Dark Shadows

Intaglio · October 21, 2003, 1:31pm

The Original or the Re-make Drama/Soap Opera

Did anyone like this show?, either one.

I have only seen the Re-make on NBC years ago, but I loved it, I hated NBC when they cancelled it.

ddgryphon · October 21, 2003, 2:44pm

Big fan – others are out there. The original is being run at 8 and 8:30 AM on Scifi.

There are around a season of shows left to play before it reaches its end on SCIFI.

The ones you like (with Ben Cross as Barnabas) are available on VHS online in a couple of places.

Most of the original cast members have their own web sites.

Quasimodem · October 22, 2003, 8:05am

This adds absolutely nothing to your thread, except that I was a fan of Dark Shadows back in the 60’s, and I could never wait to get home from school for the ritual: Dark Shadows, at 4pm, Where The Action Is at 4:30, and Lloyd Thaxton at 5:00. For an hour and a half, I was glued to that television set.

My rock group, The Watchmen used to emulate Paul Revere and the Raiders as well as The Kingsmen. I used to go crashing through my bass drum trying to copy the antics of (the now late) Smitty Smith of the Raiders. We finally put a little platform on top of the bass to support my weight.

Dark Shadows. Guess you could say me and my then-girlfriend were Goth when Goth wasn’t cool! :D.

Sorry for the mini-hijack, but thanks for the memories!

Quasi

acrossthesea · October 22, 2003, 2:31pm

My mother loved this show when she was a kid, so during my childhood when it was being rerun (not yet on the scifi channel, but maybe a local NY station?) she had me watch it. I loved it because it was so full of mistakes and they apparently never stopped to reshoot anything, even when the set fell down. They used to have conventions in NY (maybe they still do) where the people from the show would reunite and sign autographs and tell stories or something. I was just 8 or 9 but my mother made me go and talk to all of them, the guy who played Barnabas and all these other people. That was kind of freaky.

I liked the time travelling stuff. My favorite was when they went to 1897 because the late 19th-early 20th century is my favorite time period historically. I thought the crazy woman, Jenny, who was locked in a tower was a really cool plot line. She talked to dolls and stuff, that was awesome! I wish I had the sci-fi channel but we don’t have it here, otherwise I’d watch it again.

I disliked the one they made in the 90’s because it wasn’t low budget and soap opera like. Therefore it lost all its coolness. I think some things, like Dark Shadows and Godzilla, are so much better when they are cheaply made.

Guinastasia · October 23, 2003, 4:13am

I loves me some original Dark Shadows. Only I keep over-sleeping and missing it!

The 1840s timeline so far is my favorite (I haven’t seen them all, just that and the Leviathon one).

It’s about a severed head! A HEAD!!!

Odinoneeye · October 23, 2003, 10:04am

I’ve been watching the reruns on scifi, but I missed it for quite a while.

I kind of liked the 1995 and subsequent plotline because of the “prophecies” in it.

I think the mistakes are what make the show though. I love when they are doing a time travel storyline and an actor calls a character by their name in the main storyline. (Joan Bennet was famous for this with David Hennessy)

Also, I thought it was really funny when Roger said, “The car skidded the last 30 miles (chuckle) it seemed like 30 miles, 30 feet.” A good cover for a line blown.

Khadaji · October 23, 2003, 6:28pm

When I was young we watched the original every day. I never did catch the new ones.

j666 · October 24, 2003, 5:35pm

I loved that show when I was a kid. Year’s later I taught my poor niece to sing ‘London Bridge’ in that creepy way, just like the little ghost, without remembering where I got.

Guinastasia · October 25, 2003, 2:48am

“Several of my incestors-INCESTORS!-ancestors are buried here.”

(I have a wav file of that)

I also caught a major boom mike the one day.

Guinastasia · October 25, 2003, 2:54am

“Several of my incestors-INCESTORS!-ancestors are buried here.”

(I have a wav file of that)

I also caught a major boom mike the one day.

Odinoneeye · October 25, 2003, 5:21am

I also loved the time the camera was doing a dolly and all of the sudden it started shaking.

Must have hit a cord, or a crew card person or something.

