Thanks for that link. It's so fascinating how many people who were involved in the show claimed to have "created" Barnabas. I really think the character's creation was a group effort... I personally feel that if a more confident, technically skilled actor than Jonathan Frid had been cast, the character wouldn't have been nearly as compelling as he became. Because Jonathan fed into his performance his own fear and anxiety in struggling to master such long scripts with such a punishingly short timeline. That gave Barnabas an edge very different from the suavity of Lugosi, the feral brutishness of Christopher Lee, the cadaverously predatory zeal of Carradine, to name three famous actors associated with vampires prior to Frid. Barnabas was a genuine new page in the annals of the Undead.

Which is partly why I can't imagine anyone seriously trying to mount a reboot of DS without Barnabas. But we'll see...

G.

This is interesting to read as a glimpse of the new DS fandom, the youngsters who are discovering the show on a certain popular retail network's streaming service:

https://themuse.jezebel.com/i-cant-stop-watching-this-late-1960s-soap-opera-about-a-1839441762

References and comparisons to Riverdale, Instagram, etc. help patch together a picture of the cultural context new viewers bring to our show. It's intriguing to me that against all apparent odds, they still feel the fascination and find the addiction.

This fandom, which is growing, can be found on social media and the occasional blog such as this one.

G.

That sounds fascinating. Interesting that both Caldwell and Ron Sproat were gay. I only found out about Sproat a year or so ago.  It seems he left the show due to creative disagreements with DC and perhaps other writers. I thought Joe Caldwell was such a great writer but he'd disappear for months and I have no idea if that was due to Dan Curtis's whim or if he simply had other work on hand during those periods. Joe wrote one of my favorite scripts, the one that ends with a cat and mouse conversation with Julia and Barnabas, and then in the final scene Barnabas comes to her bedroom to kill her, only to be informed by "Miss" Hoffman: "I've been waiting for you a long, long time." A classic moment on the show.

G.

A date that will live in infamy.

It was April 2. But it was no April Fool's.

Such an upsetting day...

G.

There seems to be a rule that every 10 to 20 years, the BBC has to film DRACULA again. This version seems to owe a lot to F. Coppola, Ken Russell, and Guillermo del Toro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC9TjMNqPEo

G.

I think it might have been this one--the Archies singing "Jingle, Jangle." The Archies were interesting historically because lead singer Andy Kim (who of course wasn't credit at the time) was Korean-American. I think it was an early instance of an Asian-American singer on the charts (but not the first).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MewMx4zqes

The song title "Jingle Jangle" makes me think of Josette's music box... that's my excuse for posting it here!

If you search cereal box record on you tube you can find others of these by the Archies, the Monkees, the Jackson 5 and something called "Spooky Stories" from '78.

G.

And now today Julia is telling Willie that Nathan's legs are gangrenous from blood loss.

I think there was some kind of communication failure between the artist and the writer, at this point. Wasn't this the final issue of this short-lived series?

G.

I'm wondering just what it is about Nathan's legs that have Willie exclaiming "Oh God." Presumably, Nathan is turning to stone, but that's not visually evident, to me at least. Thus, it's hard to resist the thought that Willie may be a secret, hardcore foot fetishist.

For those who find the theme of this story intriguing, I strongly recommend the classic 1964 Hammer studios film, The Gorgon. It offers an interesting variation on the old legend.

G.