Greetings Fans,
Last weekend, a friend I haven't seen in awhile came to visit and brought a few goodies to loan out. Among them was a bootlegged set of the short-lived British anthology series, Journey to the Unknown. I'm not sure how I missed ever seeing this show since it ran on ABC in the US during the 1968-69 season; I can only guess that they may have given it a 10 p.m. timeslot due to the "adult" themes and that WAS past my bedtime that year.
The series was produced with US money and the format involved a British cast, location and production facilities (through fabled Hammer studios, as it happens) but with a US guest star featured as the lead in each show. Episodes I have seen to date featured folks such as Patty Duke, George Maharis, Robert Reed, Robert Lansing, etc.
Robert Lansing's episode is based upon a classic ghost story by the now-forgotten author Oliver Onions, "The Beckoning Fair One." The adaptation for this series updated the original tale (set I believe in the 1920s or 1930s) to the present day (i.e. 1968) and changed quite a bit of the story. What I wasn't prepared for was how close certain set-pieces in this version seemed to be to certain details of the second feature film, Night of Dark Shadows (filmed in the Spring of 1971).
Like Quentin Collins in NoDS, the lead character in "Beckoning Fair One" is a painter, come to England to have his first one-man show in a London art gallery. Instead of inheriting a haunted mansion, he rents one with his fiancee (played by English actress Gabrielle Drake, the sister of legendary singer-songwriter Nick Drake). The title refers to the portrait of a woman who lived in the house in the 1930s and 1940s, a Rebecca (or Angelique!) like femme fatale whose mocking ghostly laugher is heard FREQUENTLY throughout the story. (The laughter does remind me of the unseen cackling of our very own Favorite Witch.)
As in NoDS, the painter quickly becomes obsessed with his ghostly paramour, locking himself up in his studio, doing portrait after portrait of his Beckoning Fair One, and lashing out violently to his fiancee when she ignores the signs of his deteriorating grip upon reality.
I know Sam Hall had to pull a script out of his hat VERY quickly during preparations for the second feature film. It would be interesting if he had seen The Beckoning Fair One on ABC and put that together with memories of the AIP feature The Haunted Palace and some of his own ideas together to produce the narrative and concept for Night of Dark Shadows.
G.
