When Barnabas was strangling her, I was shouting at the TV, “Kill her all the way dead this time!” 
Since he has pussed out and only shot her in the shoulder previously with that damn dueling pistol.
I thought, geez Barnabas…you shoot Jeremiah, whom you loved, in the face and mortally wound him, and Angelique gets a thru&thru to the shoulder? Lame.
Conrad Bain, who later played Mr Drummond on “Diffr’nt Strokes” (talk about dysfunctional families) was on a few episodes. Essentially it was “Conrad, has your character been killed by a vampire or werewolf yet? No? Okay, you’re this weeks victim”.
A lucky accident was it was on late afternoon. A boringly bad soap opera for the first 200 episodes, it was about to be canceled when they decided to steal from the horror oeuvre and kids, home from school, picked up on what was now an entertaining bad soap opera. I remember seeing a few episodes at the time (Barnabbas throwing the I Ching sticks to go back to 1897) but since I didn’t know about the slow pace of soap operas, didn’t watch anymore since Imwas ised to resolution within an episode or two.
The DVDs, which have 9 episodes on each, have a 10 minute interview with a cast member, writer, etc on them. I especially like the one where Julia Hoffman’s son says his teacher wanted him to write an explanation of something bad he did in school for his parents to sign showing he told them. So he woke her up early one morning , gave her a blank sheet saying a friend wanted her autograph but please sign at the bottom of the sheet. Groggy, she did. He then wrote the desired explanation on top and turned it in to teacher.
I have the complete DVDs and have gone through them a couple times.
SQUEEE! I did not know it was one Amazon Video! I am getting such a long list of Things I Must Watch!
That’s called an “inverness cape”. I had one back in my bagpiping days. Might even still be somewhere around the house. They’re actually pretty fun to wear. Sherlock Holmes is also often depicted wearing one.
If he did that it would be the end of the show, so he has to be stupid about it.
Of course it’s full of plot holes. The only thing with more messed up continuity than a soap opera is comic books.
Maybe on TV… but the first sympathic vampire character is generally considered to be Varney the Vampire, first published between 1845 and 1847 as a penny dreadful serial. Wonder if it’s on Project Gutenberg? I should check that out some time.
It was really tepid before Barnabas arrived. If they hadn’t thrown him into the mix I don’t think the show would have survived. He really did make the series what it was.
Dark Shadows came on about 15 minutes after my school let out, and I would RUN the half-mile home as fast as I could to watch it. Loved it.
People say this, but there were a couple of good stories before Barnabas showed up.
The Phoenix storyline, involving David’s mother as a supernatural creature who goes up in flames every 100 years and returns to take her children with her, is one of my favorite parts. They re-did that same story later on in the 1890s, but it isn’t as good the second time around.
This pre-Barnabas story is worth watching.
There’s also a murder mystery that starts around episode 40 and ends up with ghostly intervention by the Widows and the murdered man, and the set-up with Jason and Willie before Barnabas’s arrival, where Jason blackmails Elizabeth over the secret in the locked room (which isn’t what she thinks it is).
The only part of it that’s remarkably tedious is right at the beginning, those first 40 or so episodes, where the plot is concerned with Burke Devlin and what he’s up to, and little David tampers with the brakes on his father’s car so that Vicky will be blamed, but everyone thinks it’s Burke.
My wife and I watched almost every episode through Netflix. Great on you for watching it! It’s a fantastic series, all the better because it was shot 5 days a week, often with only one take.
I remember much from the original run, but it was fun to see it again. One part that I didn’t get to see was during Count Petofi’s run (nothing to spoil, it’s just a memory my sisters and I had in the old days: one character said to another: “You have the hand [of Count Petofi]!” “No I don’t!” “Liar!” Imagine three kids, ages 12-4, saying those lines in one syllable, and that counts as a fun memory of the show for me.
What a great show. 
I’d get home from elementary school just as DS was starting and watched it off and on. Angelique (Lara Parker) was one of my first celebri-crushes. Kate Jackson, too.
Way back as a youth, in the mid 80s, I had heard of Dark Shadows, and was fascinated by the idea of a supernatural soap opera with a vampire. But back then, aside from the occasional 90-second retrospective on Entertainment Tonight with some very brief clips, I never got to see it. On a late night movie show, I got to see the “House of Dark Shadows” movie from 1970, which was my first exposure to the series. I got a sense that they were playing out the storyline. Ironically, given that DS (like most soaps) gets accused of being glacially paced, the movie plot moved at such breakneck speed that it was hard to follow. Then there was the prime time remake, which was OK, but scheduled on Friday nights at 10 PM (who is watching TV then?) and the network pulled the plug on it so fast, I barely got to see it.
I finally watched the series when the Sci-fi (not Syfy) Channel reran it in the 90s. I watched it from the beginning and through most of the run. Although it did get a little stale in the later episodes.
