There are tons of photos from the event here:

http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwtv/article/Photo-Coverage-DARK-SHADOWS-Celebrates-50th-Anniversary-20160627#

G.

It sounds really wonderful.  That's awesome that Nancy had such a great time and that John Karlen was able to participate so much.

Thanks for the write-up, Uncle Roger.  I've met Midnite several times and she's a lovely, gracious lady.

G.

That's a cool ad, MB.  I of course have no memory of Karlen's interview, though I almost certainly read it all those years ago.  Would be interesting to read that again.

Sorry you found the ending a downer, Patti.  I think it's kind of cool, but to each his own.

For anyone interested, I have long suspected that this movie was meant to be a kind of homage to Roger Vadim's film BLOOD AND ROSES (1960).  In the 1795 storyline, specifically around the time of Angelique's wedding to Barnabas, they actually restaged a certain sequence from that film (BLOOD AND ROSES).  I saw the French film long before I ever got to see the 1795 episodes (I started watching DS a few months after the conclusion of 1795, in 1968) and when I did finally get to see those shows, it instantly struck me that once again, DS was "borrowing" from the best.

Anyhow the finale of DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS mirrors the finale of BLOOD AND ROSES in a few ways.

G.

John's commentary on that film is priceless.  I think he mentions having an altercation with the director when the latter behaved badly with the ingenue actress.  As usual, I can't recall the details.

I actually remember reading about the movie when it finally got its US release.  I don't think that was until sometime in '71 though I think it was filmed in 1970, soon after John participated in hoDS. Rex Reed gave the movie a very strong good review in a New York paper that my grandfather used to buy.  I was so surprised because Rex usually did not have much time for horror films. 

Most of the scenes were done in one take.  I think John talks about how his stage training and, of course, his experience doing DS made it something he could do. Delphine also had a lot of stage experience.   She has this really long monologue in this one incredible scene where she's describing how Countess Bathory tortured her victims and in part of it, Karlen is nestled up against her and she's stroking his nipple.  They don't make em like that anymore.

G.

A fan who must be attending confirmed that John Karlen is indeed at the Festival.  I looked again and I noticed he was holding Marie Wallace's hand.  It was sweet.

G.

Clearly, someone who works for TV Guide understands that the true signature personage of DARK SHADOWS is The Pen.   This is why the show is usually described in web blurbs as "DARK SHADOWS, the Gothic soap opera featuring the exploits of that legendary villain, The Pen, who terrorized the residents of an isolated mansion in Maine."

In many middle and high schools, there was a telephone tree where kids would phone one another around 4:02 p.m. to inform everyone "make sure to turn it on, gang!  The Pen showed up in the opening monologue!!!!!!!!"

G.

I wish I could remember if the surviving footage of this sequence was among the bits screened by Darren Gross at a DS Festival I attended sometime around 2005.  (I think that was the same occasion when I saw the existing cut of the rejected WB pilot.)  I remember a scene where Carlotta brings a breakfast tray to Quentin and Tracy's bedroom (which obviously follows on a scene that's in the regular release cut), the piano scene, and the seance scene. Don't recall this one.

Holding onto the ever more unlikely hope that someday we'll all get to see the restored cut.

G.