For a television series that featured vampires, witches, werewolves, ghosts, time travel and just about every other supernatural menace imaginable, it might seem difficult to believe that one particular storyline could have been too strange for Dark Shadows. Yet that’s precisely what happened in late 1969, when the ABC daytime Gothic soap opera introduced the […]
From Victoria Winters’ arrival at Collinwood to the adventures of Barnabas Collins and Quentin Collins, here’s how the original Dark Shadows paperback series began. For fans of Dark Shadows, there was a time when spending time with the Collins family didn’t necessarily mean turning on the television. Sometimes it meant opening a paperback. Beginning in […]
What would happen if Carl Kolchak, the relentless reporter who exposed a vampire in Las Vegas, came face-to-face with Barnabas Collins, the tormented vampire of Dark Shadows? Would Kolchak immediately reach for a wooden stake? Would Barnabas recognize a fellow outsider? And, perhaps most intriguingly, what could possibly bring these two men together? Author and […]
Sixty years ago, Victoria Winters boarded a train bound for Collinsport, Maine, and television viewers were introduced to the strange world of Dark Shadows. What began on June 27, 1966, as a Gothic daytime serial about a young woman’s search for answers would eventually become something considerably stranger — and far more enduring. There were ghosts, […]
When Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) first stepped out of his coffin on Dark Shadows in 1967, viewers were introduced to a different kind of vampire. More than a predator, Barnabas was a tragic figure, forever haunted by the memory of Josette Du Pres, the 18th-century woman he once loved and inadvertently doomed. His longing for […]
While the name John Karlen may not register with today’s television viewers, there are a couple of generations of them that will surely remember him for two very distinct roles: Willie Loomis on the Classic TV daytime soap opera Dark Shadows (the show’s answer to Bram Stoker‘s Renfeld in Dracula) and Harvey Lacey, the epitome of the […]
Losing cast members from Dark Shadows is, unfortunately, something that oldtime fans of the show have gotten used to, yet it’s always a sad moment and that’s particularly true with the loss of Lara Parker, who made such an impact in her role as Angelique Bouchard. I had the opportunity to interview Lara a number of times […]
In the new episode of the Vampires & Slayers podcast, writer Mark B. Perry provides an exclusive preview of the currently-in-development television series Dark Shadows: Reincarnation, which, rather than being a remake or reboot, is actually a continuation of the original 1966 to 1971 daytime Gothic horror soap opera, all of which he considers canon. […]
Thanks to an interview with bloody-disgusting.com, writer Mark B. Perry has confirmed that his sequel series to the original Dark Shadows, Dark Shadows: Reincarnation, is still being retooled and shopped around after ultimately not making the cut at the CW, more for scheduling reasons than anything else. He describes the premise this way: “We are […]
The Vampires & Slayers podcast kicks off with a special look at Dark Shadows, the 1966 to 1971 Gothic horror daytime soap opera. It starts with an exclusive interview with Mary O’Leary, director and producer of the documentary Dark Shadows and Beyond: The Jonathan Frid Story, focusing on the Canadian actor whose role as vampire […]