DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '26 I => Current Talk '04 I => Topic started by: DarkShadowyFigure on January 13, 2004, 03:19:34 AM
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A reference to the pre-Barnabas era of the show(episodes I'd love to have seen) in another thread made me want to ask this- how did you find out about Dark Shadows and when did you first watch the show?
For me, I was told about the show by a classmate back in 6th grade. Most people in my class knew of my interest in all things monsters- horror movies, monster magazines, eerie posters, etc. I was quite surprised that I hadn't heard about a tv show with a vampire as one of it's main characters until one day during recess.
I arrived at the show during the 1795 storyline, around the time of the trial of Victoria Winters, sometime in March '68. I was immediately hooked (I kept asking that classmate for details about prior eps) and stuck with the show til the end. Well, there were eps I missed because of poor tv reception as well as missing parts of shows due to late school bus arrivals in the neighborhood. :(
Thanks in advance for your replies.
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Hi Darkshadowyfigure,
First of all welcome aboard. I have enjoyed your previous comments and I hope you post as often as you wish.
I have thought long and hard about your question since I first discovered Dark Shadows again about three years ago. I'm actually not sure how I first learned about it in it's original run. I had always assumed that I started watching because of friends at school but a couple years ago I was talking to my oldest sister (she is 13 years older than I am), anyway she told me how our oldest brother and her husband who are a both a year older than she is would have her watch the show everyday and then advise them later on what happened in that day's episode. It seems they both had to be at work by 4 and this was before VCR's. (Funny thing is at this time my sister had three infants and I'm sure watching the show wasn't at the top of her priority list. She had three kids in 18 months and none are twins. Her second child was born 2 1/2 months premature but 36 years later that one is just fine and just had a baby of her own). I have a feeling I started watching because of my brother, Pat and my brother-in-law, Ed. I doubt that I'll ever know for sure, though.
From watching the episodes when they last aired I believe I started watching in late '68 or early '69. I have no memory of the Adam/Eve storyline and also had no memory of the Victoria Winters character but I did remember the haunting of the children by Quentin and also Elizabeth being afraid of being buried alive which I learned from the last time the episodes aired is a subplot that went on for about six months.
Great question!!!!!
Murph (who has just posted for the 100th time. I didn't think I would ever make it, it's taken almost two years!!)
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I always maintained that my DS thing started with all the very public TV funerals our generation was subjected to at tender ages. I was 6 when JFK got shot, 10-11 when MLK and RFK went. I developed a semi-morbid, semi-sincere interest in obsequies, cemeteries, history, and ghosts that, while I no longer believe in the latter, I still find entertaining or intriguing or moving, depending on the situation at hand.
I was already aware that the program existed--- I do remember the preview announcements, though I was but a tender young cookie pushing age 9. However, this was 3 years before we got a bigger antenna and new TV, which could pick up the NYC ABC signal better than what we had (our local affiliate never showed it, though they showed the other ABC soaps of the time, AMC, GH, and OLTL.) In any case, DS didn't move into the 4:00 PM time slot for, what? A couple of years anyway.
I DID have one friend, though, who raved on once the Barnabas thing got going. She had me over a couple of afternoons during the 1795 storyline. She tried to explain about Barnbas and how he hated Angelique, but I had the foggy notion that they were the PARENTS of the little girl on the episode ("Sarah", I know now.) But just one look, as the song says, and I was hooked.
However, it was another 6 or so months before my parents finally got the coveted TV and antenna, around the start of the Quentin storyline. Vicki was long gone, and the other 1795 people I vaguely remembered. I caught up by buying "16" magazines (which I still have), but their synopses depended, at that time, upon the spotty memories of fans who contributed. Still, it was good for a start.
I loved all of it, even the Leviathan story so many complain about, if only because I was as tired of seeing the actors in the same Victorian clothes every day, as the actors themselves were, probably, of wearing them. I wanted to look cool as Marie Wallace in her slinky pantsuit and belt when I grew up. (Alas, didn't turn out that way. I'm generally about as cool, fashion-wise, as Mrs. Johnson.)
I even signed the petitions to keep it on the air, though, in a way, I was relieved, because in high school we had a split schedule, and, thanks to there being not even Beta-maxes at the time, I would have missed it anyway in my freshman year. I wasn't involved in after-school stuff at all (like 6 hours a day wasn't ENOUGH time to spend in that place, plus I loathed sports) so I guess if the show had continued, and I was on the day schedule, I suppose, would still have kept up as much as possible, for a few more years, anyway.
There are certain stand-out scenes that I carried in my head for all those desert years that DS was, seemingly, gone forever. Then it came back during the time I was pregnanat and a while after Son was born, so it cheered me up a bit. Then it was gone AGAIN... Then it was back and I saw all I had missed, a couple of times... And now I know other fans, something else that I had missed, because the few local fans that I knew had all moved and we'd lost touch.
And with the Internet, it seems "there will always be someone" out there "with the same button on" as me, like the folksinger Melanie wrote....
L
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Hello all!
I started watching reruns of Dark Shadows in June 2001 not long after the latest run of the series began. I believe it was somewhere around the Bill Malloy murder mystery. I watched it once, and i wasn't interested. But for some reason, I decided to watch it once more when I heard someone talking about it in a yahoo chatroom. The next time I watched it....Yep....I was hooked!..Had to see it everyday and couldn't miss a minute of it!.....ever since then...it's been Dark Shadows-mania!
Needless to say...2001 was a very good year for me!
Adra
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I watched my first episode of DS while on a family vacation. The hotel received the Sci-Fi Channel, our home didn't, so several years passed before I was able to actually view the show regularly.
I had heard about DS from my mother, who knew of my interest in the supernatural and told me stories about a show from her childhood that featured vampires, witches, werewolves, and a mysterious room that could whisk people into a different time. She also recounted the various bloopers: falling or breaking props, wobbling walls, and flubbed lines. It sounded pretty intriguing, so when our cable company finally picked up the Sci-Fi Channel during my freshman year, I started to tape DS.
