The debut episode of "Cursed Dwellings" can be heard in this podcast, which also features Penny Dreadful and myself being interviewed (separately) by the podcast host, Rachel. Danielle speaks about the introduction of Barnabas storyline on DS, and I talk about the initial storyline of Strange Paradise. It was fun to do, and I'm happy with how it turned out.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cfy2h4sglM

Gothick

Hi fans,

Sole Twins audio has launched "Cursed Dwellings," an online radio drama serial all about the origins of Victoria Winters. Episode one begins with Collinwood servant Betty Hanscombe's return to Collinsport, while a dying Jamison Collins summons his daughter Elizabeth to his room on an important matter concerning the Collins family secret.

I think the year is supposed to be around 1946. And a character from the Strange Paradise universe is due to make an appearance, too, in a subsequent installment.

Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYElLbtU42g

G.

Penny Dreadful will probably post about this soon--I'm excited to see that the new issue of Scary Monsters magazine has a horror host theme! It includes a lovely feature on Penny Dreadful with some great photos, as well as a sidebar all about "Terror at Collinwood."

cheers, Gothick

That's a very cool still from Screen World. Love the expression on the Divine One's face. So delectably cat-like.

G.

Also interesting to learn from Jeff Kenny's interview that HBO has been using Seaview Terrace as their production base for another season of The Gilded Age. Because of this, the house has been taken off the market for the time being.

H.

I think there's already a thread for this, but I'm not sure just where it is.

Online version of the KLS David Henesy interview. This version supposedly includes material not published in the mag (which I have not seen).

https://www.fangoria.com/original/david-henesy-interview/

G.

Our very own and much beloved Penny Dreadful has begun a new DS podcast: TERROR AT COLLINWOOD!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irvY8PAuueQ&list=PLkKN4d4hugdPuC5Fqbsr_xyehJzIwkZSF&index=94

There's a website for the podcast, too:

https://www.terroratcollinwood.com/

Themes from the first episode include Penny's memories of how she got into DS thanks to her extremely cool Uncle Vlad (!), her discovery of DS fandom in the 1980s, general thoughts about the series and its relationship to the genres of the Gothic tradition and supernatural terror in literature and film, and her conviction, which she argues brilliantly, that DS was NOT CAMP.

cheers, G.

Dear fans,

A few weeks ago, I started re-watching the original 1966-67 Laura Collins storyline, beginning with the episode in which Laura first arrives at the Maggie Evans Coffee Shop (as I have come to think of it). I've really been enjoying this, in part because this is the first time in decades that I've been watching DS on a regular daily basis. My delighted discovery is that I love the show more than ever.

A few observations: First, despite what you may have read or been told, Malcolm Marmorstein was a REALLY good writer. Based on his Laura scripts, I'd rate him up there with Violet Welles and Joe Caldwell. Maybe Marmorstein's early Barnabas scripts--his final period of writing for the show--weren't up to the gold standard of his work on the Laura storyline; it's so long since I viewed those early Barnabas shows that I can't comment (but I might be able to do so eventually, if I keep watching). In an interview on one of the MPI DVDs, Marmorstein revealed that during his final month or so of writing for the series, he had gone out to LA for an extended stay. In the interview, he said that he did this because his wife told him she needed a vacation from living in NYC. Evidently, Bob Costello and others interpreted Marmorstein's month-long sojourn out on "the Coast" as his looking for another job--and that may have in fact been in the case, but Marmorstein claimed it wasn't. All that notwithstanding, nevertheless he revealed that when he was told that his association with Dark Shadows was at an end, Marmorstein immediately began working on Peyton Place. He claimed in the interview that this was a fluke which occurred thanks to a chance conversation, but it's certainly an interesting development. He actually said he didn't miss a single day of work between composing his last script for Shadows and his first one for Peyton.

In my previous viewing of the Laura saga (which I recall as having been patchy and intermittent), I'd definitely picked up that elements of Laura's storyline were re-used for the Cassandra storyline. Now that I've been watching it all properly, in a regular, orderly manner, I'm struck by how much of what was done with early Barnabas and subsequent supernatural storylines during the 1967-1969 period was established by specific plot features and structures of the Laura storyline.

We have a mysterious blonde relative who unexpectedly shows up in town with a problematic backstory. We have multiple incarnations, or are they incarnations, of the same person over a period of 200 years. We have a major character being proclaimed as "one of the Undead." We have a seance, which leads to yet another seance. We have the ghost of Josette Collins, heralded by the smell of jasmine perfume. We have the Undead character's obsession with an important family member. We have a threat to David. We have dreams of occult significance, though so far the dreams are only described, not staged. We have mysterious portraits with an evil influence. In one scene, Laura even gives David a music box, though it has not been referred to in subsequent follow-up shows.

There's more, too. But since so much of this was written by Malcolm Marmorstein, I definitely get why he felt he should receive credit for inventing the Barnabas character. So many of the elements seem to have been re-used, in a shifted or modulated form, from how he wrote Laura.

G.