopping trips to K-Mart I found a perfect Barnabas ring…for all of $1! It was a lot of money to a kid my age, but well worth it!

I wetted my hair and formed it into Barnabas bangs. I went to the local forest just outside our neighborhood and found a sturdy branch with the proper crook at the end for my cane. I bought some fake blood at Woolworth’s during the Halloween season. I was set to chase the girls around the neighborhood and inflict the wrath of “South Dakota Barnabas” upon their fainting souls! (I’ve long since stopped playacting as Barnabas, but I still chase girls…FYI) I was blessed that my parents had the wherewithal to capture my maniacal machinations on black and white Kodak film back then.
As I was well into my early “cosplay” as Barnabas, I soon discovered the bubble gum cards. I couldn’t believe my luck when I acquired the Barnabas poster that came in one of the packs! I also enjoyed looking at the View Master reels and comic books endlessly! I fondly remember visiting my cousins in Idaho and bringing along all of my Barnabas collectibles, so we could set up a “fan club” in their tool shed.

One of the happiest birthdays ever was when I got the Gold Key “Dark Shadows” digest! While reading it cover to cover I would pray to God every night to sink my chubby cheeks and thin out my face so I could look more like the creepy, gaunt Fridster! Yup, I was pretty much obsessed with Barnabas, Quentin, and that super creepy Count Petofi and his rubbery, floating hand.

But years went on and the rubber fangs eventually got lost. The K-Mart ring broke off its band and had to be discarded (after many failed attempts at trying to Super Glue it), and my cloak somehow “disappeared.” But I never lost my love for the original gothic soap that made history weekday afternoons on ABC-TV. I vividly remember urging my mom to call the local ABC affiliate to ask why “Dark Shadows” wasn’t on that afternoon. With sadness, we learned of its cancellation. No more werewolf. No more Count Petofi. NO MORE BARNABAS!

Years later my friend Dave told me about a festival he was going to that was “Dark Shadows” intensive. I had no idea such things even existed. He really got me intrigued when he said that females outnumbered males at the festivals 10 to 1! Eventually I started attending many of them and enjoyed meeting a lot of the show’s stars ... INCLUDING JONATHAN FRID!

But the circle wasn’t quite complete until the great Jim Pierson cast me opposite Donna McKechnie and David Selby in an audio drama called “Dark Shadows: The Darkest Shadow.” Sitting next to David trading lines back and forth in our 3 pages of dialogue was a nerdboy’s dream come true! Sadly, we got everything perfect in the first take and we didn’t need to do any retakes…even though I would have gladly sat in that studio trading barbs with “Quentin” himself all day! When I got to say, “Quentin Collins, you’re a fool,” a chill literally ran up my spine. I couldn’t believe my luck!

Through the kindness of my pal Don Frid, nephew of the late Jonathan Frid, I was able to acquire a collection of personal snapshots from Jonathan Frid’s estate after he passed away. But best of all, I was acquired Jonathan’s personal wolf’s head cane that he used at numerous appearances at “Dark Shadows” festivals. It would fit in perfectly with the lifesize Barnabas mannequin in my house! And Lara Parker and Kathryn Leigh Scott have been guests at my house in the past for screenings of “House of Dark Shadows” and “Night of Dark Shadows.” What a life! If my six year old self could see me now!

For something called “DARK Shadows,” it sure brought a goodly amount of light into my life and imagination.

Wally Wingert is an actor, singer, voice-over artist and radio personality. He was the announcer for "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," provides the voice of The Riddler in the series "Arkamverse" series of BATMAN video games, Humpty Dumpty in 2016's "Alice Through the Looking Glass," and Jon Arbuckle in "The Garfield Show." You can find him online at www.wallyontheweb.com.

Dark Shadows: A 50th Anniversary Appreciation

By ERICA SCOTT

My discovery of Dark Shadows was actually in a series of installments, and in a sort of backwards manner. I’ve seen every episode, and many of them several times. But I did not watch it in sequence.

It started on March 28, 1969. I was eleven years old and I had made a new friend, who invited me to her house after school. When we got there, she sat us in front of the TV in the living room, saying it was time to watch her favorite show, Dark Shadows. I’d never heard of it, and she said it was like a soap opera, but scary. And then it began, and I was hooked from the start.

