1968

[MagnusTrask]

I've been watching this period for the first time since original airing.   Comments:

Interesting how they made a point of making everything the same as 1967 when Victoria returned from 1795, for continuity, yet they sped ahead from that point on with updating the show, and improving 1968 to match the level of 1795.    New characters, more clever dialogue (such as from Elliot Stokes... I didn't get any clue as to what a great character he is from 1970), bigger jolts, faster plot, and suddenly Julia is out of the frumpy ugly hair/clothing and becomes "herself" as I know and love her.    It's as if they caught up abruptly with the time lost during the flashback, time that didn't pass for the characters but did for the real world.  I got the impression of DS suddenly becoming "modern".

The Frankenstein plotline has yet to win me over.   Doctor Who did it brilliantly, so it can be done.   A lot of the dialogue has gone back to being too simple and awkward, such as between Lang and Barnabas, which goes against what I said earlier, but everything is mixed and confusing so far.   I noticed JF is back to having more trouble with lines as before 1795... did he do it for continuity??

Maybe awkwardly said lines come from awkward or uncertain writing... maybe Frid was forced to keep stopping to think how he was going to deliver a line, because these new lines could be coming from a reforming character, or someone neutral, or someone who's still a villain... and the lines don't indicate any of this either way.   I've noticed JF using a villainous tone when the line is pretty benign.   One must blow lines if one has to stoip and think how to read them.

Lang... good pain acting.

All the photos from Caption This are coming to life before my eyes!

One episode break... Duelling Portraits!  (Barnabas's and Angelique's)



[spoiler]With Barnabas's sudden cure, 'my' DS starts.   I felt this especially when Roger was being drawn to Ang's portrait, to hurt Lang, with that music.  I don't know why.   Everything is smarter, really moves, is more vital.

As the Frankenstein monster's shroud is pulled away to show Barnabas, I instantly thought, Dracula Meets Frankenstein!

That "life force" idea worked back then, but it's now been used so often that it's become a lazy meaningless science-fiction premise.   How handy, a vague something that can be yanked out of one body and into another, like pouring liquid from one bottle to another...

Couldn't Lang have just stuck Barnabas's "essence" into Clark's intact body, without the fleshy crazy-quilt Lang just had to build?    How dare he claim to have created life, when he just took intact limbs and parts and organs and sewed them together?    Sure, reanimating is hard, but that intricate biological "machinery" was already built, and Lang or Frankenstein wouldn't have known how to even begin to build any of it from scratch.   Leave it to a doctor to steal God's (or who/whatever's) thunder.

Back later.
[/spoiler]

[MagnusTrask]

When I said the dialogue was smarter, I meant smarter than 1967, pre-1795.   Strangely enough, that sentence probably will not confuse a single person here who reads it.   We're tempoally sophisticated people.

"I think that thinking about failure is a contemptible weakness."-- Lang.

Barnabas consults Julia as a "friend" about Lang... are they suddenly friends just because the script says so?

[spoiler]I was thinking... is Barnabas going through his moral conversion right there before my eyes, standing in the shadows listening to Victoria talking to Lang abouyt Jeff Clark?    Yes!    That was nice.    He cried "enough"... great.   A cheering moment.    Too bad he's weaselling out a bit at the point where I've left off... with Julia trying to phone the police about Lang (in Lang's own house!   Get out of the front door first, at least!    And what a squeamish doctor... this was no mother or grandmother of Scully's, that's for certain!)![/spoiler]

Why are doctors like Lang and Julia, or Frankenstein, so driven to do experiments that trhey can never tell anyone about, that therefore they (and society) can never benefit from?

