April 2... the Widows Wail Again

[Gothick]

Whenever this date comes up on the calendar, I can't help remembering that this was the day of the year when the last ever episode of Dark Shadows, the original series, aired in 1971.  As we've all reminisced many times in the past, our beloved show had the ignominy of being replaced by a very blandly presented game show, Password... I did tune in the following Monday to make sure the show wasn't really still on, and there was Allan Ludden doing his thing.

Thanks to the magic of DVDs, Youtube, and a surprising variety of mass media mentions and references, it seems our beloved show will live forever, but I still feel the hurt of that seemingly final parting, all those years ago.

G.

[dom]

A bittersweet memory for me. I returned to say goodbye and though the faces were the same the names had been changed to protect the innocent. Then, to top it off, the last words spoken were by Thayer David - a real slap in the face. I had absolutely no appreciation of Thayer back then. That was then...

[MagnusTrask]

I remember almost not believing that they were  actually saying the bite marks really were from an "animal" this time...

[Gerard]

I cried as the ending credits rolled for the last time.  I still feel somber on this day.

Gerard

[Uncle Roger]

I was so sad. I honestly thought that I'd never see Dark Shadows again.

[quentincollins]

I was only a few weeks old when the series ended, so I didn't discover the series until many years later. I first got into DS when I found old Marion Ross paperbacks at a used book store, being interested by all things gothic and vampires. Then years later I discovered the vhs tapes and was able to watch the actual show.
I do find it a little disapointing that the finale is a bit week - the last minute change to the bite just being a harmless animal bite is lame. It would've been so much better for DS to have gone out with one last chilling moment. But then it's a let down for the series to end in 1841 PT anyways. Even though I enjoy the story, it had no ties to the main characters of the series.
It does have the distinction of being the only tv series to end 115 years before it began in a whole different timeline.
And there's been the Revival series, the new novels, and the ongoing audio dramas, and the new movie...so DS is still alive and well for me at least. The medium may change, but I'm anxiously awaiting new stories with my favorite characters in the cds (which begin their new "season" of dramatic readings next month), Lara Parker's Wolf Moon novel coming out this fall (and some really intriguing details for the plot of her still being written fourth DS novel recently discussed), the comics (which have been hit or miss so far but the Year One 1795 adaptation looks promising...DS is still an ongoing story for me.

[The Doctor and K9]

I was not allowed to watch DS in its original run. I  used to sneak glimpses, but I was not aware it was gone until the fall of '71.  One day I wondered where it was.

I had a similar experince though in April of '76. DS had been syndicated on WLVI TV 56, Boston. It had run 260 episodes and...ended... Later the Boston Globe or the Boston Herald had answered a question in their TV Listings. They'd mentioned that World Vision had pulled DS from syndication. The last thing they wrote was, "back to that coffin, Barnabas". I thought I'd never see it again.

[Gerard]

For those of us who grew up watching the original run, the cancelation was exceedingly traumatic.  It meant that, back then, we would never see it again.  While other programs swiftly went into syndication, that had never been done with soap operas.  One could always find reruns of everything from The Honeymooners and Lassie to Star Trek and Gilligan's Island, and everything else in-between.  But a soap opera?  Never.  It was gone forever.  Well, for awhile, mostly.  The Marilyn Ross novels continued for over a year as did the (rather rancid) comic book series and there was Night of Dark Shadows to look forward to.  There was the newspaper comic strip series, but that was not run in our local press.  So we still had some touch with it.  Former actors and actresses who were featured in movies, particularly on TV, were advertised as "seen on Dark Shadows," including Jonathan Frid on The Devil's Daughter and Grayson Hall on Gargoyles.  So we had knock-offs and reminders, but eventually all that ended and DS was gone.  Forever.

That's hard on someone who found it a beloved part of his or her life.  It was like having the rug pulled out from under you.  Then, over 10 years later, when I was living in Las Vegas, at 10:30 at night, to my shock and surprise, a local station aired an episode and I was elated.  It ran every night for six months and my DS was back, if only for a shortwhile.  A few years later, when I was living in Tucson, at ten in the morning, there it was again on another local station.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  When I relocated to Anchorage, a year later the Sci-Fi network began airing and was, fortunately, added to the local cable provider.  I'll never forget setting my VCR and coming home from work and then being able to spend more than the next decade watching it over and over and over again.