The first episodes that I taped were set after Maggie's kidnapping but before 1795. Jason Maguire had just been buried and Julia Hoffman was at Collinwood, posing as a historian. Initially, the show really didn't appeal to me as much as I had hoped it would. I felt that the pace was slow, the dialogue repetitive, and the characters not very likeable. However, my feelings changed once 1795 began in earnest. Perhaps the different setting or the change of characters drew me in; I don't know what the magic ingredient was, but it made me a fan and I stuck with the show to the end and through the reruns, attending Festivals and posting on message boards to this day. :)
ProfStokes
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For me, it was really my two older sisters who got me into watching DS. I was around 6 at the time and since they were always watching it, I started watching it too. I got hooked right away. I think it was seeing the ghost of Sarah that really got me hooked because being a small child myself, I could relate to her more than the rest of the cast. I found it so facinating back then to see such a young girl being a ghost.[ghost]
I remember the big fuss my two older sisters made when Quentin arrived on the scene too. They went right out and bought the 45rpm record as soon as the song was released & played it endlessly!!
I found it again sometime in the 80's when it was featured on the NJ Netwood channel. I was so happy to see it airing again, but unfortunately, that was short lived. :-(
This time around I found it in 1999 while I was working full time. The woman I was working with was telling me how her son, who's a real horror buff, was surfing through the channels one day and came across this show that featured werewolves, witches & vampires!! I knew this sounded strangely familiar so I asked her what channel it was on. She told me it was the Sci-Fi channel and she believed it was DS!! I then called up my local cable company right then & there, asked them if they were airing DS, which they were, and then ordered the Sci-Fi channel right away. The rest is history! ;)
Murph Wrote:Murph (who has just posted for the 100th time. I didn't think I would ever make it, it's taken almost two years!!)
Congratulations Murph!![thumb]
Cassandra
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I was in front of the TV the day the first episode aired. My mother had read somewhere that Joan Bennett was going to star in a new soap opera so she made a point of having it on from day one.
The very noir atmosphere of those first episodes was enough to keep me hooked.
High School arrived just about the same time as the Ghost of Quentin Collins.....and that was the end of that. I only re-discovered it on Sci Fi 2 years ago which means I've only seen the majority of the show once.
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I started trying to watch Dark Shadows when I was a really little kid, I think it was during the 1840 storyline. I've loved spooky stuff ever since I can remember. But my grandmother (who cared for my cousin and me during the day) would hit the roof if she caught me changing the channel over to DS, so I saw very little of the show.
When the 1991 revival series began running on NBC, I was fresh out of college, working my first "real" job and still living with my old college roomate. He and I really got into the new series. While renting movies at the video store one night, we found the MPI tapes of the original series and started watching them. I think these were the early Barnabas episodes. We found the pacing slow, but liked the atmosphere and the story of lost love.
Unfortunately, the video store only ended up getting a handful of those MPI tapes, and discontinued buying new ones. We never got to see much more than up to the first color episodes. Around that same time, NBC cancelled the revival series!
Fast forward to 1999. I was at the laundromat folding laundry. They had several televisions there, most of them were tuned into a Spanish language soap opera that was very melodramatic (and perhaps somewhat supernatural?), and set in the 19th century. This reminded me of Dark Shadows, and got me wishing it was still being shown. I didn't have cable, and didn't know it was on somewhere!
The next week, I'm again at the laundromat, flipping through the channels of the nearby television, as I fold more laundry. What should pop on on my screen? The haunting, strains of that theremin laced oh-so-familiar theme song that plays as the ocean waves whip over the rocks at the bottom of Widow's Hill. Oh. My. Goddess. The original Dark Shadows!
When I got home, I called the cable company. "Do you carry the Sci-Fi Channel? Yes? When can you hook me up?"
I began watching just as the Chriswolf storyline started. The rest as they say, is history.
Oh, and btw LorraineAAB, I LOVE your avatar!!! Dark Shadows is my precious, too!
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I remember seeing promos for a new gothic/mystery soap opera on ABC, so I was anticipating it. I watched it in the afternoons until the local affiliate changed it to air the following morning. After that I could only watch it during the summers. Nostalgia-wise, I always think of the intensity of the times when these shows first aired in the sixties.
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My mother had just had my brother and would be home for 6 months. My aunt "Cookie", her sister, had told her that to be sure and watch "Dark Shadows" Monday, becaues Willie, something or other, broke in to a coffin and something was in there. So Monday came, and sure enough, something was in that coffin. I was 10 years old and Barnabas scared the bejeeze out of me. But I had to watch it everyday. And, there was a buzz at the elementary, you have to watch Dark Shadows or you were "uncool". If the truth is known, it was probably me that started that.
Any-who, thus was my love affair with Barnabas. He scared at first, then, I felt sorry for him, then I kinda liked him, and then, at the age of 10 going on 11, I fell in love with him.
Years pasted, and it was on Sci-Fi. I was right there watching it. All of these memories came back to me.
Thank You Jonathan Frid and David Selby. David by the way, was born and raised about 15 miles away from where I live now.
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I found out about it the Summer I turned 10. It was the last year my Mom hired a babysitter to be with my sister and me (she's a year younger than me) during the day in the Summer. Judy was a teenager in high school and was obsessed with DS. She told us stories about Barnabas and Angelique and drew a very clever copy of Angelique's portrait on a blackboard we had in our basement. I well remember her talking about how beautiful Angelique was... and how evil. I think she also talked about the time when Dr. Hoffman tried to cure Barnabas and he aged.
Judy was only around part of the afternoon, and she left before 4, but after a few days I decided to check out DS. The first episode I saw was from a few days before the current 1968 start point. It was when Sam Evans died and Prof. Stokes kept him from revealing the Dream Curse to Vicki. Next day was Cassandra's exorcism by Trask's ghost and boy, was I hooked! I had never seen anything like this on TV before.
It all happened back in June 1968.
G.