[petofi]

It's no coincidence that the DS Companion refers to 1968 as that "Year of Madness."  The writing became better(and more frantic) in many ways, but DC(God rest his soul) also put pressure on the writers for more twists and turns and excitement in the plot.  The "cliffhanger a day" philosophy was at its peak in '68, the stories became complex enough so one had to watch nearly every day to keep up, and there were a plethora of classic horror-inspired characters to follow.  For me, 1968 was the era that paved the way for 1897, and some of the best writing on the show.  In truth, the success of the story of 1795 probably set the stage for the whole upswing in quality and pace, 1968 and 1897 included, removing DS from the ranks of a show that could be mistaken for an ordinary soap!  1968 is probably my second favorite era for all these reasons, behind 1897 and tied with 1967.  In spite of 1795's innovations, I never got into it as much as the other eras I've mentioned.  However, this certainly doesn't mean that I don't enjoy revisiting it from time to time!

Yes, it's true, 1968 provided us with some of the classic camp moments of the show (Lang's death scene and subsequent endless tape message, for instance), but it also provided us with some real memorable situations, like the machinations of Nicholas Blair, the beginning of the endless returns of Angelique, and Tom the Vampire and his Werewolf brother Chris.  Whatever you think of the Adam story, it really opened the floodgates for so many of the supernatural characters, with problems far more dramatic that soap opera pregnancies and divorces, or little Jimmy getting acne.    Stokes was, indeed, a breath of fresh air at this point, and was a lightning rod for the wittier writing that would later dominate early 1897.  At any rate, love that 1968!!

Petofi

[MagnusTrask]

Actually, I just overloaded on Adam and the Dream Curse and I'll have to knock off for awhile.    In the patch I'm in now, the writing and logic have gone into a tailspin.    I'm now where Adam is trying to tell everyone about the taped message but can't yet (and... camp??  I don't see it).     I see no addition to the Frankenstein story yet.  When I was a kid, I was absorbing the old movies and new TV equivalents of those stories simultaneously.    I could get involved in all, equally, I guess.    It was all relatively new.

I never anticipated the Dream Curse being as bad as it is.    These people must scream their lungs out and their hair must turn white each year when the little tykes come around for Trick-or-Treat.   Good thing that doesn't happen, apparently.    The Collinsport kids must have found out the hard way.   Is this how Maggie found out they were "kooks"?

[spoiler]The first dream I could almost get behind, with a little help from my imagination.   At the end, I imagined more scale, with a tiny silhouette of Maggie at the bottom of the screen from the back, with the green skull towering above her.  They could have done that.[/spoiler]

Up until this point, for a long time, they had been telling a story they were anxious to tell-- Barnabas's.   What he's like now, then how he got that way.   It's a very compelling story.    Then after 1795, this very long arc is over, and then it's no longer a matter of exploring this fascinating character's story, but... what do we do now?    They didn't need something to "fill time" before.   No story that you come up with out of thin air to keep a show going is going to be as compelling as one you're burning to tell.

Even from what little I know or have heard, I saw DCs fingerprints on the Adam story.   Either this is the start of the twirling Rolodex, or it just was handled so well up until that point that one couldn't tell.

Later, they tried to reproduce the Barnabas arc with the Quentin arc, and that certainly worked, but they always seemed to be repeating on DS and trying to cover their tracks so people wouldn't notice, sometimes very well.    John Lennon said they'd write songs at first by thinking of one they liked by someone else, then changing bits.

[arashi]

I have a thought on the whole Dream Curse storyline. I imagine that while the imagery of the dream itself may not be what you'd call terrifying, it was the feeling of horror that came with it and built with each subsequent dreamer that was the real curse. There had to be something to trigger this feeling of unholy terror in your sleep, and a dream was the perfect vessel. Plus a dream is a great oral way to pass along the curse, you couldn't rightly say, I had a feeling of terror in my sleep last night, it wouldn't work. But by relaying the terror as images, it gives the next dreamer something to visualize even before they hit the sack.

[MagnusTrask]

Well, the visuals ought to convey what the characters are experiencing to some extent.

As Julia's trying to phone the police--
BC: "Remember... someone."
Lang: "Dave Woodard."   If Mr. Frid comes here and comes across this post, sorry to remind him of that.   Maybe it's like the dream curse.... when i see moments like that, i just have to mention them to release some tension, or something.   Also... BC says "Professor Strokes."   Sorry, sorry.

