I, of course, loved the Depp/Burton film.  I thought it was a wonderful tribute to DS and that's what it was:  a tribute.  Maybe the comedic approach of Barnabas being a fish out of water, trying to comprehend life 200 years later was a bit whatever (I can't put the right thoughts or words to it), but it was far more realistic than the previous incarnations (the OS and '91) where Barnabas gets released and within 48 hours he's knocking at Collinwood, understanding zippers and the latest episodes of Green Acres or The Golden Girls.  Depp/Burton's concept regarding this situation, in my view, more correct.  Characters needed more fleshing out, and it appears they were before editing placed chunks on the cutting-room floor.  And, as far as I'm concerned, a straight take on the Barnabas story, remade for the umpteenth-millionth time, would not have worked.  The original was the original; it had been copied many times over, including in the banal Twilight thing.  Doing it again as a strict drama would've appeared as nothing more than a rip-off of Twilight, a way of cashing in.  Where the studio failed was in marketing. 

So it was, and it wasn't, "our" DS.  Neither was '91 in what it did with some of the characters.  I never liked how '91 turned Maggie into a tart, or Willie into a bumbling sidekick.  Nothing stays the same.  The latest Star Trek films have taken the original material and placed it in an alternate universe.  Lots of fans were outraged that Spock's mother, Amanda, was killed.  You think irrate fans posting on message boards were upset with the D/B DS film?  You should've seen what they posted about the ST film - they wanted Abrams arrested, tried and executed for heresy.  But the first film was enough of a money-making success to bring about a second one, and I'm sure it'll also be filled with heresy.  Simply redoing the same stories over and over and over again won't work.  Would upset DS fans remained upset if the D/B DS film was basically a remake of HoDS?  HoDS also strayed from the series (although it was closer in the original intent of the Barnabas story - monster kills, monster is caught, monster is killed; 13 weeks done and on to the next plot-line). 

No, the DS "franchise" is alive and doing well.  This year, there are three "festivals" scheduled:  the one in San Diego that's already done, the cruise (the "official" one) and another at Lyndhurst (that, if I'm right, is more focused on '91).  The D/B DS film pulled in nine figures in the box office.  That hardly makes is a financial "dud."  I'd love to see a sequel.  Barnabas and Vicki now share the same lifestyle, as does Julia.  David's spectral mother has returned.  There's now a werewolf in their midst.  Angelique has been defeated (or has she?) and the Collinses look to rebuild.   So many juicy things!  And it's still the 1970's, so we can have soundtracks from Bread and Elton John and people dealing with that new CBS series about a family living at 704 Hawser Street in Queens, NYC.  It would be so much fun, like DS meets American Graffiti.  Plus, you've got a bunch of monsters and spooks thrown in, just like the OS. 

The D/B DS film had so many wonderful things in it.  I will say that the opening credits was among the best.  It set the tone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRYy8poaJwg

Brilliant.  Simply brilliant.  It wasn't our Robert Cobert opening music, but it was brilliant.  It was the train ride of Vicki just as it was in the OS and in '91, and done much better than DC did in both his versions.  Brilliant.

Gerard

It's possible to find the Yorga films on-line; I know I watched both of them that way.  It might've been youtube, but I don't recall if that was the venue.

Gerard

wow. that's a lot of work to connect the two.

Ain't it though, Michael?  But I learned early on from watching DS from the very first episode that one has to create his/her own workable solutions to plot discrepencies.  But when one does that, it seems to work.  Besides, it's fun.

Gerard

I saw it in its original theatrical release (double-billed with HoDS; remember the days of double-features, cartoons, maybe a documentary, and all for less than fifty cents?).  I found it creepy as well, with edge-of-the-seat suspense.  Some of it confused me and now I know it's because of the horrible re-editing and shortening ordered by the MGM PTB's. 

There were some people in the audience totally unfamiliar with DS.  HoDS played first, followed by NoDS and those audience members were thrown off by seeing several of the same actors/actresses from HoDS in NoDS and got all discombobulated by it.  Those of us who were familiar with DS, of course, fully understood how the same performers would play completely different characters in various plots (and sometimes the same plot) as was done on the show.

