I have quite a backstory with Dark Shadows because my mother watched it during the original run, and I was petrified of it. My 6 year-old self would hear the opening music and bolt for the nearest door and stand out on the porch refusing to come back inside until it ended. I would lurk at the screen door and peer in, asking every few minutes, “Is it over?” It seriously creeped me out and was the reason I had to have night light.
Mama also had the record album with the music on it, and she would threaten me with it when I was being bratty. She would say “Stop it, or I will put on Josette’s Theme” and I would almost wet my pants.
After it went off the air, I didn’t recall much about actual characters and story lines other than some names and that it was a town populated by vampires, witches and werewolves, and everything seemed to happen in this gargantuan house that they only showed 2 rooms of.
Fast forward 50 years later: I have discovered it on my Amazon Prime, and feeling it was time to get over this childhood trauma, I have been binge watching it relentlessly for about 3 weeks. I’m obsessed! I am up to episode 427, which is about 2/3 of the way through the 1795 story line.
And damn, this thing is so bad it is deliciously good! I love it in all of its’ cheesetastic glory! Sure, there’'s plenty to laugh at. Boom mikes, stage hands and even cameras are often visible, but the characters are very engaging as horror archetypes and I am even loving the soapy-dopey writing. It takes itself very seriously, doesn’t it?
Some observations, good and bad:
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There’s obvious lifting of whole elements from every Gothic novel anyone ever heard of. Barnabas and Josette are very “Wuthering Heights”, Victoria Winters is a pale shadow of Jane Eyre, Edgar Allan Poe pops up everywhere.
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I had to tell myself going into it that I need to remember this was a soap, so it will advance the plot slowly and use all those typical plot-stalling tactics, like building up a confrontation and playing the “da DA daaa” music and then cutting to a break only to come back and suddenly the tension has dissipated and the characters are conversing normally. But I don’t care, I keep watching, :D!
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Barnabas has very uneven powers. Sometimes he is terrified of being caught somewhere he shouldn’t be, other times he can disappear. Sometimes he can mesmerize people, sometimes he can’t.
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Half of Elizabeth’s (Joan Bennett) lines seem to be “I am not going to discuss this right now” and “I am sure it was just your imagination”, but still I am intrigued by her backstory and that she was a recluse for 18 years. And that she didn’t let being a recluse stop her from getting up every day and putting on diamonds and piling up that coiffure. With a big ol’ bow on it.
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How amusing to watch the episodes go from b&w to color and back again and remember that time when most people didn’t have color TVs anyway. The quality of some of the episodes is extremely poor, but I am happy they even exist, considering the disposable nature of such shows at the time.
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The costuming is really pretty good, especially in the time travel sequences, and c,mon…who doesn’t love all the feast of glorious 60s fashion in the “present day”? Carolyn is a master of the “flip” hairdo. Barnabas wears a long brocade smoking jacket in both the present and the past that is very elegant and well made, and shall I say, "to die for’?
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In 1795 they have bedding that features blue and gold sheets and modern blankets with the satin banding…there was obviously a much bigger costume budget than set decorating one. White or unbleached muslin would have been the proper linens for that time. This same granny square afghan shows up in every house, both past and present. The few servants they do have come in and out of the Front Door, which was a no-no.
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Most of the women are typically weak damsels until Dr. Julia Hoffman shows up and Angelique makes her entrance, and I hate Angelique so much! Which is a good thing, right?
And they both are desperately in love with Barnabas. -
And speaking of Barnabas, Jonathan Frid is so oddly sexy. He kinda turns me on, especially in his pre-vampire incarnation, but it is probably just the lovely waistcoats and that hybrid coat/cape thing he wears. I have always been a sucker for costume drama. Barnabas must have plenty of extra clothes packed away with him in that casket, because sometimes his cravat is white and/or covered with blood, and sometimes it is black and clean. I am striking that up to vampire magic.
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They have done a decent job of creating an isolated world where all these things happen. Collinwood, the Old House, Eagle Hill Cemetery, Widow’s Hill, the Blue Whale…etc.
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It is full of plot holes. Barnabas is so sad after Josette throws herself off Widow’s Hill that he is condemned to live as the undead forever, then why doesn’t he just burn himself up in the Sun? After all, he was going on and on for the 2 previous episodes about how he wanted to be “united with her in death as he never was in life”…so, do it! lol!
I find it refreshing to go back and see this through a lens of a time before the vampire genre became so overworked and worn out as it is today. I also think Anne Rice had to have been influenced by Barnabas Collins for the character of Louis de Pointe du Lac as a reluctant self-loathing vampire.
I was at home by myself watching a few days ago and Julia is being gaslighted by Barnabas and tormented by the ghost of Dr, Woodward and there is a storm at Collinwood (always a storm!) and the phone and the lights are acting wonky. There is this eerie grinding sound and the door to her room becomes distorted as she thinks something is coming to get her…am I got a flashback to my childhood! It was really scary!! haha!!
It is so wonderful on the absurdity scale, it is just the escape I need right now.
Please, share your Dark Shadows experiences and observations. 
