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Post by Ian Fryer on Jul 9, 2019 11:31:47 GMT
I am considering getting started with DARK SHADOWS. Should I begin at the beginning, or does the good stuff start at some specific later point? Also, is it necessary to watch every episode? Modern soap operas are characterized by a glacial pace and a constant repetition of crucial plot information, so it is never really necessary to watch more than once a week in order to follow the story. A lot of people start with episode 210, which is where the vampire storyline is first introduced. There are supernatural storylines before then, but they creep in gradually amidst the more earthbound intrigue of plots and murders and family secrets. Amazon Prime starts off what it calls Season 1 with episode 210 - in reality the show didn't have seasons, but was broadcast five times a week all year round, but I think Amazon are basing their 'seasons' on the individual DVD boxsets, which also started with the introduction of Barnabas Collins with the earlier episodes being released later. There is a lot of repetition of plot elements and recaps for viewers in DS... to the point that you can end up memorising certain bits of dialogue you know will come up again and again. There are also a couple of interesting releases on DVD and streaming on Amazon - The Vampire's Curse and The Haunting of Collinwood - which condense weeks or even months worth of episodes into three hour features based on two of the series' most popular storylines - the origins of Barnabas in the 18th century and the ghost of Quentin Collins - which might make handy samplers for anyone looking to delve into the series without committing to all 1,225 episodes. Funnily enough I'm watching Dark Shadows for the first time at the moment - I don't think the TV series ever aired in the United Kingdom. I've started at episode one and it is very much characterized by a glacial pace and a constant repetition of crucial plot information. I'm up to episode 56 (I think) and it's watchable and atmospheric so far, with only extremely occasional supernatural elements and I'm looking forward to events being livened up.
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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Jul 9, 2019 16:50:08 GMT
I don't think the TV series ever aired in the United Kingdom. Apart from a single episode broadcast during a themed Soap Opera Weekend on Channel 4 in the mid-90s, it was seen by cable and satellite viewers in the UK in the 90s on the Sci-Fi Channel. I got hooked on it when they were broadcasting two episodes every weekday, usually around 3 or 4 in the morning. The BBC bought the rights to show the early 90s remake series, but never broadcast it.
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Post by mattofthespurs on Jul 10, 2019 7:06:33 GMT
The Sci-Fi channel was when I first encountered Dark Shadows in the 90's too.
Can't say I was overly impressed with it to be honest.
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Post by andydecker on Jul 27, 2019 21:19:54 GMT
After reading some of the really terrible reviews of Another Life from Netflix, a sf-series with Katee Sackhoff, I thought to give it a chance. And it is really as bad as the people wrote. Terrible writing, terrible acting, stupid, unoriginal plot. Spacemen and woman say f**ck every other minute, so it must be edgy, I guess. But this is already all that is edgy about this.
Netflix seem to loose its luck when it comes to SF. Nightflyer was boring and terrible, Lost in Space was crap. And now this misfire.
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Post by ripper on Aug 3, 2019 13:10:03 GMT
I noticed that Amazon Prime had umpteen episodes of Dark Shadows for watching, but was really in two minds as to whether to give it a go or not. I did watch an episode on YT quite a while ago. I think it was the very first episode, and to be honest it didn't inspire me to seek out more. However, now it is on Prime, I may give it another try, possibly skipping to the vampire storyline.
Also on Prime, I saw that Curse of Frankenstein was on there to watch for free. I was in luck as it was the final day it would be available, and as I haven't seen it in decades, gave it a go. Well, quite tame compared with today's gore-fests, but I can understand the fuss it caused back in 1957 with audiences used to bloodless B+W horror, and that first sight of the monster's face is still a key shock moment. Cushing's performance is, of course, top-notch. It has a fairly leisurely pace, with the monster's appearance coming quite late in the film by modern standards, but imo that doesn't harm the production at all. I hope more of the classic Hammers will appear on Prime, particularly in the Frankenstein and Dracula series.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 3, 2019 15:28:21 GMT
If you want to watch Dark Shadows, I would suggest starting with episode 701, the beginning of the 1897 storyline. You could just read one of the online Wikis or blogs to catch up on "the story so far." It still might be too slow paced for you or too stagey, but at least you might get a sense of the kind of thing that made it so popular back in the late Sixties. I'm not that big a fan of this blog, but a lot of Shadows fans think it's really great. He provides a lot of background info and summarizes the storyline which may be helpful. darkshadowseveryday.com/2015/08/11/episode-701/Episode guide page: darkshadowseveryday.com/episode-guide/Overview: darkshadowseveryday.com/2013/09/01/introduction/Best, H.
