Not So Dark Shadows
Did you watch Dark Shadows as a kid? If so, you probably remember it as creepy and downright nightmare inducing scary.
It aired from '66 to '71 and it's been interesting to hear people's memories of the show. Just a few years difference in age and it's a whole different viewing experience. I only remember seeing it one time after school when I was someone's house (not my usual babysitter's). It scared me so much that I watched it from behind a piece of furniture.
My friends who are just a few years older than I, remember gathering every day after school to watch the latest episode and letting themselves get scared. Or, scared by someone like Jello-Shot Queen's Dad who would walk in and yell "Boo!" at them during the show. Some of that group either watched it with their parents' knowledge or snuck around behind their parents' backs to watch it.
I haven't talked to many people who watched it in syndication. Probably because by the time the then SciFi was playing it, it was too outdated to be scary anymore.
It is, however, completely laughable.
My girlfriends and I gathered to watch a marathon of episodes on Saturday. We started with a movie sliced together with story lines from the show that explained the backstory of how Barnabas Collins became a vampire.
Usually, I'm the person who insists on no talking during a movie. I lifted that restriction within five minutes of this starting as there was no way I was going to be able to keep quiet myself.
Man, was this cheesy! We laughed at the scenery, the clothing, the shiny makeup and what was allegedly the plot. I found myself predicting the upcoming lines and I have to say, give me a few bottles of wine, and I could write this whole thing a lot better.
We were hysterical several times because it was so over the top. There were also lots of "wait, what?" moments that the script writers must have realized because a few minutes later, a character would do some random exposition that would explain what had previously happened. Or, it was really poor editing from the episodes. Could have been both.
I hadn't realized, or had forgotten, that this was a five day a week show. There are 1,225 episodes. That's a lot of TV. We were about an hour into The Vampire's Curse when I thought, "This has got to be ending soon." Checking out the DVD case, I found it was 210 minutes long.
Are you kidding me? A three and a half hour long movie? Who does that? I can only hope it lets us skip a couple hundred episodes in our continued viewing.
And, we are going to continue. JSQ has a boatload of DVDs for us to go through still. Crash was betting that both Marisa and I would bail on future episodes but it was actually fun and an excuse to eat, drink and have a girls pajama evening. Can't go wrong with that. It will just take us years to finish it as we only got through disc 1 of 4 for the first set of actual shows after we watched the movie. Fortunately, they recapped the first 200 or so episodes then dropped us in when Barnabas showed up.
The best part of the evening that Barb and I are still giggling over? When Barnabas was "attacked" by the vampire bat.
Too dang funny!
It aired from '66 to '71 and it's been interesting to hear people's memories of the show. Just a few years difference in age and it's a whole different viewing experience. I only remember seeing it one time after school when I was someone's house (not my usual babysitter's). It scared me so much that I watched it from behind a piece of furniture.
My friends who are just a few years older than I, remember gathering every day after school to watch the latest episode and letting themselves get scared. Or, scared by someone like Jello-Shot Queen's Dad who would walk in and yell "Boo!" at them during the show. Some of that group either watched it with their parents' knowledge or snuck around behind their parents' backs to watch it.
I haven't talked to many people who watched it in syndication. Probably because by the time the then SciFi was playing it, it was too outdated to be scary anymore.
It is, however, completely laughable.
My girlfriends and I gathered to watch a marathon of episodes on Saturday. We started with a movie sliced together with story lines from the show that explained the backstory of how Barnabas Collins became a vampire.
.JPG) |
| The Vampire's Curse! |
Man, was this cheesy! We laughed at the scenery, the clothing, the shiny makeup and what was allegedly the plot. I found myself predicting the upcoming lines and I have to say, give me a few bottles of wine, and I could write this whole thing a lot better.
We were hysterical several times because it was so over the top. There were also lots of "wait, what?" moments that the script writers must have realized because a few minutes later, a character would do some random exposition that would explain what had previously happened. Or, it was really poor editing from the episodes. Could have been both.
I hadn't realized, or had forgotten, that this was a five day a week show. There are 1,225 episodes. That's a lot of TV. We were about an hour into The Vampire's Curse when I thought, "This has got to be ending soon." Checking out the DVD case, I found it was 210 minutes long.
Are you kidding me? A three and a half hour long movie? Who does that? I can only hope it lets us skip a couple hundred episodes in our continued viewing.
And, we are going to continue. JSQ has a boatload of DVDs for us to go through still. Crash was betting that both Marisa and I would bail on future episodes but it was actually fun and an excuse to eat, drink and have a girls pajama evening. Can't go wrong with that. It will just take us years to finish it as we only got through disc 1 of 4 for the first set of actual shows after we watched the movie. Fortunately, they recapped the first 200 or so episodes then dropped us in when Barnabas showed up.
The best part of the evening that Barb and I are still giggling over? When Barnabas was "attacked" by the vampire bat.
.JPG) |
| Oh, no, there's a bat flying at me! |
.JPG) |
| It's just hovering (cuz that's what bats do, right?), how shall I ever escape it? |
.JPG) |
| I won't even try to escape! I'll just fall down and expose my neck so the bat can feast upon me! |
Too dang funny!
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