Anyway, some of my thoughts/observations:
1.This is pretty well known, but the character Dr. Julia Hoffman was originally intended to be a man’s part. It was conceived of as a Van Helsing type character who would become Barnabas’ enemy. ‘His’ name was originally “Dr. Julian Hoffman”, but when Dan Curtis’ secretary typed out the casting sheet, she made a typo and “he” became “Dr. Julia Hoffman.” On a whim, Dan just decided to go with it. If you pay attention, the episode in which Dr. Hoffman is initially discussed, a few weeks before the character actually appeared, the character is repeatedly referred to as “he” and “one of the finest men I know.”
Despite it being obvious what Barnabas is from his first appearance, the word “vampire” is not actually spoken by anyone on the show for at least the first two years. IIRC, the first time someone mentions the word is during the 1890’s storyline.
Actress Joan Bennett was actually quite famous, having appeared in numerous 1940’s-era film noir movies. In 1951, she found herself in a real-life soap opera situation: her husband suspected her of having an affair with her agent and shot him dead. That almost completely ruined her career, and Dark Shadows was her big comeback. Before Barnabas showed up, she always got top billing in the cast credits and had a much bigger role in the storyline. In fact, Bennett often stated that the original plan was that Victoria Winters would eventually be revealed to be her daughter. (That of course would have made the later romantic pairing of Victoria and Barnabas a bit awkward.)
I have a Facebook friend who went to school at the mansion that was used for exterior shots of Collinwood. (Yes, Collinwood Manor was a prep school during the late 1960’s. Can you imagine having history class in the Parallel Time room? Lol) He said it was down the street from where Doris Duke had her own scandalous car “accident”.
One of the later storylines (the one taking place in the 1840’s) concerns the journal of an ancient wizard Judah Zachary from the 1600’s. In a few episodes, the journal is shown and it is quite obviously a regular Mead composition essay notebook like you can buy at any Rite Aid or CVS.
Oh and another thing I forgot: actress Alexandra Moltke (Victoria Winters) had her own real-life soap opera escapades after leaving the show. She was the mistress of Claus Von Bulow of all people, and ended up having to testify in his trial on the charge of attempted murder of his wife Sonny.
I remember when I was watching this all through the first time a few years ago, how frustrating it was listening to their coyness about saying the “v” word. Occasionally, I would shout to the TV: “Vampire! Vampire! Vampire! Just say it already!”
It was Angelique, bless her witchy little heart, who first used the word after she put her curse on Barnabas.
In one of the DVD interviews (Louis Edmonds, I think), said that Joan Bennett once brought her old friend, director Fritz Lang on to the set. Lang was a big fan of the show.
Alexandra Moltke has said so too, that she was cast for her resemblance to Joan Bennett. And she does look more like a daughter for Elizabeth than petite, blonde Carolyn.
But the romance between Vicky and Barnabas wouldn’t have been dampered by their being distant cousins. Closer relatives among the Collinses had relationships. Carolyn dated her werewolfy third cousin Chris Jennings as well as her long-lived great-great-uncle Quentin (although neither of those really went anywhere once she met Leviathan leader Jeb Hawkes).
More icky, Roger’s first wife, Laura Murdoch Collins, who reincarnates after she goes up in flames, turns out to have been married to Roger’s grandfather Edward in an earlier incarnation and was mother to his father Jamison. She was also married a century earlier to Jeremiah Collins, but they didn’t have any kids.
We have Netflix, I guess I’m out of luck, but thanks for the info!
I am enjoying everyone’s responses and even if I don’t comment on all of them, please know I am taking them all in.
I went and read up on the whole Claus Von Bulow thing, and, wow…that’s exactly why 1) you shouldn’t mess with married men on the sly and 2) you don’t press them to leave their wives.
Miss Mapp - If Laura Murdoch was married to Jeremiah Collins, was it before Angelique’s spell caused him to fall in love with Josette and marry her? Because Barnabas killed him in the duel right after that, right? I am trying to wrap my head around the Collins Family Tree. It is also puzzling to me that Naomi and Joshua had no surviving children (Sarah & Barnabas) so how do they have descendants that resemble them? And whose line do the “present day” folks come from? I can just suspend belief and buy into it, lol, but either way it’s kinda fun trying to figure it out.
And as for the icky cousin relationship stuff, that was considered very aristocratic at the time, so I can buy that.
Oh, about the sparing use of the word “vampire”, I sorta like that. It contributes to the whole alternative universe feel to it. I don’t watch it but my sons both say they do the same thing when it comes to “zombies” in the Walking Dead.
Laura was married to Jeremiah before Josette.
The thing about the Collins ancestors confused me too when I was first watching the 1790s storyline. In the earliest shows, Jeremiah and Josette are definitely said to be the ancestors of the present-day Collinses. When David talked to the ghost of Josette via her portrait, he addressed her as his great-great-n-grandmother. Before Barnabas showed up, Josette’s ghost was basically the protector of the Collinses, her descendants. That changes after Barnabas, when the show’s writers ret-con her into being his lost love.