They knew enough to let Lacy stop doing Peterson as Bogart.

I thought, I can't believe Barnabas is doing a bodyswap!

How is the Dream going to scare Barnabas, of all people?

Why doesn't Willie want harm to come to Barnabas?

Nameless thug cop: "You give a lot of orders."
ECS: "Yes, I do."   When he appears the second time, I thought, he's getting his soon.    He did.

No one has suspected Adam of Barnabas's old crimes, yet.   They're fairly recent, still, for those who weren't whisked away to 1795 for a few months.

Adam is growing on me--- maybe they emphasized the innocence more than the Frankenstein movie did.    Another monster whose creator is the real villain.    He's learning violence from us.   I like him.   Widow's Hill: babies don't know falling hurts... maybe he just thought he was escaping.

Adam's intro to the story is silly, but now that he can speak a little and his presence is a fait accompli, he's growing on me.

I'm tired of transcribing these huge-lettered notes about episodes i saw days ago now... more later.

[Lydia]

As Julia's trying to phone the police--
BC: "Remember... someone."
Lang: "Dave Woodard."   If Mr. Frid comes here and comes across this post, sorry to remind him of that.

If I were Dan Curtis, I'd have fired Addison Powell right then and there.  Forgetting words and even whole lines was part and parcel of Dark Shadows, and usually the cast managed to get past it without making the proceedings totally asinine.  But there Addison was, Mr. Helpful, Mr. Officious, and he just had to tell the world that he knew Frid's lines better than Frid did.  And so he turned a difficult situation into a ridiculous one.  All that was needed was for Grayson Hall to pitch in with, "You mean...?" and Frid to play along with, "Yes, that's EXACTLY what I mean!" and Hall finishes up by moaning, "Dave!"  But no, little Addie had to show off.  ("Little Addie."  Real mature of me.  Maybe I need to get a life?)

[Raineypark]

Someone from Actors Equity should have shown up at the studio and demanded Addison Powell's Equity card, and then had him arrested for impersonating an actor.  

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Well, as I've mentioned before, a possible explanation for Powell's performances could be that it's actually the way the DS directors wanted him to play the part. They could have certainly reigned him in if they'd wanted to, so I find it hard to believe that most of what all the actors were doing wasn't at least with the directors' blessings, if not their actual designs. Just think of how shocked some of us might be if we ever learned that Lela Swift and John Sedwick were actually in the rehearsal room telling Powell that his performance wasn't broad enough and to take it up a notch.   

[Raineypark]

Well, I hope like hell that was not the case.  Because if it was, I would assume such direction indicated complete disdain for the audience. 

[B.Collins]

ya know what? as much as I LOVE the 1795 storyline & the 1897 storyline. i think with the success of THOSE Great stories. DC & the writers or WHOVER thought of this storyline or that storyline, they got TOO Carried away with the traveling through time & The Parrell time. did i spell that right? & also i agree repeating the same storyline. the kids got possed 2 or 3 times at LEAST! HOW many times can you do that? even so it's STILL a great show. & the last storyline that they did alwys felt to me when i 1st saw it on sci-fi a few years ago. i've been a fan since (1998) i think it was? anwys, it feels unfinished & rushed. they knew they got cancelled & i think ran out of ideas on HOW To end the show. so they said what the hell let's just do this & that & than just END IT! anyone disagree or agree with me?

[BuzzH]

All that was needed was for Grayson Hall to pitch in with, "You mean...?" and Frid to play along with, "Yes, that's EXACTLY what I mean!" and Hall finishes up by moaning, "Dave!" 