Miller · October 25, 2003, 5:44am

I’ve seen this quote mentioned on the boards, like, a dozen times, and I only just now got it. Incest-ors. Hee!

Mofo_Rising · October 25, 2003, 6:36am

I always heard a lot about this show growing up, being immersed in genre as I am. I never watched it (little, before my time). Actually I did catch part of one episode before I realized what it was. My response was, what the hell is this? No, really. What the hell is this?

I have talked with quite a few people who admit to being obsessed with this show when they were younger. Barnabas is quite the sex symbol you see.

The funniest anecdote I have is this: I work in a library where we get a lot of donations. Mostly people clearing out their storage and the like. Some people don’t bother going through the boxes, which is how I ended up with the diary of a young girl obsessed with Barnabas. She had numerous letters about the fellow, and even had a prototype report about vampires. I know this may not seem that funny, but at the time I thought it was hilarious. What a sweetly pathetic capsule of time.

BrainGlutton · October 25, 2003, 4:40pm

From Danse Macabre, by Stephen King (Berkley Books, 1983), pP. 231-232 (mass-market paperback edition):

[Dark] Shadows became something of a nine-days’ wonder during the last two years of its run. Originally conceived as a soft-focus ladies’ gothic of the type then so popular in paperback . . . it eventually mutated . . . into something quite different from what had first been intended. Dark Shadows, under [Dan] Curtis’ inspired hand, became a kind of supernatural mad hatters’ tea party (it even came on the air at the traditional hour for tea, four in the afternoon), and hypnotized viewers were treated to a seriocomic panorama of hell – a weirdly evocative combination of Dante’s ninth circle and Spike Jones. . . .

One tuned into Dark Shadows every day, convinced that things could become no more lunatic . . . and yet somehow they did. At one point the entire cast of characters was transported back into the seventeenth century for a six-week turn in fancy dress. Barbabas had a cousin who was a werewolf. Another cousin was a combination witch-succubus. Other soap operas have always, of course, practiced their own bemusing forms of madness; my own favorite has always been the Kid Trick. The way the Kid Trick works is this: one of the characters on the soap opera will have a baby in March. By July it will be two; in November it will be six; the following February it will be lying in a hospital, comatose, after being hit by a car while returning home from the sixth grade; and by the March following its birth, the child will be eighteen and ready to begin really joining in the fun by getting the girl next door pregnant, or turning suicidal, or possibly by announcing to his horrified parents that he’s a homosexual. The Kid Trick is worthy of a Robert Sheckley alternate-world story, but at least the characters on most soap operas stay dead once their life-support machinery is turned off (following which there will be a four-month trial with the turner-offer in the dock for mercy killing). The actors and actresses who “died” picked up their final paychecks and went job hunting again. Not so on Dark Shadows. The dead simply came back as ghosts. It was better than the Kid Trick.

j666 · October 27, 2003, 1:11am

I thought they popped back and forth through time more often than once.

Guinastasia · October 27, 2003, 2:22am

They sorta did the Kid Trick on DS, only it was the Leviathon, and the characters saw him aging, and were told it was a new kid each week.

Then he married Carolyn, and then something happened to him, and he was gone.

zoogirl · October 27, 2003, 2:33am

Ohh, DARK SHADOWS!

I was so dedicated, I went to my friend’s house *every day[i/] for like three years to watch it! (She had cable). I even went to Woodwards, the local Dept. store, and sat in their TV section if my friend wasn’t around! I wasn’t the only kid there, either.

I still have all the paperback books and copy on '45 of “Quentin’s Theme”. I had all but one of the comics, but they got stolen.

zoogirl · October 27, 2003, 2:36am

Ohh, DARK SHADOWS!

I was so dedicated, I went to my friend’s house *every day[i/] for like three years to watch it! (She had cable). I even went to Woodwards, the local Dept. store, and sat in their TV section if my friend wasn’t around! I wasn’t the only kid there, either.

I still have all the paperback books and copy on '45 of “Quentin’s Theme”. I had all but one of the comics, but they got stolen.

I also dragged my poor grandmother down to the Columbia to watch a double feature of “House of Dark Shadows” and “Night of Dark Shadows”. I made Mr zoogirl watch it to, when they ran the whole series on cable a few years ago. Gee, I wish I got SciFi here!