Binge on Dark Shadows with Decades this Halloween

Marathons of DARK SHADOWS have become a holiday tradition for Decades, a network that specializes in classic television. As a lead-up to its "official" launch in 2014, Decades broadcast 68 straight hours of the classic soap during the summer, followed later that fall with a weekend marathon at Halloween called "The Binge." This is the third year running that the channel has celebrated Halloween with a DARK SHADOWS marathon, which features a block of episodes pulled from the earliest appearances of vampire Barnabas Collins in 1967.

The festivities kick off 1 p.m. EST on Saturday, Oct. 28 with episode 257, at which point Maggie Evans is already a prisoner of Barnabas Collins. The marathon comes to a close at 6:30 a.m., Oct. 30, with episode 340, an episode from early in the show's color transition. If my math is correct, the Binge represents 83 consecutive episodes of DARK SHADOWS, during which TCM will also be broadcasting the feature films HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS (4:15 p.m. EST) and NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS (6 p.m. EST).

On Oct. 31, Decades will also be airing a special episode of "Through the Decades" devoted to Halloween. The episode will include a profile on Harry Houdini, a look back at "some of the media's favorite monsters," and will showcase the debut of DARK SHADOWS. This episode of "Through the Decades" airs 7 a.m., 1 p.m., 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., EST.

Some readers are going to take issue with Decades repeating this block of programming, a modest episode pool that appears to make up the entirety of Decades DARK SHADOWS offerings. Sure, this narrow range omits a lot of the show's best cast members and characters, who are introduced a little further down the line. But it's difficult to argue that the early episodes of Barnabas Collins, with their cobwebby sturm and drang, represent DARK SHADOWS at its absolute Halloween-iest. If you were to ask a dozen fans of the series to select 100 consecutive episodes to air specifically for Halloween, there's a good chance most of them would draw from the same collection at Decades.

Click HERE to see if you receive Decades in your hometown.