Totally groovy!

G.

Whenever this date comes up on the calendar, I can't help remembering that this was the day of the year when the last ever episode of Dark Shadows, the original series, aired in 1971.  As we've all reminisced many times in the past, our beloved show had the ignominy of being replaced by a very blandly presented game show, Password... I did tune in the following Monday to make sure the show wasn't really still on, and there was Allan Ludden doing his thing.

Thanks to the magic of DVDs, Youtube, and a surprising variety of mass media mentions and references, it seems our beloved show will live forever, but I still feel the hurt of that seemingly final parting, all those years ago.

G.

Holy Moly.  "A gentle tribute to the original DS" and the first anniversary of Frid's passing?  Really guys?

Sheesh.

speechless,

G.

I don't keep up with these as I should like to do, alas.  I just have to chime in that I LOVE Jane Draper and wish she had been brought back, perhaps as a Levianette, or maybe instead of the dumb storyline where Willie kidnaps Maggie during the Adam storyline, Our Jane could have shown up as a nosy wise-cracking reporter a la Glenda Farrell and started asking "too many" questions.  (Reporter (looking around Collinwood drawing room with distaste):  "So what time do they lay out the chow in this dump?" Barnabas (looking down his nose):  "Madam, you ask... too many QUESSStionssss.")

I didn't understand the point of Barn strangling all those women without having a nice long drink first.  This was even underlined in [spoiler]the scene in 1968 when Trask's ghost comes back and puts Barnabas on trial and Nathan's ghost keeps repeating "strangulation" when asked how so-and-so died.[/spoiler]

G.

So, have any other cousins seen Stoker?  I went to see it more or less as an experiment with a friend last night.  And I kept saying to myself, "This is one way a DS remake could have been done."  There are only hints of supernatural themes in the film (including a couple of forms of vampirism), and I found neither the story nor the characters much to my taste--the exception that proved the role being Nicole Kidman's baroque, super-charged, and very DS-styled performance as the protagonist's mother (there was also an elderly housekeeper who had a DS flair to her scenes but was only in the early part of the film).

In some ways, this project also shows why it's smarter to come up with your own thing that might provide an opportunity to do an homage to DS, rather than attempting to go back and make more DS (which I've thought for years now isn't really possible). 

I kept thinking of DS throughout the movie (and at times, I was laughing at stylistic touches that nobody else in the theatre seemed to get--I always feel slightly odd laughing in a room full of people sitting in stony silence).  The strongest visual reference I noticed was when a character played by Michael Goode glanced through a window and saw the central female character running away from the mansion.  It made me think of Vicki in those old 1966 photographs...

G.

I started watching in June 1968 and at that point, Barnabas wasn't the villain, he was the hero.  Angelique (or Nicholas, or Quentin, or ...) was the villain.

H.

Joan Crawford would have been a disaster in the role of Liz.  Joan Bennett had a strong background in theatre, which was why she was so perfect in the role.  Granted, Joan Bennett occasionally forgot her lines, but she maintained her regal composure to the end onscreen. 

This is just personal, but I always felt that our Joan exuded a certain warmth, even when she was laying down the law in what appeared to be an unreasonable fashion to Miss Winters (in the early weeks).  I've never felt warmth from Joan C (although I admit I enjoy her film performances enormously).

I wonder if the "other actress" who "talked to" Joan C on the set of the Lucy show was Viv Vance.  I could see Viv doing that in a sensible, yet sensitive way, that would have gotten the message home without making Joan get her dander up.

G.