Good luck! 

BTW, I noticed that (URL) links to the version listed as OOP on Amazon.  That can't be good.

I'll post here if I do receive the book this time so people will know if it is in fact available.

 

One thing I much preferred about the first season was how much more "normal" things appeared via sets and scenes.

...

Then, as monsters proliferated, the sets and background folk vanished.  The sense of the bizarre, mysterious and macabre amidst normalcy was gone.  To me, something was lost from that very first season.

I agree that the earlier part of the series was much more grounded in reality.  It was so fascinating to see those early kitchen scenes -- and especially the location footage in the town and at Seaview Terrace.

On the other hand, one could make the argument that as the show became more fantastic in plot, the settings and surroundings became attuned to that, becoming more abstract and removed from reality.

Hitchcock's films are sometimes criticized for their sometimes "fakey" aspects -- rear-projection, silkscreen or matte backgrounds (not sure of my terminology here), even in such late films as "Marnie."  Others argue that Hitchcock deliberately wanted to set certain scenes against a slightly unreal, perhaps expressionist, background.  One might say the same of Dark Shadows ...

Even in some contemporary, art-house type films (usually European) the artistic vision of the director is one of stylized sets and unreality -- just off the top of my head, I can think of "Edward II" (Derek Jarman), "Querelle" (Fassbinder), "Suspiria" and "Inferno" (Argento) ...

It's interesting because I've seen customers/viewers reviews criticize the "cheapness" or "fakiness" of some of these films, where actually the look of the film -- the removal from the mundane and ordinary -- is deliberate.

Whether the artistic vision in the case of DS was deliberate or a matter of economics, it's clear that the end result has a distinct effect on the viewer ... and we're certainly forever tied to the visual and visceral effect we've received whenever we think of the show.

(OT - It could be fun to think of contemporary movies that were shot entirely on soundstages, no location shooting, and how that creates an imaginary world -- Victor/Victoria, Sleepy Hollow (which I haven't seen -- did the recent Moulin Rouge do this?) etc. ... )

I have mixed feelings about the episodes.  IMO they were way too slow moving for my tastes.  I'll have to watch those episodes again.  Dark Shadows is the only Soap Opera that I've ever gotten into.  I have always believed that the show is more exciting when Barnabas is on.  I began watching the show in '68 at the age of 8.

As an adult I like more character driven shows and I especially enjoyed the dynamics between Joan Bennett and Louis Edmonds in the early episodes.  I too believe the writers got carried away with ridiculous plots after Barnabas arrived that probably hurt it's  chances of becoming a longer running soap.  Dark Shadows, I believe had more children watching it than other soaps at the time and children do not have the attention spans of an adult and I'm sure the writers knew that.

I see a lot of you really liked the Phoenix storyline and I didn't at all.   I'll have to watch that one again.

I'm looking at this thread for the first time now and felt compelled to comment on Murph's because nearly every line in it could have been written by me.   

I do like the way the early episodes of the show developed the characters more, but I agree they were quite slow moving.  I've never watched any other soap -- I've tried but haven't been able to stomach more than a handful of episodes of any of them.    DS does capture and hold my interest though, from the very first episode; I guess it's the  whole Gothic atmostphere that makes it unique right from the start.

The development of the supernatural aspects made the show far more interesting, and Frid as Barnabas really "made" the show.

I would encourage Murph to try the Phoenix story line again.  I had never seen that as a child (was probably pre-school) but saw it for the first time as an adult a few years ago when I got cable for the first time upon learning that DS would be re-airing on SciFi.  They started with the Phoenix storyline, and I was entranced -- even spooked by it, as I would watch my tape of the day's episodes in bed just before falling asleep ...

Patti wrote:

Okay...somebody please post pics of both Sams Evans' side by side...I can't remember....

LOL, I couldn't remember either.  Thanks, Midnite, for directing us to Dom's earlier post.  The photos help clarify what everyone's talking about in this thread.  I'd been confused in the past by comments that David Ford couldn't remember his lines and even statements to the effect that his character was made blind so that he could read his lines through sunglasses.  That seems a little far-fetched to me, and it seems puzzling that he would suddenly have developed some sort of amnesia with respect to his lines at this point during the show.  Yet I believe KLS has remarked that Ford couldn't remember his lines and maybe she was even the source of the story that that's why they decided to make the character blind.  (I think KLS sometimes spins a good yarn ...  )

Very strange.  Did Ford go on to success in other acting roles?

