I did notice the age thing, but that was and is pretty common in casting older men and younger women.
Although Quentin was only supposed to be about 30 before he got Dorian-Grey’d into a permanent state of youthful appearance which lets him party for the better part of a century and down gallons of brandy and never look the worse for it. I don’t know exactly how old David Selby was at the time–in much later DVD interviews, he seems like a lovely, older man, and along with Lara Parker and Kathryn Leigh Scott one of the people most responsible for keeping the fandom alive.
There’s a weird thing about Barnabas’s supposed age if you watch the show closely.
Jonathan Frid was just past 40 when he started on the show, and in the episodes before the 1790s story, the character was also supposed to be around 40 at the time he became a vampire. For example, when Carolyn’s sort-of boyfriend Tony sees Barnabas sinking his fangs into her neck, he assumes the two are having some sort of decadent, upper-class cousinly romance and says Barnabas is old enough to be her father. Elizabeth also says something about how nice it is for Roger to have another man his own age around Collinwood to be his friend (one gets the impression that none of Collinses have very many friends).
But during and after the 1790s story, there are hints that Barnabas is supposed to be much younger when he became a vampire–under 30. When he sees Laura for the first time and recognizes her as the same woman who used to be married to his uncle Jeremiah, he says he was only a little boy of 10 at the time, and this was in the 1780s. At another point, we see a tombstone for him with a birth year of 1770. He really doesn’t look like a guy in his mid-twenties, but for a man pushing 200, he’s holding up very well.
Another one of the supporting players who rarely gets their due was Clarice Blackburn, who played the cantankerous housekeeper Mrs. Johnson, as well as the bitter old spinster Abigail Collins in 1795, etc. She rarely got much to do but be an onlooker, but when she was given some material to work with she always knocked it out of the ballpark. There’s an early, pre-Barnabas episode where it’s just her ordering lunch at the coffee shop and she’s fussing over how Maggie made her sandwich. It’s amazing to watch how such an ordinary interaction could be so engaging. The episode in which Abigail goes snooping in the Old House basement and Barnabas reveals himself to her was, in my estimation, one of the highlights of the 1795 story. I think the bulk of the episode is just the two of them in one extended sequence, but it’s amazing to watch.
I think the show was shot live and remember little bloopers from time to time. Like the boy in a coma who opened his eyes in a close-up, unaware the camera had not shut off yet. Or a mirror showing someone passing by off camera.
My favorite one of these is Willie Loomis down in the basement of the old Collins house, in the middle of a speech about how being in that place by himself gives him “the willies” (ha ha). But there’s another person, one of the crew, standing just a few feet from him, fully and obviously visible until he steps out of the shot.
Another favorite happens when Julia and Barnabas visit the future–1995–and find Mrs. Johnson dead under a tree, killed by another one of those evil ghosts that pop up to plague Collinwood every so often. I didn’t realize at first that she was supposed to be dead, since she blinks several times.
Oh, and when Angelique turns Joshua Collins into a cat, keep an eye on the floor around the cat and you can sometimes see Kitty-Joshua’s handler crawling around.
Miss Mapp - Yes, I am confused by Barnabas’ age. I got the impression he was supposed to be under 30 in the 1795 story, but they keep mentioning things about how old he is/was at certain times and who he is closer in age to, that as you say, are confusing. I had to look up Jonathan Frid to see how old he was at the time to try and get a reference.
Don Draper - Yes, I agree about Clarice Blackburn, I feel she was one of the few actors who looked like she belonged in 1795. She just has that look of the people of that time. I just watched the sequence you described this morning, where Abigail discovers Barnabas in the basement of Old House, and yes it quite good!
A couple of nitpicks: I complimented the costuming earlier, but Victoria’s blue dress that she is wearing during her trial has a very obvious modern zipper. :mad: I get that lacing may have been too much for them to do, but they could have at least done buttons.
The actor who plays Peter Bradford has the MOST irritating voice!
I am up to episode 438 - Victoria just got sentenced to hang.
My guess is that the show’s writers and producer (Dan Curtis) wanted to make the character younger as he became more popular and more of a romantic figure.
I don’t think he was originally meant to be a reluctant vampire. His initial story when he first arrives at Collinwood is very Dracula-ish, and in spite of his professed yearning for Josette, his treatment of Maggie certainly isn’t romantic. He only begins to change after his little sister’s ghost rescues her and gives him a good talking-to about his bad behavior.