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Hello,
Sadly I just started watching "Dark Shadows" this past summer on the Sci-Fi channel. I had heard of the show before but all I knew about it was the fact that there was a vampire. I didn't even know his name was Barnabas lol.
1970 PT was what Sci-Fi was showing at the time and I quickly enjoyed the whole John Yeager storyline. I even thought that the characters were real and in real time, that is how little I knew of the show.
I decided to research the show, and so I got on the internet and quickly released there was much more of the show than I thought. I learned about Victoria Winters and all the other characters and time lines. This interested me because I had never seen the shows before Parallel Time, and I wanted to see them.
I then realized that there were DVD Sets out, and I wanted to start with the very first episode. Well since Set 1 starts with episode 210, I decided not to get it because I wanted to see episode 1 to 210 first and then after. After looking over the other Sets, I picked out Set 5 which started the 1795 SL.
This was a good choice, and I quickly became fascinated with the show and formed my favorite character Victoria Winters. Since then I have purchased Sets 5-9, pre-ordered Set 10.
I am currently on the last disk of Set 9. This is where I am today, and I will continue to buy the DVD Sets up to 11, which is Victoria's last appearence. I would love to get Sets 1-4, but I am waiting until they release the early (Pre-Barnabas) episodes, and then I will purchase them.
I hope this story wasn't too boring lol, but I do need help. I haven't decided if I am going to buy any other portions of the show. So far I am just wanting Victoria Winter's run (1966-1968).
What other SL's do you guys suggest I get? I have thought about getting 1970 PT, but that will be down the road when I have extra cash. Set 11 which comes out in March, will be the last Set I get for a while. I am keeping my fingers crossed, and hoping they release the early episodes.
Shane
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Hey guys!
VictoriaWintersFan, I would also reccommend you to get the 1897 episodes when they come out also. 1897 was a really suspenceful time at Collinwood, and there was so much going on.There was Quentin and his "issues",family struggles,infidelity,posessions,hitmen,Crazy Jenny, Laura Collins(my fave)...and of course, Barnabas and Angelique's problems...not to mention count Petofi and Aristede....etc.etc. You would love 1897.
Adra
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I started watching Dark Shadows in 1968 when I was 4, soon going to be 40 this year. :o My mom got me interested in the show, she was hooked on Barnabas Collins and still is to this day! ::) I watched the show with her and my brother. We had all the bubble gum cards. My dad didn't like us watching Dark Shadows, so when he came home early from work, we went to the next door neighbors or other friends homes to watch it.
I saw the show again in 1980 when it came on late at night. I was a teenager, would come home after an evening out with my boyfriend, then put Dark Shadows on before I went to bed. I got bored with it at the time though, because they were showing the early episodes, so I quit watching. In 1990, I remember on Friday nights sometimes, seeing the new Dark Shadows, and only after catching a few episodes, it was gone.
I moved to Las Vegas, NV in 1996 when I was expecting my now live wire daughter. In 1998, I found out there was going to be a Dark Shadows Festival here, so I went, but I didn't remember the actors because I really hadn't watched the show that much since I was a little girl. The only actor I remembered at the Festival was John Karlen as Willie Loomis.
Then the following year at the end of the century, while watching 1968 Dark Shadows reruns on the Sci Fi Channel, I fell in love with Craig Slocum, and now have a website, and online memorial for him, also my Cheryl's Dark Shadows Website, which to my surprise won a Merit Award in 2001. I'm also a collector, I have a huge Dark Shadows collection. I went to five Festivals, met many DS stars, made some friends with fans, and one lives here in Vegas. I never met a nicer person.
I have all of the MPI Videos and some of the DVD sets too. My mom watches Dark Shadows when she comes to visit, she likes to see Barnabas. My daughter likes the werewolf, lol! I keep all of the MPI Videos and DVD's with Craig Slocum in them on top of the big screen TV in my room and I watch those. ;)
Dark Shadows will always be my favorite TV show! 8)
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I was a junior in college when a couple of my friends told me about it. One of them had watched from the beginning and the other from 1897 (or perhaps before that, but I know she had missed 1795). The one who had seen it from the beginning had the better memory and informed us both about the early parts and helped the other in bringing me up-to-date with the later parts.
I've decided that it must have been Leviathan when I tuned in, as I know I saw nothing of 1897, had vague recollections of Leviathan when I saw it again many years later, and I know I was watching before the first hints of PT. I saw from there to the end. Apparently we didn't get the show in the early years, but fortunately when I went home for summer vacation, one of our UHF stations (in those days there were the main networks and a few new channels on UHF. I think all sets came with UHF at that point, but those stations didn't have the kinds of ratings as the main national networks) was showing it. I got my mother interested in it and she continued to watch to the end even after I returned to school.
Many years later one of our stations brought it back, claiming it had been the most requested show. We saw from coming of Barnabas through most of 1795. At that point they pulled the show, supposedly temporarily-after all, it had been the most requested! That was it!
A few years later the tapes came out and at some point I learned of them. I managed to find a video store that was getting the whole series for rentals. We watched, as quickly as possible, from the start (coming of Barnabas) to the point where they were (I forget how far that was, but I think they were up to tape 84 or 88) and then I had to wait each month for the next 4 and race a few other renters to get them as soon as possible. We finally saw the whole thing.
Then, came the classic episodes - from the beginning - but no one else wanted to rent them (I couldn't understand that), so after tape 16, she stopped getting them.
When SciFi came along, we didn't get it. We finally got it in spring of 1996 (I think) and I tuned in one day just to see where they were, got hooked again, and have been watching it ever since. This last time, FINALLY, I got to see those early episodes!!
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Hey Everyone, I'm new here and still getting acquainted and I thought I'd just mention that the suggestions to get acquainted helped alot.