I suppose it could have been a temporary problem he had, like Mitch Ryan did before being canned after previous good work on the show.

I never had the game as a child myself.  I wanted it, but my mother refused to get it for me.  I did get the comic books (and eventually the Marilyn Ross novels) with my owned saved pennies, but the game was out of my price range.  It probably cost a whole whopping five dollars .  Well, I guess that was a lotta money back then.

Gerard, your story gave me a much appreciated chuckle; it brings back similar childhood memories (though I don't recall much about the Barnabas Collins game).

I've never been a parent, but I wonder why so many parents (at least in those days) wouldn't indulge their child when something was so very important to the child.  Though I think parents today frequently go to the other extreme.

We had it tough back then.

So I will be able to play it after all, but I still don't know what the loud noise like an airplane taking off was all about.  I don't think it was my imagination.

This is becoming more of a DVD technical question now -- it could possibly apply to DVDs in general so I'd like to post it in case anyone has any ideas.  The DVD in question does make a lot of noise in my laptop DVD player (sounds like an airplane taking off).  Usually my DVDs make some whirring noise at the start (not half this loud) and then stop after half a minute or so.

I e-mailed Acorn Media, the DVD producer, and received a swift response saying that sometimes DVDs are encoded so they can't be copied on a computer (and presumably that could be causing the noise problem I'm experiencing).

It's strange that, out of all the DVDs I have, though, that no other DVD has done this.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Acorn said to try it in a regular DVD player, but I don't have one.  Regardless, I wouldn't be able to return it any more without a receipt (I bought it two or three years ago I'd estimate, and it was expensive).

Thanks if anyone has experienced this and knows what it is, or if it might mean the DVD is defective.

As it is, I'm not going to play it; the mechanical noise it was creating in the DVD drive was alarming!

I popped my VHS of the Branagh version of "Hamlet" into my VCR last night not having watched it for a few years, and I think Chris Pennock (at least the Chris Pennock we know and love as the Leviathan Jeb  ) would have fit right into this version of Hamlet!  Not to put too fine a point on it, Branagh's production is, er, bombastic, to put it mildly --  both in the overall production he directed and in his performance.  There were a few scenes where he toned down the shouting, but talk about overblown ... I'm amazed that I used to proclaim Branagh to anyone who would listen, but time sometimes tempers one's youthful enthusiasms.  The frenetic camera work, the staging of the hyperkinetic action scenes, and the earth-shaking special effects seem to foreshadow the worst excesses of the truly godawful "Mary 'Branagh' Shelly's Frankenstein"!  But it amused me to think of "Jeb" chewing the scenery like mad alongside Branagh (I couldn't remember which role he played in this "Francesco Vitali" version). 

My new reaction to Branagh comes after being touched much more by the naturalistic performances in the maligned Ethan Hawk/Almeryeda version (which was far more innovative) where the acting was so understated and psychologically realistic in comparison.  From my many posts here regarding acting on DS, it's clear I prefer the "subdued" approach -- which we didn't always see on DS!  (Now I'm wondering if the Mel Gibson version could have been better than I thought ...)

.........


  After posting the above, I went back and re-read the thread (always a good idea, though maybe not in that order)    Chris Pennock was Claudius!?  'Zounds!  Not an easy part ... Derek Jacobi (as Claudius) was the best thing about the Branagh version I thought ...  It's too bad the recent L.A. production flopped as this would have been a major role for Mr. Pennock.

Does anyone know anything about the reputability of an online outfit called "MTC Europa Video"?

They claim to have VHS and DVD available low-cost of many movies that have been discussed on this forum that are either out of print or have never been released on VHS or DVD to my knowledge.

Some examples:

Louis Jourdan's Dracula

Witchfinder General (aka The Conqueror Worm)

Eye of the Devil

Burn, Witch, Burn!

and others.