Gerard

Yup, Patti, it's called that:  FDSMS (Faulty Dark Shadows Memory Syndrome).  I think I might've been the one to coin the phrase!  But I'm not sure.  I've had plenty of that.  For years, after watching the original, I thought the Quentin-haunting story happened because the spook who prowled Collinwood in early '69 was not actually Quentin, but Quentin's "body" possessed by Petofi. 

Gerard

I hope "the cruise" is even a minimal success.  It's something different than the usual New York/Los Angeles/New York/Los Angeles/New York/Los Angeles/New York/Los Angeles thing that has been going on for the past sixty-seventy years.

Big news:  not everyone lives within a ten-mile radious of New York or Los Angeles.  Most people who love DS live elsewhere.  I went to only one DS festival in New York and that's only because the weekend they had it I was returning to New York from - is anyone ready for this? - a cruise to Bermuda, the same place that the fest organizers are trying different this year. 

If I have to pay big bucks to go to another DS festivel, it had better be something different than a Brooklyn hotel or some place in the middle of nowhere in Los Angeles where the only food comes from a middle-of-nowhere-"cafe" in a hotel cast aside a cloverleaf of LA freeways.

I'm sick of NYC/LA/NYC/LA/NYC/LA, and in both places where they hold it has nothing to offer except rip-off prices.  If I had the funds and the time, I'd be on that cruise.  I don't care about another semi-fest in some California "resort" charging exorbitant prices, or trecking to Lyndhurst for the umpteenth-millionth time.  Okay, it's Lyndhurst, we get it.  How about a DS festival in Newport, RI or Essex, CT?  How about something different than the same-old-same-old over and over and over again?  The cruise is something different.  But I will not fly to LA and spend a weekend in a hotel where a "diner" is open only 15 minutes a day and charge $40 for a grilled-cheese sandwich.  Yes, I know you west-coast and east-coast people get to enjoy it every other year, but there are those of us in-between who don't care to sample what you have to offer year after year after year.  I know the cost of a cruise is prohibitive to many (even though, day for day, it's a lot cheaper than what the Brooklyn and airport-LA hotels charge - I'm sorry, but I'm not going to pay over a hundred dollars a day, at a reduced "DS" discount dontchyaknow, to stay in a hotel room where I spend time sleeping, going potty and showering when I could do all that for a lot less a day while enjoying the luxury of a cruise liner) but look at the bigger factors.

May the cruise be a big success, despite the nay-sayers.  May all the other "competive festivals" be as equally successful.  Just, please, do something different than NYC/LA/NYC/LA/NYC/LA year after year after year after year (and everything within all their environs).

Okay, enough of my kvetching.  Have fun for those going on the cruise.  Have fun going to that island thing.  Have fun those going on whatever else is being done.  Just have fun. 

Gerard

I can picture Vicki, taking Peter's hand, looking deeply into his eyes, and saying:  "I'm falling in love with you.  And if you love me, will you do this one thing for me?  Go side with the prosecution.  At least then I'll have a chance."

Gerard

After it went off the air, I held onto the hope that it would be brought back, even as a weekly, one-hour prime-time series.  That lasted for about a year (hopeless romantic that I was).

Then, one night, I was all psyched and ready to watch the premier of ABC's Movie of the Week The Night Stalker.  I heard it - that soundtrack that was obviously Robert Colbert.  I shouted:  "That's Dark Shadows music!"  As the opening credits rolled, I saw all those familiar names including Dan Curtis.  I was ecstatic.  I quickly grabbed my cassette recorder (I had gotten it as a Christmas gift), popped in a tape, held the microphone up to the TV speaker and began taping.  I didn't have enough tape to record the whole thing, but I got much of it.  I would then spend hours listening to it.  In a way, DS had returned.  Throughout the years, there were other Dan Curtis DSish cinematic treats, whether on TV or on the big screen, from such fare as Dracula and The Turn of the Screw to Burnt Offerings.

Gerard