I haven't been able to post here very often this year ... most of the time (when I wasn't writing cover letters) I was absorbed in medieval genealogy. The last few weeks I've been absent because I moved back to my home state to the house I grew up in. The job I had moved out of state for didn't last long because the company made cutbacks with the recession. (If anyone knows of a position anywhere in the U.S. for a researcher/writer with a library degree, please let me know ... )

One of the good things about moving is that you tend to find things that had been missing since the previous time you moved. The find that most elated me was discovering my "Dark Shadows Episode Guide" published by Pomegranate Press. And all the notes I made from re-watching 1840 and 1840PT over the summer seem to have made it here, too.

Back at home now, my mother asked me to go through boxes of my sister's and my old children's books to find which ones could be given away. Here too I made some exciting finds.

Here's my summary of one that's most relevant to my writing this post - this is from the first chapter, which I read last night:

Dan Pride, an orphan raised in private schools in London, arrives by train from Boston to a small town on the coast of Maine; he is picked up at the station by the hired man, a young, talkative man in his 20s, who tells the 13-year old about the boy's ancestors and why his family is shunned by locals. It seems an ancestor was executed for witchcraft in colonial times. The boy arrives at the dark, forbidding house of his uncle ...

One phrase leapt out from the first few pages because I had always thought that my memory of this came from DS - but I see now that I was wrong:

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

The book has enough similarities in subject and atmostphere with DS that some aspects must have become fused in my later recollection.

I wonder if anyone else remembers this book, or read similar books during the time of DS's original airing. "The Witch's Bridge" was published in 1967; my second edition Scholastic paperback was published a couple of years later, and I read it in 1970.

Last night at about midnight I made another startling discovery. I was idly googling the name of the town of some of my ancestors in northeastern France and had discovered a link to a book about witch trials in that province. I was familiar with the researcher's previous work, a historian at Oxford University. As I paged through an online preview, I stopped for a moment almost in disbelief. I saw the name of one of my ancestors from the town I was seeking. I had no information about him previously other than his name. He is mentioned in this book as having accused a woman of witchcraft in 1608, when he was 32 years old, and signed his statement with what is described as the flourished signature of an educated man. He later testified against her, and she was subsequently tortured and executed. The account is quite detailed. Unfortunately, this isn't the first ancestor I've discovered who played a role in the judicial process against alleged witches in this region.

It's strange that my early interest in DS, witches, and the like, should be from a viewpoint so completely opposite from these forebears. It's unsettling yet macabrely fascinating.

Darren, I apologize for responding to this so much later, but I've been away for a while, in my own version of time traveling ...

Your reply explains things very well, and the circumstances you describe now make sense to me.

- Philippe

I haven't followed things like ownership of the series closely, so I'm not sure what the references to WB are that other posters have referred to. The only connection I recall is that the WB network was producing the pilot for the series that never came to be, as happens with many TV and film projects.

I don't believe holding off the release of the DVD movies is a plot to drive us off Widows Hill but a way to maximize the marketing for the old series.

It's more than about increasing DVD sales, it's about introducing a new audience to the old series which will hopefully increase interest it

I'm not informed with insider information, but I feel skeptical that a corporate entity like "WB" would really have an interest or concern with promoting the original ABC series from the '60s and '70s. But if I'm wrong, and they really do have this humanistic interest at heart, I'm still skeptical that delaying release of the HODS and NODS on DVD for a 2010 (or whatever) movie is going to either 1) bring about a major resurgeance of interest in the TV series, or, 2) be a marketing coup for selling the 1970s movies.

Personally, I didn't think the movies were great, but they do have a connection with the original series with the cast and general storylines (plus great locations!), so I would buy them up in a snap.

Aha! I didn't know that. And I wonder why ABC wanted to preserve the master tapes?

Having experienced high hopes originally for a revival of a Dark Shadows series on TV, which I think is the best format for DS, I've finally settled into a general disinterest in a new film version of DS. The 1991 TV remake had some good aspects, but it wasn't "the same" as the original DS. A movie now is going to have little of what makes the original series something unique in television history. After 40 years, a new movie version is going to have little in common with the DS that many of us grew up with. I could accept Johnny Depp as a new Barnabas, but after forcing myself to make it through "Sleepy Hollow" after several attempts, I just can't see Tim Burton as the right person to direct something like "Dark Shadows," with its complex characters, intricate mysteries, and old-fashioned Gothicism. I'm content personally to keep the flame going for the original, and don't want its memory or unique place in television history usurped by a 21st century movie.

The release of the two films on DVD, has been postponed and has no release date at all.  It won't be put back on the schedule until the movie starts actual production.  

Given the current economy, perhaps we'll have a better chance of WB ponying up the restoration money in a couple of years, if we pass this financial slump.

I am very disappointed that the DVD release of HODS and NODS has been tied to the projected film project. The existing movies will likely bear little similarity to the upcoming feature film. The younger generation of moviegoers that the new movie will be marketed toward is unlikely to embrace what will seem to be rather dated movies from the 1970s.

I'm certain I'm in the minority, but I personally have no interest in a Dark Shadows feature film directed by Tim Burton.

Philippe, have you ever seen Roger Corman's early (and bargain-basement-budget) feature, "The Undead" (I think released in 1957?).  It weaves together a number of plot elements that were recycled in the Vicki Winters time travel storyline on DS.

I think these themes were very much in the air in the 1960s. 

This is the first I've heard of the movie "The Undead," Gothick. It doesn't seem to be available anywhere, but someone wrote a detailed description of the plot on amazon.

I guess your observation that "these themes were very much in the air in the 1960s" must explain the similiarities with DS. It seems almost more uncanny if DS 1795 and"A Message from Charity" were not connected by a direct inspiration of the other. Sources say that the story was published in the November issue of the science fiction magazine. I just wonder if the actual issue might have come out a month earlier, or if one of the DS writers could possibly have read the story earlier, because it is so similar to what happens in 1795 a few months later.

Barnabasjr, I agree with you that the TZ episode was well done by the two young actors. I liked the part where Peter was drinking wine and Charity got tipsy. Their characters were good, but not goody-goody.