Anyway, I'm 19 years old ( much younger than many viewers of the show... that's probably why everyone who saw me watch the show when I had taped it at college couldn't understand what I saw in the show ) but that's just it they wouldn't understand. I stumbled upon the show probably in `96 or `97 ( I guesstimated seeing as I picked up when Jeremiah's ghost was tormenting the house, and now I have finally seen the run all the way through to the end twice and only seen the pre Barnabus episodes once). I found the show absolutely astounding. I didn't realize it was a "Soap Opera" until a couple weeks later when it had dawned on me. I got very interested in the show and began taping it because of school, VCRs are wonderful. For a while, I just watched the show and then I wanted to put some of the pieces together so I got online and found darkshadows.com which at the time was updated regularly but now the website has no activity. When I found out the show was to be cancelled I didn't know what to do I thought maybe this would spark ds.com into some aggitation but no, nothing. So I began searching and found this forum. I want to say thank you to the Administrators for setting it up. I was a part of an old forum but my use fell off quickly because it was very difficult to keep up with.... in fact I believe ProfStokes was a member also, my username was youngshadow and my stint was very brief just thought I'd mention it.
Anyway, I am really excited to hear of remake talk and I am working on acquiring the DVDs but being a poor college kid that's gonna take a while...I've got expenses like crazy. Again thanks, and just to mention it I had a very large aspiration of putting together a magnificent website together regarding the show sometime in the notsonear future because I don't have the skills to do it quite yet but anyone interested in sharing knowledge, pictures, or questions let me know.
P.S. * A funny happenstance concerning Dark Shadows, I attend Washington University in St. Louis and my Acting I teacher was telling us about an actor he worked with who could rarely remember his lines because he never had time to apply repetition instruments to learn them due to his rigid schedule. It just so happens that he was speaking of Dark Shadows own Louis Edmonds. I nearly jumped out of my shoes and let him know quite enthusiastically that I was abreast of the show and got a few wierd looks from classmates (*embarassing sort of ) He was saddened to hear that he had passed away. I was very touching and coincidental.
JUST THOUGHT I'D SHARE
BenStokes
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Hi BenStokes. Welcome.
A quick word to say that I am thoroughly enjoying reading through this thread. The commonalities make for fun discovery.
**Spoiler ahead for those who haven't seen the pre-Barn eps yet**
My first glimpse of Dark Shadows happened during a stroll thru our living room. My older sister and her girlfriends were watching it during it's original run. It was the scene where...
[spoiler]Laura Collins was attempting to get David to come into the flames with her as Viki was trying to save him.[/spoiler] I stood there mesmerized. It was by far the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. It made no sense to me at age nine.
I caught back up with the show and started watching on a regular basis during 1897 sometime after Petofi came on the scene and stayed with it through about half of 1840.
I tuned in for the last episode and was so disappointed because I didn't have a clue as to what the heck was going on. But it was still a sad and sentimental farewell nonetheless.
My family still ribs me about my past DS viewing. I used to put blankets over the windows so that it would be as dark as possible in the apt when I would watch the show, lol. They busted me once but that was enough to have to hear about it the rest of my life. ::)
Thank goodness they never caught me during my other "secret" DS related activities of which only one I'll admit to here. I used to play the DS album for background music and create my own episodes on cassette tapes. [blshy]
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Thank goodness they never caught me during my other "secret" DS related activities of which only one I'll admit to here. I used to play the DS album for background music and create my own episodes on cassette tapes. [blshy]
Oh! That is so cool, and a great idea. Did you act out the parts or were you just narrating??
I can't remember the sort of details a lot of people can - it was just tooooooo long ago. But I know I started watching from the beginning, in 1966. No one told me about it, so I must have seen promos or was watching something else in that time slot beforehand. Does anyone know what was on back then? Only thing I can remember watching in the afternoons was a show called Where The Action Is. LOL (very groovy)
I remember being quite into it from the very beginning -- Carolyn, Vicky, David, etc. but don't remember the plotlines (haven't seen the black and white stuff since the 60's). I remember more, the sort of DS-related nonsense and fun my best friend and I used to have. Ya know something we used to do in school when we were bored? We'd draw little scenarios for each other and exchange them in class. I recall mine usually took place in the Old House. I'd draw the fireplace with the portrait over it, a piece of furniture or two, and it would almost always have Barnabas (and probably Julia) in it. I couldn't draw for shit, but you knew it was Barn 'cause of the pointy bangs. I'd have them saying I don't know WHAT to each other. Sometimes I'd do one at home (while I was supposed to be doing homework) and give it to my friend in school the next day. The ones done at home were better 'cause I could cut the different characters' faces out of teen magazines and paste them on bodies. (More realistic) LOL Only one weird thing -- sometimes we'd have other characters in the scene that didn't belong there. I can remember drawing George Harrison sitting on the floor in the drawing room in a yoga position, playing the sitar. (Go figure) Anyway, we called these little creations, "Pidger and Writty" (the term taken from one of John Lennon's books)
I THINK it was Fall of 1999 when I was flipping through channels one morning and lo and behold, there was Barnabas!!!! I freaked. It was around the time in the '68 storyline when Angelique had bitten him. So, if that's what was showing then, then it was 1999. Sometime not long after, I discovered there was Dark Shadows stuff online. One day I was looking at screen grabs and this silly stuff came to me. I put the grabs together with some dialogue and emailed it to my friend (the same friend -- who is my best friend to this day) as a joke. It was called Revenge Of Julia. The rest, as they say, is history. Oy vey.
-CLC
Who wants to know about some of dom's other "secret" DS activities. ;)
(Hey - awhile back I admitted that phony phone call to Grayson!)
Shameful - simply shameful
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Only thing I can remember watching in the afternoons was a show called Where The Action Is. LOL (very groovy)
OH!! SWEET MOTHER!!! [shockeyes]
"Where the Action Is"??!!
Connie, you just triggered a psychedelic flash back beyond belief!!
The clothes on the guys were enough to make you shriek! [lghy]
I wonder if that was a New York based production, and was it shown anywhere else in the country?
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Hi Connie and Rainey, I'd love to see old episodes of Where the Action is! From voiceovers on the early MPI collectors series tapes, I gather it followed DS at 4 in the afternoon. They may have promoted DS on that show's commercial breaks during June 1966 and that may be how you found out about it.
