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A few months ago I noticed that Netflix was streaming the original Night Shadows ABC daytime soap opera, no doubt coordinated with the release of the film adaptation ready for May 2012. Later on a moment's hesitation, I knew that I had to go back – render to my five-twelvemonth-old cocky and confront one of my deepest fears: Barnabas Collins, the agent of many childhood nightmares that left an imprint of anxiety on my psyche that may have never been fully erased.   I was about to carry dangerous psychotherapy – on myself.

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This photograph seems to encapsulate Dark Shadows for and so many, myself included.

My babysitter watched the show religiously, and since I, even at age four or five, was quite Boob tube-centric, I sat abreast her on the sofa, filled with dread and fright, for the bear witness truly frightened me, but with my television addiction already in evidence, I could not just await away. Too, I was savvy enough not to permit my babysitter know that I was internally terrified and tormented by the programme, because such a confession might accept resulted in my banishment to the swing set in the back chiliad, leaving me with my olfactory organ pressed against the family room window burning with green-eyed as my sitter sat on the couch glued to her story.

At least I wasn't alone.  Some quick research proves that marketers were highly enlightened of a legion of children watching gothic horror during their misspent days.  Even Milton Bradley got in on the action with a board game, and kids could add the hearse-like Barnabas Vampire Van to their collection of Tonka trucks while reading Barnabas comics alongside Spiderman.

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I don't think viewing this commercial for the Milton Bradley board game did me whatsoever favors either:


I also made a mental note not to discuss Dark Shadows in front of my parents, as even at that early age, I knew of TV transgressions from spending time with other families. I had been denied viewing rights to the shows I enjoyed at my own habitation by other kids' parents at their houses, either because "it'south for grown-ups" or "it's as well dainty outside."  My own parents more or less gave their kids bill of fare blanche when it came to television and film, which meant that I watched not only far too much TV in general, only also far too much inappropriate programming. I knew then Night Shadows was non intended for a pre-schooler, but I would never have risked revealing anything negative about it that might accept curbed any access to our giant Television, which was built into a huge hole in the wall, with the dorsum accessible through a closet door, which I was forbidden from opening, and backside which I spent a dandy deal of time surreptitiously studying the massive motorcar which brought me so much please, and, for half an hour each weekday, so much terror.

And now, suddenly Dark Shadows was looming on the giant TV of my machismo, a flat LED with no mystery in the back. I was set up to confront Barnabas in the digital age, my childhood angst simmering, waiting to show itself once more than and maybe seek retribution –  confronting me for willfully inflicting the Collinwood saga on myself then many moons ago.

The streaming episodes of Dark Shadows begin with the introduction of Barnabas. At that place were some 200 episodes beforehand, so I had to get schooled quickly on what had transpired before:

The show was in danger of cancellation, so they actually shook things up with the introduction of the supernatural, first through a ghost, and later, more incomparably, with a vampire. Therefore, my first viewing every bit an developed was also the series' launch of Barnabas, the vampire with the Collins name, idea long dead, only really lying in a bury in a secret tomb within the family crypt.  I had a ringside seat as Barnabas walked into Collinwood Manor for the very first time:

My initial reaction upon re-viewing was non of terror, only rather, of shock: stupor that the testify looked then embarrassingly cheap and that it moved about as fast as sludgy h2o drips through my washing machine pipes clogged with dog hair. How could I have been scared by this? How could I have fifty-fifty sabbatum through information technology? Don't pre-schoolers demand more stimulation than what a brooding, crawling daytime serial has to offer?


I could not fathom any reaction from a small child other than boredom. And then it hit me: the music. Background music runs through near of the 21-minute duration, and it's all creepy and spooky. Sometimes it runs fifty-fifty when zippo remotely scary is happening. I think it was going when the matriarch and her snotty blood brother were complaining about how bad the melt's food was. The music was surely more than frightening than Barnabas.

Or was in that location something else?

