DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '24 I => Current Talk '13 I => Topic started by: Joeytrom on April 23, 2013, 04:35:32 PM
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This site has a list of the most disturbing television shows ever:
http://io9.com/8-tv-episodes-that-qualify-as-psychological-warfare-476802212
Are there any episodes of DS that you would put into this category?
For me, its the episode when David runs out of the mausoleum he was trapped in and into the hands of Barnabas. It's running from one danger right into the one person you are scared of that could kill and dispose you easily.
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When Edward's reassuring Jamison that he's not Petofi, and that he really has both his hands, and then Jamison's now-fake prosthetic hand comes off in Edward's.
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I found some of the episodes where Barnabas has Maggie prisoner in the Old House and is trying to brainwash her into being his "new Josette" to be among the creepiest, skin-crawlingly disturbing things ever done on the series. It's the period where Frid was basically walking off a cliff every day with feeling overwhelmed with the pace of it all and the nervousness kicks up this disturbingly realistic look of mingled craving and hysteria in Barnabas' eyes in some of his scenes with her.
Later on when she finally escapes and he hasn't realized it yet, he's going down to kill her and he's soliloquizing "I could have loved you... but now you must die!" and through the melodrama there's a vein of sick psychodrama that's chilling.
Later on they repeated the Maggie kidnapping a couple of times, notably with Pennock in his Yeagar persona, and even when Yeagar was obsessively licking Maggie's jewelry it wasn't as disturbing as the original Barnabas scenario in 1967.
G.
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Barnabas putting Maggie in the coffin was pretty strong stuff, as was Barnabas beating Willie.
David possessed by Quentin acting seductively toward Maggie still makes my skin crawl.
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It's the period where Frid was basically walking off a cliff every day with feeling overwhelmed with the pace of it all and the nervousness kicks up this disturbingly realistic look of mingled craving and hysteria in Barnabas' eyes in some of his scenes with her.
Thanks for that, G. I didn't know the background of this.
Of course, a lot of us didn't know then that there are people who do vaguely similar things in real life, without the vampire element, kidnaping women and putting them in cells... Now I equate Barnabas and Maggie more to that, than I do to monster movie conventions. So yes, the whole thing is very disturbing. It's not the first time DS did it, either. I think the last few hours or minutes (hard to tell time in early DS) of Matthew Morgan get far too "real" for comfort. [spoiler]He rambles about killing mercifully, then chooses an axe, and a small one, so it will take a million blows. We see him going psychotically violent in front of our eyes.
The end of Dave Woodard, totally unexpected, morality warped and turned inside out, that is definitely on the list.[/spoiler]
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Perhaps Ester should take up knitting instead of blithering nonsense like this or even watching these kinds of shows.
I personally can't think of any eppy of Dark Shadows that is disturbing in nature.
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Episode 735. Trask with Rachel in the mausoleum.
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When I was a kid I was not allowed to watch DS. I'm going to recount two "episodes" exactly as I remember them. I've seen the show since and now realize my memory is faulty. We tend to reconstruct events in our minds, often filling in gaps with erroneous data.
Memory 1-"Quentin" was chained to a wall after claiming he's not a werewolf. His hand changes and he rages against the chains trying to get out. The screams were hellish.
Memory 2-David finds a noose and is playing with it. It puts itself around his neck and he's slowly being strangled.
I think most of you will recognize the fractured plot points that were the genesis of these faulty memories. I still snuck glimpses whenever I could, but I payed for them at night.
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Because the tone was so different than what we'd seen on the show before, the scene when the original Willie Loomis cornered Carolyn in the drawing room was a bit jarring. It went beyond a garden variety masher annoying someone.
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I found the first couple of episodes in 1995 to be genuinely unnerving.
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As an adult I found the episode in which Miranda quotes Judah Zachary saying "God is dead! Long live Lucifer!" both chilling and powerful. If it had been a DS motion picture it would not have had the same power, but knowing the strict TV restraints, it gave a chilling realism to the moment. TV is a less is more medium. Previously the villains on DS had danced around the name of their master. Using the name made it a tad chiling for me.
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As a kid watching during the original run, the most disturbing moment (that stuck with me even after the episode was over) was when Yaegar physically molested Maggie.
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"Ring"
scaaaariiieestttt!
Patti
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I don't watch the Yaeger episodes for this reason. In fact, one would have to physically force me to watch those episodes. I love the first part of PT, but it goes down hill as soon as the experiments start. Yaeger is the only character on the show that I find distasteful. I just don't feel he belongs in the DS universe. Barnabas was insane in the early episodes, but his actions had nothing on Yaeger's.
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The bit where Cyrus fondled Maggie Collins' glove or scarf was pretty creepy. But I think that the ultimate was the Thanksgiving day eve cliffhanger where Nicholas Blair placed Maggie on the altar and was offering her up to the devil. Some wedding present, huh?
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For me, as a kid watching the original, Yaeger's assault (let's say it - he raped her) of Buffy Harrington, who was one of my favorite "B-List" characters, was very unnerving. Of course, I didn't understand fully what had happened when I watched it, but something made my skin crawl. When I was older and saw it again, I knew fully what had occured and that made it even creepier. Although it was "unspoken" when it first aired, that was pretty heavy stuff for a daytime soap back then; I'm surprised the censors allowed it. Was that the first time such a horrible thing happened on a soap? Another DS "first?"
Also, as already mentioned, Barnabas finding the terrified and traumatized Maggie after she escaped, pulling her up by her arm as she screamed, ready to kill her, also was highly disturbing to me when I first saw it. It still is. I remember when Barnabas was the original fiend as he was initially suppose to be, brilliantly tempered by his anguish of being what he was.
Gerard
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I agree gerard...
the buffy harrington character/storyline was in a general of a more "adult" sensibility than some of the more adolescent plotting. and the scene you describe, with it's undercurrents of sadomasochism, was striking in it's sexual frankness given the time and the perimeters the series had set for itself.
and the early barnabas/maggie stuff was highly disturbing in it's cruelty and sadisticness. even if we were not dealing with a "vampire", take that element out of it completely, and have it just be about a man trying to turn a defenseless woman into the image of a dead lover, through the complete eradication of her own identity, was strong stuff. that imagery was indelible for me and in later storylines when they attempted to pair the two up romantically I couldn't get past it and found it revolting.
needless to say the murder of doctor woodard was shocking in it's bleakness and profound sense of betrayal and despair. it's almost overpowering to watch.
and in a similar vein to the yeager/buffy scenes adam's strongly implied attempted sexual assault of carolyn(although, again, the word "rape" was never spelled out in specifics)was pretty stunning too.
because the supernatural stuff was so far out and, in some cases, even rather ridiculous, I've always found the incidents of more human cruelty to be more disturbing than anything else. when those scenes were well played they were quite shocking.
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Cyrus/Yaeger's attraction and abduction of Maggie really disturbed me. Yaeger's delusions (helped by 'Alexis') that he could make Maggie fall magically in love with him the longer he held her prisoner and the more sadistic he got with her (like forcing her to write a farewell note to Quentin by threatening to kill her hubby) was really scary, maybe because it is a scenario that could (and probably has) happen in real life.
But the fact that Cyrus started developing the same sick obsession was really frightening....he's supposed to be the 'good' one when in fact he wouldn't mind stabbing his supposed best friend Quentin in the back, (not to mention fiancée Sabrina) by acting on his attraction to Maggie.
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They really were the same person, that's the important thing.
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As Magnus said, they were the same person, but "good" Cyrus would never have acted upon it.