Amazon Prime offering a master class on the work of Dan Curtis

Amazon Prime is offering the equivalent of a master class in the television films of Dan Curtis.

https://amzn.to/2EpYlxQWhich is great timing, now that I think of it. There's a feature length documentary about Curtis coming to home video in April called Master of Dark Shadows, and it's sure to prompt people to seek out his lesser-know work. In recent years Kino Lorber Classics have released high-definition restorations of Trilogy of Terror, Burnt Offerings, The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler on Blu-ray and DVD ... but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

What you get with an Amazon Prime membership right now are all 1,225 episodes of Dark Shadows (split into two categories titled Dark Shadows and Dark Shadows: The Beginning) and the two Dark Shadows anthologies The Haunting of Collinwood and The Vampire Curse. You also get Dan Curtis produced or directed movies Dracula, Scream of the Wolf, Dead of Night, The Turn of the Screw, Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Trilogy of Terror.

Sure, there are a few things missing off that list. House of Dark Shadows, Night of Dark Shadows and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde aren't streaming, but that's still a hell of a lot of television viewing.

You can click HERE to learn more about Amazon Prime memberships.

The Dark Shadows art of Dave Curbis

Artist Dave Curbis has been watching Dark Shadows every night on Decades, and it inspired him to put iPencil to screen to draw some of his favorite characters. You can follow him on Instagram at @biomek and, if you like his work, you can contact him for commissions at GigMasters.

Bite me, Barnabas ... bite me!, 1969

Dark Shadows didn't air in much of Canada during the show's original 1966-71 run, but that didn't mean the Canadian media didn't take notice of what was happenined with Hamilton, Ontario native Jonathan Frid. Yeah, it took a while ... the gears of print media have always ground slowly, with this profile on Frid appearking in a December issue of the Canadian news magazine Maclean's mere moments before House of Dark Shadows began production. Better late than never! This is a pretty good feature, one that's a little underinformed about the goings-on of Dark Shadows but still pretty insightful about its leading man. It can be a passive aggressive at times (the author refers to Frid as "unlovely" which is amazingly assholish) but still worth your time. Enjoy!

"Bite me, Barnabas ... bite me!"
By Catherine Breslin
Maclean's, Dec. 1, 1969

With fangs, a cape and a job as resident vampire on TV’s horrorsoaper Dark Shadows, Canadian actor Jonathan Frid is learning that the fastest way to a woman’s heart is through the jugular.

The first time it happened was at a supermarket in Charleston, South Carolina, just 18 months ago. A middle-aged, unlovely Canadian bachelor of scholarly bent and indiscernible allure was being deafened and debuttoned by a gaggle of nymphettes performing one of the sexual rites of our times. A pop star or a rock group would have expected such treatment. But for Jonathan Frid the experience was terrifying.

Jonathan who? Frid. He’s a 44-year-old sometime Shakespearean actor who grew up in a well-to-do Hamilton, Ontario, family with a stern Protestant outlook. For 25 years he walked on and off the boards in a hundred and one road shows. His acting was competent. Remember his Caliban in San Diego, his Richard III at Penn State? But fame passed him by. Then he became a vampire and found himself basking in the sort of adulation that not even Olivier has enjoyed. At a telethon in Birmingham, Alabama, this fall it was Frid, and not such imported “names” as Frankie Avalon, who was the target for a horde of pubescent females screaming, “Bite me, Barnabas. Bite me!”

For three increasingly frenetic years Frid has been playing Barnabas Collins in ABC Television’s afternoon “horror-soaper,” Dark Shadows. Barnabas is the resident vampire of the series, sharing a 36-room mansion called Collinwood with a weird crew of witches, warlocks, werewolves, winged beasties and other Gothic standbys. The plot is a convolution of murders, mutilations, hexings and time-tunnelings that even Frid finds “impossible to follow.”

An average audience of 6,300,000 Americans watches Dark Shadows every weekday at 4 p.m. That makes it the top daytime TV show in the world — without adding in the hundreds of thousands of Canadian viewers who tune in to ABC border stations. All the tea leaves of TV (fan mail, crowd count) credit this astonishing success to the show’s lank, gloomy star. Frid, swirling his de rigueur cape, snarling around his plastic fangs and sucking blood all over the sound stage, has an audience appeal so powerful it’s beyond the merely bizarre. Shrugs producer Robert Costello: “Half the women in America want this guy to bite them on the neck.”