It’s a more sentimental story than the ones in the “A Legend Reborn” series I’m in the middle of now. There’s the feeling that it’s a cast reunion as much as a Collins-family get-together. I like that they re-used the old musical cues and “stings” from the show.
And how are things up there in Collinsport these days?
I remember one scene where the cat disappeared from its cushion where it was supposed to be sitting by itself, and the camera panned back to an actor and back to the cat, where you can clearly see the hand of somebody holding the cat in place.
Dan Curtis said that in one of the DVD interviews. He told the writers it was a world where non one ever heard of vampires or werewolves and bookjgs like “Frankenstein” or “Dracula” didn’t exist. So people are alwaysc(with one exception) assuming a neck wound from a vampire is from a wild animal.
Remember in the early episodes the Collinsport bar/nightclub “The Blue Whale” would always have this fast paced, jazzy music that youngsters were supposedly listening too? Dd anyone in the real world ever listen to such stuff?
There is a very sad story in a Dick Schaap book “The Year the Mets lost last place” one how one housewife in New York wanted to watch “Dark Shadows” but her husband wanted to watch the Mets vs Cubs game? They fought, he beat her up and she subsequently died from her injuries.
While the stage hands, microphones, mirrors and flubbed lines are fun, this show is great because the actors took it so seriously despite the budget handicaps.The performances by the leads are almost always exceptional, the chemistry of the cast is obvious, and the writing and stories are top-notch. The show was a derivative show, but yet an original and brave broadcast by 3rd place network ABC.
We laugh at the silly special effects. But consider all of the bad movies and shows that ruined good special effects on tired plot rehashes and uninspired acting. That list is very long. Good special effect movies/tv have a very short shelf life if the acting and writing are poor. *Dark Shadows *enormously succeeds despite its limitations. And many of us who loved it then love it still 50 years later.
Yes, I totally agree. That’s why it did not deserve what Tim Burton did to it.
Ah yes, and the poor cat who had to portray Joshua Collins, haha!! I am a cat person, so I could tell that kitty was so not feeling performing for any humans. Just as pretty much every other cat in the world.
I wonder what their candle budget was? Pretty damn high, I suspect. And how much do you love that there are burning candles inside the secret chamber of the mausoleum even though there is no way they would stay lit in a sealed room with no air? More Dark Shadows theatrical magic! I also love that the candles are blue.
I am going to watch another big batch of episodes this week. The 1795 storyline is winding down, and I know something bad is going to happen to Reverend Trask, so that will be good. He got caught with a prostitute in his bed, and a dead one at that!
I am ready for them to get back to the present, I need more Julia Hoffman.
How badass was it that Julia, in episode 290, left her window open basically luring Barnabas into her room and tricked him into thinking she was in the bed. Then as he is absorbed in that direction, is sitting up waiting for him and tells him she has been waiting for him for a long time! That was a turning point for her character for me. She is afraid of him, but she doesn’t show it. No matter how many times he grabs her around the neck, which is often for about the next 60 episodes.
It’s worth mentioning that while the special effects on DS are often derided for looking “cheap”, they were actually VERY expensive effects for the era, especially on a daytime soap’s budget. I recall reading Sam Hall (the head writer at one point, and Grayson’s husband) say that as the series became more special effects heavy, a rule was implemented that no more than five characters could appear in any single episode to save on the costs of paying actors. The rule was broken once in a while for major plot point episodes (the seance that sent Victoria back in time, for example, involved most of the regular cast), but oftentimes characters could be mentioned, but not shown. So, for another example, when Quentin’s ghost takes over Collinwood and the entire family have to abandon it and move to the Old House, we get a scene of Elizabeth looking wistfully at the great hall and Roger saying “Everybody is down at the Old House. We’re the last ones.”
It’s not a special effect, but there’s a sequence I love just after the Collinses flee the house and Quentin’s ghost takes it over.
While Quentin’s Theme plays loudly on his gramophone, the cameras pan around all the rooms/sets of Collinwood, showing them to be empty. Then we end up at the front hall, with Quentin up on the gallery, laughing silently, triumphantly.
I like the blue candles, and those big fan-like candelabra that hold about a dozen of them.
When people venture into the secret passages of Collinwood, there are often already candles or lit gas jets burning for them.
The storyline that follows is my favorite stretch of the whole show. Back in 1968, Barnabas makes friends with another mad doctor, Eric Lang, who says he can cure Barnabas of vampirism by creating a Frankenstein-style being and transferring Barnabas’s soul/mind/whatever into it. Only it doesn’t work out the way they expect it to.
