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Post by mcannon on Feb 10, 2019 3:35:41 GMT
I don't think Dark Shadows ever ran down under. It did! I've an early memory of watching an episode in grainy black and white at my grandparent's place - must have been early 70s. Would that have been in Perth, James? For many years, I assumed that the original "Dark Shadows" never screened in Australia; I certainly had no memory of ever seeing it, or listings in TV guides, growing up in New South Wales, although I was vaguely aware of the show via the comic books and occasional other references. However, some years back a work colleague, who had grown up in South Australia, mentioned the show to me; one of his school mates had been an obsessive fan of the show. So "Dark Shadows" obviously screened in some parts of the country. Back then in the 1960s-70s - and indeed well into the late 1980s - programming on commercial TV stations varied from region to region, and it was quite possible for a show to never air at all in some areas. These days, other than some local interest material such as news, the three main commercial networks (along with the two public broadcasters, ABC and SBS) broadcast pretty much the same content right across the country. Even though I picked up a sampler DVD set of DS a few years ago for something like $5, I still haven't gotten around to watching a single episode! Can't rush these things..... Mark
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Post by jamesdoig on Feb 10, 2019 4:36:49 GMT
It did! I've an early memory of watching an episode in grainy black and white at my grandparent's place - must have been early 70s. Would that have been in Perth, James? Yes, in Perth. I must try and find a newspaper from that time to confirm it.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 10, 2019 10:34:29 GMT
Or The Fog by Etchinson, come to think of it? I've made at least three false starts on The Fog. It is the same with his/'Jack Martin's Videodrome. Have liked a number of Etchison's short horrors but fast lost interest in both of these.
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Post by helrunar on Feb 10, 2019 22:46:17 GMT
Thanks, Mark, for those interesting memories. I've never heard of Dark Shadows being screened Down Under. From what I have been told, it went unseen in the UK until the 1990s, when I think the Sci-Fi channel established a beachhead there and screened it for a few years.
Now I wonder whether Strange Paradise ever ran in Oz (or NZ). SP was a Canadian produced series that was in fact owned by the infamous US producer Steve Krantz. If you've never heard of him, Krantz was described by US film auteur Curtis Harrington as "utterly evil" (I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist). Ralph Bakshi detested Krantz to such a degree that he actually killed off "Fritz the Cat" because Krantz was planning a sequel to the original film. Undaunted, Krantz emitted something that I believe bore the title The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat.
Despite all this, Strange Paradise is a cult favorite for myself and a few friends. It ran on US television in syndication from September of 1969 through sometime in the Summer of 1970. Three tie-in novels were published by Paperback Library in the same format as the Dark Shadows books, by Gothic romance author Dorothy Daniels.
For me, the most constant attraction on Strange Paradise was Colin Fox as troubled squillionaire Jean Paul Desmond... intermittently possessed by his diabolical 17th century ancestor, Jacques Eloi des Mondes. Colin Fox went on to be a regular on Psi Factor, and later played Nero Wolfe's personal chef on a series. Also noteworthy was unflappable Toronto stage and television actress Cosette Lee as Raxl, Voodoo Priestess Housekeeper, who memorably uttered the line "Return to your dwelling-place in Hell!" when another character who had made herself persona non grata at the ancestral manor swam into view.
cheers, Helrunar
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Post by andydecker on Feb 11, 2019 20:59:50 GMT
Strange Paradise. I had to watch a few episodes on Youtube for writing a review of one of the merchandising novels by Dorothy Daniels. I thought the novel not very good - while competently written - and the episodes just bad. The concept sounds so wild on paper, but is there a less convincing tropical island on film? Even for a daytime soap this must have been done on a mini-budget. Compared to that Santa Barbara - back then my no.1 soap, how I loved Justin Deas as the evil DA - looked like Dynasty.
