first episodes

[michael c]

when i saw today's slideshow for episode #85 i had good reason for getting a bit nostalgic.

it was the very first episode of dark shadows that i ever saw!i'll never forget it.i saw it at a time when the sci-fi channel aired the show at 11:00pm.i remember being completely mesmerized by it and it was the starting point of this whole thing.

i commented on it extensively at 'luciaphil's idle thoughts'...which disappointingly seem to have stopped.

i think i'll dig it up at watch it at 11:00 tonight.

does anyone else remember the very first episode they saw?

[proudhug]

I was at a friend's house one day several years ago and we had the TV on Sci-Fi, waiting for my favorite show "Earth 2" to come on.  I saw some old, black and white, extremely cheap, video-taped show on beforehand and asked him what this was.  He said he thought it was "Dark Shadows" but he'd never watched it.

Later that night when I went home, my curiosity about that show was still with me so I went online and read about all about "Dark Shadows."  I must've spent two days straight reading Mr. Juggins' site.  What a cool friggin' show!  I checked the Sci-Fi schedule online and found out they had recently started over from the beginning.  I don't remember anymore which episode it was that I'd seen, but I remember it had Bill Malloy in it.  I didn't get the Sci-Fi Channel myself, so I went to Amazon and ordered the first volume of the Collector's Series VHS tapes.  I watched it when it came and instantly fell in love.  I was so disappointed that I didn't have more episodes, so I ordered all the way up to Volume 10!

While waiting for the next batch of episodes to arrive, I kind of forgot about the show for a bit, but when they came, I quickly gobbled down those episodes and when it ended with Bill's body being found at the foot of Widow's Hill, I vowed never again to let myself catch up to the number of episodes I've got purchased.  After the Collector's Series ran out, I naturally switched over to getting the DVDs... and the rest is history!

I guess the reason why I like the early episodes so much is because I was one of the fans lucky enough to actually see the show from the beginning their first time.

[PennyDreadful]

  I distinctly remember the first episode I saw.  It was the episode where Willie lets Barnabas out of the coffin.  I'll never forget watching that.  I was around 10 years-old.  My uncle, who had been a big fan of the show in the 60s, managed to get some really grainy second generation bootleg video tapes of the show from a friend (this was in the early 80s when DS could only be seen in syndication).  My mom and I happened to be visiting my uncle at the time, and he was rabidly excited about having gotten ahold of Dark Shadows tapes.  I had always heard him talk about the show as I was growing up, but had never actually seen it.

   He popped in the tape to show me Dark Shadows.  I watched as Willie stumbled upon the secret room in the mausoleum.  I sat, transfixed, as he broke away the chains with that greedy, hungry look in his eyes. And then... THEN... that pale hand reached out of the coffin grabbed the terror-stricken graverobber by the throat.  My jaw was agape - Willie wasn't the only one who had been grabbed by the throat.  I was terrified. I was fascinated. I was hooked!  My uncle, enjoying my petrified captivation, left the tape running and we watched the next episode - when Barnabas came to Collinwood. I'll never forget, already knowing full-well that this guy was a vampire, seeing that ominous smile creep across his face and hearing him intone, "Oh madame, if you would... You may tell her it is Barnabas Collins."
SUCH chills[/b] I tell you!!

     Despite the nightmares, I kept coming back for more.  I couldn't get enough.  Eventually my uncle couldn't get any more tapes, but a year or two later, Channel 58 in Cape Cod started showing DS and I was able to watch every day!  They went right up until 1970 Parallel Time which is where the syndicated episodes ended.

[AndreDuPres]

I think my very first episode was at the tail-end of the Dream Curse plot when Vicki refused to tell her dream to Barnabas.  My mom had been sitting on the couch in our living room (whichnI now fondly call our Drawing Room) while watching some weird 60's soap opera that I had never seen much less heard about.  I remember sitting down next to her and beginning to watch the show myself.  I was especially fascinated with Cassandra and Nicholas when they had a little scene in the Drawing Room.  My mom had stepped out of the room and had walked back in, and I was very excited that I had begun to get to know all the characters.  "Mom, this is Cassandra!"  "No, this is Angelique!"  She then proceeded to explain her entire history, and I was hooked.  I began watching the show every day when it came on the Sci-Fi channel, and the rest is history.

[Barnabas'sBride]

I was working in a video store at the time my mom had mentioned to me that I would like the show. They happened to have a volume on VHS and I rented it out. It was volume 9. I took it home and watched it downstairs in the family room at 3:00 AM.  Barnabas actually didn't appear in those episodes. It was the Jason McGuire storyline, with Elizabeth's almost wedding to him. My only glimpse of Barnabas was at the end of the last episode on the tape, when Jason goes searching for jewels. I was so mad that the tape ended with that.  After that, I knew as soon as I went shopping again that I would buy the first dvd set.