I love watching old rock and roll shows from that era. I just got some 1967 tapes of a German show called the Beat Club and, believe me, the groovy threads those guys were wearing made *me* shriek, though perhaps not in the way you intended.
cackling obscenely,
Gothick
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Where The Action Is was hosted by Paul Revere and the Raiders, right? My sister (and her now infamous girlfriends) used to watch that also, along with all the other Rock and Roll shows. I only watched for two reasons, The Supremes and The Shangri-las. Don't ever recall seeing them on WTAI though.
I had a friend, Albert, who used to do an hysterical imitation of Barnabas dancing to those 60's tunes.
Fangs for the memory,
dom
PS - Connie, I used to verbaly act out the parts (the dialog) into that tiny portable cassette player.
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OMG, "Where the Action Is"... you can bet it was shown in L.A.! For some bizarre reason the theme song is in my head. MY sister always made fun of DS but I make up for it by teasing her about the time she came home from a Paul Revere & the Raiders concert swearing she would never wash her hand again cuz Mark Lindsay touched it. :D
Hey, BenStokes, welcome!
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Okay....now that we've made it official just how freaking old we are.....! ::)
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My best friend (we had the same first name-- weird, huh?) would go straight home after school to watch DS, but she couldn't convince me to see it too until one day she announced that they'd added a vampire. We were in the 6th grade, sigh. Growing up on Universal monster pictures, how could I resist? I lived the closest-- her family was rich so they lived "on the hill", as it was called then ( ;) to victoriawinters)-- so we went to my house that day and I thought the show was so darn spooky that I was instantly hooked. From then on we'd take the bus there everyday, watch the show, sometimes would do homework but mostly we goofed around, and her dad would pick her up later. She developed a crush on Barnabas and I only had to take one look at Quentin before I was a goner. If someone had told little Midnite that she'd meet David Selby one day, she might've fainted on the spot.
It always intrigues me to read about the discussions that went on in the schools concerning what happened on DS the preceding day. In my school it was NOT cool to watch DS, so my friend and I kept it to ourselves. The likely scenario, however, is that all my classmates watched it but didn't admit it. I tried to get my mom to check it out when she wasn't working, but except for passing by the room now and then to make a comment about Joan Bennett, she wasn't interested. It was over the recent holidays that she told me I kept pleading with her to watch it because the show "has a vampire, and a witch, and ghosts, and a werewolf!"
I gave the show up during the infamous Leviathans storyline, which was also around the time I started high school. That year I met my current best friend, but it wasn't until years later that we learned that we'd both watched DS before that. It's probably not surprising that we both dabbled in different occult things during our teen years.
Flash ahead to 1996 and I'm getting my kids ready for school when my mom calls to leave a message that I'm supposed to turn on the SciFi channel NOW because there's something on there from my childhood. I did and was blown away seeing Barnabas, newly made a vampire by Angelique. It made me think of my friend a lot that got me hooked on it and who had passed away a few years earlier. I saw the DS eps every day after that, taping them usually, til I'd seen them all. Funny thing is that my mom started watching too at the same time and LOVED it; she even got herself a "handle" and joined me for a while on the SciFi DS boards. I'm, of course, not one to say "I told you so", but...
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Welcome, BenStokes! I seem to recall the name "youngshadow";did you used to post on Stuart's messageboard at darkshadows.co.uk?
Incidentally, your mention of how your fellow students fail to understand the magic of DS rings a bell. None of my schoolmates were DS fans either, and the two whom I was able to persuade to watch a few episodes never developed an interest in it. Fortunately, the people here are far more understanding. :D
Ya know something we used to do in school when we were bored? We'd draw little scenarios for each other and exchange them in class. I recall mine usually took place in the Old House. I'd draw the fireplace with the portrait over it, a piece of furniture or two, and it would almost always have Barnabas (and probably Julia) in it. I couldn't draw for shit, but you knew it was Barn 'cause of the pointy bangs. I'd have them saying I don't know WHAT to each other. Sometimes I'd do one at home (while I was supposed to be doing homework) and give it to my friend in school the next day. The ones done at home were better 'cause I could cut the different characters' faces out of teen magazines and paste them on bodies. (More realistic) LOL Only one weird thing -- sometimes we'd have other characters in the scene that didn't belong there. I can remember drawing George Harrison sitting on the floor in the drawing room in a yoga position, playing the sitar. (Go figure) Anyway, we called these little creations, "Pidger and Writty" (the term taken from one of John Lennon's books)
How fun (and funny) that must have been! No wonder you got to be such a talented writer and storyboard narrator, Connie.
dom, do you still have those homemade cassettes and if so, is there any chance of you posting a transcript of some your DS episodes?
ProfStokes
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How sweet of you to be interested, ProfStokes. I'm afraid none of those cassettes have survived my torrid life, (it's a miracle that I have, lol). Back then we practically rerecorded over those 120 minute tapes until they broke. But to be totally honest, had they survived, I'd be much too embarrassed to transcribe them for public consumption. [blshb]
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Exactly the same reason all the thousands of pages of "stories" (never heard of fan fic until I got here) that Abbeymarch and I tandem-wrote together were consigned to the flames.
Never leave the evidence of one's adolescence just lying around!! ;)
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I think I first heard of it on some television news website (I'm addicted to classic television and researching it...I'm an odd teen, lol), which mentioned that the 'Barnabas' episodes of some serial named Dark Shadows were soon going to air. I thought that Barnabas was an odd name, but didn't really think about it after that. One day, a few months later, I was at IMDb looking up information on Kate Jackson (who I knew from Charlie's Angels) and stumbled across a listing for her Dark Shadows work. I decided to watch the series.
The first time I ever watched Dark Shadows was at the very beginning of February 2002. The first episode I saw was #341 -- in which Julia and Barnabas murder Dr. Woodard. I kept watching from that point on, but what really hooked me was the 1795 storyline, which began the third week after I had discovered it. During those first weeks, my favorite characters included Victoria (partly because she was the only present day character other than Barnabas in the 1795 storyline), Burke & Jeremiah (Anthony George has remained my favorite in the role of Burke, despite me liking Mitch Ryan's Burke a lot), Millicent & Carolyn (Nancy Barrett is my favorite actress on the show), Julia & Natalie, and Angelique.
