DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '24 I => Current Talk '08 II => Topic started by: Taeylor Collins on July 09, 2008, 02:22:36 AM
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[ghost_azn] Okay. So my brother and his boyfriend have watched Season 1 of the 1991 version. So I told them that could basically stop us from watching the first 400 and something episodes. They just don't want to commit to 1225. I know I will have to explain a few things...but it could serve as a sequel to the 1991 show. I think that is why I took to the original. I was hungry for more DS. So it was like watching a continuation for me. I started watching the original DS and I started with after 1795, cause I had just seen it all rehashed on 1991. I however went back later and watched the first 400 and something ep's and equally loved as well.
What are some good points I came make about how great DS can be and convince him. My brother is on board, so we wanna try and get his significant other there. He complains he has a hard time getting into "OLD" shows. One good thing though, (the boyfriend) He loves Grayson. Any definitive Grayson ep's one would recommend , please do. Thanks ;) Any suggestions are welcome. I know him well and I think he would be on board if he gave it a shot. It's getting him there. Some people are predjuice against old shows. I have never understand that. DS went off in 1971 and I was born in 1977, but I still appreciate the show and LOVE it.
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[ghost_grin]
I always find that tying someone up & putting clamps on their eyes a'la Clockwork Orange is a great way to get them to watch!
Seriously, though, tell them both to put the show in it's historic context.
In the 1960s, no other soap had special effects or period episodes~~DS was YEARS ahead of it's time.
OK, sometimes it look a little cheesy by today's standards, but even by 2008 standards, storylines like 1795, 1897
and the 1967 intro of Barnabas have some magnificent
writing and really terrific character acting.
Enjoy watching!
David
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over the years i have tried with limited success to get friends and coworkers into the show.
because the storyline is relatively easy to follow i usually start them with the 1967 episodes(as opposed to something much more convoluted like 1897).even like-minded friends claim to "enjoy" these episodes and certainly get a kick out of the datedness of it but that's generally it.they don't or can't commit to more.
i think the massive volume of episodes and the show's serialized format make it hard to view casually.the episodes don't really stand on their own if you don't understand the context.it has to be followed regularly and watched sequentially for it to make sense.not everyone wants to make that kind of commitment...and i can understand that.there is no other show i would ever want to sit through over 1200 episodes of.just watching it through once took me over five years and there are still episodes i haven't seen.
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I have learned through years of experience if someone doesn't want to watch the same show/shows or movies that you do, and if they're really so gung-ho about it, you just can't convince them to give it a chance. [ghost_azn]
No one in my family other than my mom has ever seen a single episode of DS despite my occasional "Why not give it a try?" remarks. My mom used to be a DS fan when it was first on the air but even she isn't into it very much anymore. Alas, I am the only DS fanatic in my family. Ah, well. [ghost_mellow]
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Considering how often people say that they're alone in their love for DS among their friends and family, I guess I'm really lucky that almost everyone I know watches or at least watched the show and either continues to do so or remembers it fondly. Actually, I recently discovered that a colleague that I do volunteer work with on the advisory committees at a local school graduated from Salve Regina University, lived in Carey Mansion, and is still a big fan. Let me tell you, we were already good friends, but learning that bonded me with her even more so than we already were. [ghost_smiley] And she has great Carey Mansion stories. Maybe one day I'll convince her to join the forum to share them firsthand.
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If someone only likes new shows, and allows bad special effects to get in the way of drama, he or she is shallow.
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Agreed. I may make the occasional crack about how DS's SFX look now (particularly what I like to call simply "Angelique's Floatin' Head"), but I can appreciate it as being revolutionary for TV in 1967.
Though it is in my profile, I've been wary of discussing my age here before, as I thought it might attach a negative stigma to me (I'm a long-time member of a forum that has many very ageist members, and I rarely visit their public boards now because of said ageism), but I feel a bit more comfortable discussing it now that the (fantastic) community here has seemingly accepted me so much, so here we go.
I'm 14. That's not a typo, and I'm not kidding; I was born 28 years after the original and 3 after the revival. My mother was a big fan when the show first aired, and the reruns on the Sci-Fi Channel were morning staples in the house, though I was too young to fully appreciate them. She'd told me a bit about the show and I decided I wanted to get in on it, so I offered the suggestion of signing up for Netflix to get the series, which we did, along with buying a few collections.
