Dark Shadows Original Series All Purpose Thread

There are a number of Dark Shadows threads, but I could not find a general thread about the original series, running from 1966-71.

I'm guessing that many forum members of a certain age group have vivid memories of racing home from school to catch Dark Shadows.

I watched the show as a kid and found it terrifying. Lots of details left impressions - The ghost of Quentin, hands rising up from the dirt, empty rooms coming to life in parallel time.

When my wife and I got together in the 1990s, the SciFi channel was airing the series, and we watched the whole thing from the arrival of Barnabas in 1967 to the end in 1971.

While the show is painfully slow and there is lots of dead weight in every story line, the show at its best is very rich on atmosphere - the sets, the music, the mood, the characters.

We decided that we could never commit to the whole series again, but around Halloween we will just pop in random discs from the DVD sets and lose ourselves in the atmosphere.

As a connoisseur of film scores, I love Robert Cobert's music, and have several of the CDs that were released in the 1980s and 90s, including the box set (which sadly is unlistenable because of presentation).

Both of the films are excellent also.

Any interest in discussing?

 

A friend of mine found about 120 volumes of the VHS tapes at a thrift shop for 50 cents each. He knew I wanted them so he picked them off. This was about five years ago. I spent a couple winters watching those tapes regularly. Around Volume 80, the show starts going downhill. Every so often, there was one good storyline. I pretty much stopped around Vol. 110. Ha. I imagine one day I'll watch some of them again. It is the mood of the show that attracts me to it. Sometimes I just like going there myself.

 

I would argue that most or all of the story lines start out very good, but they all eventually get bogged down by needless details and useless characters. By the time they end a story line, I am bored, exhausted, and relieved. I sometimes think that the writers had no idea where to take stories or how to pace them.

 

I always thought Grayson Hall was a weak link in the series portraying Julia Hoffman. She was involved in so many storylines but was probably the worst actor on the program. However, without her, I don't think we would have French Stewart's Harry from Third Rock From The Sun. I'm not sure if it was intentional but his character makes those weird squinty faces just like hers.

 

I was in preschool during the first run. I don't remember this, but apparently, if someone was watching the show, I'd run out of the room.

In the mid-'70s, our local station started running it at 4 p.m. every weekday, and I was hooked. Not sure I've ever been so obsessed with a show before or since. You are both correct that the mood is key. It was so imperfect in so many ways (flubbed lines, visible microphone shadows), but when it was good, it was tremendously creepy without a drop of blood.

Someone gave me the DVDs of the first season several years ago. I guess I didn't remember how unbelievably slow it could run, and how many useless storylines were mixed in with the good ones. I think I need to find the sweet spot in the run--it's not in the earliest episodes, and it's definitely not in the latest either.

 

I’ve never seen Dark Shadows, but I watched a regular soap opera one unemployed summer in the 80s, and the way they dragged out the storylines endlessly was maddening. Of course, this was because the show was on every day, so if they didn’t stretch it out, they’d burn through far too much story. Watched in a binge, the pacing must seem bizarrely slow.

One doesn’t think of soap opera scripting as good writing, but it must take a certain skill to write five hours worth of scenes a week while only moving the plot forward an inch. As the viewer, you were in a constant state of anticipation that something big was finally going to happen, only to be frustrated once more ... which brought you back for another week, at least until you found something better to do.

 

I think that a big part of this trend was that, before videotape and DVR, the writers didn't want to lose viewers who missed episodes. So, it was important to not have much change over a long period of time. I think that if viewers had the capability of taping shows, things may have moved at a better pace.

 

This is kind of an unexpected reaction, considering your avatar!

 

For me, the two sweet spots are when they go back in time and Victoria Winters is a supposed witch (featuring a lot of Angelique). The second is the introduction of Quentin's ghost. Any of the early Nicholas Blair shows are good too. He seemed to be the best foe IMO for Barnabas.