Angelique, meanwhile, has placed a Dream Curse on the Collinses, family and friends, so that each person in sequence has the same nightmare and it gets worse with each dreamer until the last person who dreams it is Barnabas… only that doesn’t work out the way she expects it to, either.
That may be my absolute favorite moment in the whole show, when Mad Science triumphs over Black Magic.
Can anyone confirm if the “Old House” (original mansion) was ever referred to by the characters as the “great house”? I seem to remember that term being used, but when I watched the entire series (except for maybe 5-15 episodes), no one said the “Great House”. I guess I’m misremembering…
And as has been mentioned, it really was a top-notch show considering the time restraints and budget for production. Had it had the same effects and miscues, but was on only once a week, that would be different. But considering it was shot 5 days a week, and (according to some of the DVD extras), actors occasionally learned their lines on the subway going to shooting that day (if I remember, it was John Karlen who said that), it was nothing short of a fantastic show.
And, there’s nothing wrong with taking classic stories like Frankenstein and using them in the way DS did. Although at the end, the Wuthering Heights story was, for me, something of a disappointment.
I’ve heard them say it, but I think when they did, they were referring to Collinwood, which is huge. The Old House is a much smaller colonial.
Another actor worth mentioning is Robert Rodan, who does a really nice job of conveying Adam/the Monster’s development from oversized infancy to maturity.
Yeah, the last 40 or so episodes are disappointing, and I can see why their ratings plummeted to the point the show got cancelled. It’s not just the unlikeability of the Cathy and Heathcliff characters, who we’re told we’re supposed to be in sympathy with as they destroy other people’s lives, but that we’re in a story that’s made up of entirely new characters we have no connection with. Normally when the show went into another time or alternate dimension, there was at least one standing character we had an emotional investment in–Vicky, Julia, Barnabas. Here, it’s nobody we know, and nobody we’ve grown to care about, so we don’t care what happens to them.
It sounds like generic “Stuff the kids are listening to” music that you hear on television shows of the '50s or 60s when they don’t want to pay for real hit songs, but there’s one surfer kind of tune that’s so evocative of The Blue Whale that when it shows up on the audio plays, I get a vivid mental picture of the place.
I wanted to say something more about the special effects and ghosts earlier in the day, but kept getting interrupted by things I had to do.
I like simple practical effects–not just on Dark Shadows, but in general–so the ones that work best for me on the show are when the ghosts are just people.
Little Sarah, for example, would appear on one side of the room after other characters walked out of the door on the other end of the room, or else the person she was talking to would look away for a moment and when they turned back, she’d be gone. It was simply a matter of the kid stepping in or out of the shot, but it worked for me, better than the chroma-key, blue screens, or double exposed effects.
Or else one of the ghosts would appear from of a deeply shadowed recess in the corner of a room–again, just a matter of the actor stepping into the light. The ghosts of Beth and Quentin used this technique to good effect.
Although this effect didn’t always work if there was too much light in the corner. I remember a scene in which Elizabeth and Julia, I think it was, are sitting in chairs in one of the Collinwood bedrooms. Vampire Barnabas is waiting to appear from the dark corner behind them after they leave the room… only you can see him clearly all the time they’re talking before they exit, and have to wonder how they don’t notice him back there.
List of my all-time favorite Dark Shadows moments/sequences:
The above-mentioned moment of Quentin laughing triumphantly after having chased away all the residents of Collinwood.
The confrontation between Barnabas and snoopy Abigail Collins in the Old House basement.
An early, pre-Barnabas episode in which Vicky is alone in the parlor during a thunderstorm/power outage. As she gropes around in the dark for a candle, she catches a glimpse of a silent shadowy figure, apparently a woman in old-timey clothes. It was the first hint that the show was not merely going to use gothic haunted house trappings, but actually involve ghosts and supernatural beings in the story line.
Angelique invoking Satan and going to Hell in order to report on Nicholas. (This sequence actually still gives me the creeps when I see it. There is something luridly evil about it.)
The night that Vicky agrees to stay at the Evans cottage while Sam is out and Maggie is having her ‘sleepwalking’ episodes (while Barnabas is attacking her). The dogs snarling, Maggie’s spaced out behavior, and Barnabas appearing in the room after Vicky run away in fear.
The first time Barnabas sees the Parallel Time room.