Where my age comes into play here is the fact that my friends are around the same age as me, so the majority of them have never even heard of Dark Shadows. Most of them have proven themselves mature enough to accept older movies and TV shows, but I've had horrible luck convincing them to watch Buffy (not that it's an "older" TV show by any stretch of the imagination), which is only 144 episodes long, as opposed to DS's 1,225, so I haven't even bothered to attempt luring them into DS. The only thing I've ever been successfully able to bait someone into was the anime series Death Note, which is only 37 episodes long, plus I had the help of a friend who was also a fan (who, coincidentally, hooked me on it, despite the fact that I generally dislike anime).
In addition to this, my already scornful grandparents seem to think even less of me than they did before ever since I started watching DS, even flat-out telling me that I shouldn't watch the show. They have a big thing against fiction dealing with the supernatural in a non-religious context, and have simply refused to watch even the first storylines with no supernatural elements. But I don't really care what they think. I enjoy the show, and if they have a problem with it, well, that's just too bad.
So I basically live in a situation where convincing anyone to watch DS is impossible. In the case of your brother and his partner, I'd say that it's probably impossible to get them into it. Some people just can't be convinced to get into something, and when that something has over a thousand episodes, the likelihood of them being convinced is even lower. My best (and only) advice is to make sure it's always playing on your TV whenever you have either of them over. With any luck, they'll get hooked on something they see in that time.
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Oh, yes, a 14-year-old who loves DS, and thinks, and expresses himnself well in actual sentences and everything... there's a real stigma against that here! How dare you presume to join us here!
I'll just add that viewers trying out the show don't have to commit to watching the entire run. That's intimidating, it sounds like a job. People sample one episode of something, then maybe catch a couple more.... I showed a friend an 1897 episode, the one where the Hand and Evan Hanley encounter each other. He called it "hokey". I think some people these days need a sort of light jokiness going most of the time and if things are played straight, they don't like it.
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I'm an 'old timer' [ghost_cheesy] in age but still work 'watching' the show into various situations where I have the opportunity to do so. I work in a call-center that tracks credit card fraud and if I speak to someone from Maine or the New England I almost always mention the show and drop the big hint that there are dvd's of the episodes available. Some people are pretty enthusiastic and want more details and others just stifle a yawn.
I was at a library once where I used to live checking out some DS videos and the librarian said she remembered the show and it not being really scarry at all. I guess some people just don't get it [ghost_tongue]
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Maybe my friends are weird, but I've gotten 3 seperate people into the show by watching a good episode while they happen to be over, and they subsequently ask me to borrow DVD sets, or specifically ask me to turn it on when we are watching tv.
In particular, I've found that if you watch the episode where Barnabas is released from the coffin with someone, this will get him or her at least moderately interested. Even the most casual watcher must wonder "how the hell did he get chained in the coffin?". Well, as long as they have some level of appreciation for horror/scifi stories ... Of course I don't tell them it will be a LONG time before you find the answer to that question...
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Oh, yes, a 14-year-old who loves DS, and thinks, and expresses himself well in actual sentences and everything... there's a real stigma against that here! How dare you presume to join us here!
[ghost_cheesy] As I said, the only forum I've really frequented in the past had lots of members who thought that if you were under 18, you were automatically an idiot and that your opinion meant nothing. I didn't know what to expect from this forum, so I've been cautious about mentioning my age in the past, but I've been accepted quite fully, as the members here have proved to apparently be about 50 IQ points higher than the people on said other forum, so I'm pleased with that.
I did think that simply having the show on would be the best way to lure someone in.
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My wife was never a DS fan. She has never liked the idea of my staying up late watching television. In our bedroom we only have basic cable. So she suggested that I watch my Dark Shadows DVDs, DS: The Beginning series. So now I watch my favorite nightcap TV show before going to sleep and she lays there and watches it with me. I can't tell if she's getting into it or not yet.
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[ghost_smiley]
Hey Goober:
you are far more sophisticated & eloquent than I was at 14~~you're even moe eloquent than I am now at 52!
To hell with the judgemental bastards~~glad you're here!
David
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I agree we need the young fans to carry on the DS tradition when us old farts fade away. [ghost_wub]
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Heh, I'll be considered a 14-year-old old fart when the movie comes out. I'll likely spend most of my time complaining about how *pulls out cane and uses old man voice* "there's no Dark Shadows but the original, and there's no Barnabas but Jonathan Frid, you whippersnappers with your Tim Burton and your Johnny Depp!"
you are far more sophisticated & eloquent than I was at 14~~you're even moe eloquent than I am now at 52!
To hell with the judgemental bastards~~glad you're here!
Thank you very much, David! I really appreciate that.