 

Hulu or Amazon had the show for awhile a few years back. Their episode numbering was off and I don't think they even had the first season. It all stared with Willy and his creepy partner going at odds and Barnabas's arrival. We watched it to the point where the Female Doctor wanted to cure Barnabas and then the channel decided to charge for the remaining episodes so we bailed. I don't think we saw any color episodes.

 

I caught various episodes in reruns in the 80s and 90s (mostly from Barnabas's introduction in 1967), but from 2011 to 2016 I watched the entire series from beginning to end and it was a blast. My favorite stretch was from late-'66 (when Matthew kidnapped Victoria) to late-'69 (when Barnabas returned from 1897). Laura The Phoenix, Barnabas's arrival, 1795, Adam & Eve, Quentin's Ghost and 1897 were all fantastic storylines. From the Leviathans on, however, the quality began to drop (with a few strong spots) and the rest of the series (1970-71) was forgettable.

Regardless, it's a great show as well as a fascinating insight into the writing and production of a daily series from its era.

 

I love the first Nicholas Blair storyline, but like every other one, they had to wreck it, in this case with that interminable Frankenstein monster, Adam.

I love Angelique's Satanic incantations, in which she seems to be on the verge of orgasm.

 

Nicholas Blair was fantastic. Some of the best scenes in the series were when he was squaring off against Barnabas and Julia in 1968.

 

In terms of acting, Blair (Humbert Allen Astredo) and the great Thayer David may have been the best. They never screwed up their lines, and their deliveries were very natural.

 

Thayer David was great too! He brilliantly portrayed so many different characters.

 

Do you remember the great scene in 1797 or whenever, when Barnabas (now a vampire), was begging Ben Stokes to kill him, and Stokes couldn't do it? That is one of the best scenes in the entire run of the show!

 

I don't remember that scene specifically, but Thayer's acting was great for whatever character he was playing.

 

I was also very impressed with David Selby how he first played Quentin as a mute ghost for several months in 1969, then brilliantly fleshed out the character when we got to see Quentin alive in 1897.

 

I have to give props to David Henesy, who played David Collins. For a kid, there were scenes where he was the best actor. Thayer David was great. One of my favorite moments is him walking into the set during credits and noticing they were doing that. He scurried off. It shows that they didn't have much a budget to work with if they couldn't even redo the credits.

 

Henesy, like a lot of child actors, overdid it in the first few years, but he got much better as he got older.

Last I heard, he is a restaurateur in Brasil.

 

My wife knew that David Selby (Quentin) was a '60s heartthrob in 16 Magazine, but when she first encountered Quentin as the ghost with no dialog, she didn't get what the big deal was. Then they went back to the 1890s, she saw him in full character, and she totally fell in love. "OK, I get it now."

 

Composer Robert Cobert is 95 today! Oct. 26, 1924!

 

I’ve only just started getting into Dark Shadows, since it’s been playing on the Decades channel. At first I was amused at how characters endlessly talked in circles to pad the run time of the episode:
“I just talked to Victoria in the old house.”
“What do you mean, you talked to Victoria in the old house?”
“I mean just what I said. Why should that surprise you?”
“Because you could not have seen Victoria in the old house!”
“Why do you say she couldn’t be in the old house?”
“Because I only just saw Victoria in the new house!”
“How could you possibly have seen Victoria in the new house?”
Etc.
But eventually they got into a plot with some blood sucking, stake pounding, etc. and I became a believer. I can see why Barnabas developed such a following, he does have charisma.

 

And don't forget this great exchange between Barnabas (Jonathan Frid) and someone-or-other played by Roger Davis:

Barnabas: Tell them that you saw no one.
Roger Davis: Yeah? Well what do you want me to tell them?
Barnabas! THAT YOU SAW NO ONE!

 

My favorite storyline is when they go back to 1897. Pretty sure that year was picked because that was when Dracula was published.

Also a fan of Grayson Hall. I know a lot of people don't like her but the Barnabas and Dr. Hoffman dynamic give the show a lot of its flavor.