Sunday, May 13, 2012

DARK SHADOWS: An Appreciation and Lament

Dark Shadows, the first and so far only Gothic soap opera, had its premier when I was four years old--but things got interesting a year later, in 1967, with the introduction of the 200-year-old vampire Barnabas Collins (portrayed with tragic panache by the just-passed Jonathan Frid).  I'll not get into a scholarly treatise here about how Barnabas was intended to be a limited-run villain who instead saved an otherwise moribund franchise, or how DS paved the way for later generations of serial thrillers from The X-Files to Lost to Fringe.

No, I want to tell you how that gaunt, dark-eyed gentleman with the elegant wardrobe and the wolfs-head cane (and every so often, the wicked fangs) was my gateway drug into horror and occult fiction.  You see, Barnarbas--along with his werewolf cousin, Quentin (David Selby, who went on to prime-time soapy success in Falcon Crest) and the rest of the supernatural good'uns and bad'uns featured on Dark Shadows--spun off a massive line of marketing tie-ins:  trading cards (which I collected feverishly and pored over obsessively), a board game (about which I recall absolutely nothing), and... paperback novels.

These books--and there were quite literally dozens upon dozens of them--were my first "adult" reading material (and yes, I was precocious enough to be gobbling these things up as fast as they were released by the time I was seven or eight).  I'd say they probably rated a notch above the average paperback romance novel, but that might just be personal prejudice talking.  Most in particular, I remember a collection of short stories, The Dark Shadows Book of Vampires and Werewolves, that had some absolutely brilliant work in it (including "Wolves Don't Cry," by Bruce Elliot, which still may be my favorite werewolf story ever).

And what has Hollywood gone and done with this fabulously dark, mythic realm of my youth?

They've turned it into a camp parody of itself.  Pfaugh.

Now, I know in retrospect that a good bit of the mystique surrounding Dark Shadows has as much to do with my age at the time, and the era of its appearance, as anything.  My reply is:  So what?  One could make the exact same argument about Star Trek.  I guarantee, if JJ Abrams did to Trek what Tim Burton did to DS, there would have been riots unlike anything seen since the peasants stormed the Bastille, at the very least.

There was a very respectable 12-episode reboot of Dark Shadows back in 1991, with Ben Cross as our dear Barnabas; the Chiller network just had a mini-marathon of the series this weekend.  That's how one respects a source:  with style and class.

Me, I think I'll raid the used bookstores and see if I can scare up any of the old Marilyn Ross tie-in novels to take on vacation with me next week.

Harrumph.

8 comments:

  1. Love it. I've got the entire set of Marilyn (Dan) Ross novels, except for ONE, which I've not been able to find at less than extortionate prices. Every now and again, I go back and read those, even though they're essentially just traditional romance novels with DS characters' names thrown in for good measure. Having written "officially" for DS on several occasions has been a dream.

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    1. Mark, I'm glad you have your books--I wish I'd had the sense to keep up with my set 40 years ago (I probably had the one you lack, as I'm pretty sure I had the complete run at one time). Ah, the folly of youth.

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  2. As an original Dark Shadows fan (I even liked the Ben Cross incarnation) I totally loved the Tim Burton version because I got the one thing I never got on the shows and the movie House of Dark Shadows... Barnabas got the girl.Finally after all those years. Yeah, that's a stupid point or whatever but I loved it. And some of the old cast was very pleased. Kathryn Leigh Scott had no problem with the angle Tim Burton took it. In fact she and Lara Parker and the late, great Jonathan Frid all made cameos and were treated like royalty on set. Johnny Depp grew up idolizing Frid and Dan Curtis. I admit I went to the movie yesterday full ready to hate it but I loved it.
    And I will always love original Dark Shadows, which I have on DVD and all of the books Kathryn Leigh Scott has written about the show.

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    1. I'm glad at least one true fan loved the new movie; I think most of us despair over it. I was thrilled to see Depp cast as Barnabas--he has the proper, um, bloodlines for the role, if you will. But really: while there were certainly some laugh-inducing moments in the original DS, none of them were intentional.

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  3. Afterthought: my Graddad, a handyman of no mean craft, built for your youthful blogger here a lovely toy-chest. After I discovered DARK SHADOWS, said chest was promptly emptied of toys, to become my play-coffin.

    My parents found this amusing. I was a fortunate child.

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  4. The latest episode of MAD MEN is titled "Dark Shadows." Cannot WAIT to see if the series makes an appearance :)

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    1. The era is right--and there are no doubt more than a few bloodsuckers on MAD MEN. Werewolves? We'll have to wait and see.

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  5. The series made a very veiled appearance. It was played for laughs, and as a possible commentary on how shitty the show started off, and how wrong the movie is. Maybe.

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