I was at a library once where I used to live checking out some DS videos and the librarian said she remembered the show and it not being really scarry at all. I guess some people just don't get it [ghost_tongue]
No, apparently they don't, if they thought that the point of the show was terror. It was a show about people more than it was about horror.
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I was considered a weirdo back in 1970 among my friends because I was still watching DS when just about everyone else I knew had given up on the show. Since then, I've always been wary about attempting to "introduce" anyone to the show.
And I find it refreshing whenever a teenager writes in about loving the show. Without people such as yourself, no one will really care about preserving the legacy of our show! Despite the role DS played in pop cultural history of the Sixties, I do think the shows have a "timeless" quality about them.
Grayson's episodes during the first six weeks or so of Leviathan are stellar. One of my favorites is the one that is sort of a duet between herself and Nancy, when Julia is fretting over what happened to Barnabas in 1897 and psychically hears the voices of Magda and Charity talking about the disappearances of Barnabas and Kitty in the drawing room. Great stuff.
cheers! Gothick
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Goober, you are very wise for your old age. [ghost_wink]
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Thanks, JS. [ghost_smiley]
In response to Gothick, I'm still considered something of a weirdo by some people for liking what I like. "You're 14, shouldn't you be watching Nickelodeon, not 40-year-old soaps?" Personally, I think that family networks would do well to have programming like DS. I've attempted to watch the current lineups, and one of the (many) despicable things about them is that there's not enough "spooky" programming for children. Kids of the 60s watched DS, and I, as a kid of the 90s, watched Are You Afraid of the Dark?. There are no "spooky" shows on now that are really appropriate for children. Though DS wasn't a children's show by any means, the millions of people who "ran home from school" certainly liked it, and, with the possible exception of things like the Head of Judah Zachery (which would have traumatized me when I was 7 or so), it wasn't really too intense for them, in terms of themes, violence, or sexuality. But I'm getting off-topic here.
I agree that DS has a timeless quality, especially since they did so many of the arcs set in the past. The only ones that I really think are dated are the Leviathan, 1970PT, and Ghosts of G&D arcs, where you occasionally hear slang words circa 1970, like "groovy," being used by hipsters like Hallie, Bruno, and Sky.
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Around here we know better than to look down on teenagers simply because they're teenagers because some of the most articulate and thoughtful members of the forum have been teenagers. I've personally been blown away in the past by the keen insights of some so young yet mature beyond their years. Which is not to say that all teenagers are articulate/thoughtful/insightful - I've taught high school, so I know for certain that's not true [ghost_cheesy] - but for whatever reason DS seems to attract a fair percentage of the ones who are. And quite frankly we'd be extremely remiss not to accept/welcome them with open arms. [ghost_smiley]
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[ghost_wink]
But there's one thing that I'm sorry you missed out on Goober~~that mad dash home from school every day!
Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end!
David
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as a kid of the 90s, watched Are You Afraid of the Dark?.
Hey goober did you watch that in syndication? 'Cause I remember watching that and I was a little kid at the time ... By the way I'm a next generation fan of DS too so hopefully there are more of us and DS will still have a following decades from now ...
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Well I am glad I started this thread. Some great feedback. Good to see you "come out" Goober. My brother loves DS and partner loved the 1991 version. We all talked last night and we are gonna give a STORYLINE a shot. We are gonna start with Victoria's return because it's basically picking up where the new show left off. A few things will have to mentioned and explained. 1968 and 1969 years you can't get any better so maybe they will get hooked maybe they won't. GOOBER, we are currently watching Buffy and they love it. It took a bit of conviving there, but now THEY ARE HOOKED. We are in our 30's. I can't believe some people believe Buffy is too old. LORD. There are some bad effects, but STORY is what always carries a good show. RIGHT? Thanks for everyone great comments!
I guess I am second generation. It all still confuses me.
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Taeylor:
a few key eps from the original I'd suggest the three of you watch before moving on to Vicki's return:
1. In 1967, Barnabas tells Carolyn & Vicki about Josette's death. (Listen to the Wind, such a sorrowful sound......)
2. Barnabas' first night as a vampire
3. Death of Josette
4 Josette rises from the grave
5. Trask gets walled up in the Old House
though these plot points were covered in 91, these five
eps are flawless, spooky, and will help reel them in.
In particular, your bro' and his BF will fully understand the hypnotic
magnetism of Frid's Barnabas from the first two eps I'm suggesting.
Happy Watching!