I've been watching it ever since, although I've missed an episode here or there. I also bought many of the MPI VHS volumes which cover the pre-Barnabas episodes, which are some of my favorites. Thus far I have all the DVDs and hope to collect all of them.
Sean
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Thanks, murph, for the welcome aboard (and congrats on your 100th post) and a welcome aboard to BenStokes (congrats on your first post)! I've really enjoyed reading everyone's introduction to Dark Shadows.
In my school it was NOT cool to watch DS, so my friend and I kept it to ourselves.
Once I entered 7th grade, I learned the hard way (much teasing) how uncool it was to watch DS- and admit it at school. But I didn't mind as much because most of my neighborhood friends- who attended a different school- loved DS. Good thing too, as I'd often run to these friends' homes straight off the school bus in order to not miss too much of the show (my house was farthest from the school bus stop, naturally). All of us bought as much DS related magazines and merchandise as our allowances could afford (I hate thinking about what great DS memorabilia I've either lost, sold or *shudders* tossed out in the trash).
btw I think I remember "Where The Action Is", if there were go-go dancers in mini-skirts on it, I remember it. Unless I'm thinking of a different show...
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I saw the first episode of Dark Shadows when it originally aired in '66, while I was at my grandparents' house in Georgia. I was seven at the time, and I doubt I understood much of what was going on except there was a girl on a train going to a creepy place. When we came back home to Virginia, we found that the local ABC affiliate didn't run DS at all, and I think I threw a bigger fit than at any time since they cancelled my cartoons for JFK's funeral.
I found out later that Channel 13 out of Lynchburg, VA, carried DS, but you had to have cable to pick up the station; back then, hardly anyone had cable, but one of my best friends did. I took every opportunity to invite myself over to his place so we could watch DS, and I managed it just enough to know that I was missing something very special. And of course whenever we visited my grandparents in Georgia, come DS time in the afternoon, nobody else could get anywhere near the TV.
We finally got cable at home in late '69, just as the Leviathans story was beginning. At the time, my only knowlege of the show was based on sporadic viewing, so I had no idea how the story racked up compared to all that had come before. As far as I was concerned, this was Dark Shadows, it was scary, and I was in heaven. (To this day, I still have a special fondness for the Leviathans story because that's where I really began with the show in earnest.)
Then the unthinkable happened. They went to parallel time and locked Barnabas in his coffin.
Good God, here I was finally able to watch DS every day, and what do they do but take Barnabas away. I can't count the number of times I raised my fist to the heavens and told anyone who would listen that if they didn't bring Barnabas back, I was gonna QUIT WATCHING DARK SHADOWS!
OK, so he came back, I kept watching the show, and all was well. Then of course, 1971 rolled around.... Oh, what a sad boy. On the Monday after DS's final episode, I tuned in, as I'm sure many young'uns did, certain the cancellation was a late April Fool's Day joke, or some horrible mistake. But it wasn't.
In '76, the reruns of DS started up, and I was again in seventh heaven, until my younger brother started pitching a fit that he wanted to watch Gilligan's Island on the TV downstairs (which was the only one that would pick up DS), never mind that it was in black and white and the black and white TV UPSTAIRS picked up Gilligan's Island just fine. Of course, Mom had no inkling of the profound gravity of the goings on at Collinwood, and so she made us alternate afternoons watching our shows. Therefore, I missed every other episode of DS until Gilligan moved to another time slot.
I repaid my brother by setting fire to all his GI Joes (and a few other toys I decided he had outgrown). But having gained so much maturity since those days, every now and then I look on Ebay, find old toys like those of his I destroyed, buy them, and send them to him -- along with a can of lighter fluid and matches so he can, after all these years, have the pleasure of burning them himself.
Tell me I'm not a really good brother. ;)
--Mark
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In '76, the reruns of DS started up, and I was again in seventh heaven, until my younger brother started pitching a fit that he wanted to watch Gilligan's Island on the TV downstairs (which was the only one that would pick up DS) ... Therefore, I missed every other episode of DS until Gilligan moved to another time slot.
I repaid my brother by setting fire to all his GI Joes (and a few other toys I decided he had outgrown).
It's stories like this that make me so grateful to be an only child! [b003]
It always shocks me when I read how in some schools it was considered uncool to watch DS because my experience was exactly the opposite - watching DS was considered the coolest thing to do. Everybody watched, and outside of class it was always the main topic of conversation, talking over what had happened the day before, speculating about what was going to happen next, asking if someone had seen the latest DS article, and collecting the cards, games and comic books.
Like Dom, I used to make my own audio tapes of DS. I used to write the scripts and then a bunch of friends and I would act them out. My most vivid memory of doing that was one day when we were taping a scene that supposedly took place on the Collinsport docks. We were big on "special effects", so we were taping in the bathroom so that someone could be splashing water in the bathtub to simulate the sounds of the waves. :D Barnabas was meeting up with one of the typical doxies, who was going to be his victim. Unfortunately though, the girl who was playing the victim got distracted by something else that was going on in the room (I can't honestly remember what at this point) and she wasn't really paying attention to the Barnabas dialogue. In the spirit of how DS rarely ever stopped tape, we rarely ever did either (except to change music cues), and the scene played out exactly like this:
Barnabas - (normal voice): You're very pretty. What's your name?
(Silence)
Barnabas - (louder voice): You're very pretty. What's your name?
(Silence)
Barnabas - (screaming): You're very pretty! What's your name?!
Doxie - (suddenly snapping back to reality): Oh. Grayson Smith. And who are you?
[ Yes, the naming of the character was intended to be a tribute to Grayson Hall, but somehow I doubt she would have been impressed or flattered by the way the scene turned out. [wink2] ]
Barnabas - (normal voice again): I'm Barnabas Collins. I live in the Old House over there.
