There are very likely many of us here would like these paintings.

Love, C.

It has only been in the last few days that I heard about the new Dark Shadows film, and while searching for articles on the production found this blog. To see people still talking and caring about the Dark Shadows story was gratifying.

kind regards,
Patrick

I looked though, and can see why this would work out so well for you:

I recently acquired a 1960’s black and white TV set and hooked up an old VCR and would run the tapes while I worked in my studio on paintings quite possibly influenced by DS. Watching the show on a 1960’s TV set is very interesting. The colour episodes translate back to black and white very well and give it a silent movie era look. Seeing the show at the screen resolution it was designed for is quite appealing to me.

Have you seen the Guy Madden2002 film, Dracula: Pages From A Virgin’s Diary? This is a silent, ballet film. I wrote about it extensively here. You can find the Introduction plus 5 installments, I think there are, here, if you click on the Vampire link here on the right column. I do not know if the intra-hyper links are still working since the last re-vamping of this board.

It’s too bad this is so far down the line now. I think people would really like to know about your paintings.

Love, C.

Even as a child, I was more fascinated by Barnabas’s travails looking for Josette than I was being scared by werewolves. But having said that, there was a lot going on that I didn’t pick up on until I saw the show again on video thirty years later. I now enjoy the show far more than I did in the 1960’s. I can only hope that Johnny Depp truly gets it and brings it to the screen in a way that conveys something of the original magic.

This in particular:

Imagine waking up in 1967 after being locked in a coffin since 1795 and you see a world that is both alien and familar. Faces that you know inhabited by the souls of strangers. You want to find a place in this new life, and you don’t want your family to know what you’ve become. You were a good person driven by forces that sicken you even as you find it almost impossible at times to stop what you’re doing.

Love, C.

Not only do you have to learn the customs of the new era but also how to trust again, how to rise above your fears, how to find a way to love that doesn’t invite destruction. Dark Shadows sails in the waters of universal human experience and does not let itself become distracted by what is going on in the world outside of Collinsport. That is why it stands the test of time for me.

I loved the revival series for streamlining the original story and for the improved production values. I’ve seen quite a bit of both Buffy and Angel. I’d still choose the original DS over all of them.

With regards to Anne Rice: I think she owes DS a huge debt. Late in the original soap opera,there was a storyline involving parallel universe Collinwoods. In one of them, Barnabas enters it thinking it would cure him of vampirisim. It doesn’t. In this universe, Willie Loomis is a writer who imprisons Barnabas and makes him tell his life story for a book he’s writing on that universe’s Barnabas Collins. So the original interview with the vampire happened on ABC in 1971.

I have trouble picturing Johnny Depp as Barnabas. I hope he does him justice. I second the suggestion of Anne Hathaway as Josette, but there might yet better even better casting possibilities if I gave it some thought.

I was a mere infant (no, wait! I don’t I was born yet) when DS aired and I remember rushing home from school to be in front of the tube just in time for cue-creepy-music.

It was an awesomely kewl show at the time but I can’t see how it has stood the test of time. After all, it was a soap opera, pure and unabashed. Only difference was the predators and prey were, eh, really predators and prey. I don’t recall any real depth to it. (But then I was watching it before I was apparently actually born.)

As someone who has seen all episodes of Buffy more times that I care to admit, I’m finding it difficult to see where DS could have had much of an influence on Buffy. I’d guess that JW and the writers all shared a love of vamps, werewolves and witches, and probably ran home from school to catch the latest hijinx (or drool over Quentin who is, in my mind, a much better predecessor to Angel than Barnabas every could be — talk about tortured!). But beyond that, my imagination fails me — DS was entertaining and fixating in the way soap operas are, but lacked the depth, wit and running social commentary of Buffy.

Love, C.

Of course, the last scheduled episode was pre-empted by a rebroadcast of the “Michael Jackson’s nose falls off� interview or whatever it was called.

Gee, just look at all I miss by not having a television!

Love, C.