David
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Goober, anyone who grabs for some simple excuse like numerical age to justify treating someone else's opinions as worthless has to be desperate to raise himself up by pushing others down, because he doesn't have anything real to be proud of in himself.
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Thanks to everyone. :)
I can't believe some people believe Buffy is too old.
I apologize, I phrased that poorly in my last post. They just won't watch the show for whatever reason; it's not because it's too old for them. Some of them have caught the reruns occasionally due to my prodding, but I've failed to convince anyone to actually get the DVDs and watch the thing straight through.
As per Garth Blackwood's question about whether or not I watched AYAotD? in syndication or not, I'm not sure, but I likely did. I watched it on Nickelodeon in the late 90's; I'm not sure precisely how old I was. In an interesting parallel to DS, despite my having been born more for the time of the second Midnight Society on AYAotD? I always preferred the first one, and despite being born closer to the DS revival, I've always preferred the original.
MagnusTrask, I thoroughly agree. It was an enormous annoyance to me whenever I saw in someone's profile something like, "Don't contact me in a private thread if you are under the age of 18." And it certainly couldn't be that they only wanted to discuss more adult topics, as that site had fairly strictly enforced rules against that.
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The formula for convincing neophytes to watch DARK SHADOWS is fairly simple.
Take one hard stare, apply it liberally to the subject, then say, very forcefully, "You must."
Repeat as needed.
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How didn't the rest of us think of that, Mark? Especially when that has to be the most often repeated imperative on DS! [lghy]
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Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end!
We'd sing and dance forever and a day!
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He complains he has a hard time getting into "OLD" shows. One good thing though, (the boyfriend) He loves Grayson. Any definitive Grayson ep's one would recommend , please do.
Okay, from this middle-aged gay man who watched DS in 1968-1971, just tell them both that they're not really gay unless they can appreciate older movies, color or B&W, and not just DS but all those great old Bette Davis/Marilyn Monroe/Joan Crawford/Doris Day--dare I add more?--movies. It's not all about Andrew Lloyd Webber or Madonna. You're not a real "gay" until you can appreciate the history of entertainment that speaks to gays. And more: drag queens used to do showtunes and actually sing live! That's real drag! (Not "To Wong Foo" or "Priscilla" but "Outrageous.") And Julia Hoffman is the ultimate drag queen - just because she's played by a woman doesn't mean she's not a queen!. LOL. What else? Oh, yeah, "Satan in High Heels." "Polly Magoo?" Oh..and one more...they should check out the Carmen Miranda DVD collection. Now there's a real female drag queen!!! who came years before Julia Hoffman. LOL. and IMHO. Brian
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I'm 14. That's not a typo, and I'm not kidding... my already scornful grandparents seem to think even less of me than they did before ever since I started watching DS, even flat-out telling me that I shouldn't watch the show. They have a big thing against fiction dealing with the supernatural in a non-religious contex..
Goober...not to disparage your grandparents, but my parents (born in 1936/1937) were always supportive of my interests, including DS in 1969, and had no problem with me watching it when i was only 12-13 years old. Dad sometimes watched, too, and he always fondly rememebed "Barnaby" Collins (his memory of the character's name). In fact, my great-grandmother, born in 1896!, sometimes watched it with me. And she enjoyed it, too!! Stand by your interests and continue to do your best to educate your family about being open-minded and non-judgemental -- which is one of the things that DS taught me!
Brian
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Stand by your interests and continue to do your best to educate your family about being open-minded and non-judgemental -- which is one of the things that DS taught me!
Having known my grandparents for 14 years, and knowing what kind of people they are, the only thing that'll make them more open-minded is a few swings of Julia's medallion.
Take one hard stare, apply it liberally to the subject, then say, very forcefully, "You must."
Repeat as needed.
I must try that sometime. [ghost_happy]
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Stand by your interests and continue to do your best to educate your family about being open-minded and non-judgemental -- which is one of the things that DS taught me!
I really have to know: what aspect of DS taught you this lesson? Was it Quentin's legendary interest in brandy that his family was so closed-minded about? Or maybe how Barnabas struggled to convince Edward, for example, that he was still cool eventhough he was a vampire?
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Goober, I am cackling wildly at the thought of your swinging Julia's medallion in front of your folks while murmuring "Find the center of the light!" and somebody shrieking "Dear God, that thing is Satan's own bauble!"
I watch WAY too many hyper-melodramatic old movies... (I have been watching the wonderful old Boris Karloff "Thriller" series--I highly recommend it to all fans of DS!)
G.
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I'm convulsing with laughter from the last two posts. [rofl10]
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Maybe the grandparents will like Trask. Call it the Trask Show.