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Post by ripper on Aug 3, 2019 17:24:55 GMT
If you want to watch Dark Shadows, I would suggest starting with episode 701, the beginning of the 1897 storyline. You could just read one of the online Wikis or blogs to catch up on "the story so far." It still might be too slow paced for you or too stagey, but at least you might get a sense of the kind of thing that made it so popular back in the late Sixties. I'm not that big a fan of this blog, but a lot of Shadows fans think it's really great. He provides a lot of background info and summarizes the storyline which may be helpful. darkshadowseveryday.com/2015/08/11/episode-701/Episode guide page: darkshadowseveryday.com/episode-guide/Overview: darkshadowseveryday.com/2013/09/01/introduction/Best, H. Thanks very much. I will take a look at those pages. As I believe Dark Shadows was a daytime series, I would expect its target audience would have been mainly housewives, particularly given the fact of when it was shown i.e. the late 60s. It must have stood out from other daytime soaps of the time quite a bit, perhaps the TV equivalent of those gothic romance novels with a heroine in a gauzy nightdress and a dark brooding house in the background on the cover, which were so popular at the time.
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Post by andydecker on Aug 3, 2019 19:50:41 GMT
Here is another blog chronicling every episode of Dark Shadows. Short and to the point. They were on ep 810 on friday.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 3, 2019 23:22:32 GMT
Hi Ripper,
The original storyline in 1966 was meant exactly to be from the world of the endless "Gothic" paperbacks with the fleeing ingenue on the cover, often running away holding a lit candle from a looming, darkened mansion which had one lit window in an upper room. (There's a thread somewhere about the constantly repeated motif of the one lit window in the upper room in these mansions.) About three months or so along, the first ghost showed up, followed by other supernatural manifestations, eventually culminating in the arrival of vampire "cousin" Barnabas Collins about 10 months after the show had debuted.
It originally ran at 3:30 in the afternoon which was right after kids would get out of school--they moved the time to 4 p.m. fairly early on to accommodate more kids. It was a huge hit with both young children, teenagers, and college students.
Apparently during the time it ran, nobody at the network really knew what to do with it, particularly once the heavy duty supernatural horror/sci fi storylines hit in 1968.
H.
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Post by Ian Fryer on Aug 4, 2019 0:40:01 GMT
I'm on episode 85, which is around the point when the supernatural content starts to come in. Boy, does it ever give what had been an increasingly dull and pointless series a major boost!
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Post by helrunar on Aug 5, 2019 21:17:37 GMT
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Post by Dr Strange on Aug 6, 2019 8:53:27 GMT
That does sound like it would be good. Anything with Alfred Molina in it is usually worth a watch.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 6, 2019 17:18:32 GMT
So, another friend said he switched it off after the first ten minutes--and the thing is only half an hour long.
I guess "your mileage may vary" really applies with this one.
H.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Aug 12, 2019 10:52:40 GMT
Mark Gatiss is making a documentary about Dracula to accompany the upcoming adaptation written by himself and Steven Moffat: www.radiotimes.com/news/2019-08-09/mark-gatiss-dracula-documentary/Beginning at Orava Castle in Slovakia (which appeared in classic vampire movie Nosferatu), In Search of Dracula will follow Gatiss as he tracks down research literature in the London Library and checks out Dracula author Bram Stoker’s original notes and unused ideas in Philadelphia. He also meets with actors, historians and experts drawn from decades of vampire stories as he traces the Count’s journey from book to screen. And finally, after exploring the cinematic legacy of onscreen Draculas like Bela Lugosi and Chrostopher Lee, Gatiss will meet with the latest actor to don the fangs – his own leading man Claes Bang – to chat about their own vision for Dracula, as well as why readers and audiences keep coming back to the Count.It sounds better than the usual piece about holidays in Whitby. I've only just discovered that Mark Gatiss played Dracula for a Big Finish audio version: www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/dracula-1409
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Post by helrunar on Aug 12, 2019 15:42:26 GMT
Interesting. I wonder whether Gatiss will mention the research from the 1990s by somebody who felt they had proven conclusively that Stoker did NOT draw on legends about Vlad Tepes in creating the Dracula character. I can't recall the actual points of the argument now. The name obviously must have come from something he found about Vlad.
The famous speech about "the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back" does seem to hark to the period of Vlad Tepes if not what is known of the actual history of his actions. I can't recall what the writer said about this. The whole Vlad Tepes thing had become so heavily entrenched in popular imagination (just as much as Dracula himself) that the little article seems to have made no impression whatsoever. The author did state very confidently that he had exploded the "Vlad Tepes = Dracula myth" CONCLUSIVELY.
I wasn't impressed by the publicity still that was released to promote this Mofftiss project--the actual film, or is it to be a serial--recently. It just seemed like such an inept, poorly accomplished photo, like something a teenager would take on a cellphone camera. And in general I have no expectations about the project and frankly, no particular interest in tracking it down to view.
H.
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