Dracula looks interesting enough to make me want to tune in.  Thanks for posting this, Vlad!

G.

I'm always astonished at how beautifully they staged those Eagle Hill sequences in today's show.  The atmosphere was just as thick as the penetrating fog in the ancient cemetery.

I agree with Lydia; Jonathan Frid fiercely rules in today's show.  And Vinnie did a brilliant job with his makeup today, too!

G.

Hi Dom,

I can understand why you're confused.  What she means is that the old VHS release of the series (the tapes that started coming out way back in '89) were edited so that most of the Jason Maguire story was left out, and even non-Barnabas scenes of episodes featuring Barn were sometimes eliminated.  I guess that initially, MPI execs thought the only reason why anyone would buy the tapes would be to see Barnabas.  They had not yet figured out that there are fans here who want to see every second of DS--bloopers and all!

I don't own the new volume one DVD set from 1966, but from what I have been able to determine, a technical glitch led to ONE disc of that set getting a few seconds edited out of the closing moments of each episode.  (I actually think I have an idea of how it happened--the people producing the discs may have inadvertently forgotten to re-set the defaults on a day when they had just been processing something that involved a "mix" feature on one of their editing machines.  This happened to a friend of mine recently when he burned a CD for me.)

Just to add a further wrinkle of complexity, we've also been discussing how the DVD issue of the 1991 remake failed to include deleted scenes that were incorporated into the VHS release for that series.  In the case of 1991, the VHS release IS more complete, both in terms of deleted scenes and in terms of image presentation (the DVD of this show was cropped to turn it into a "faux widescreen" look).

Hope this helps!

G.

That's a gorgeous portrait of Frid.  Welcome to the boards!

G.

I've been noticing lately that the chairs in the OH drawing room move around  A LOT.  I know it's because they would put the furniture out different ways depending upon the day's blocking but it's been freaking me out.  I just wonder how I managed to watch this long without noticing!

Some years ago, somebody mentioned about the wall by the front door with Barn's portrait on it moving around--back, forwards, side-to-side--again, depending on blocking and the day's shooting routine.  I started paying attention to that and was again very surprised at how much it shifted around.

G.

I always love it when the voiceover promises "a night of horror at Collinwood."  It's soooo deliciously over-the-top!

Maggie being exhausted and then getting her mojo back when summoned is classic vampire material.  I believe this is in Stoker, as well--I know in the Lucy story they had the business with the victim being exhausted during the day and then coming "back to life" at night.

Great chem between KLS and Frid in this show.  A harbinger of things to come!

G.

What wonderful dialogue in this episode:  "Serenity is my favorite emotion."  "A savage beast made familiar."  All deliciously Gothic and it must have sounded eccentric and Victorian in a bar in a small town in "Way Down East" Maine.

When Barnabas first enters Maggie's room, the show itself enters a new era, one very different from how it had been.  That's a mixed blessing but it was the transformed series that so deeply attracted me to the show as a child.

G.