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I'm convulsing with laughter from the last two posts. [rofl10]
They have pills for that!! are you ok? ;)
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Maybe the grandparents will like Trask. Call it the Trask Show.
I can just see my grandmother. "Go, Trask! Stake that vampire! Burn that witch!"
No, GB, I think I lost my spleen somewhere along the line. Maybe a lung, too. Oh well, I needed to clean up, anyway. Thanks for the concern, though.
To get people into DS before the new movie, we could possibly hack several websites and replace them with video of DS. [ghost_rolleyes]
Come to think of it, that could work out of cyberspace. If you have a key to your brother's home, go in when he's out and replace all his DVDs with DS. Then lock him in when he gets home.
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Goober, are you sure you're not related to Nicholas Blair? Your last post sounds like the horrifying dreams of an Evil Genius!
Or, as Dr. Hoffman once exclaimed: "That's monstrous!" To which Blair sneeringly riposted: "It is MEANT to be."
*wink*
G.
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Your last post sounds like the horrifying dreams of an Evil Genius!
Thank you for the compliment! I, however, just prefer to think of myself as someone who thinks... outside the box.
Seriously, though, the best approach is probably just to have anyone you want to get in on the show over at your place while you have the show on your television.
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Yay! It really warms the cockles of my heart (whatever those are) to learn that an intelligent, articulate 14-year-old is way into Dark Shadows! Glad to know that the show will live on. It's great to hear what you think about the show, Goober!
I guess I'm a second generation fan (45 yrs old); although I saw a bit of the show as a kid, really got into it during the Sci-Fi run. Oh, and btw - the head of Judah Zachery ruined me when I was 7 or 8. Still scared of disembodied heads. [ghost_undecided]
A few friends (and my husband) have been known to watch it with me, but it's more of a curiousity to them than anything else. Oh, they enjoy it and everything, and will sometimes ask to watch it when we're hanging out, but they're not seeking it out on their own.
I do have two friends who are into Dark Shadows, but both of them are a little older than I and are actually first generation run-home-from-school fans. Each of them has a couple dvd sets, and when we see each other (we live in different cities), we watch. Always trying to convince them to get more of the dvd's. Maybe now I know what to get them for Xmas! [ghost_smiley]
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Thanks. :)
Actually, all of DS would have probably ruined me at 7 or 8. I had a paralyzing fear of vampires at that age. I saw an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? (The Tale of the Midnight Madness) about a vampire that scared me out of my skin. [yikes] I've obviously gotten over it.
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I can just see my grandmother. "Go, Trask! Stake that vampire! Burn that witch!"
Now I'm picturing them in makeshift bleachers in cheerleader outfits with a big "T" on them, shaking pom poms at the TV.
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Some of the great episodes to see. I think the episodes where Maggie is in the room
in the basement when she was kidnapped. The shows when Barnabas is trying to make
Julia think that she is mad. The episode in 1967 in black and white were very suspenseful and had great chemistry. That is where the show really began to grow.
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yeah, for me it would be the show where barnabas tells victoria and carolyn about josette's death.
also the episode in which julia [spoiler]gets the harassing phone calls from barnabas masquerading as dave woodard's ghost.
and i love the episode where nicholas blair turns angelique's hand into a skeleton.
lets see, what else? oh yes, the whole sequence with the psychic medium janet findley and the ghost of quentin. that is really chilling, to me anyway.
and i love the beginning of 1897, when barnabas first shows up as a "cousin from england". again.[/spoiler]
and any interaction between barnabas and angelique. these are the kind of things i like to show to friends, and my partner. they are all curious about dark shadows, maybe i can ramp up their interest. the 1897 storyline is really compelling. think that's a good place to start?
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I wouldn't go for separate episodes. I would show the beginning of 1897, starting with episode #701 and continuing for several episodes. It's good storytelling, and although Barnabas makes reference to 1969, on the whole there's very little back story that you would have to tell your friends, because at that point the characters were as new to long-time viewers as they were to first-timers. Eventually you would have to explain to your friends about 1969 Collinwood, but if they're not sucked in by that time, they'll never be.
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I just recently introduced DS to a friend of mine, and we started with the arrival of Barnabas. We're trying to go through that, plus all of 1795. If something happens she wants to watch more, than we'll probably skip to 1897 (never a dull moment in that one).
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I once got a friend to watch some DS, she seem to liked it alot. But that's back the sci-fi channel still showed reruns. That is the only person I ever got to watch DS.