I remember seeing seeing it on Saturday, October 3, here in the midwest. It was for the matinee, and I got to the theater two hours before the doors even opened, and already there was a line.
I remember having a big fight with my mom over hoDS. I wanted to go see it after school on the Wednesday it opened, but she wouldn't hear of it. Her objection was that the theater it was playing in was located completely on the other side of town from where we lived and she knew she'd have to go out that night to pick me and my friends up after having worked all day (believe it or not, none of my friends' moms drove and their dads were all firemen and policemen who worked at night).
It seemed that every kid in my hometown was there and the management opened the second balcony, even though it was closed because it was unstable. Those were the days when they weren't as strict about worrying if the whole thing collapsed.
Oh, I could just see that story: Hundreds of Local Kids Killed and Injured As Balcony Collapses During Showing of
house of Dark Shadows. The wire services would have surely picked it up and the story would have generated worse publicity for DS than the film itself ultimately did.
One of my "favorite" hoDS reviews has to be this one in which the reviewer is completely mystified by DS' appeal:
HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS -- Horror movies are measured by their capacity to thrill, chill, and mystify. This feature, based on the gothic TV soap opera, fails; the only mystery is its great popularity with teenagers. They seem to enjoy the wooden performances, hack writing, and stilted direction as camp humor, and to delight in the gory vampire scenes. The original TV cast consists of Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins, the 200-year-old vampire; Grayson Hall as Julia Hoffman, the lady doctor who tries to cure him; and Kathryn Leigh Scott as Maggie Evans, the governess who is a reincarnation of Barnabas's 18th-century fiancee. Though there is a fair amount of violence and blood, the effect is negligible because the movie is, at best, an easily disposable, plastic copy of the real thing.It was a double-feature, and the first movie was a western, although I no longer recall its title. Double-features - remember those? They went the way of taking chances with unstable structures.
Luckily the co-feature hoDS was paired with in the theater I first saw it in was Roman Polanski's hysterical The Fearless Vampire Killers (or, Pardon me, But Your Teeth are in My Neck). Next to it, hoDS couldn't have helped but look like it was played straight and nowhere near the "camp" the review above accused it of being.
Despite the fact that I was less than enthusiastic with the way hoDS turned out, it was still DS and that Saturday I stayed to see it three times (the days when you could do that for one admission price are long gone as well
) - and my mom still ended up having to pick me up around 9 that night - but at least she didn't have to work the next day. And two weeks later, hoDS opened in another theater in town that was only four blocks from my house, so needless to say I was there that Saturday too. hoDS didn't have a co-feature in that theater so I got to spend about 5 and a half hours (three more showings) immersed in it with breaks only for coming attractions. And best of all for my mom, she didn't have to pick me up because afterward I just walked home.
Just imagine how many times I might have gone to see hoDS if I'd really liked it.