I missed this thread completely so I looked at the initial post about a Battlestar Galactica vet playing "a female Dracula."

It is on Sy Fy and I am afraid it sounds ghastly, but not in the way intended.

G.

Fans,

Melody Clark, one of Grayson's fan club presidents from the late 1970s (and editor of the zine Shades of Grayson) leads this interesting conversation about Grayson as the lead-off episode of her new podcast, "Fan Flak."

https://anchor.fm/melody-clark/episodes/Fan-Flak-a-celebration-of-the-life-of-Grayson-Hall-e56s8v

DS fans Taeylor and Cassie, both of whom used to post here, are the other participants. Some fun stories and some very moving ones are told.

My only very slightly critical comment is that the topic of Grayson's favorite actress came up, and the name Kim Hunter was mentioned. In the interviews I've read (including a tape recording I heard of Grayson talking to fans), Grayson mentioned Kim Stanley, not Kim Hunter, as her favorite actress. A completely understandable mistake. Kim Hunter is at least somewhat remembered thanks to Planet of the Apes, but Kim Stanley is only really known to film buffs for her bravura performances in such movies as The Goddess and Seance on a Wet Afternoon. Kim Stanley also appeared in a memorable episode of Night Gallery in 1971.

There are some technical difficulties with this first episode. The sound goes dead 3 or 4 times. You just have to be patient and let the recording play and eventually, it comes back.

I am excited about this new series because Melody is so interesting to listen to, and she's promising Nancy Kersey and R.J. Jamison among future guests.

G.

Hilarious.

G.

Same here, KMR. But the perception from DC, the publicity unit, the network heads etc. was that it was the vampire thing that made it so huge.

There's a funny interview on one of the DVDs (I am not sure if the "coffin set" includes all the interviews) with an ABC publicist who told a story about a network executive more or less accidentally tuning into an episode of DS sometime in 1967 and turning, baffled, to the publicity guy and saying "what's going on with Cousin Barney's teeth??"

G.

I have written about this several times over the years--a long time ago, having sifted through all the evidence available to me, I came to the conclusion that DS was canceled because Dan Curtis had decided to wrap up the show.

Just my personal belief--at one point when we were discussing the final month or so of the show, somebody commented that the cancellation was announced at the March ABC board meeting. The ratings were actually going up when the announcement was made, and board members were concerned that the network was losing a very popular show.

I also think that some of the major actors were totally burnt out on doing it at that point. A more immediate motive for Curtis must have been plans in place to shoot NoDS and looking at another four to six weeks of having major actors not being available. I've always thought it was significant that the NoDS shoot started something like 1 to 2 weeks after the taping of the final DS episode.

G.

I LOVED Virginia Vestoff as Samantha. She was the standout in that storyline, for me.

I did think there were some good elements but there were long stretches of absolute nonsense that were hard to sit through. It was fun watching Jerry Lacy chew the scenery once more as Lamar Trask (a character named after Lara Parker's real-life name--I always wondered whose idea of a joke that was). I also liked the showdown between Julia and Angelique.

G.

Some fans speculate about the new series. I don't really have time to read through all of this, but perhaps it will be of interest to some of you.

http://www.collinsporthistoricalsociety.com/2019/09/a-few-thoughts-about-dark-shadows.html

G.