The first episode I ever saw was #720, near the beginning of the 1897 story arc. One of the first things I saw was a tall, incredibly handsome man being stabbed by a crazy woman with wild hair, and my little adolescent heartstrings were plucked. Of course, it was Quentin, and he’d just been attacked by his wife, Jenny. I had no idea who the characters were or the details of any of the situations, but it didn’t matter. Watching Dark Shadows became an obsession, a fixture of my weekdays. My new friend became my best friend, and we truly did rush home every day after school, stopping at the local 7-Eleven first for Slurpees and candy bars, then plunking in front of either her TV or mine (we lived down the block from one another), stuffing our faces and swooning over Quentin.

The next two years went by, and we watched all the way through 1897, the Leviathans, and the remaining storylines until the show ended. And that should have been that. Daytime dramas don’t get repeated, and there was no such thing as the VCR or the DVD yet. So I figured I’d never get to see the years I’d missed.

Fast-forward to the early 2000s when, quite by accident, I rediscovered Dark Shadows while sick in bed one morning channel surfing. It was rerunning on the Sci-Fi channel (the name before they changed it to the ridiculous SyFy), and they showed two episodes back to back every morning. However… guess what? When I found the Sci-Fi reruns, they were right in the middle of—you guessed it—1897. No matter. I had a blast watching again, and got just as hooked as I had been when I was a kid. I taped the two episodes every morning and played them back each evening, and I discovered the Dark Shadows Bulletin Board on Sci-Fi.com. Now that was fun, posting on a forum with several others who had the same passion for the show and its characters. I called myself “Quentin Fan” and yes, thirty years later, I still swooned over him. I used to crack up the other forum members with my bawdy comments and fantasies about him, and I even wrote rather kinky fanfic and song parodies about him. It was great fun, but something was missing. People talked about things I had no idea of, characters and situations from all the episodes I’d not seen. Who the hell was Victoria Winters? What was the Dream Curse? Who was that cute little girl in the nightgown and cap—she wasn’t Nora/Amy. Why did people keep talking about what a bastard Barnabas used to be? Wait a minute—Barnabas and Julia weren’t always the best of friends and allies? My Dark Shadows passion was thorough, but my experience was nowhere near complete.

By now, the series was being released on DVD, in collections of 40 episodes each. Set #1 started with episode 210, the first appearance of Barnabas. I bought a new collection every time I had some extra cash and I was binge-watching long before that became a thing. Finally, I was seeing all the situations and characters I’d only heard of before. But I still hadn’t seen the infamous first 209 episodes, pre-Barnabas…

…Until late 2007, when those 1966-67 episodes were packaged in collections called Beginnings. Not wanting to buy them, as I’d heard they were tedious, I rented them on Netflix. (They were fairly tedious, but they had their good points.) At long last, nearly 40 years after I’d first started watching, I had now seen every Dark Shadows episode, and had full DS literacy.

And to put the cherry on top, in 2010 I experienced the last item on my Dark Shadows bucket list: I went to a festival. I threw myself into it fully; I got autographs from everyone there, except for Jonathan Frid, who wasn’t giving them out. But it was a thrill to see him, just a couple of feet away, making his way down the hall to cheers from the onlookers, leaning on his Barnabas cane. I got a photo with Kathryn Leigh Scott. And my inner adolescent swooned when I not only got a picture with my nearly lifelong crush David Selby, but it was of me kissing his cheek.

Of course, after I filled a shelf with Dark Shadows DVD Collections 1-25, then they came out with the complete show in one set. Figures!

I still love Dark Shadows, the original and the greatest, with all its bloopers and cheesy effects. And if it were to be shown yet again on an oldies cable station, yup, I’d watch it.

Erica Scott is a freelance copyeditor in Southern California who is still a Dark Shadows nut and who no longer has kissing David Selby on her bucket list.