But I never thought any of that would've happened that April day in 1971.  It was gone - forever.

Gerard

[Lydia]

It was gone - forever.

Yes, exactly.  I was so sad.  But what a joy to watch it on tape, nearly twenty years later, and find it was as good as I remembered - in fact, better!

[Gothick]

I lived in a town where what I believe to have been the first relay of syndication started in early 1976.  What was odd about that was they began with the episode where Willie releases Barnabas from his coffin, in 1967.  I had never seen those episodes since I did not begin watching till June of 1968.  It wasn't until the videotapes came out in the 1990s that I was finally able to see again more than just one or two of the 1968 episodes, and see my personal first episode of the show again.

G.

[Gerard]

After it went off the air, I held onto the hope that it would be brought back, even as a weekly, one-hour prime-time series.  That lasted for about a year (hopeless romantic that I was).

Then, one night, I was all psyched and ready to watch the premier of ABC's Movie of the Week The Night Stalker.  I heard it - that soundtrack that was obviously Robert Colbert.  I shouted:  "That's Dark Shadows music!"  As the opening credits rolled, I saw all those familiar names including Dan Curtis.  I was ecstatic.  I quickly grabbed my cassette recorder (I had gotten it as a Christmas gift), popped in a tape, held the microphone up to the TV speaker and began taping.  I didn't have enough tape to record the whole thing, but I got much of it.  I would then spend hours listening to it.  In a way, DS had returned.  Throughout the years, there were other Dan Curtis DSish cinematic treats, whether on TV or on the big screen, from such fare as Dracula and The Turn of the Screw to Burnt Offerings.

Gerard

[Gothick]

Gerard, I would always get so excited whenever I would hear a cue from DS on another program, after the show went off the air.  I don't remember the music from Night Stalker so much, but I do remember the string of productions DC did for that ABC late night slot that were dramatic adaptations of Dorian Gray, Frankenstein, and others.  They all had the old DS cues which he recycled for the score.  Even when DS was still on, he did the same thing for Dead of Night/Darkness at Blaisedon (a personal favorite in my home).

The strangest instance of this was at some point in, I think, the early 1990s, all of a sudden DS cues were being played during some Saturday Night Live skits.  I didn't watch often enough to be able to report how frequently this happened, but the one or two times I experienced it, it was a very strange thing to see and hear on the TV.

G.

[Philippe Cordier]

The strangest instance of this was at some point in, I think, the early 1990s, all of a sudden DS cues were being played during some Saturday Night Live skits.

I remember that moment on "Saturday Night Live" too. I think the music was from "Josette's Music Box." Did that happen as late as the 1990s? I recall that the audience reacted to the music with a mixture of awe and laughter, obviously recalling it. That's why I wonder if this incidence was really more than 20 years after the series.

I really don't remember anything specifically about "Dark Shadows" ending. It must have been near the end of the school year, and in our location I remember that "DS" aired at 3 p.m., and school was dismissed at either 3:10 or 3:15. There were times that I ran home from school, through the park, and managed to catch .... about the last five minutes of the show, which was a disappointment and almost not worth it. So while I have a vague thought or memory of disappointment upon hearing that the series was ending, I wasn't able to watch it anyway at that time (and wasn't supposed to watch it, either).

I never completely forgot "Dark Shadows," and when I was living in the SF Bay area in 1982-84, I was startled one night, late at night, to flip the TV channel and stumble upon DS airing on the local PBS station, I think it was. The thrill and memories returned instantly, and I was able to watch quite a few episodes over some time (it was during the part about the Leviathan book, which I had no previous memories about), and then I don't know what happened - school got in the way or the broadcasts ceased or both. But I do recall excitedly telling some of my college friends about it and everyone brightened up right away and remembered the show fondly and with instant recognition and interest.