Wow wow WOW MB. Today's photo of Cassandra is JAW-DROPPING!

STAGGERINGLY excellent work!

Thanks!!!

G.

I remember seeing The Phantom Empire on "Cinema Club 9," a late night weekly movie feature that happened on a Washington DC station, Channel 9, in the early to mid 1970s. It was a cool serial, a crossover between the Western and fantasy/lost civilization genres. I had no idea there was a remake in the late Seventies--I have seen the Dracula episodes from this series, thanks to a friend who sent me copies a few years back.

G.

Question about the 1991 series: I decided to watch episode 6 this evening, which combines 2 to 3 months of the original 1967 storyline into 42 minutes. In a scene set in Carolyn's bedroom, she has this extraordinary, rather large high modern Satanic sculpture sitting near her bed. Does anyone recall reading anything about that? It stood out because so much of the set dressing in this series just seemed so unimaginative. But this was a brilliant touch, highlighting the evil influence Barnabas had his cousin under at this point in the story.

As usual I can't post an image but maybe somebody out there remembers this. It looks like a one of a kind sculpture.

G.

I think the official credits are to some extent misleading--Violet Welles said in the one interview with her I found that she wrote, apparently, all the PT 1841 episodes credited to Gordon Russell--and implied that she wrote some that went out under his name earlier on, as well (which reportedly is how she got the gig to write for the show under her own byline). I have no idea why she wasn't simply credited for writing that final group of episodes--it may have been that she, like several others who worked on the show, had some kind of argument or dispute with DC. It seems to have happened a lot. So Gordon simply paid her under the table and took the credit. According to another writer who so far as I know never worked on DS, playwright Robert Patrick (author of the fascinating novel Temple Slave, a fascinating roman-a-clef about avant-garde off-off B'way theatre culture in 1960s Greenwich Village), a lot of name writers had ghost writers churning out their scripts if they were busy developing other projects and were given assignments on deadline.

Joel Crothers also stated in an interview that he wrote, if I remember correctly, at least a couple of scripts for DS. I have no idea who got credit for writing those shows.

I doubt we will ever know more about who was actually writing for the show since most of the people involved are dead now. And even when they were living, they would have been reluctant to discuss this subject, since among other things there were potential violations of writers' guild rules involved.

G.

Sure, Midnite! That's nice of you to offer.

I'd be really surprised if that image is new to MB. He who sees all, knows all!

xo G.

That's nice to see. On my "wall" on social media, I posted this really nice color shot of Alexandra wearing a sleeveless dress, in the Foyer next to the black rearing horse statue. It had DARK SHADOWS (in block letters, not the font) and the ABC logo on it and might have been used as a "bump." I'd post it here, but I have never figured out how to post photos on the forum.

G.

I realize this is quite irrelevant to the theme, but...

My God, David Selby had pretty lips back in 1969. SWOOOOOOOONNNN.

G.