Dark Shadows: A 50th Anniversary Appreciation

Dear Aspiring TV Writer:

I understand you want to know the secrets to writing great characters and great dialogue. Okay. Here they are. Pick a great show you’re obsessed with, a show your mom won’t let you watch as a kid because it’ll give you nightmares. Then watch it anyway. Once you’re a teenager and that same show becomes available on your local PBS station, record episodes of the show on crappy cassette tapes. Listen to those tapes over and over and over again until you’ve memorized every word, every comma, every pause in a lengthy soliloquy for falling set designs and repeat the process endlessly. Finally, when the entire boxed set becomes available on DVD in a collectible “coffin” edition, buy the whole thing and watch all twelve-hundred-odd episodes over again. Twice. In a row. Just because you can.

Oh, and most importantly… love every damn second of the process.

That’s what I did. Yes, somewhere in my parents’ basement those stacks of DARK SHADOWS bootlegged audio cassettes remain intact, ready for an impromptu revisiting. They primarily cover the “Dream Curse,” “Adam and Eve,” and early “Whoa, Chris Jennings Is A Werewolf!” storylines, because those were my favorites at the time.

I listened to those tapes so many times. It was common to sometimes fall asleep to the rhythms of my favorite characters’ speech patterns: Dr. Hoffman’s nasal insistence on perfection. Reverend Trask’s spit-flingling prognostications of hellfire and destruction. Barnabas’ aching laments of melancholy over doomed romances. Ah, good times.

That’s why DARK SHADOWS is more than just my favorite TV show of all time. It’s literally the show that’s responsible for driving me to become what I am today. A TV junkie who is lucky enough to get paid to also write it.

It seems like yesterday when I had a major crush on Donna Wandrey (still do). And yes, the relationship between Barnabas and Julia never stopped breaking my heart. (Isn’t unrequited love the best?) I loved the 1840 storyline so much that I wanted my own “Head of Judah Zachery” prop. Someday.

But I was equally excited every time the name “Gordon Russell” scrolled by during the show’s end credits. Even at a young age, I was starting to figure out that tons of my favorite episodes were being written by the same guy. Or gal, in the case of Violet Welles and the 1897 storyline. That’s not to say I didn’t also love episodes from Sam Hall, Ron Sproat, Malcolm  Marmorstein, Art Wallace and the many other wonderful scenarists that contributed to the show. Gordon and Violet (and later Sam Hall) were simply the ones I noticed first.

What was it about DARK SHADOWS that made me sit up and take notice of the words that lay beneath the veneer of bats, tombstones, and severed telepathic heads? Truth. As insane as the stories sometimes became on the show, there was always genuine emotion at the heart of the characters’ daily conflicts. You could hear in the actors’ voices how much they relished the juxtaposition of supernatural hijinx with grounded situations like dealing with a cheating fiancée (it’s okay, Josette… I know you were under a witch’s spell), the premature death of a loved one (R.I.P. Jeb Hawkes) or having to deal with the ongoing realization that the person you love doesn’t think of you in “that way” (Oh, Julia… I’m so sorry…).

Listening—and watching—Barnabas and the rest of the Collins clan deal with these very real, very grown-up feelings exposed me to the essence of good dramatic writing before I even knew who Aristotle was.

After truth, let’s not forget my other favorite aspect of great DS dialogue: hyperbole. I’m talking about hyperbole that rivals Shakespeare in its intensity, if not always in its execution. But then I’m guessing old William made mistakes, too. Fortunately for him two-inch tape had yet to be invented.

I know what you’re thinking. Hey, Eric, this show is fifty years old. Surely, you don’t watch DARK SHADOWS anymore. I’ll bet there have been a dozen or more shows that have influenced you just as much in the intervening years, right? Sure. There’s THE X-FILES. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. DR. WHO. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. 24. GAME OF THRONES. Each of them are TV milestones in their own right and huge fonts of continued inspiration for me today.

But there’s still only one show that moved me so much that just hearing it—listening to syncopation of script, direction and performance over and over in the dark—was enough to impress permanent shivers on my spine, shivers that continue to resonate with me and drive me to keep writing every day. That’s the power of DARK SHADOWS. Fifty years later, I still can’t get enough.

So get thee to your television or laptop or black box wireless thingy, Aspiring TV Writer. Find your muse. Oh, and listen, ahem, watch DARK SHADOWS. You’ll be glad you did. Just like me.

ERIC WALLACE
Writer/Co-Executive Producer, TEEN WOLF

PS - Happy Anniversary, Collins Family!