...
As hysterical as the screaming was that finally got her attention, the thing that really makes me laugh now is thinking that it made any sense whatsoever that Barnabas could or would actually point somewhere as if they could actually see the Old House from the Collinsport docks! And, of course, why would he have introduced himself to someone he planned to kill, much less tell her where he lived?! [lghy] But, hey, I was 12 when I wrote it, so I guess that's my excuse.
[ And unlike you, Rainey, as ridiculous as it was, I'm pretty sure I still have that script packed away somewhere. ;D ]
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OH!! SWEET MOTHER!!! [shockeyes]
"Where the Action Is"??!!
Connie, you just triggered a psychedelic flash back beyond belief!!
Well, then I've done my job. ;D
Okay....now that we've made it official just how freaking old we are.....! ::)
a. Old enough to know better
b. Old enough not to care
c. Old enough that if you don't color it, there's way
too much gray hair
I repaid my brother by setting fire to all his GI Joes (and a few other toys I decided he had outgrown)...
....Tell me I'm not a really good brother. ;)
Mark, you're a psycho.
Actually though, I really like you sending your brother some toys and the lighter fluid, etc. (nice touch), so I'd have to say you're a REFORMED psycho. (who should probably be watched rather carefully) ROFL :-* ;)
...My most vivid memory of doing that was one day when we were taping a scene that supposedly took place on the Collinsport docks. We were big on "special effects", so we were taping in the bathroom so that someone could be splashing water in the bathtub to simulate the sounds of the waves. :D
I love this! What I wouldn't give to hear some of these scenes. How precious!
Barnabas - (normal voice again): I'm Barnabas Collins. I live in the Old House over there.
ROTFL [lghy]
This sounds like classic stuff. (Maybe even better than some of Sam Hall's scripts) ::)
;D ;D
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[ And unlike you, Rainey, as ridiculous as it was, I'm pretty sure I still have that script packed away somewhere. ;D ]
And unlike you, Pepe, I have a brother 5 years older than I, who would have blackmailed me till doomsday if he'd ever found those stories. [lghy]
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MB -- That's a hysterical tale. Some of us kids recorded similar soundtracks to imaginary monster movies, though I don't think we ever did Dark Shadows. My favorite was Professor Smut vs. Dracula, starring me, my brother, and my friend David Hare.
Narrator (David): "What's that? A giant bat. Wait! The giant bat is Dracula! And he's diving on Jahlo. Oh... Jahlo... Look out!"
Jahlo (My Brother): YEEEEAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!
Professor Smut (Me): Jahlo scream like girl.
Jahlo: Shut up, Mark.
Professor Smut: No, you shut up.
Jahlo: No, you.
What I'd give to find those old tapes...
--Mark
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I saw the very first episode back in the summer of 1966. It was in the morning (our ABC affiliate obvioulsy did a day-or-so later-delayed broadcast) and I was watching some game show, my mother telling me to turn off the TV and go outside, it being such a nice day. The game show finished and I was reaching for the knob (natch, those were the days when TVs had two big knobs, one for on/off/volume, the other for channels, which went from two to thirteen, and you could only pick up your local three networks - if you had a rotor, when weather conditions were right, you could pick up affiliates farther away; there were a few smaller knobs for things like light/dark and horizontal control, and it was a black-and-white set, of course, unless you were a "fancy" family who had a color set) to turn it off when the ABC teaser commercial came on, a local add-on commentary saying that it was starting next, at eleven o'clock. Well, hearing that eerie music and seeing those foggy scenes, I just had to see what this was all about. And then I watched it the next day, and the next, and the next. Even though there was nothing supernatural, ie "spooky", for those first few months, it still held my attention. I would "play" David, hiding that brake part from Vicki, one of those big motel room key tabs which use to say "drop in any mailbox" serving as the brake thing.
Eventually Dark Shadows "got spooky" and the local affiliate switched to broadcasting it during its initial feed in the afternoon. My mother kept telling to to "turn that crap off", and we had wars over what to watch. First, it came on opposite Art Linkletter's House Party to which my mom was addicted. Sometimes she got to watch Art interviewing kids who said the darndest things, sometimes I got to watch Barnabas chasing nubile virgins with fangs bared. Then Art went off the air, but the war would continue, as she now wanted to watch that drunk Australian cook on The Galloping Gourmet. Sometimes she got to watch the drunken Australian cook pour sherry into anything and everything he was whipping up (I swear that man would pour it into a bowl of Super Sugar Crisp cereal); sometimes I got to watch the ghost of Quentin threaten nubile virgins. But my mom finally gave up and that time slot was mine, all mine.
Fortunately, my mom never made anything she saw being baked, broasted or fried on The Galloping Gourmet, otherwise we would've been a household full of people getting potted on the pot roast. But I'd run around wearing a big ring, holding a cane (one of the bamboo things you'd win in a carnival side show game where you knock over bottles with a ball) and sticking fangs made out of cardboard in my mouth. The neighbors probably thought I had been dipping into the cooking sherry and saying the darndest things.
Gerard
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Goddess, I love your posts......you always make me laugh. :D
You're STILL saying the darndest things!! [lghy]
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LIke a few of the other posters I don't remember how I got started watching DS the first time. I do remeber it was at the time Quentin had first appeared. Luckily, we had more than one TV so no problem with the Mother who would never watch that crap as she called it. This is the woman who was glued to the O.J. trail. She did watch just about every other soap. What I think happened is someone was watching The Edge of Night and than the channel got changed and low and behold DS. The fog in my brain is starting to part. My two best friends in grade school we would run to my house to watch. My house was closer. Dark Shadows was never mentioned at school. I don't think most of the kids were allowed to watch. We were not the "in" kids anyway. The other girls at our school were very goodie, goodie. At the time we never would have known if the boys watched or not there was still the social thing of girls and boys hating each other at the time.
I got rehooked , I know I have told this story before sorry for those who have heard it already, our cable had just gotten upgraded and my daughter was home sick and I found the show Mommie had loved so much and thought she might like it.
