Okay, so I've been buying the Dark Shadows dvds piecemeal, and the other day I was looking for a good price on set #12. I came across a website for Planet DVD (which I'd never heard of), in which the merchant was offering the complete series - all 1225 episodes - for $199.95. Does anybody here know about this merchant? Can this offer be for real? The box set supposedly even has the "Beginnings" episodes. I'd like to get this, as long as they aren't some rubbish quality bootlegs.

Happy Birthday Devlin66! Hope it's a great one!!!

Your post above (reply #7) is a great post too, MaggieEvans!

It's so true that Willie is one of the most believable characters on "Dark Shadows," and we see so much growth from him from when he first appears on the show, through the time he is in thrall to Barnabas, on towards the middle/late part of the series when he's spending a good bit of time away from Collinsport, and has found a girlfriend (whom we never see).

The first guy to play Willie Loomis (James Hall?) wasn't up to much, IMO. But John Karlen just gave him so much life and, well, realness, for want of a better word. He starts out being a sleaze, and ends by being one of the most sympathetic characters on the show. You really want things to come out right for him, and get the feeling he's had a hard life. He doesn't know quite how to overcome his past, but we can see that he is actually an innately good person.

Does anyone know, has JK ever talked about any backstory he may have worked out for the character?

I just watched those episodes earlier this year and really enjoyed them, too! It IS nice to see Vicki hook up with a more normal guy than she will be paired with later in the series. And it kind of sucks that they just stopped using Frank Garner after the Laura storyline was over, and never really explained why he wasn't around anymore. I sort of liked the actor - wasn't his name Conard Fowkes or something unusual like that?

The Bangor Pine was a great set - I'd totally have dinner there. Bet their drinks were strong and their lobster to die for! And I'm with Pansity on the thought that maybe that set was built for another show and they let Dark Shadows use it for an afternoon or three. What other soaps did ABC have on the air in 1966/67?

I've been watching an episode each weekday evening since last June, kind of trying to approximate the original run. So I just saw this one a few months back and it was priceless! Roger was a total douchebag all of the time, I wouldn't be surprised if Art Wallace's original plan for the character was to have him murdered - pretty much everyone in Collinsport found him insufferable!

I'm in agreement that Maggie and Joe were really cute together at the start of their relationship. I'm glad the writers sort of took their time in getting them together - it sort of just blossomed between them organically. Joe was never really right for Carolyn and vice-versa, so Maggie was a great choice for him - kind of sassy and sharp witted. Definitely a different creature from the sort of stock ingenue-in-peril she later became in service to the supernatural storylines.

If you're looking for the specific episode number, Gothick, it looks like that was episode #78, which originally aired on October 12, 1966.

Yeah, given Laura's Egyptian connections (origins?) and worship practices, I could easily see her having a mummy in her thrall, dispatching it to make nighttime visits to various members of the Collins family who were giving her problems, and of course nobody would initially believe the poor sap who'd seen the mummy that the thing was afoot. I'm sure that would have been one more instance of Roger thinking Elizabeth irrational in her belief that something awful was about to happen to her , 'cos you KNOW Laura would've sicced the mummy on Liz.

The thought of having to deal with, shall we say, "feminine hygiene issues" in an 18th century setting is one of the reasons that I would NEVER want to travel through time, but I digress. 

This episode was good - but did anyone else find it rather rushed? There was more story here than there was time to tell it.

I go back and forth about some of the acting. Lysette Anthony's Angelique is a little too sly and kittenish for me. I think it should be clear to one and all that she's up to no good from the first, but some of that is the fault of some fairly unsubtle writing.  And yeah, her French accent is pretty over the top, but to my ear it sounds fairly authentic.

Barbara Blackburn is sort of hilarious as Millicent, and I'm wondering what/if they're actually going to do anything with the character, but I agree that she's somewhat inexplicably rude. It's as if more back story for her character was left out.

Also hilarious is Roy Thinnes as Trask - you can tell that the actor was really having a good time playing this part, esp. after the somewhat more uptight Roger Collins. We already know that this "Reverend" is no good. Thinnes really chews the scenery.

Also on the holy roller front, you can tell right off that Abigail Collins is going to cause Vicki some problems.  Julianna McCarthy really does a lot with this character, IMHO.  It appears that the old biddy is sexually frustrated and is clinging to superstition in order to assuage her lack of lovin'.  Let's hope that Vicki will find some good friends with the menfolk of the Collins family and their immediate circle.  Peter Bradford certainly seems like he might be an attractive ally, no?

Vicki's really in a difficult situation, isn't she? Although she tries to keep most of what's going on with her a secret, I think in her place, I might have said just enough so that people wouldn't think I was nuts, and then just kept very quiet.  But it's going to be hard for her to stay in the background, especially since she looks EXACTLY like Barnabas's newly-arrived fiancee, Josette. To me, it's a little weird that the Collins family aren't way more freaked out at the resemblance.