Title: Welcome to Collinwood: Dark Shadows 101
Author: Michael Culhane
Publication: Famous Monsters of Filmland
Issue: May/June 2012
DARK SHADOWS, if this is your initiation, is now the gold standard for atmospheric horror TV of the 60s—a show so influential to a generation that only now, with the upcoming Tim Burton/Johnny Depp cinematic incarnation, do we see it as the revered cultural reference that it was destined to become.
For example, if you saw this current remake of FRIGHT NIGHT and were paying attention, you may have caught the dialogue when Toni Collette wonders about strange new neighbor Colin Farrell and later why her own house is bedecked with garlands of garlic clove and crucifixes.
“It looks like that show Dark Shadows!” she says.
Think of it as a web series; a low-budget, live-theater experiment; or some kind of unheard of short-form television. But whatever it seems like to viewers now, the original DARK SHADOWS TV show (1966-1971) was a noir-gothic-turned supernatural soap opera, airing daily in the afternoon, with storylines freely and gleefully borrowed from FRANKENSTEIN, REBECCA, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Edgar Allan Poe.
The show was not just unusual but unique for its prime-time content (Vampires! Werewolves! Love-starved witches!), which aimed for advertising’s stay-at-home moms and captured a nation of kids dubbed “The Creepyboppers” by Newsweek magazine, who literally ran home from school with millions of other kids to catch the show. (Remember FM’ers: no video, no internet, no reruns of soap operas!)
What was with the appeal? Putting aside its eventual mash-up of time travel, gothic horror, and literary suspense—including; Wolfman-style transformations, headless ghosts, and haunted corridors—the core drama centered on Barnabas Collins, the ultimate prodigal son, and Angelique, the anything-but-angelic witch who wrought the vampire curse upon Barnabas in a fit of love-spurned pride. Barnabas suffered the curse by his once-lover Angelique and came back to life as a reluctant vampire after 200 years of being put on pause by his father, who thought his son better-off chained in a coffin. When Barnabas knocked on the door of the Collins family manse after two centuries of being undead and was invited in, the show—both dramatically and ratings-wise—took off.
Plus, there was good, old-fashioned, mysterio-noir drawing-room drama taking place at Collinwood: love stories, family feuds, great-looking chicks and dudes in period costumes, and lots of supernatural treachery. Woven throughout and punching the drama was the signature theme music with Theremin cues (the Original Music from Dark Shadows soundtrack by Robert Cobert was a Top 20 Billboard hit). And it was all against a backdrop of inventively strange sets, mixing together like a bubbling mad scientist’s brew.
Performed mainly by stage actors and shot live to tape every day, the compelling cast exuded edgy intensity -including their desperate searches for teleprompters, the drama of which certainly underscored (and sometimes upstaged!) the drama in the plot. For all these reasons, and for the ownership its generation of fans claimed of the series, DARK SHADOWS had a rabidly loyal fan base, a giant share of the viewing audience, and wildly famous stars—its top actors reaching almost Beatles-level mania at the peak of its run. Rumors of its low-production values and bloopers are true, and part of the charm. Discerning viewers were hooked— stay-home-from-work-and-marathon-it hooked!
DARK SHADOWS episodes were a singular thing in TV history: a daily fright buzz for viewers when we usually had to wait days for our next doses of must-see TV, whatever our favorite. DS storylines rose and fell, up and down with weekly and daily climaxes, leaving millions of kids hanging at the end credits, already hoping against hope that tomorrow they could race home from the bus in time to see more.
So here, we present your indispensable Dark Shadows guide— including FM exclusives, like our Jonathan Frid interview—in which you’ll find out what exactly is the deal with that show, and how it broke ground early and often for television. You’ll get the scoop on all the series’ fang-tastic highs and lows. And you’ll meet the four most hypnotic characters ever to be on a TV screen: Barnabas, Josette, Angelique, and Quentin. It’s obvious how hypnotic these characters could be. We ran home every day to see them!
