They released everything from the "Introduction of Barnabas" onwards in consecutive order. 

Then they went back and released "Dark Shadows:  The Collectors series," which was everything from episode 1 to some point during the early Barnabas storyline.

Originally on the VHS tapes, they had edited the early Barnabas episodes and a lot of the Jason material had been excised.  I don't remember them doing that when they put out the DVDs but maybe they did.  I do know that one episode from the Aged Barnabas segment had to be reissued at one point because originally it was only available in an incomplete form.

After all the DVDs had been out for maybe 3 or 4 years, I started buying them on Amazon vendor.  I think I also found a few for stores.  Gradually over maybe 18 months or so, I collected them all.

Because of this, I really have no interest in the coffin set.  Glad you were able to have one though since you didn't own any of the discs.

G.

Revisiting Luciaphil.  Because words of beauty are a joy forever.

Wherever you are, Mistress of Prose and Wit, my hat is off to you.

G.

"...the free service became very limited and no longer aligned with the Hulu experience or content strategy.”

I know that's supposed to mean something other than "we got tired of giving away for free what we realized we could make people shell out 12 bucks a month for."  Right?

cheers, G.

Don't Disney or Warners pretty much own everything at this point? 

G.

I can't understand DC's problems with Monica Rich.  I thought she was very effective in what we do see.  Her closeups were incredibly intense and poignant. 

G.

Just parking this link here--it may come in handy.  Hope it proves to be irrelevant to your purchase.  Congratulations!

http://www.collinsporthistoricalsociety.com/2014/04/warning-bootleg-dark-shadows-boxed-sets.html

Best,

G.

My personal take on all this has always been that most, if not ALL, of those notes in Grayson's script represented her own thoughts on how she was going to play this out.

Grayson was a great believer in something called sub-text.  In a theatrical context, this means information that an actor brings to a given scenario or action.  Ordinarily, this would be augmented or perhaps changed outright by the director's notes.  DC was still fairly green at this time, though, so I don't know how much he contributed to all of this.  I know he was into things such as tracking shots and whip-pans.  LOL.

I do remember the story of him yelling at Thayer David to hit the stake HARDER in a certain scene in hoDS.  Frankly, that seems about DC's speed during this period of his life as a director.

Of course he went on to win an Emmy... which was invariably prominently displayed in every video interview he did, in later life.  I always had the feeling he worked his butt off getting that thing.

Wonderful captures, MB!  And wonderful job of annotating all this for us.

G.

Grayson said in a magazine interview once that Julia attended Cornell and majored in haematology (I think this was Grayson's little joke).

Grayson said several times that Magda was her favorite character on the show.  Grayson had some Romani presence back in her bloodline.  I think I read somewhere that Sam created Magda because Grayson was so bored playing Julia, who she regarded as a "straightass."

In another interview, either Thayer or Grayson said that their accents for Magda and Sandor came from the fact that both of them had been in productions of the Molnar play Liliom.  Their surname, Rakosi, is Hungarian.  It was the surname of an important figure in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, which resulted in a lot of people fleeing to the US (including the family doctor my Mom worked for in the 1960s and 1970s). 

I've wondered if a core element of Magda came from a play Grayson did in the early Sixties, THE BUSKERS--the photo published in the NY Times of her in the role really has a Magda look to it.

Yes, some of us are just a bit hung up on Grayson.  Because, you know, she was THE GREATEST ACTRESS TO EVER WALK THE EARTH.  (I'm quoting no less an authority than Danny Horn there--LOL).

G.