DS Borrowed from Twilight Zone Episode

[Philippe Cordier]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this before.

A couple of nights ago, after midnight, I caught the last 15 minutes of a "Twilight Zone" episode airing on the SciFi channel.  I've enjoyed many of the Twilight Zone episodes I've seen, although I haven't seen all that many.  I hadn't heard that the Dark Shadows writers borrowed from the Twilight Zone.

But in this episode, there can be little doubt that the DS writers were inspired not once, but twice, in the course of the Dark Shadows run. 

The episode was called "Queen of the Nile" and starred Ann Blyth.  It was about an actress who looked young, but a reporter interviewing her discovered evidence that she was far, far older than she appeared - generations older.  I was immediately reminded of both the Laura Stockbridge Collins storyline, and the Olivia Corey character.  The Twilight Zone character maintained her youth by means of an Egyptian scarab.  I can't remember anymore what Egyptian object it was that Laura Collins had, but the concept obviously came form the Twilight Zone episode.  Then the fact that the Twilight Zone character was an actress reminded me of Olivia Corey.  I don't remember if Olivia Corey was generations old or if it was rather that she had rather unusual origins, but her character seemed to have been inspired by that of the actress in "Queen of the Nile."  In the Twilight Zone episode, an elderly woman is an attendant to the young, beautiful actress, but she furtively reveals to the reporter that she is not the actress's mother, as she had been introduced - but her daughter.  As I think more about it, I recall something about Olivia Corey claiming to be the granddaughter of an actress of two generations ago, but in reality she wasn't the granddaughter, but the original.

The writer of this Twilight Zone episode, which aired in 1964, was Charles Beaumont, who died in 1967, and thus probably never knew his story was reworked in DS.  Interestingly, Beaumont also wrote the scripts for some of the Roger Corman Poe adaptations ("The Haunted Palace" and "The Masque of the Red Death").

It would be very interesting to find out how Charles Beaumont came up with the idea for his character - whether it was his own original concept, or whether he, too, was inspired from some earlier work.

Also, does anyone know why The Twilight Zone hasn't come out on DVD?

[David]

Hi, on DS, Amanda/Olivia was almost 3 generations old.

Good points about Queen of the Nile, I think you're right.

Check Amazon for season by season box sets of Zone from Image Entertainment.
LOADS of GREAT extras.

David

[Cassandra Blair]

Whoa - it really does sound as if Dark Shadows plundered the plot of this particular episode of Twilight Zone. 

It occurs to me that this TZ story was also mirrored in Thomas Tryon's 1976 novella "Fedora" (I believe a film was also made of it), in which a perpetually young Hollywood actress is revealed to have been a mother/daughter tag team with the mother appearing in the 1930's movies and the daughter in the 1950's 'comeback' films.

I'm sure if DS had stayed around long enough, they'd have found a way to borrow that plot in it's entirety as well! 

[arashi]

I remember that one! Good episode.

[Charles_Ellis]

BTW, the elderly daughter was played by Celia Lovsky, best remembered as the Vulcan high priestess T'Pau on Star Trek.

[MagnusTrask]

So now I ask, was there ever an original idea on DS?

[Cassandra Blair]

Well, I'm not sure that there was a reluctant, self-loathing vampire before Barnabas, at least onscreen.  And I also don't remember seeing a psychiatrist/haematologist/perpetual houseguest who nurses an unrequited love for a vampire before Julia. 

[David]

I think the way Barnabas became a vampire was an original tale, along with the Dream Curse.

Also, the way Quentin became a werewolf was unique.
And, turning a witch into a vampire was an interesting and new twist.

David

[Nelson Collins]

Well, I'm not sure that there was a reluctant, self-loathing vampire before Barnabas, at least onscreen.  And I also don't remember seeing a psychiatrist/haematologist/perpetual houseguest who nurses an unrequited love for a vampire before Julia. 

Nope, sorry ....

Gloria Holden as "Dracula's Daughter" 

She even fell in love with a doctor and tried to be "cured" of her "affliction"  which is a twist of the Julia/Barn relationship...

[Nelson Collins]

And I was completely forgetting the Victorian Gothic horror serial "Varney the Vampire, or, The Feast of Blood."  Varney is the first example of the "sympathetic" vampire who hates his condition.  This story predates "Dracula" by some 50 years, but one wonders if DC and co. would have been familiar with the story.  It has rather been eclipsed by Stoker's Dracula and it's descendants. 

I'd be more inclined to connect the sympathetic supernatural creature story (as well as his looking to re-discover his lost love) with the main plot of Universal's "The Mummy."

[Gothick]

In House of Dracula, the insidious Count (thesped by our beloved Uncle John Carradine) comes to visit a very odd sanatorium run by this mad doctor.  Dracula feigns remorse for the evil he has wrought and tells the doctor he is seeking a cure.  But it's all just a ploy to get his fangs into the inevitable ingenue also staying at the castle.

I think this movie dates to 1944 or thereabouts.  Although the script and direction are spotty, it's worth seeing for the classic Universal 1940s stylish cinematography and setpieces.

G.