[Ed. Note – On May 4, 2012 goth-inspired, iconoclastic film director Tim Burton is set to release a movie version of the beloved television series DARK SHADOWS which will star Johnny Depp, Chloë Grace Moretz, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Lee and many others. While longtime fans of the show are eager to see this new iteration of the 45 year old production, most concurrently feel that due respect must be given the original. This is what Tom Kipp hopes to do with this piece, to contextualize and fully honor the original, thereby enabling fans to enjoy the upcoming film as much as possible.]
Back in about 1991, TOWER PULSE reported that this brand new thang called "The Sci-Fi Network" had recently purchased the rights to re-broadcast the Gothic, Supernatural soap opera DARK SHADOWS in its entirely. I swore then that when the opportunity arose I would commit to watching the entire run, which came to 1225 30-minute episodes, originally broadcast on weekday afternoons from 1966-71.
Eight years later, following a trip to Montana to attend a close friend’s wedding, I returned to my Seattle apartment to find that my TV—working normally mere days before—was now broadcasting nothing but snow! Eventually it dawned on me that the abysmal Comcast had finally accomplished its years-overdue Capitol Hill cable upgrade, and I was delighted to realize that I could now embark on my long-delayed DSojourn!
I’d seen a good portion of the last 18 months of DARK SHADOWS’ original run whilst being babysat after school on North Central Montana’s Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation by a neighbor woman who was a big fan (Bless you, Mary Jane Lamere!). But though some of its images/personages were indelible, even to/for a 6-to-8-yr-old boy, I realized that much of its content had been a bit beyond my ken.
I knew this because DS had enjoyed a brief run in U.S. syndication during the spring/summer of 1982, which I tuned into once I got back to Havre, Montana from Brown University in late-May. But the show seemed even more pleasurable to me at 19, so I had no fear that a 36-yr-old version of TK would be disappointed.
Anyhow, circa September 15th or so, 1999, I settled into a routine that lasted for the ensuing three years. To wit, I set my VCR to tape the back-to-back episodes broadcast each morning (they kept moving it around the Sci-Fi schedule, so I had to be diligent in monitoring the weekly TV listings), and would watch them upon arriving home from work each afternoon.
At that time the show was amidst its less-than-scintillating "Adam" subplot, thus somewhere in the vicinity of episode 600, as I later discovered, once I’d acquired a few DS reference books. I continued right to the finale, occasionally archiving a few especially-riveting sequences of episodes, and even buying a few cut-out VHS compilations (predecessors to the “strip job” dvds Bill Kennedy recently referred to on Facebook), which contained a miserly 4 episodes apiece.
The True Revelation(s) awaited though, once I’d reached the somewhat anti-climactic April 2nd, 1971 finale that I recalled so bitterly—the jarring next-day return to June 27th, 1966, to glorious black & white, and to a version of "Collinsport, Maine" that did NOT include Barnabas Collins for nearly 200 episodes!
Victoria Winters, newly-hired governess to the ever-mysterious Collins clan, arrived in town and was immediately caught up in various bewildering intrigues, in an atmosphere I instantly recognized from Jane Austen’s NORTHANGER ABBEY, about which I’d written my very first paper at Brown in October 1981!
Eventually, the tall/dark/handsome Burke Devlin showed up and much mayhem ensued, alongside plenty of boilerplate "soap operatic" ennui, which I also recognized, having been an intermittent (and intermittently avid) watcher of select network soaps from as early as 1965 or 1966, among them THE DOCTORS, ANOTHER WORLD, AS THE WORLD TURNS, DAYS OF OUR LIVES, the early GENERAL HOSPITAL, and my particular fave, the relatively short-lived THE EDGE OF NIGHT!
Anyhow, since I’d read awful things about the pre-Jonathan Frid (Barnabas Collins) DS, I approached this period with a certain trepidation. Ultimately, I found myself enjoying it quite a lot, at 10 episodes/week, and on my own schedule, which permitted me to view the two episodes in just under 45 minutes/day, fast-forwarding through all the commercials! At any rate, I knew full well I had HUNDREDS of as-yet-unseen Barnabas episodes to come, so I simply lay back and enjoyed it, as it were.
Once Barnabas made his dramatic entrance (from a long-sealed crypt/coffin) things kicked into a higher gear, and the months and years just seemed to float by, past the faux-crisis of Y2K, past the truly horrific 9/11/2001, and right through more immensely-entertaining riffs on 19th Century Literature & Myth than one could shake Barnabas’ silver-tipped, wolf’s-headed cane at!
Bits of DRACULA, of course, and the aforementioned minor Jane Austen, but FRANKENSTEIN, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER, and THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GREY all made appearances, and amidst copious additional Supernatural grist, including werewolves, time travel, demonic possession, teenage Satanism, Occultic ritual, intense dream sequences and hallucinations, and the like!
In particular, the device known as "Parallel Time", a delicious/delirious conceit that literally saved the show from the inevitable limitations of having to situate Gothic drama in (supposedly) late-’60s/early-’70s Maine, provided immensely satisfying and perverse fun by having most or all of the cast appear as their own ancestors in 1797, 1841 and 1895, with bewildered present-day characters having to improvise as best they could, once hurled backward via secret portals in the more obscure wings of the great Collins family mansion, Collinwood (the one with those great, glorious SPIRES at its corners)!
A lengthy subplot also involved using the I CHING to intentionally journey back in time to effect historic change, though it was always clear that no one really knew at what risk said machinations were undertaken!
I could go into much greater detail about the long transformation of the great Jonathan Frid’s Barnabas Collins from Avenging Vampire into compelling Existential Hero, or with regard to the amusingly dazed woodenness of much of the acting and flimsiness of the rather-too-few sets, not to slight the bracingly non-existent production values that famed producer Dan Curtis ("The Roger Corman of TV Goth"!) and his negligible, one-take videotape budget ensured.
But I’ll save further comment for another occasion. Suffice it to say, once one has "negotiated" the entire 612.5 HOURS of DARK SHADOWS (approximately 460 hours, even without the commercials), a mere 15 hours of BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ seems like a cakewalk, and thematically not all that grueling after all!
There are perhaps a handful of television series I venerate more than DS, but its truly epic scope and seldom-referenced literary ambition and inspired pilferage ensure that there are NONE that have provided nearly so much sheer bulk of blessed entertainment and life-affirming diversion!
– Tom Kipp
Jonathan Frid… Farewell! By Tom Kipp
The Day Jonathan Frid Invaded My Humanities Class, By Joe Mabel
