My sweet Lady, everybody from the Tapioca Goddess, to Hallie Stokes (shrilling helplessly HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU ARE YOUUUUUUU???) *bleat bleat*, to Pepe Herself wishing me a glorious birthday! AND Smooches from Midnite, too! what more could a retired gentleman quietly eking out the remainder of his days in holy contemplation ask for??

Thanks, everybody, you're all the best!  I'm going to be away from tonight through next Tuesday, so forgive me if I don't respond to any further greetings.

hugs, Gothick

I was watching July 3 and 4 1967 episodes last week and in one of them, you could see the big stand-up fan outside Liz's bedroom window making the draperies billow.  It was fun.

Also, Carolyn's birth year was given as 1946 which means the character was meant to be 19 or so when the series began.

Liz was born in 1917 so she was supposed to be fifty in the Summer of '67.  That feels very odd to me because as of tomorrow, I will be three years away from fifty, yet I don't feel nearly as "old" as the Mistress of Collinwood!

G.

Julia: Barnabas, what are you saying?

Barnabas: (in Ed Sullivan voice) I'm saying that next in tonight's shoo, we present live from London, England--a very talented young man and his friends--Eric Burdon and THE ANIMALS!!

Oh, but GH is marvelous in that scene where Julia and the "pig" first meet!

Thanks for the pointer.  I'll take care to listen closely!

G.

I got to see a video of the Louis Jourdan version many years ago, and I'd love to see it again.  The ending is the closest to the book ever filmed, I believe.

Apart from that, some of my other favorites:

The Lugosi Dracula--the first fifteen minutes or so show you everything you ever need to know about Gothic horror.

The Jack Palance Dracula; some wonderful moments.

I think of the Hammers my current favorite is the 1969 Taste the Blood of Dracula, because it's been so beautifully restored on DVD, and Anthony Corlan (aka Higgins) makes a lusciously beautiful hero; Ralph Bates has a wonderful bit in the beginning, as well.

I've been meaning to screen again the Lee version directed by Jesus Franco, El conde Dracula.  I last saw it in the mid Seventies.  Klaus Kinski's disturbing realism in the part of a viciously deranged Renfield stood out.

G.

Christopher Isherwood in his novel The World in the Evening has a section where two of the characters discuss "camp."  I believe that this predates Susan Sontag's much better known Notes on Camp.  The Isherwood novel is one of the first mainstream texts to discuss what began life as a very gay concept (I am using the word "gay" here to refer to homosexual people and our culture, not "stupid" as has become the meaning of the word in  high schools and chatrooms around North America).

In it, Isherwood distinguished between high (or highbrow) camp, and low camp, as saying that high camp is like a production of the Tschaikovsky ballet Swan Lake--so stylised as to have a certain ridiculous grandeur, which only really "works" if everybody involved performs their parts with the utmost seriousness.  Isherwood would have argued that something like a production of Swan lake by les ballets trocaderos de Monte Carlo (a celebrated all male ballet troupe with some brilliant dancers in their own right) was low camp if not burlesque because they are deliberately "sending up" the material.

I think the increasingly outre storylines of Dark Shadows required a more "elevated" stylistic positioning of actors and direction.  There is also the factor that so many of the people involved in DS had worked either in theatre or from a tradition (such as Fifties Playhouse 90 or Studio One type anthology television) that was more informed by theatre.  In my opinion there is an over-emphasis today on "naturalistic" performance due to the fact that it requires far less technique to bring this off than a really stylised performance of complicated material such as the typical DS script presents.

Besides, YOU try and find a "natural" way of saying this line:  "Nobody and nothing will stop me from letting everyone know exactly What You Are!"

G.

I can't help mentioning that my "wicked" side thoroughly enjoyed both "Aristide asks Tim about Quentin" (and, hmmm, did their chat involve Quentin's linguistic abilities, specifically with the French and Greek tongues?  Hell's Bells, I just came close to using one of those damned smilies!!) and "Tim tells the hand it's exactly what he needs"--I imagine a dialogue caption from this one reading, "hallelujah, my days of mail-order from Fredericks of Hollywood's are OVER!"  Briscoe's expression in the latter image was truly priceless!

Seeing Julia turn up in the July 17th show was a real treat for me when I watched this show last weekend.  I'd forgotten she appeared in it.

I thought it was hilarious that they actually made Karlen and Frid pick up Dennis Patrick's body and hoist it up those stairs.  Apart from everything else, fanciers of vampire lore would expect that with his great strength, the Undead Barnabas would have easily been able to sling Jason up those steps singlehandedly.  Of course, Karlen's bit when he has to touch Jason's dead body provided the emotional highlight of the entire episode.  What a brilliant thespian!

Thayer, of course, was wonderful as well in both of those shows.

G.