As I viewed more episodes and Barnabas began bitter people – always off-screen, usually strongly suggested earlier the fang marks are revealed – I did notice a sure menace to Barnabas. His unexplained power over people – and so far including the no-goodnik Willie Loomis, who mistakenly let Barnabas out of his coffin while grave-robbing, and the kind-hearted café waitress Maggie Evans, whose downfall came through her fascination with his gold and silver wolf-caput cane – was more eerie than outright scary, and therefore left me with a feeling of malaise that I was unable to articulate and therefore unable to purge.


Normal folks who suddenly became wild-eyed and exhausted looking, refusing to get out of bed in the day and then disappearing into the dark – all that was no uncertainty more unsettling than people yelling and being chased around by a homo in a cape.  Every bit a small child, I could accept related to yelling and chasing, but not to hypnotic trances and complete personality permutations, along with unexplained and intense attractions to Barnabas, who, about two weeks after his debut, had get increasingly unnerving.

Barnabas was an enigma leaving residual unease afterward each scene, and the unease mounted equally he extended his presence from the Collinwood Manor to the town of Collinsport and its hapless, unsuspecting residents. Barnabas distressed me in a way that I could not express, fifty-fifty if I had wished to practice then, which would accept fittingly and perhaps rightfully concluded my sad human relationship with him. (Substitute a swing set for a serial drama and you lot've just ruined i five-year-old child's day.)   Barnabas Collins had become the fear with no proper name.

In the early stage of my re-entry into Nighttime Shadows, I didn't really call back anything specific from the bear witness except Barnabas until the cast concluded up in the entry hall, where information technology seems at to the lowest degree half of the running fourth dimension takes place.

Since the show is so, then cheap, they pad the script with countless discussions of what had happened, what might have happened, and what could happen next. This saves them the trouble of having to construct an actress set or rent additional actors to show what actually happens, in add-on to filling upward the 21 minutes without the bother of writing additional storylines. (I suppose the ever-present exposition and summarization was helpful for people who led busy lives and could non watch v episodes a week, dissimilar my babysitter and me.) In fact, some of the episodes have literally only three actors really actualization. Nosotros are reminded of other plot threads through the characters' endless discussions, or amend said, their expositions, paraphrasings, and summarizations – and re-summarizations.  In i numbingly tedious scene, several characters spent about five minutes in real fourth dimension at the local pub discussing the disappearance of a cow.  At 1 bespeak I had the sense that ane histrion might have flubbed a line and the other actors just started the scene over from the get-go. The dialogue feels that circular.

Yet how almost enchanting was my re-discovery of the entry hall of Collinwood Manor, or The Great House, where then much takes place, well, so much talking anyway. It also features a giant portrait of Barnabas, whom the Collins family all remember is their long-dead relative.  The undead Barnabas coincidentally bears an uncanny, some say identical, appearance to the portrait of the living Barnabas,  right down to the gigantic ring on his finger.  Anybody comments, and comments, and comments, on the remarkable similarity of the man in the portrait to the Barnabas now ensconced in The Former Business firm (a decrepit mansion not far from the The Great House, where the not undead members of the family reside).

At commencement I thought that I would sentry just a few episodes, especially when I came to the glacial pacing and the exhaustingly inordinate amount of fourth dimension spent on repetitive dialogue. And then I realized that I had already built the prove into my grown-upward schedule, 21 minutes of unhurried, undemanding viewing – right earlier turning in for the night. The soporific effects of the bear witness were wholly unpredicted, and at present they had become a necessity.

Every bit a kid, I could non get to sleep considering of Dark Shadows; as an adult, I cannot go to slumber without it.

Moreover, I accept come to appreciate aspects of the series. Information technology is representative of a time gone by, non but my childhood, but of television entertainment, which did not depend on multiple shots, quick editing, and physical activity to continue the viewer engaged. Instead, it offers atmosphere, frequently campsite, though the intent of creepiness is discernible, and I tin easily spotter the testify through either lens, or normally both simultaneously.

