Dark Shadows
Doesn’t happen too often these days, in my admittedly jaundiced opinion, but hey! One can always hope!
So, I was kinda excited when I saw this new version of Dark Shadows on the shelf. It’s got that dishy Johnny Depp playing the 175 year old vampire Barnabas Collins, a cast of other stars and it was made by that master of creepy macabre Tim Burton.
Looked like it could be a winner! However, I left it for the day, I had stuff to do (like start writing this paper which I seem to like to really procrastinate over…. Although I must confess that the printer’s deadline seems to concentrate my mind marvelously the closer it looms!)
However, I was a bit suspicious about this movie as I had not heard or read any buzz about it whatsoever, which seemed a bit odd given the caliber of the stars and director involved.
So I looked it up. The online reviews were really very critical, with many of the IMDB independent reviewers calling it an outright stinker.
Oh well. But my curiosity became totally piqued because many of the reviewers said they were devoted fans of the original TV series.
I never saw any of the original Dark Shadows TV shows. I was aware of it, of course, especially because once Jonathan Frid joined the show as the vampire Barnabas Collins the show became a huge hit.
Still, my family was just not much of a TV watching household back in those days. And then, my online research revealed that the original show, which debuted in 1966, had a daytime slot because it was originally envisioned as a gothic kind of Soap Opera.
Daytime soaps were simply not on my radar when I was 12 years old! Too much else to do!
But now, I wanted to learn about the original series. Dark Shadows has an intense and devoted cult fan base. Johnny Depp says he was so obsessed with the character of Barnabas Collins as a child that he wanted to become him.
Dark Shadows was conceived by producer Dan Curtis, who had a dream about a young woman alone on a train. He told the dream to his wife the next morning, and she encouraged him to flesh out the story.
So it began, in classic Gothic Romance style, with a young woman traveling to a spooky old mansion to be the governess to a child.
Although I had now lost all interest in watching the new movie version, I was absolutely itching to watch the old series. And lo, to my infinite delight, they are streamed online, although it took me awhile to figure out how to locate them.
If you yourself wish to check ‘em out, you need to be specific. Simply putting “Dark Shadows” into your search engine will merely bring you several zillion hits about the new movie and nothing about the old TV series.
I used “Google” and typed in dark shadows episode 1. (And, if you want to work through the series, next punch in dark shadows episode 2, and so on) It comes up in the first few sites, and is streamed through “Veoh.” You have to sit through an annoying brief ad for some sitcom, and the site has ads….and watch out for the obnoxious poker page trying to get you to gamble online!
However, the episodes do conveniently have the old commercials removed so they only run about 20 minutes each.
Except for Episode 1, which hilariously still has the original commercials. It’s quite the “blast from the past” as they say to see these ads from close to 50 years go!
There was a plug for “Off” insect repellent, and an ad for a laundry detergent that promised to get your clothes sun dried bright. The ad gimmick had two gals in big, fashionable sunglasses peering into the washing machine that was lit up inside like there was an atomic blast in there. Seems like I even remember seeing that commercial when I was a kid!
After the babes ooh & aah over that nice bright laundry, a man comes on and assures us silly females we don’t really need to wear sunglasses… whew! Glad he cleared that up!
But back to my topic. Turns out that Dark Shadows only ran for 5 years, but as it was a daily half hour program there are 1,225 episodes!
So, should you decide to watch them online you will completely appreciate the time savings of having the old commercials removed!
The show opens with the story’s heroine, Victoria Winters, as she arrives by train in Collinsport. She grew up an orphan girl in a foundling home in New York City…. She’d been left in a box on the doorstep with a note 18 years earlier. The orphanage began to receive a monthly check for 50 dollars for her upkeep. The envelopes are always postmarked “Bangor, ME.”
So, when Victoria gets a job offer as a governess to a child in Collinsport, only 50 miles from Bangor, she suspects that something is up and naturally accepts the offer and so the saga begins.
It’s fascinating, though, and I’ve been entertained, but seriously…. The plot is moving along pretty darned slowly!
As it turns out, the original TV audience was feeling the same way. So, about 6 months after the series began ghosts were introduced into the story…. And interest began to pick up. And then, about a year into the run of the show vampire Barnabas Collins was introduced and that’s when the show’s popularity exploded.
We take supernatural elements in movies and TV shows for granted these days, but Dark Shadows was the pioneer of the genre.
As this point, young people became the show’s fan base. Other supernatural elements were introduced, with zombies, werewolves, witches, warlocks, monsters parallel universes, alternate timelines and time travel all of which had the cute benefit of allowing the regular characters to play alternate versions of themselves, or, portraying their own ancestors.
Watching all the episodes seems like a fairly harmless hobby to occasionally indulge myself in, but I am feeling a bit daunted by the fact that it’s going take about 132 episodes to get to that first ghost, and Barnabas doesn’t show up until episode 211!
Jonathan Frid, a Canadian actor, was only originally contracted to play the part of Barnabas for 13 weeks. The program had been faltering, and had fallen in the ratings. The show enjoyed such an unprecedented spike in popularity after his appearance that he soon became the series’ star.
The cast also included actress Joan Bennett, who portrayed the Collins family matriarch Elizabeth Stoddard.
I am a devoted fan of Joan Bennett due to a couple of wonderful classic movies that she starred in that are among my absolute favourites.
Back in 1944, the genius director Fritz Lang made a movie titled The Woman in the Window with Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and that lovely film noir bad boy Dan Duryea.
Edward G. and his club cronies become infatuated with the portrait of a woman in the window of an art gallery. One night, as Edward’s character leaves his club, he meets the model for the portrait, who is played by Joan Bennett. She picks him up, and they go out for a drink and the story takes off.
If you do, pay attention to the art on the walls of the lounge Joan and Ed visit, and then be sure to check out Joan’s apartment. I think the director was really having us on. Remember, it was made in 1944 when the censors kept an eagle eye out for anything to risque. But there is a sculpture of a naked woman’s torso on the mantel, Joan’s bed has a big satin duvet and the headboard is a giant mirror! Joan’s character is quite clearly a shady lady!
The villain of the movie is played by the incomparably oily Dan Duryea. He invariably played a bad boy, and generally slaps a few women around in every movie he was ever in. So naturally, women just loved him and he had a huge fan club. All women, of course!
At one point in his career he was asked to play a kind of weak, sympathetic character and he was very concerned about what kind of message that would send to his fans. And, amusingly, in real life Duryea was a devoted family man whose wife and children adored him!
Two years after making this picture Lang cast the same three actors in Scarlet Street. If film fans want to snark that The Woman in the Window doesn’t qualify as true noir, they sure don’t have any issues with Scarlet Street.
What a movie! Edward G. plays a henpecked, milquetoast bank clerk who one night sees Kitty (Joan Bennett) getting slapped around on the street by her boyfriend Johnny (Dan Duryea). Ed steps up to the rescue, and Kitty soon realizes that he might be a mark worth exploiting.
Because Johnny beats her up, sure…but, jeepers! She loves him! And, he’s her pimp….
There’s a scene in the movie of Joan/Kitty eating grapes in her apartment where she spits the seeds out on the floor. You may wonder why I find this remarkable, but she is actually talking toJohnny at the time, she is not alone, and she spits the seeds out with force, like half-way across the room. I mean, spitting on the floor is disgusting enough, but we aren’t talking a demure expulsion next to the couch…no, she ejects those puppies! With sound effects! Definitely an amoral hussy!
This movie is also no longer under copyright and can be streamed online, you don’t have to download anything. Please let me know what you think if you watch any of these shows!
Stephanie Kelley