Today the signature of Jonathan Frid (co-signing with Barnabas Collins) is rated by Coronet magazine as “the autograph of the year.”



William Dennis, ABC vice-president in charge of the network’s merchandising empire, says Barnabas Collins and Dark Shadows are “a phenomenon, an explosion we didn’t expect. There’s no doubt it’s the hottest property we control. Not up to Batman yet, but it’s got a longer pull and should give Batman a real run in the long haul.” By that, Dennis means the market bonanza for Barnabas comic books, novelettes, posters, jewelry, masquerade costumes, penny banks, puzzles, coloring books, card games, toys, sweatshirts, 3-D slides and LP records. With all these selling like hot cakes, the Christmas market should also see dolls, kites, model kits, magic slates, stuffed pillows and even, as one talented merchandiser dreams, a range of “Barnabas Boots — you know, monster shoes.” A soup company is reportedly toying with the idea of a Barnabas Cook Book, and the Philadelphia Chewing Gum Corp., offering “giant pinups” of Jonathan Frid with their third set of Barnabas bubble-gum cards.

All told, ABC expects that $20 million in Barnabas paraphernalia will be sold before the fever breaks. That will earn $500,000 in license fees. And even after the network, authors and producers take their respective cuts, Jonathan Frid will still receive enough to further confuse his already complicated finances.

What he is making remains something of a mystery, largely because royalty payments have still to be computed. Until he renegotiated his contract in November, Frid was paid a basic $600 a week whether or not he appeared in the show. If he appeared in all five programs, his weekly pay would be $1,500. He earns a few thousand from each of his many public appearances; takes other lucrative acting jobs; rakes in cash from Jonathan Frid-Barnabas Collins concessions. For making females from 12 to old-enoughto-know-better squeal with orgasmic delight, Frid makes ... “I really don’t know how much,” he says. Associates guess that in 1970 it will be somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000. Another showbiz rumor has it that Frid, the best-loved monster since Boris Karloff, grosses around $17,000 a week. Frid smiles grimly on hearing that. “Actually, stardom is leaving me broke. I just don’t know how to cope, careerwise and economically.” As the first certifiable star of daytime soap opera, he “should have made a million out of this thing already. God, I need a business manager.”


This summer he moved to an East Side Manhattan apartment where the rent is “so high I don’t even tell my mother,” Mrs. Herbert Frid, widow of a wealthy Hamilton, Ontario, contractor.

It was there, amid the splendors of East Side living, that he sat this fall and mourned over his latest business offer. He had been asked to lend his name to a chain of restaurants. He conceded that the money sounded good, and that he was rather more broke than usual at the time. “But I want to preserve some integrity,” he said. “And then, if the profits started to slip. I’d probably end up out there cooking the damn stuff myself.”

It is entirely possible that members of Jonathan Frid’s family had faced the prospect of Herbert Frid’s youngest son doing just that for a living.

Frid’s father was a man of some consequence in southern Ontario, and Jonathan’s background — Presbyterian, private school, the Nob Hill that in Hamilton is called The Mountain — was properly Establishment.

After Sunday services he dressed as the minister and re-enacted the sermon to the delight of his ardently Presbyterian grandmother, who thought she had a born preacher in the family. At 16, he finally gave in to an “absolute compulsion” he had been battling since the age of five. In what he calls “the most agonizing decision in my life,” Jonathan volunteered to act in a school production of Sheridan’s comedy, The Rivals, and turned in a brilliant performance as Sir Anthony Absolute by imitating the school’s very English headmaster.

Jonathan went on to McMaster University, where Frid Senior later served on the board of governors. Jonathan reorganized the dramatic society and reactivated the Inter-Varsity Drama League after the war. About nine years ago he changed his name from John to Jonathan so it would take up more room in the programs. The old one “went too quickly —JohnFridJohnFridJohnFrid.”

