Dark Shadows 50th Birthday

With all the hubbub over Star Trek turning 50 this week, I feel like a jerk for forgetting the 50th birthday of another fandom that has stolen my heart... Dark Shadows!  It turned 50 in June actually... Goodness, I feel like I should be made to sleep on the couch for forgetting it! Lol!

Dark Shadows was an afternoon soap that "everyone ran home from school to see" according to stories from my mom and aunts and uncles.  It wasn't like other soaps though.  Sure, there were the obligatory love triangles and drama, but the bad guys weren't your run of the mill mob bosses, drug dealers, and unscrupulous business men.  No, no.  It wanted to be a gothic, thriller story.  It ended up with vampires, werewolves, Frankestein monsters, frequently possessed children, witches and warlocks, and ghosts.  Everyone that knows the show knows its history and how it wasn't really taking off at first.  The haunted old house wasn't all that interesting.  So after they got word that they were as good as cancelled, the creator decided to bring in a vampire for a few weeks to terrorize everyone and then get promptly staked by the heroine.  But they ended up striking gold as the actor who played the vampire put a tragic spin on him and melted the hearts of fans all over.  He became the star and the series continued for nearly 5 years and then went on to gather a cult following cementing it as a major fandom that has been passed down to following generations.

I admit, I've still not seen the first, flailing year of Dark Shadows where poor Victoria Winters goes to be a governess to a spoiled rich kid who finds trouble in one of the old family properties which is haunted.  The fact is, I never cared for Victoria.  She was a little stiff and whiny.  They had a Jayne Eyre type of character in mind for her, and I think in the first year there were more of the standard, interchangeable soap opera story lines than anything supernatural.  We've toyed with the notion of getting this first year to round out our collection because we have all the other episodes, but even though they still had the heavy-hitters - Joan Bennett, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Louis Edmonds, Nancy Barrett and even a young Mitchell Ryan (who, in my opinion is one of the most underrated character actors of his time), it didn't become interesting until the introduction of Jonathan Frid, who was the inimitable Barnabas Collins. 

Not only Barnabas, but John Karlen who was the second person to play Willie Loomis.  He was the harmony to Barnabas' melody and soon became an irreplaceable part of the cast even though I don't think he was meant to have any more storyline than the vampire; probably less.

Once they realized that Frid was saving the show they decided to write some background for Barnabas and low and behold we have the great antagonist and supernatural equal, Angelique, played by Lara Parker

After re-using the cast for a storyline that took place in the past, the sky was the limit.  They no longer had to stay in the 60's if they didn't want to and they could start bringing in other supernatural beings, to keep the concept as fresh and interesting as possible, considering that a lot of the material was openly stolen from classic novels - Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Turn of the Screw, etc.  After a while they could remove some of the pressure from Frid to "carry the show" when they brought in Quentin Collins played by David Selby.

The secondary characters of Julia Hoffman,  T. Elliot Stokes,  Chris Jennings, Nicholas Blair, Jeb Hawkes, and Reverend Trask who were also had alter egos in other timelines were better actors than the main actors at times.  

And they pushed it as far as it could go for the censors of late 60's, early 70's television programming.

However, as much fun as it was, it couldn't sustain that kind of momentum when they weren't developing and growing their characters and running out of classic horror stories to retell.  Even the creator, Dan Curtis, was getting bored with it.  It's a shame, but several actors went on to find steady work in soaps including David Selby, Louis Edmonds, and Christopher Bernau.  And all that are alive still enjoy their popularity at cons and some have even written their own fan fiction regarding their character(s) on the show.

The revival series in 1991 was no good.  Curtis was a one-trick pony and only wanted to remake the old storylines almost frame for frame utilizing a little bigger budget,better special effects, and racier love scenes.  It's a mistake that Star Trek TNG was making in the first two seasons because Roddenberry had the same compulsion.  Trek survived, but Dark Shadows, sadly did not.

However, this is where fan fiction can be a good thing, and I've examined some of it over the years.  I could see several bits of ideas played out in the 2012 Johnny Depp movie which was a fetching tribute to the original series for the most part.  And Jonathan Frid got to make a cameo in it before he died.

Happy belated 50th Birthday to Dark Shadows!  The most originally unoriginal series ever made!  I may start profiling a character every week.