In all fairness, whenever DC was in town, he DICTATED the storylines to the writers.  That's right, Dan Curtis was not only the producer, he was also the uncrowned head writer on the show.  There were longish periods when Dan was in England or elsewhere pursuing other projects and in those periods, the stories actually managed to make sense.  I think the first Laura Collins story (1966-67) was so well written because DC wasn't around to interfere--I believe he was in England throughout that period.

According to Sam Hall, if one of the writers tried to protest that what Dan ordered did not make sense, he would bark, "Are you writing the show or not?  I can get a lotta people to write this show."  So they would have to give in and do what he said, regardless of how loopy or incoherent.

In the final two to three years, the rhythm of the stories with all the cliffhangers and increasing avalanche of occulture meant that the writers themselves simply could not follow what was going on.  Add in the fact that many if not most of the shows were taped way out of sequence.

The reintroduction of Quentin in 1970 was purely driven by the character's huge popularity.  What I remember from what was revealed is that Frederick Thorne had been a previous alias adopted by Quentin before he assumed the Grant Douglas identity.  Immortals have to keep doing this because otherwise, people become curious why somebody that old still looks so young.  (It was before the invention of botox, guerilla plastic surgery, etc.)

cheers,  G.

Veteran DS fan Nicky confirmed to me that the intro of Angelique episode on the new compilation is NOT restored.  Same old muddied kinescope we've all seen before.

I did find it highly unlikely that MPI would spend the money required for this.  I doubt whether they have direct access to the software and equipment required, so it would have involved setting up a contract with a special DVD restoration service.

Best,  Steve

I'm so glad this finally got posted.

Many thanks Midnite for a truly heroic effort!

G.

What a hoot!  I find the photos of Radcliff and McAvoy together to be very slashy...

G.

Happy Birthday Midnite darling!

cheers, Steve

Sorry to hear about the emergency room trip, Michael.  I hope you are feeling better now.

Best,

Steve

Just seeing this now, so it may be too late.  The thing to note about Lovecraft is that he wrote in a heavily literary style with lots of elaborate descriptions.  So you might want to start with just one story and if you like that, try a couple more.

"The Dunwich Horror" was the inspiration for the DS Leviathan storyline--and was made into a fun film (well, *I* think it's fun) with Dean Stockwell, Sandra Dee and Sam Jaffe around the same time (1970).

A couple more that I think are good:  "The Call of Cthulhu," "Dreams in the Witch-house,"  and "The Whisperer in Darkness."  I remember "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" being bizarre and fun but it's been around 30 years since I last read it.  It's described as being co-written by HPL and another writer, but the other writer only contributed one paragraph--which I believe HPL completely re-wrote so the style would match up.

Best, G.

I don't go to Festivals anymore, but I think it would be great if James Hall were invited.  Apart from anything else, would be very interesting to hear his own account of what went down during his time on the show.

I'm very happy that John Karlen took over the role, since to me, he IS Willie.  But I have to confess that when I finally got to see James Hall's episodes, I thought the performance had a compellingly unpleasant feel and some definite potential. 

G.