Dark Shadows I only know from the remakes. But I read now and then John Scoleri's epic blog Dark Shadows Before I Die. He does a write-up of every episode, with caps and all, and is currently at ep. 686. It is quite fascinating reading, but I believe its myth has become better then the show itself. I read a few of Ross' novelisations, they were competently done.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 11, 2019 21:36:47 GMT
Or The Fog by Etchinson, come to think of it? I've made at least three false starts on The Fog. It is the same with his/'Jack Martin's Videodrome. Have liked a number of Etchison's short horrors but fast lost interest in both of these. Thanks. I had forgotten that Halloween was published back then as a translation. I also have a lot of Etchinson's shorts, but I honestly don't know if I could read them again. Sometimes I think that a lot of what was cutting edge back in 80s has aged much more badly then the 70s or the classics like James or Stoker. The Fog as a novel could have been interesting. Maybe it fills the gaps of the movie. Every time I see it I have to laugh about the scene in which Jamie Lee Curtis meets, seduces and chats with Nick in what must have been 10 minutes. Maybe Etchinson explains this :-)
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Post by helrunar on Feb 12, 2019 0:20:03 GMT
Andreas, just for the hell of it, there's some interesting info about Dorothy Daniels here: ead.ohiolink.edu/xtf-ead/view?docId=ead/OhBgUPC0015.xml;chunk.id=bioghist_1;brand=defaultHer husband, Norman Daniels, was also a writer, and I seem to recall speculation that Norman may have written some of Dorothy's work. As usual with professional writers of the period, Dorothy Daniels also wrote under several pseudonyms. For me, the Daniels Strange Paradise novels are a notch or two above the "Marilyn" Ross (actually written by husband Dan Ross) Dark Shadows books. The Strange Paradise novels included some backstory about certain characters which was never used in the scripts produced for the series. It was indeed done under a very, very tight budget. Best wishes, Steve
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Post by mcannon on Feb 12, 2019 3:39:03 GMT
Thanks, Mark, for those interesting memories. I've never heard of Dark Shadows being screened Down Under. From what I have been told, it went unseen in the UK until the 1990s, when I think the Sci-Fi channel established a beachhead there and screened it for a few years. Now I wonder whether Strange Paradise ever ran in Oz (or NZ). SP was a Canadian produced series that was in fact owned by the infamous US producer Steve Krantz. If you've never heard of him, Krantz was described by US film auteur Curtis Harrington as "utterly evil" (I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist). Ralph Bakshi detested Krantz to such a degree that he actually killed off "Fritz the Cat" because Krantz was planning a sequel to the original film. Undaunted, Krantz emitted something that I believe bore the title The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat. Despite all this, Strange Paradise is a cult favorite for myself and a few friends. It ran on US television in syndication from September of 1969 through sometime in the Summer of 1970. Three tie-in novels were published by Paperback Library in the same format as the Dark Shadows books, by Gothic romance author Dorothy Daniels. For me, the most constant attraction on Strange Paradise was Colin Fox as troubled squillionaire Jean Paul Desmond... intermittently possessed by his diabolical 17th century ancestor, Jacques Eloi des Mondes. Colin Fox went on to be a regular on Psi Factor, and later played Nero Wolfe's personal chef on a series. Also noteworthy was unflappable Toronto stage and television actress Cosette Lee as Raxl, Voodoo Priestess Housekeeper, who memorably uttered the line "Return to your dwelling-place in Hell!" when another character who had made herself persona non grata at the ancestral manor swam into view. cheers, Helrunar Now that's a show I don't think I've ever heard of! Of course it's possible it may have screened here but if so, it completely passed me by. Despite most of Australia having a warm climate (currently either stinking hot, fire-ravaged or flood-stricken - or a combination thereof - depending on where you live), with parts that are genuinely tropical, we've always had a great ability to make our own completely unconvincing-looking soapies set in beach areas or on tropical islands. The long-running "Home and Away" is at least filmed in a beach area, though it's never looked particularly convincing on the few occasions I've watched it, but the short-lived 1980s show "Holiday Island" is legendary for filming most of its "Tropical island" scenes in Melbourne, which is about as far as you can get from the tropics in mainland Oz. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiday_IslandI don't think Australia has ever produced an actual supernatural-themed soapie, though I can think of a few that have occasionally veered into semi-horrific themes, such as Devil worshippers in "Number 96" (an incredible raunchy-for-its-time 1970s series) or the seemingly-supernatural "Mr Bad" character in '90s series "E-Street". Of course, many would argue that soaps as a genre seem to be some form of horror fiction; odd characters trapped in an endless succession of nightmarish scenarios in worlds that bear little resemblance to reality....... Mark
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Post by jamesdoig on Feb 12, 2019 9:44:25 GMT
I don't think Australia has ever produced an actual supernatural-themed soapie, Maybe not soap, but there was The Evil Touch, Australia's answer to Thriller, Tales of the Unexpected, Night Gallery etc, and introduced by Anthony Quayle - I've fond memories of that.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 12, 2019 17:24:21 GMT
Of course, many would argue that soaps as a genre seem to be some form of horror fiction; odd characters trapped in an endless succession of nightmarish scenarios in worlds that bear little resemblance to reality....... Mark That is a very good definition. I quite liked Australian tv productions. Have fond memories of Halifax p.f. with Rebecca Gibney. Now that I think of it, seems there are a lot less imported Australian productions in the last decade. Isn't the market as lively as it used to be?
