DS Usenet Newsgroup

mentioning the old Usenet Newsgroups makes me wax nostalgic.  I belonged to several back then, including the DS one (and there are cousins here who also did).  It was once a great forum, especially for those of us who use to belong to AOL.  It's a shame that they were all disolved; lots of good discussions went on.  And there was the occasional "fun" character.  Anyone remember that guy who use to spam virtually any and every Usenet Newsgroups, a real macadamian who believed that the model Heidi Klum was a goddess?  He called her "Our Lady" and he was the head of her new religion, being psychically connected to her, spreading the good news that she was preparing to take over the world and turn it into a utopia.  Oh, those were the fun days of Usenet. 

Gerard

(small bit of editing by admin.)

I'm so happy that everything went fine for you, Annie!  You're such a special person!

Gerard

By the way, if you haven't seen NoDS, or if you haven't seen it in a long time, you can watch it, in parts on a website.  I think you know what it is.  I'm not saying to you what it is because I'm trying to be suttle to you in case you-know-who finds out and calls out the army of lawyers and threatening letters.  You know how he makes sure anyone posting anything that takes away even imagined money forces postings to take a you-turn.

Gerard

Youtube carries most, if not all, episodes from Night Gallery.  Give it a google and one can probably view it.  It's not as good as on a TV screen, but at least it's available.

Gerard

I agree with David.  I think there has been a long hatred of DS by horror "experts" because it was a soap.  It doesn't matter that it was the first soap of its kind and years ahead of any of the rest airing.  It set standards to this day.  Interview With the Vampire wouldn't have been written if it wasn't for DS (and I'll stand by that).  Without DS, there wouldn't have been the insipid but highly popular and profitable Twilight series.  I'll stand by that, too.  So much of what horror "experts" enjoy today is because of DS, and because it was a soap, with all its warts, they hate that.  That's why they hate the Depp/Burton movie.  It brought back all that came because of the original.  They like what came, but they hate the source.  Why?  I don't know.  Maybe it was because of the soap perspective.  Who knows?

Gerard

Can we read your Fangoria articles on-line, David?  I no longer live in a pace where the magazine is easily purchasable.

Gerard

Showing scenes in trailers that weren't in the movie (because they ended up on the cutting room floor) is nothing new.  There were scenes from NoDS, especially during the seance scene, that were in trailers but didn't appear in the film.  Nothing changes in Hollywood.  It's all tease and bait-and-switch.

Gerard

Hammer was also offered, and accepted, the screenplay for the film adaptation of the vampire apocalypse movie The Last Man on Earth, pretty much faithfully adapted from Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend.  Matheson wrote the screenplays for Dan Curtis' The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler, his first major works after DS.  The British board of censors considered the screenplay too violent and would not allow Hammer to produce it.  The screenplay then went to an Italian production company, starring Vincent Price.  It is now a cult classic.  Despite the low budget, it is well known for being an eerie, atmospheric film.  You can watch the entire film on youtube.  Because of the limited budget, it was done in black-and-white and Italian towns were remotely "disguised" as Los Angeles.  Italian actors and actresses stumbled through English or were otherwise dubbed.  Hammer, if the then prudish British censors would've permitted the movie to be produced, obviously would've thrown every pound into it, making it in color with actual location shots and elaborate sets.  But it's amazing what the cash-strapped Italians did with the screenplay.  The scene where Vincent Price's character's wife returns from the dead as a vampire and attempts to attack him is blood-curdling.  The scene where he has to watch the body of his seven-year-old daughter dumped into a burning pit of infected, dead humans before she "reverts" is mind-boggling.  The scene where he finds a frightened, injured dog that shows up at his doorstep, where he thinks he's finally found another living thing to spend his life with, only to find it infected and he has to euthanize it is heart-breaking. 

Again, another vampire movie/Dark Shadows connection.

Gerard