So, anyway, it confused me when Jeremiah got shot and died before he and Josette had any children. For a long time, I expected it to turn out that she was pregnant from their brief marriage and would have a baby before she took her cliff dive. But that doesn’t happen.
Then I wondered if Barnabas and Angelique might be the ancestors, although there’s no sign that their also-brief marriage was ever consummated. Plus, that would be a little too Addams Family. 
I won’t spoil it for you unless you really want me to. The person who carries on the family name is about the only one who’s left standing after Angelique (and dastardly Nathan Forbes) have done their best to destroy 1790s Collinses.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Dark Shadows exists in an alternate universe where Dracula as a book or film does not exist.
Oh, one more thing. If, when you get to the end of the show, you find that you haven’t had enough of these people and their bizarre adventures, some surviving members of the cast have been doing audio plays that continue the story. I’ve been listening to and writing blogs about them since I finished with the show.
One, titled Return to Collinwood, was written by Jamison Selby (son of David Selby - that’s Quentin Collins). It carries on some of the plot projections of the show’s writer Sam Hall (husband of Grayson Hall - Julia Hoffman). In it, Vicky is established as being Elizabeth’s daughter.
I just thought of another plot hole that always bugged me. In the 1795 storyline, Angelique is obsessed with breaking up Barnabas and Josette so that she can convince him to marry her. To that end, Angelique casts a love spell on Josette and Barnabas’ uncle Jeremiah to make them fall in love and run away together. I could never understand why Angelique didn’t just cast a love spell on Barnabas and get him to run away with her.
And maybe I’m just remembering it wrong, but did anyone else think it odd that this show featured a string of romantic heroines (Victoria, Maggie/Josette, Carolyn, Daphne) who all looked to be about 21 years old but were more often than not paired up with boyfriends/love interests who were clearly on the far side of 40? Carolyn/Burke, Victoria/Burke, Maggie/Barnabas, Victoria/Barnabas, Josette/Barnabas, Josette/Jeremiah, Carolyn/Adam, Maggie/Nicholas, Daphne/Quentin…Of course I think they all dated Joe Haskell at some point, who looked to be about their age, but every one of them dumped his ass! Was this typical of all soaps back then?
And lest you think I am being harsh on the show, I do have to say for the record that I am a huge fan. But even so, here’s a compilation video of Julia Hoffman screaming in terror.
Don Draper - Yes, I did notice the age differences, but that has been a pretty longstanding thing in pretty much all forms of entertainment. I can think of a number of movies of fairly recent years where the older actor has a love interest that is significantly younger. I don’t think that’ll change much anytime soon, and that’s probably a discussion for another thread. I think this kind of Gothic genre calls for a certain amount of sweet innocent virginal females, so characters like Maggie and Victoria are necessary. I would say Carolyn, but she’s a bit wild and frenetic, although her antics are quite tame in the end.
As for the spell, I think you make a good point that Angelique could have just as easily put a hex on Barnabas and been done with it, but I think she wanted to sully Josette’s reputation by having her do something scandalous and Angelique wanted the satisfaction of seeing Barnabas be disgusted with her. It is strongly hinted at that Barnabas and Angelique had sex in Martinique, Barbados, wherever it was, I can’t recall at the moment…but anyhoo, that lets us know Angelique is far from virginal and innocent, and I think she was motivated by wanting to spoil Josette for Barnabas. Angelique is a servant girl that men have romps with and Josette is the kind they marry.
I also think it was quite clever that the writers had Angelique sort of fall through her own asshole and hang herself on her own curse. She cursed him in anger when she thought she was going to die…supposedly. I think she did it just out of spite and spite alone. Trick knew she wasn’t going to die from that shoulder wound, look how fast she healed herself from it! 1-2 days tops and she’s all like new. So she curses him HARD out of anger and not knowing her own strength and/or how her wrath would amplify the magic, puts him teetering on the edge of death, and if he dies, he will wake up as The Undead and her ass is toasted. I relished that!
That makes sense. Angelique was certainly spiteful and loved tormenting Josette, including resurrecting her late husband Jeremiah as a revanant to haunt her. It also occurred to me (after I’d posted my last reply) that Angelique’s spells, being black magic, likely could only be used for destructive ends. For instance, she never used her powers to make herself independently wealthy – she’s the Du Pres family maid for chrissake!
*Dark Shadows *is my favorite show of all. I also got the “Deluxe” edition DVD coffin box set with the signed card by Jonathan Frid. The set came out right before he died.
Quentin’s Theme plays when my cell phone rings.
The memories of watching that show as a child are still strong. I remember hiding behind a chair and peering around the side… so I could duck back when it got too scary. My cousins were not allowed to watch the show, so my sister and I could gleefully tell them the details.
My father, a conservative Presbyterian minister, enjoyed the show too. Dad also introduced me to Stephen King. There were people who said *Dark Shadows *would warp a kid’s mind. It certainly did mine and I am always grateful for that.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned John Karlen’s fantastic Willie Loomis role. He played off Jonathan Frid so well early. His transformation from cocky punk to forced servant was amazing.