Pre-Barnabas Dark Shadows

What are your thoughts on pre-barnabas dark shadows? Please use this thread to talk about all things "Pre-Barnabas" dark shadows.

 

There was a reason we ignored it before Barnabas. It was essentially a gothic soap opera. And don't underestimate Quentin Collins as a selling point either.

 

Dreadfully bad except for Louis Edmonds as Roger Collins. And I always like the opening narration "My name is Victoria Williams". If there ever was a new character who saved a series instead of Ted McGliney-ing it, Barnabas was the vampire. Actually going to 1797 and turning him into the victim of Angelique was a great stroke.

 

Oh and Angelique. I was 12 and in lust with her.

 

I remember in Jr high that because of daylight savings time DS was now on while we were still in school. After many reports of kids ditching school to watch DS, WXYZ 7 started to tape delay it back at its regular time.

I had the soundtrack album on Phillips. I had all the books(and the early ones are just gothic potboilers like the show).

 

I had a ball revisiting DARK SHADOWS' beginning episodes when I finally got the massive full-series DVD set.

I'd seen most of it originally, but this brought back a lot of forgotten memories.

Harry

 

took me about 8 months to watch all of it!

 

(Winters)

 

I am currently watching the timeline where Gerard Styles (what an amazing character!) marries the Collins woman, and Quinton returns unexpectedly, being thought dead. I'm now thinking of starting from *The* beginning.... the very beginning.

But hey - this is Dark Shadows... no need to do things linearly. I can watch episodes from the beginning one night, then hook up with another timeline the next!

 

Why was everyone so obsessed with staying in and living in Collinwood when everyone was so dreadfully unhappy? And I don't mean just the family, either. You think they'd be trying to leave the place instead of trying to stay?

 

Question for all: When viewing the DVD's: how do you keep track of which episode you are on when you pop the DVD in the next day after watching several the day before? It's easy for me to know which disc I'm on, because I keep that disc out - but I lose track of the episode numbers.

 

When we were watching it, I'd just jot the number of the next episode to view on my phone.

 

I enjoyed the pre-Barnabas era .

 

We started at the beginning and have enjoyed all of it so far. We are at about episode 260. We are getting the Netflix snail mail discs and because we are going at it very slow we constantly lose our place and have to preview many episodes before we find out where we left off.

 

I watched Dark Shadows as a kid and loved it. How many episodes before Barnabas makes his appearance?

 

210, I believe.

 

All of the "Beginning" episodes are black & white, and most of those are straight from the ABC network videotapes, so you get to see the pre-episode slates and hear the booth announcer promoing other ABC shows over the end-credit roll.

Harry

 

I buzzed through the first part of the series, yet lost interest in the never-ending "Adam" saga.

There is lots of good stuff before Barnabas showed up - Burke Devlin making Roger squirm; a murder mystery; the Phoenix story...

I enjoyed the early stuff way more than anything after Angelique showed up. (I just don't care for Lara Parker.)

But, the Adam storyline is tedious. Nothing ever happens at all.

 

I saw many episodes as a kid but sometime in the 90's I think a network showed the series from beginning to end. I'd tape 5 a week and watch them on the weekend. What network was that? Anyone remember?

 

Sci-Fi ran the series in the mornings. 10 AM I think, and two a day.

 

Did you get them all on tape?

 

I'd erase them after a couple of weeks I think. Don't have them now.

 

I think that was it and yes it was 2 a day back to back in order. Thanks.

 

Sci Fi is the way I rewatched the series too. I'd tape them on one tape and then watch them when I had time. I had one tape I would use and just keep taping over. I think Dr. Who followed Dark Shadows so I would tap that too.

 

There are so many remarkable things about the program. I haven't watched the pre-Barnabas episodes since I was a kid and they were new. I got hooked on Dark Shadows one summer because my mother watched it. A couple of decades later when I saw repeats I couldn't believe how crappy it looked. Anyhow, love the program. I was madly in lust with Nancy Barrett and Lara Parker and Kathryn Leigh Scott wasn't bad either. Jonathan Frid had a dramatic range above and beyond anyone else in television. When he was acting in front of the camera nobody else in television could touch him. He was like the Boris Karloff of the airwaves, oozing empathy and bleeding tragedy. Why he walked away from the biz, I'll never understand. While watching the 1796 flashback I also became impressed with Louis Edmonds; particularly the way he downplayed the discovery that his son Barnabas had become a vampire, an idea he had been scoffing at for months. Edmonds made those scenes work. I've always kinda hoped there would be a straight-foward feature-film version of just the flashback. It has literary underpinnings, and it could be something amazing if done right. But alas, it is not to be. Recently I discovered the first nine months of Peyton Place -- another brilliant program -- and was surprised at how much Dark Shadows resembled it.