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Post by andydecker on Feb 12, 2019 17:55:20 GMT
Andreas, just for the hell of it, there's some interesting info about Dorothy Daniels here: ead.ohiolink.edu/xtf-ead/view?docId=ead/OhBgUPC0015.xml;chunk.id=bioghist_1;brand=defaultHer husband, Norman Daniels, was also a writer, and I seem to recall speculation that Norman may have written some of Dorothy's work. As usual with professional writers of the period, Dorothy Daniels also wrote under several pseudonyms. For me, the Daniels Strange Paradise novels are a notch or two above the "Marilyn" Ross (actually written by husband Dan Ross) Dark Shadows books. The Strange Paradise novels included some backstory about certain characters which was never used in the scripts produced for the series. It was indeed done under a very, very tight budget. Best wishes, Steve Thanks. Nice to know that those writers don't all wind up in oblivion. Actually after reading the Strange Paradise novel I bought a few translated Gothics of her. They were very competently done. Not the top third of the Genre, this is reserved for writers like Phyllis Whitney,Dorothy Eden, Mary Stewart, Sandra Shulman, but a solid middle. The basement is for writers lile "Edwina Marlowe" or Belknap Long.
Ross' Dark Shadows novel were marketed in Germany in the Vampir Horror Heftroman as Barnabas the Vampire. Editorial did this when times because of complaints of violence called for soft horror. (Which of course even this was not. In my opinion the horror content in this was marignal at best) As the tv-series was unknown customers were not informed that this was a Gothic. Which was understandable. No horror-fan would have touched a girls book. And the publisher had a very successful weekly Gothics line which in the first years was exclusivly translated material. There were at least 5 Daniels novels under the first 100 issues.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Feb 12, 2019 18:43:47 GMT
No horror-fan would have touched a girls book. Eek!
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Post by kooshmeister on Feb 14, 2019 11:05:38 GMT
Got this: 1987's (or 1988's, depending) Cinemonsters, a collection revolving around short stories (and in the case of Who Goes There?, novellas) that have been adapted into films. Although it's nice having all these stories together, for a book edited by three different people, it's a pretty slapdash affair. Although it promises to cover the differences between the stories and the films based on them, it saves this for an appendix at the end and each individual story/movie(s)' entry, with cast list(s), is lazily brief, and there are a number of errors. For Re-Animator, it credits Robert Sampson as Dean Halsey twice, and even though it correctly identifies David Gale as Hill, in a still of Hill's headless body carrying his own head in a tray that accompanies the actual story, it identifies Hill as being played by Fritz Weaver (!). In the cast list for 1982's The Thing, it credits Richard Dysart as playing "Dr. Cooper," not Dr. Copper, and in its synopsis of that movie, claims that "the closing scene reveals that the attempt [to kill the alien] has failed," which is in no way definite, and very misleading of Waugh, Greenberg and McSherry to put in. Another puzzling thing is theme under which Killdozer! is placed. Most of the stories are classified under different themes - Who Goes There? is under Aliens, Herbert West - Reanimator is under Mad Scientists, There Shall Be No Darkness is under Werewolves, etc. - but Killdozer! is under... Mutants. I confess that I haven't tucked into Killdozer! yet (I've only seen the film and never read the original story), but how exactly does a possessed vehicle count as a mutant? And finally, there's the judgment against (then) new horror. I know nothing about Waugh, Greenberg and McSherry outside of this collection they've edited, but considering that the introduction waxes philosophic about seeing 1932's The Mummy and 1944's The Mummy's Ghost in the theater, refers to Hawks' The Thing from Another World as the superior film to Carpenter's The Thing (which is debatable and reeks of kneejerk reactionism), and disgustedly dismisses Re-Animator as "repulsively carnographic," I'm thinking the three were old fogies who shook their heads in scowling distaste at what the 80s had to offer in terms of sci-fi and horror.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Feb 14, 2019 13:40:34 GMT
No horror-fan would have touched a girls book. Eek! Or a girl's anything else?
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Post by kooshmeister on Feb 14, 2019 22:21:42 GMT
My second copy of Mr. Smith's immortal epic The Slime Beast! I got the NEL edition again because I've always loved the cheesy ray of light shining behind the Slime Beast/through his legs. It makes it look like he's about to be hit by an oncoming train whooshing up behind him. And the sequel, Spawn of the Slime Beast, which I've wanted to read for some time now, although can someone tell me why the title looks like it's written in Slime Beast jizz? Maybe that's how he gets spawn; he goes and donates at the sperm bank. Or maybe it's cake frosting? He's throwing a birthday party for his spawn. ...God my mind goes to weird places.
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