Thanks for posting those links.  By a coincidence, yesterday I found the old full-length trailer for hoDS on YouTube (the one that runs around 2 and 1/2 minutes long) and really enjoyed watching it again.  In some ways a superior viewing experience to the movie!

I kept thinking I recognized the male announcer's voice but couldn't quite get it.  Anybody out there have any idea who did the work?  I kept thinking he might have been one of the "horror hosts" of the period.

In completely unrelated news, I LMAO when thumbing through a new book about the late Pete Duel in the workroom here (I work in a gigantic academic library), and I spotted on one page the terse sentence "Roger Davis was a FOOTNOTE."  They meant as a replacement for Mr. Duel, but I'm afraid the way it was written made me cackle cruelly.

We DS fans can be so unkind--in addition to be cultish, raving, and benighted, of course!

G.

I love the early 1966 episodes.  The brooding monochrome camerawork, the atmospheric lighting, the spot-on performances from all involved--granted, Art Wallace's writing does have its banal moments (I still shake my head at that "container of coffee"), but there are some really exquisite moments in there.

And, if you don't grok just how special DS was from episode 1, check out the week from Days of our lives in 1966 and see just what a WORLD of difference there was between standard soap writing and DS!

G.

My Goodness, you're all such sweethearts!  Many thanks for all the lovely wishes.


hugs, Gothick

With regards to Iman as Angelique--I think having a dark skinned actress of whatever background play the character would help make a genuine new departure in a new DS.  I liked Alec Newman as Barnabas precisely because he was physically different from Frid and carried himself in the role very differently which made it possible to look at the new telling of the story with genuinely fresh eyes.

It's all truly academic at this point because the whole thing could be put on a shelf for the next five years, or at least that's my impression given what I have read so far...

G.

Many thanks for all those wonderful wishes! I'm deeply touched.

Best wishes to all,

Gothick

Convicted "Witches" in the US were never burned; they were supposed to be hanged.  In the Salem hysteria two people died from "pressing," a form of interrogation under torture that is realistically re-created in the classic 1970 telefilm Crowhaven Farm (which I highly recommend to all DS fans).

I've never heard of decapitation, the punishment meted out to Judah Zachery in the DS 1840 storyline, being used as a form of capital punishment in the US.  I believe that death by decapitation was reserved for people commited of crimes of treason and sedition under old English law (hence Mary Queen of Scots, etc.).

Anyhow, I agree with Brandon Collins that the point of 1795 was for Victoria to witness the events of Barnabas' death and then return.  Presumably, she could not return until the moment of the death of Phyllis Wicke whose place she took when she was catapulted back through time.

G.

Arashi, this is a really great exposition of the emotional/sexual dynamics involved in the Angelique/Barnabas/Josette triangle.  Excellent work!

I think it is interesting to compare the pre-1795 version of Barnabas' romance with Josette with the way the relationship is depicted as we see the events unfolding during 1795 and then how it plays out afterwards.  When I finally got to see all the original 1967 Barnabas episodes in order, I remember being very disconcerted by just how creepy Barnabas' obsessive need for Josette seemed.  There's a scene soon after Maggie has taken up "residence" in the OH where she's been dolled up in Josie drag and Barn is grinning like the cat that copped the cream and ranting on and on about how she will be his very own living Josette doll come to life again... it gives me gooseflesh to watch.  I actually find it one of the most disturbing things they ever did on DS--perhaps THE most disturbing.  I find it much more unsettling than the Cyrus/Maggie kidnapping scenario later on in 1970 even though by the time of the latter story they could be somewhat more sexually explicit (but only somewhat).  The ruthlessness with which Barn pursues erasing Maggie's own identity and substituting a weirdly distilled simulacrum of Josette's own personality is very creepy.

Thinking about the series as a whole, Josette comes across almost as a blank-check character to me.  I'd never thought about this before, but I guess the energy of KLS' own personality in the various forms and manifestations of the character helped give her a phantasmal unity that otherwise isn't really there.  How do you reconcile the original version of Josette as a kind of spectral guardian of the Collins family with the image we get from Barnabas' own distorted memories (I do love the scene late in 1967 where Julia forces Barnabas to admit that Josette in real life never did return his love, even though this was almost immediately changed with the 1795 "flashback"), and then subsequent "incarnations" in later storylines?  Will the real Josette Collins please stand up?

cheers, G.

I've always thought one of the most illuminating moments Angelique had in her dealings with Barnabas was when, during a crisis in 1968, she blurted out to him:  "You've never cared what I was feeling or thinking!" I think that was a moment of truth for her.

I really don't care for the end of 1840 at all, particularly given Angelique's actions in her initial entrance in that storyline.  I just find it taxes even my abilities to suspend disbelief with respect to DS.  I also think that it robs the story of a great deal of its tragic punch.  Just my own opinion--I do grok why the more romantically inclined Barn/Ang 'shippers love the idea of it.

cheers, G.