Angelique of our own time band certainly had her fair share of incompetence.  The Dream Curse, apart from being poorly realized by the budget-strapped production crew, was unbelievably clunky and flaw-ridden.  As a junior witch, that whole fiasco she perpetrated with the ghost of Jeremiah was simply laughable.  It bothered me last Spring when I was watching 1795 and the writers simply DROPPED that whole storyline.  There was no explanation at all as to why the ghost stopped haunting Angelique--I got the feeling that DC simply got bored with it.

There were a lot of other instances in which poor judgement or sheer stupidity got her into trouble.  The way she handled Joe Haskell when she was a vampire wasn't just cruel; it was really quite boneheaded.  If she wanted him dead, she should have just done the job herself.

This kind of thing is why the insistence of so many fan writers upon depicting Angelique as "SuperWitch" used to drive me crazy back when I was still reading DS fanfic.  Even in 1840, Angelique didn't use her powers very expertly, when supposedly she had been wandering the world for 45 years and should have had the chance to work out the kinks.  I suspect her of having been one of those Witches so desperately convinced of her own innate superiority, she never bothered with magickal homework or the kind of exercises most Witches do to keep themselves on their toes.

G.

Hi John, this was an actor who played the guy from whom John Yeagar rented some property.  I can't figure out whether the episode has been screened yet on Sci Fi so I won't say more right now.  If no one else bothers to post the actor's name, I'll make a point to look it up when I get home tonight and post it here tomorrow.

I thought he was cute, and, judging from the tight trousers he was wearing, well endowed. Unfortunately he didn't have much to do on this one episode.

Gothick who's wondering when the detritus from Witch Switch week is going to get cleaned up here

Well, the arrival of Mrs. Maggie Collins' studio portrait from Paris (in a box that looks like it came from a Coney Island stall) certainly tells one a lot about the taste (?) of her husband.  I've seen far better efforts by a 6th grader armed with a decent assortment of crayola crayons.

We need a poll for worst portrait on Dark Shadows.  It might be a toss-up between this one and the original Charles Delaware Tate portrait of Quentin, which made one of the most attractive men on Earth look as if he were dying of dyspepsia and sunburn.

For best portrait, I'd probably vote for Sam's sketch of Betty Hanscombe.  The portrait of aged Quentin is a fun example of a very particular genre.

any other thoughts?

Gothick

Thanks, Midnite, for that tip.  I just LOVE the screen capture of Grayson and Louis together on the July page!  What a treat. This is one of my favorite scenes, and this image beautifully captures two of the characters who make this storyline so memorable for me.  I just watched this scene a couple nights ago.

I remember well a few years ago that I wrote a short review of Louis' brilliant thesping in the role of PT Roger Collins.  Guy Haines was kind enough to make a printout of the review and show it to Louis.  Imagine my delight a few weeks later when a copy of the printout arrived with a short, handwritten note from Louis himself thanking me for my kind interest in his work!

Louis Edmonds was a true gentleman, and I still miss him.  He always brought a special quality to the annual Dark Shadows gatherings.

Gothick

I agree that an onscreen scene of Barnabas nuzzling Will's neck would have been VERY hot ... hmmmmm....  but it's HIGHLY unlikely that anything like that would have been shown on network TV at this time (1970), though just a few years after this those of us with Public TV got to see Ian McKellen performing a very sensuous kiss with another man in a BBC production on Edward II (that I really wish would come out on home VHS).

If you have Kathy Resch's 1967 concordance, you'll have seen the letter from ABC's standards and practices office about some sarcastic dialogue given to Jason Macguire in a scene with Willie during the early Barnabas storyline.  Apparently, s & p were worried that Jason's crack about Willie's light housekeeping duties would be seen as an inference that Willie and Barnabas were in a gay relationship!

And some people think we go overboard when we talk about homophobia as a mental disease!  ::sigh::

Gothick

I really love The Night Strangler.  Great character roles for Wally Cox and John Carradine, and a superb cameo by Margaret Hamilton ("Human blood, of course!").  The only thing about that flick is that I find the character of Kolchak so annoying in it, I keep hoping that the Strangler will just put him and us out of misery with one good twist!

btw, does anybody remember seeing this great movie of a similar style and vintage, directed by cult favorite Curtis Harrington Jr., entitled The Cat Creature?  Gale Sondergaard was in it.  And there's this moment where she's reading the tarot cards for the protagonist and turns over the Death card, with great relish, that always reminds me of the story that she was approached at one point about a role on DS.

Gothick

This is a great topic.  Thanks, Vlad, for posting about this.  Maybe you will inspire more folks to see this fabulous film.  I'd love to see it on the big screen some day.

The film version of NOTI has a *cartload* of differences from the original stage version by Tennessee Williams.  The screenplay was adapted by John Huston and another writer.  A copy of the screenplay was auctioned on eBay a while back, and I would have loved to have been able to read it--it would be interesting to know how the finished film differed from the script.  Huston always shot his scenes in the order they were written, I believe he had a theory that this helped sustain the narrative mood for the actors.  (my brain is barely functioning at the moment, so pardon my mangled English).

As for Grayson's stage training, she had been acting all over the Northeast for over twenty years on various stages, and had done two films (both of which she subsequently deleted from her "official" filmography) before her appearance in Iguana.  She'd also done a fair amount of television, much of it now difficult to track down as she did small supporting roles that weren't well documented in published credits of 1950s drama anthology shows.

I've read a lot of the press coverage of the filming of Iguana, and it seems as if Grayson got along very well with nearly everyone.  She managed the remarkable feat of making friends with both Richard Burton *and* Elizabeth Taylor.  Elizabeth's daughter Liza became a friend of Grayson's son Matthew.  One of my favorite anecdotes about her trip to Mexico was that she got this scopion venom antidote kit and insisted upon carrying it all around the country with her.  I remember Matt mentioning at a Festival interview after she had passed over that that scorpion kit was STILL in the medicine cabinet at his parents' house.

Another bit worth mentioning is that Grayson had a bit part (basically a 2 minute scene) in an episode of Route 66 that was aired early in 1964.  That episode was filmed in Florida and I've always wondered whether Grayson did it on her way home from Mexico.

G.

Just speaking up against any kind of altering of the episodes.  Just starting on this could open up a real can of worms.
What would be eliminated next?  Roger's line about incestors, such a clever and unintended reference to the Laura storyline?  The fly landing on Barnabas' nose as he's informing Julia that she is going to die?  Quentin bumping his head on the door to the kitchen?  Greggie Trask, Minerva and Judith rushing past exorcising warlock Evan Handley as Trask lets flie the mumbled exclamation, "Jesus!"?

Good luck to the MPI technical dept for keeping track of further "improvements" of this type. Frankly, only a diehard fan would be able to recognize this sort of thing when going through the tapes.  Even I have less than perfect familiarity with some weeks of the show, and there are whole swatches of 1966-67 that I've still not seen.

G.