Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/07/dark-shadows-12-major-storylines.html
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I caught one re-run on Sci-Fi once, but it didn’t grab me. I did quite like the first film, House of Dark Shadows, which apparently attempted to summarize at least a month’s worth of episodes in one hour and a half film. Just filled with a crazy amount of plot.
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I watched this too - till the episode where they overcooked the bride of frankenstein and left nothing but a brown skeleton on the table. Had nightmares about that for years.
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Been re-watching it on Tubi (free, with a tolerable amount of ads - 1 at the beginning of each ep, and 5 grouped in the middle somewhere, all very short). It’s also on Prime, purportedly for free, but random episodes they want $2 for, which is BS tactics.
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The exterior establishing shots feature a local home called Seaview Terrace (though no other filming was done there), and there’s an outstanding surf break right around the corner from that rocky shoreline. There used to be an annual dinner in the Fall for the fans until quite recently.
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The series really went down hill with The Leviathan story arc, just as it was getting back on track. The ending timeline could have been great as it pivoted away from monster mash style sensationalism and toward a promising Bronte-style story.
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I used to do the same thing - run home from school, arriving just in time to see the start of the show. It scared the beejeebers out of me, but I was admittedly kind of a chicken shit. In particular I remember a scene where a priest was bricked up inside a wall - I’m pretty sure it’s what led to a life-long case of mild claustrophobia, and being convinced that there’s a vampire hiding in my closet …
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That was Reverend Trask and he deserved it. Good god that actor could play an asshole well, he had it coming.
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I grew up rushing home from school to watch Dark Shadows. PlutoTV has an entire Dark Shadows channel (free!) and it’s fun to tune in to what is perhaps the US’s first gothic soap opera.
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Something I almost forgot about was the “Dark Shadows” reboot in 1991 which I watched with my parents at the time. It starred Ben Cross (“Chariots of Fire”), who recently passed away.
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My mom grew up watching this and she passed her love of it on to me.
The original- such a creepy show. That portrait of Barnabus probably got half the screen time in the whole damn show
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Soap operas, much like comic books, have a luxury that movies and weekly TV shows do not have; the ability to stretch timelines and storylines out over long spans without losing the viewers interest. When you can remind the watcher of previous events, and only reveal the minimal amount of new information to keep their interest, you can sustain it almost indefinitely.
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