The cheapness that I initially reacted against makes the program somehow more than tactile, as if I could imagine myself putting up a fake wall or stringing cobwebs over styrofoam gravestones. There is an odd appeal in the obvious bamboozlement quite different from CGI. I know that everything on the gear up is real, even if there is zippo backside the walls and the staircase in the entry hall leads to nowhere. Information technology'southward a staircase I could thunder upwards or mope my manner down, just like the characters. The fakery is real.

Atmosphere is cardinal in Dark Shadows, and information technology is set correct off the bat in every episode with the opening narration of Victoria Winters, the governess for a child portrayed by an thespian who can virtually never begin his line as scripted. She speaks in a oddly remote, disaffected vocalism, always introducing herself ("My name is Victoria Winters") before establishing the tone, always ominous or bleak.

Her strangely detached voice rolls over a shot of either The Manor or The Old House, cloaked in the thick fog featured in her speech.  The intro intrigues me; I wonder if equally a kid I understood any of what she was saying – it sounds like a stilted recitation by someone broadcasting from some other dimension.  Maybe this was building upward my vocabulary ("fog" seems an omnipresent word in the opening) and my sense of figurative language, as bad similes are piled upwards i upon another to make Collinwood/Collinsport sound as gothic as possible.

Let me not forget to credit the performances. Jonathan Frid is actually quite skilful as Barnabas. He overplays all the fourth dimension, but holds back only plenty and so that you wonder what schemes are spinning in his mind. His interim skirts the line of a cartoonish at times, but never to the extent that Barnabas's machinations tin can exist discounted; he may be risible, but his aura of danger never wholly subsides.  He tin be erudite and impeccably mannered, but at the same fourth dimension quietly threatening in his hyper-focused gazes and imposing stances. Everything that comes out of his mouth seems to be part of a master program most which but he knows. In addition to making the obvious double-entendres virtually his undead state, he slyly coaxes and manipulates everyone in his sphere, even if they are not under his spell, which I believe comes after a seize with teeth. Barbabas shares much more than in common with vampires of the schlock and classic horror films of the thirties and forties than with the hyper-sexed, martial arts masters in contemporary vampire stories. Frid's performance contributes to the atmosphere, both to the superficial cheapness and to the underlying uneasiness.

Also entertaining is disgraced Hollywood star Joan Bennett

as Elizabeth Stoddard Collins, the Collins matriarch.  (In 1951, Bennett's husband shot her amanuensis out of jealousy and she was blacklisted thereafter.) In the beginning episodes, Bennett delivers her lines as if it were a nuisance to exist on the set at all. Her grapheme always seems angry or upset; I can't tell how much this owes to the script and her acting, or how much it relates to her being a former Hollywood leading lady relegated to playing the dame on a low-rated daytime lather opera that showcases a vampire. But like a trooper, she delivers her lines with a direct face, no thing how preposterous the writing.  After someone goes missing, she demands an all-out manhunt, and when someone dares tell her, "I've looked everywhere believable," she can antiphon, "Well so you'd amend showtime looking somewhere inconceivable !" without then much as a sly grin.  I am looking forward to seeing her evolve, if merely in terms of wardrobe, as the series presses through the tardily 1960s into the early 70s and becomes a national sensation.  Maybe by and then Joan Bennett volition have felt vindicated.

I oasis't read about what is still to come up because I like to be surprised, which tin be a challenge in the Data Age. I am ready to learn more about the modest characters and all the backstories, and I know that werewolves, zombies, ghosts, Kate Jackson, and fourth dimension travel have all been promised, but I'd like these stories to unfold southward-50-o-w-50 -y like everything else in Dark Shadows. It might exist similar watching it as a small child again, except this time I have nothing to fright but the end of the serial.  In near ii,000 more episodes.

I cannot look for this!