Not to belittle Frid, 'cause I *do* think the guy's got talent, but he himself admits to being a 'slow-study' and frankly, he never seemed to be the kind of actor who could 'think on his feet' and recover from a flub like say, Louie Edmonds can.  I can't think of a single time where he just winged it and ad-libbed while staying in character.  Instead, he'd nervously wring his hands, search for the teleprompter and stutter.  Not really a flaw, just some actors can do it and some can't.  Frid seems to be the type that can't.  Just my 2 pesos... 

[Brandon Collins]

***SPOILERS LITTERED THROUGHOUT***

I love most storylines about DS. They all have their good and bad qualities. Albeit, some have BADDER BAD qualities (lol) than others. 1968 started out just fine. The Dream Curse was an inspiried idea (as we have said in another thread appropriately titled "Dream Curse"). But it got old after person AFTER person AFTER person continued to have the dream. Sure, ol' Ang. wanted to have everyone involved, but if you get too many people on a little boat, the boat is bound to sink. The best thing about it was the end when Vicki and Barnabas were fighting about Vicki telling or not telling the dream to him--as others have said elsewhere.

As for Adam. *SIGH* I lilked the story at first. It was nice. Adam was all innocent and mumbly. Couldn't say a word. I even found it humorous when Barnabas would say "You said my name! What a good little boy! Not Aunty Grayson--uh, uh, I mean Julia will come and give you a cigarette!" (OKay, so he didn't really say that, but his babying of Adam was quite a different place for EVIL Barnabas to go, ya know? He's supposed to be all mean and junk). Adam's storyline got dragged down by the not-so-lovely Dr. Lang, and hiis infamous "If both live" tape. However, fun was reinfused into the situation when Angelique returned as Nicholas Blair's play thing. Unfortunately for Adam, again, fun was SUCKED out of the storyline when Nicholas poked and prodded Adam to threaten and kill his way to a mate, only to have her reject him. BOO. And the whole thing with Peter Bradford knowing her, that was just really awful.

As for b.collins' post about DCP wanting to just END somehow, I was under the impression (and my impressions tend to change with the winds) that they were attempting to go into 1840 and later 1841PT because time travel storylines tended to be some of their higher ratings and they were attempting to recover.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

If I were Dan Curtis, I'd have fired Addison Powell right then and there.  Forgetting words and even whole lines was part and parcel of Dark Shadows, and usually the cast managed to get past it without making the proceedings totally asinine.  But there Addison was, Mr. Helpful, Mr. Officious, and he just had to tell the world that he knew Frid's lines better than Frid did.

I don't think that was necessarily the case. Powell was most likely just trying to save/recover the scene just as others actors had and would do whenever Frid flubbed. In fact, one of my favorite such incidents from 1970PT is discussed in this topic:

The May 20th Episodes - Classic Blooper Expertly Covered

I also don't think it's necessarily a big deal that Lang knew about Woodard. It was clearly established that Barn was telling Lang about his history. So, even though we didn't see it, it doesn't necessarily follow that Barn didn't at some point explain to Lang what had happened to Woodard.

[stefan]

I adore Frid most of the time but he's pretty darn awful in 1968. I've been glancing at one of those tapes and am astounded just how lost and baffled Frid looks. Normally his line-flubbing doesn't bother me a bit, but in 1968 he barely seems to be cognizant of his surroundings. Maybe it was sheer exhaustion by that point.

In comparison, Humbert Astredo is marvelous as the oily Nicholas Blair and definately the high-point of 1968 but, then again, he was fresh on the scene and probably didn't have the pressures Frid had. Also, in all fairness .. Barnabas must have been a trying and difficult role to play, both physically and emotionally. Maybe the brilliance of his 1795 performances took everything out of him. I mean, it couldn't have been easy.

I find 1968 spotty and unpleasant because Frid's not at his best. Though I can get into Nicholas Blair and his relationship with Maggie and his devilish bantering with the even more lethal Angelique (still think she's the real monster of DS). Robert Rodan is a fine actor and I like Adam's relationship with Carolyn. NOT into warewolf stuff or experiments but there is some good casting in Don B. and his sister Amy but I agree that the guy who played Dr. Lang is terrible.