Some of you might enjoy this podcast, in which a gentleman film buff and a chosen friend discuss and dissect various 1970s TV horror films (which some of us grew up watching obsessively). I'm pasting the link here for THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER with Jonathan Frid, who alas doesn't appear in the video trailer devised for the site:

https://www.mondayafternoonmovie.com/episodes/12-devils-daughter-tony-rodriguez

GARGOYLES with Grayson Hall, CROWHAVEN FARM, and numerous other films we've discussed here in passing are also featured.

G.

Fans,

Here's a note about an August Derleth story from 1951... I wonder if it was one of the ones that the DS writers had on their note cards (Sam Hall mentioned in a couple of interviews that they all read a great many horror tales and had notes about them as sources for plots on the show).

August Derleth - A Knocking in the Wall: (Weird Tales, July 1951). No one could be inside the wall, yet the knocking came from there ... polite, diffident, but determined. Hobart Maclain, 50, corporate lawyer and world's least imaginative man, is forced to concede that the house he recently moved into is haunted. Maclain learns via automatic writing that the ghost is that of Mrs. Elizabeth Hopper, drugged and walled-up alive by want-away husband Kilvert in May 1933. The killer has since relocated to Canada. The persistent knocking gets on top of the lawyer but fortunately for him Julia Bennet, his faithful secretary, takes command of the situation. Miss Bennet unearths Mrs. Hopper's bones and frees her vengeful spirit to do what it must. (Note from the pen of fan author Kev Dimant on the Vault of Evil web forum.)

cheers, G.

It mentions a lot of other interesting details, including rooms that are copies of the rooms seen on TV of Stately Wayne Manor, complete with bat-poles that I think were stated to be fully functional... wild.

The owner produces videos for television including PBS and of course, people in the comments immediately assume he WORKS FOR PBS... reading comprehension has sunk to an extreme low in the era of the "information superhighway."

He actually sounds like somebody who might know Jim Pierson since it also mentions that there's a recording studio and he has produced recordings for a long list of 1960s and 1970s era recording stars. Pierson does that as well.

G.

And it's already marked reserved!

I was curious to see what this was priced at but the info does not appear to be available--price quote upon expression of interest to buy, no doubt...

G.

Thanks for that link. It's so fascinating how many people who were involved in the show claimed to have "created" Barnabas. I really think the character's creation was a group effort... I personally feel that if a more confident, technically skilled actor than Jonathan Frid had been cast, the character wouldn't have been nearly as compelling as he became. Because Jonathan fed into his performance his own fear and anxiety in struggling to master such long scripts with such a punishingly short timeline. That gave Barnabas an edge very different from the suavity of Lugosi, the feral brutishness of Christopher Lee, the cadaverously predatory zeal of Carradine, to name three famous actors associated with vampires prior to Frid. Barnabas was a genuine new page in the annals of the Undead.

Which is partly why I can't imagine anyone seriously trying to mount a reboot of DS without Barnabas. But we'll see...

G.

This is interesting to read as a glimpse of the new DS fandom, the youngsters who are discovering the show on a certain popular retail network's streaming service:

https://themuse.jezebel.com/i-cant-stop-watching-this-late-1960s-soap-opera-about-a-1839441762

References and comparisons to Riverdale, Instagram, etc. help patch together a picture of the cultural context new viewers bring to our show. It's intriguing to me that against all apparent odds, they still feel the fascination and find the addiction.

This fandom, which is growing, can be found on social media and the occasional blog such as this one.

G.

That sounds fascinating. Interesting that both Caldwell and Ron Sproat were gay. I only found out about Sproat a year or so ago.  It seems he left the show due to creative disagreements with DC and perhaps other writers. I thought Joe Caldwell was such a great writer but he'd disappear for months and I have no idea if that was due to Dan Curtis's whim or if he simply had other work on hand during those periods. Joe wrote one of my favorite scripts, the one that ends with a cat and mouse conversation with Julia and Barnabas, and then in the final scene Barnabas comes to her bedroom to kill her, only to be informed by "Miss" Hoffman: "I've been waiting for you a long, long time." A classic moment on the show.

G.

A date that will live in infamy.

It was April 2. But it was no April Fool's.

Such an upsetting day...

G.