She did and asked me to tape it when she went back to school.
We watched for about a two years together bringing in her younger brother. She got to busy with school and dropped DS. Now it is the family past time to kid me about it.
Birdie
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OMG, "Where the Action Is"... you can bet it was shown in L.A.!
....and its so neat to meetcha baby where the action is.
n
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History keeps repeating as Shirley Bassey sang . . .i thought i knew .. well i kinda know but after i moved to NYC and got all my life belongings in once place. . . i found a notebook/journal i wrote in 1982, when i was 14. .. Grayson Hall 's name is penned on the cover and my first several entries are about enjoying a wacky show on PBS and Grayson in particular. . .I always thought it was a few years later, closer to college that "i" not my Mom (womb story) got into Ds. . .but my stepdad confirmed, he used to watch it with me in 1982 in the summer. .and that I loved the skinny redheaded doctor, which he just didn't get at all. . .It was my first bonding experience with my new dad I guess. . . ;D
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::) Well I remember exactly how I got started on Dark Shadows, although it certainly is a bit awkward. Actually, my DAUGHTER (omigod, am I that old!!!) who was 7 at the time, flew home from school every day to watch this program. After a week or so curioslty got the better of me and I decided to join her. Of course it was Dark Shadows, which had just made its debut, so I really got in at the beginning---and I fell, hook, line, and sinker in love with this show. My daughter is now a Mom and her daughter is also hooked. I share my DVD's with her.
Long live Dark Shadows!!
Misty, who will remain a DS junkie at least as long
as the brain is functioning!
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I first discovered it during the 1795 period when Jeremiah with his bloody bandages was looking in the window at Naomi. I new this series had possiblities.
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I discovered it in 1998, I think they were showing episodes 620 and 621 that day. I suddenly got hooked!
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I started watching Dark Shadows in 1968 when I was 4, soon going to be 40 this year. :o My mom got me interested in the show, she was hooked on Barnabas Collins and still is to this day! ::) I watched the show with her and my brother.
I was 4 also when I started watching DS back in 1966. My mother used to watch it right after General Hospital. I have to say that I found General Hospital alot more frightening that Dark Shadows! I mean those nurses were always having a crisis of some kind and we never got to see them at home (my question, "did they LIVE at the hospital?"). Contrast that with Dark Shadows which in 1967 started color broadcasts and had all those great sets and costumes. On General Hospital we only got to see the cafeteria and the nurses' station. And so, it became one of my life's phobias that I would grow up and find myself working at General Hospital. Well, you might say that couldn't happen as there really IS no General Hospital, but I was recently informed that the General Hospital of the 1960's in the opening sequence was actually Stamford Hospital (in Connecticut) which is where I work now. EEEEEEEEEE!
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After reading the 3 pages of how we discovered DS, i might be one of a few that was attracted first by the music only, i remember my older brother back in 1971 use to play the stereo soundtrack album over and over and very loud. my dad would get upset and yell at him to lower it down. well 5 years later, i discovered that one of the local channels was airing DS at night, same time as the 11 o'clock news. again my dad wasn't too happy to have me standing there each night ready to change the channel from his nightly news to DS. 1976 was when i first watch DS. on the other hand, my mom loves DS and is even reading "dreams of the dark" and she is 70 years old! -robert
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I wasn't even born during the time DS aired on ABC....I discovered the show on reruns on channel 62...my mom was a fan during the Barnabas episodes up to the time Quentin was on. (This is gonna come as a shock but my mom lost interest in the show when the ghost of Quentin came on! [hall2_shocked]) She stopped watching altogether just before 1897 started.
Not me....I started watching the reruns where Barnabas just arrived and watched up until 1970 Parallel Time...unfortunately channel 62 pulled the plug on it....it wasn't until years later on videotape I was able to watch the rest of the show.
So in retrospect I have become a bigger DS fan than my mom was. But I as so glad she introduced me to the show. And I am so glad they kept tapes of the show that all of us DS fan can discover or rediscover the show.
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watched up until 1970 Parallel Time...unfortunately channel 62 pulled the plug on it
Unfortunately there were no more episodes available in local syndication after Ep #1007. [hall2_sad] No one got to see Eps #1008-#1245 (and Eps #1-#209) on TV again until the Sci-Fi Channel first ran them in '94-'95 (and in '92-'93 for (most of) Eps #1-#209).
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It always shocks me when I read how in some schools it was considered uncool to watch DS because my experience was exactly the opposite - watching DS was considered the coolest thing to do. Everybody watched, and outside of class it was always the main topic of conversation, talking over what had happened the day before, speculating about what was going to happen next, asking if someone had seen the latest DS article, and collecting the cards, games and comic books.
Same here. At my school nearly everyone watched the show and read those novels. There were a couple of us who took time off from watching when Barnabas was away for an extended period of time and then resumed watching when everyone talked about the vampire's return to the show. I started watching DS in early 1967 as a much loved TV program was scheduled to come on afterwards. It was a kiddie's show in Philadelphia and then later, I think, Mike Douglas. Not sure which came first but anyway I turned on the TV to wait for my program which then followed DS. The day Barnabas was discovered and stuck his hand out, I knew it was a vampire in that coffin as I was alread a big fan of horror movies. I ran upstairs to wake my napping mother to tell her that I discovered another vampire that wasn't Bela Lugosi.
She was not impressed. Years later she told Jonathan Frid "you ruined a nap of mine once."
Nancy
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I remember watching the promos for DS before it premiered but it didn't strike my fancy back then. I was 13, a big too young for it. And I wasn't into spooky stuff back then. How things change.
I had been watching Sandy Becker for years at this point. Sandy hosted a kids show in NYC and I never missed it. Until he added an obnoxious, in my opinion, teenage sidekick. I tolerated the kid for a while until one day he was lip-synching to Judy Garland. Enough of this!! I started channel surfing for something better. Well, I found it and never looked back.
And, if you're out there, Tim Moriarty, thank you!!!!!!