MB, dahling, you are TOO funny.

The Jeremy creature was on some "reality" TV show (we really need a new word to convey just what these programs present--it's nothing like the form of "reality" I know!).  There were some other washed-up "celebrities" in attendance as well; I think that Tammy Faye Bakker and a hideously bloated and aged Erik Estrada were among them.

G.

I've read fanfic that cast medical-school Julia and Dave as lovers, but re-watching quite a bit of their storyline last year, I don't feel that it really adds up in how their story was played in Canon.  I think Julia may have intimidated Dave a bit just because she was so brilliant.  She was also extremely caustic and short-tempered (except for when she put on the Niceness Wig when she was trying to get something out of somebody, such as Liz).  I'm talking now about the original Julia characterization.

I do think that Dave's death was a horrible turning-point for Julia... in the ORIGINAL '67 storyline.  "You no longer have any friends, Julia," rang hideously true for her.  I don't think we need to presume a former romantic attachment between them to explicate the horror she feels at her implication in Dave's death.  I think it was a major wake-up call for her... the logical conclusion to it was when she informed the family that everything David had said was TRUE.

Julia's character is written very inconsistently during the weeks leading up to 1795 but I'm usually so dazzled by the brilliance of Grayson's thesping that I suspend disbelief.  Her behavior on the two days of Barn's aging, for example, is very contradictory.  But then, as some wag of the 18th century once wrote, "la donna e mobile" (really explains nothing but is a very pretty conceit).

cheers, G.

That's OK, everything that goes into my mouth is public property.

Erm, I mean, uh... oh, NEVER MIND.

Have you ever seen Nancy Barrett''s cabaret show?  She sometimes salutes the original 1966 Carolyn characterization with a renditon of "Girls just wanna have fun."  It's so cute.

cheers, G.

MSC, that's one of my all-time favorite scenes in all of DS... when Carolyn and Julia have their bitchy cat-and-mouse game in the foyer of Collinwood.  I love how Carolyn snidely twits Julia for failing to dress for dinner and tells her, "if you wish to live with us, you must conduct yourself according to our standards" or something along those lines--it's priceless!  And one of the most Addams-Family moments on DS.

I did think it was a bit less than credible when the writers had Carolyn show some compassion in one of those episodes for what Julia was going through, in a scene with Barnabas.  I thought that given how Vampire Slave Carolyn's character had been established, she would have gloated over every second of Julia's degringolade.

I can't make myself choose one of the Carolyns listed here.  I adore the original spoiled heiress minx of 1966, but the PT 1970 Carolyn gets some of Nancy Barrett's very best scenes in the entire series.  I love it when she drunkenly runs on about knowing ALL the secrets.  And there's a very poignant moment where reflects that if she'd joined Will in his drinking, perhaps things would have ended more happily between them.  The writing seems much more adult and sophisticated in some of those scenes than in the usual tone set for the series.

Well, I've blathered on long enough about how fabulous Nancy Barrett's evolutionary Carolyn was.  Grayson Hall stated more than once that she thought Nancy was the best actress in the entire cast, bar none; this thread offers many reasons why.

G.

Congratulations!

I hate to be the Cracked Crab (but you know I secretly revel in the role) but I will have to force myself to chivvy out the intricately concealed menus for changing the colors back to the crimson and black.  Right now I feel as if I really have been exiled to the Lilac Ward at Wyndcliffe.    Either that or a strange spacewarp on the Starfleet Academy fansite.

I also need to find the "Destroy All Smilies Now!" command.  You did promise that I would be able to do that...

G.

Greetings Fans,

Last weekend, a friend I haven't seen in awhile came to visit and brought a few goodies to loan out.  Among them was a bootlegged set of the short-lived British anthology series, Journey to the Unknown.  I'm not sure how I missed ever seeing this show since it ran on ABC in the US during the 1968-69 season; I can only guess that they may have given it a 10 p.m. timeslot due to the "adult" themes and that WAS past my bedtime that year.

The series was produced with US money and the format involved a British cast, location and production facilities (through fabled Hammer studios, as it happens) but with a US guest star featured as the lead in each show.  Episodes I have seen to date featured folks such as Patty Duke, George Maharis, Robert Reed, Robert Lansing, etc.

Robert Lansing's episode is based upon a classic ghost story by the now-forgotten author Oliver Onions, "The Beckoning Fair One."  The adaptation for this series updated the original tale (set I believe in the 1920s or 1930s) to the present day (i.e. 1968) and changed quite a bit of the story.  What I wasn't prepared for was how close certain set-pieces in this version seemed to be to certain details of the second feature film, Night of Dark Shadows (filmed in the Spring of 1971).

Like Quentin Collins in NoDS, the lead character in "Beckoning Fair One" is a painter, come to England to have his first one-man show in a London art gallery.  Instead of inheriting a haunted mansion, he rents one with his fiancee (played by English actress Gabrielle Drake, the sister of legendary singer-songwriter Nick Drake).  The title refers to the portrait of a woman who lived in the house in the 1930s and 1940s, a Rebecca (or Angelique!) like femme fatale whose mocking ghostly laugher is heard FREQUENTLY throughout the story.  (The laughter does remind me of the unseen cackling of our very own Favorite Witch.)

As in NoDS, the painter quickly becomes obsessed with his ghostly paramour, locking himself up in his studio, doing portrait after portrait of his Beckoning Fair One, and lashing out violently to his fiancee when she ignores the signs of his deteriorating grip upon reality.

I know Sam Hall had to pull a script out of his hat VERY quickly during preparations for the second feature film.  It would be interesting if he had seen The Beckoning Fair One on ABC and put that together with memories of the AIP feature The Haunted Palace and some of his own ideas together to produce the narrative and concept for Night of Dark Shadows.

G.

I'm sure it will be released on DVD eventually.  They all are done nowadays...

G.

Greetings Cousins,

I am LOL at the final image on today's slide show... except that I would have changed the caption to this:

"Bruno is horrified when Damion Edwards appears ... and gloats that soon Bruno himself will be trapped in a tacky Ohrbach's "Go Gay for Spring 70!" leisure suit ... FOR ALL ETERNITY!!!"

I am coming to the horrifying revelation that Damion's leisure suit rivals that hideous orange jacket of PT Quentin for the award for "most unsightly garment ever to appear on Dark Shadows"--a title for which there has been FIERCE competition.

cheers,

G.