[michael c]

 i too consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to see the show from the very beginning.

the way the show was packaged for sydication(and also the way the videos and dvds are released)starting with barnabas' release cheats viewers of some excellent stories.

i know i would not have enjoyed the later storylines nearly as much if i hadn't had a solid background context in which to put the characters and much of that is established before barnabas' arrival.

since i'm not otherwise interested in tales of vampirism and such it's fortunate that episode #85 was the first episode that i caught.the characters hooked me.if i had originally stumbled across a later episode that focused heavily on one of the supernatural characters i might have turned it off thinking "monster show" not my thing.

[Janet the Wicked]

I'm kicking myself now that I didn't keep the early episodes that I taped from Sci-Fi channel. This morning I read Robservations episode 85 - one of my favorite episodes. Burke and Sam dead drunk and singing in the Blue Whale.

Janet

[Ian]

I distinctly remember the first episode I ever saw. As I can recall, I was spending the day home sick from school. Now, even though I had a nasty stomach virus, of course I'm forbidden from watching television. XD So, naturally, when my parents went to work, I turned on the TV. As I was flipping through the channels, I came across something with an old house at the top of some cliffs. Going inside, I noticed a regal woman in a black gown gloating to her three brothers that she was the new matriarch of the family.

Ahhh...the excellent acting in that episode.

Anyone remember which episode I'm talking about?

[michael c]

ian,

i know exactly what episode you're talking about.i just saw it very recently.you're right that the quality of acting there was excellent.

i loved it when the character you're refering to was compared sarcastically to "katharine of russia".

[Mysterious Benefactor]

i know exactly what episode you're talking about.

I do too. It's one of my all-time favorite DS episodes - and I especially love when a certain sister drags a certain brother out of bed to inform him of her decision to change bedrooms. That scene is priceless! 

The first episode of DS that I ever saw was Ep #311 in September of 1967. Over the weekend a school friend had told me how he and his cousin had watched a show called Dark Shadows on the previous Friday and how it featured a vampire and a ghost. On Monday I tuned in to see David hiding in the coffin and getting trapped in the mausoleum, and Barnabas nearly attacking Vicki on the terrace of Collinwood. Needless to say, I was instantly hooked - so much so that I kept arguing with my mom on the days that she wanted to watch the World Series games rather than letting me watch DS. (But I was never going to win those arguments because the Red Sox were in the WS in '67 and my mom was a HUGE Red Sox fan, so I ended up having to go upstairs to watch DS on my aunt's B&W TV while she went downstairs to watch the WS in color with my mom.  )

[Misa]

The first episode I saw was one set in 1795. Angelique was on it and I was captivated by her. I loved the costumes and everything. On this episode Trask took Vicki and tied her to the tree, saying that this was some kind of test to find out if she was a witch. Then Barnabas and Nathan rescued her. Angelique followed them and use her witchcraft to burn the tree.

I didn't see the show again until the Adam storyline, but I still remembered that episode it was so different from anything I had ever seen before. I just loved it.

Misa

[Julianka7]

I don't recall the exact episode I first saw. I first started watching just before
Laura came on in the early episodes and was hooked.
Julianka

[Sandor]

Mine was the day both Angelique and Barnabas were human (at last)- in 1968 - and Ang, disguised as Cassandra, revealed her true identity (which Barn had suspected all along) as she whipped out a pistol and prepared to shoot Barnabas in the Old House parlor! If I wasn't hooked by then, the next scene took us to Vicki's room, where the portrait of Angelique began to age. Vicki summoned the fabulous Dr. Julia Hoffman (whose striking features immediately haunted me) to surmise the phenomenon. Then the elegant Roger showed up in a smoking jacket. Then a frantic Angelique shows up, pounding on the doors of Collinwood, wanting her portrait back. Then Julia pulled out her stethescope (versus a sedative, for a change). At the age of 6, I thought these were the most tortured, complex but fascinating people I'd ever seen on TV.

[Patti Feinberg]

MB...you had a COLOR! TV in '67?? Wow...only my grandparents had one before '70s.

Some of these remembrances sound great...my first real remembrance of DS was 1967 (I remember where we lived)...just watching the waves crash against rocks @ Collinwood. Waiting for my older sister to get home. I was 3, so I didn't 'get it' at all.

I do distinctly remember Dr. Hoffman though; years later, while channel surfing, I'd see DS on PBS (here in NJ). I would watch for a moment or two, vow faithfully that next Friday at IIRC 10:30pm I'd tune in....of course at least a month would transpire before I'd see it again.

I really didn't see DS until most recent Sci-Fi run (? starting in 1998ish/99?)

Who'dathunk that by watching 'an old show' that I'd be online and make such nice friends!!

      

Patti

[Luciaphile]

i commented on it extensively at 'luciaphil's idle thoughts'...which disappointingly seem to have stopped.

They're more stalled at the moment. Unfortunately, my job has kept me terribly busy and I just had some major stuff go down in my family. Despite being named "Idle Thoughts," they're also no longer idle to write. In their original incarnation, they were simply random jottings with no context for plot because I wrote them as SciFi was airing them. Now it takes me a good 5 hours to do 1 column.  Never fear, they will be back...