Midway through university, Frid volunteered for the navy and was slated to go to the Pacific. At that point, however, the allies used the atom bomb. Frid’s war wounds were limited to being seasick, but the interlude provided a Hollywood fan magazine with the teasing headline: “How The Bomb Saved Jonathan Frid For Dark Shadows

Frid graduated in 1948, and spent the next 19 years in a “rich and rewarding”

but financially lean theatrical world: a spell at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London . . . playing in the English provinces as an American gangster ...at Lome Greene’s Academy of Radio Arts in Toronto ... in CBC radio plays ... stock companies ... In 1954 his wealthy father played “angel” to the Dominion Drama Festival, that year being staged in Hamilton. Frid was persuaded to play the lead in Hamilton’s festival entry, Rebecca, which the adjudicators panned.

Three years later, armed now with an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in directing from Yale Drama School, Frid went back into acting. By then his elder brother Doug owned a ski resort near Orangeville, Ontario, and the other brother was president of the family construction business. Jonathan, at 32, was earning $50 a week if he was lucky.

Of his work at that time, one actor recalls: “John was one hell of a fine actor, who had been in a million plays all over the universe, but it was usually we who got the notices.” In 1967, he had just finished a six-month tour of the sticks playing a one-line walk-on part with the road-show company of Hostile Witness when offered the part of Barnabas Collins, vampire.

Dark Shadows, “a gothic suspense series,” was then 10 months old and dying. “We decided to go all the way with the spook stuff,” says the show’s creator, Dan Curtis. “I’d always felt that if the viewers bought a vampire, we could get away with anything. If it didn’t work, we could always drive a stake through his heart.”

When Barnabas Collins climbed out of his cobwebbed coffin in April 14, 1967, the ratings surged and the mail rolled in. Something about this sad-eyed fellow with an early-Beatles hairdo, flowing black cape, massive carved cane, onyx ring, custom-made fangs and nervous ways twanged a responsive chord in the great Out There where the ratings come from.

Some inexplicable 20th-century chemistry had annointed this aging bachelor as the vicarious aphrodisiac of the year. A fan in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, wrote: “If it takes blood to keep him alive, he can have some of mine.” A lady in New Westminster, BC, praised his “great charm and dignity” and “his most evil, corrupt and forceful domination of your victims.” A housewife in Illinois wrote : “1 wish you’d bite me on the neck. I get so excited watching you, I could smoke a whole pack of cigarettes,”

The phenomenon spread. A nineyear-old in Rockville, Maryland, showed up for her dentist appointment watching Barnabas on a portable TV. A sixthgrade science teacher in Flint, Michigan, reported that her entire class could locate the jugular vein, thanks to Barnabas. At Penn State University, where Jonathan had been invited to play the lead in Richard III in 1965, a stern warning was issued to students cutting classes to watch the soaper.

Yet the thing built slowly enough that its full impact didn’t hit Jonathan until a year after he took the role, when he was making a 10-city public-appearance tour complete with chartered Lear jet and publicity-man escort. Driving up to a supermarket at their first stop in Charleston, Jonathan suddenly felt the physical shock of the crowd of 2,500 waiting to greet him: “I didn’t believe it. It was the stepping stone from being somebody who went to the CNE to watch Frank Sinatra being idolized, to being Frank Sinatra.” Suddenly they were ripping and tearing at his clothes; it took 14 policemen and five squad cars to manoeuvre him to safety.

The rest of the tour was a continuing triumph: 5,000 at the Grand Rapids airport to watch him ride into town on the roof of a hearse (an experience he does not deign to repeat). At a Fort Wayne shopping centre a mob of 15,000 (more than Richard Nixon or Robert Kennedy were able to draw in that presidential election year) crunched through plateglass windows in the press to see Barnabas. “They were grabbing at me like animals. We had to run for our lives,” Frid recalls. He escaped through a warehouse with a police escort.

Frid has since learned to relish that rarified sensation of mob worship: “Part of the fun of these crowds is to go with it, to ride it like the rapids or surf-boarding. You’ve got to stay with the wave.” Yet between these sessions of mass ecstasy his life had then become “a constant agony, a nightmare every day.”

For months he was written into almost every episode, a half-hour show five days a week, as the Dark Shadows plot line explored the sad details of how Barnabas had gotten the way he was. (He was bitten to death by a mad bat 180 years ago.) Always “the slowest study in the history of the theatre,” Frid would rise at 6.30 every morning and grapple with the script over breakfast before reporting to work at eight. The cast rehearsed until taping at 3:15, with a brief lunch break at 10:30 which Frid used for shaving. After taping, they had a dry run of the next day’s “incredibly complicated” script until around 6.30 p.m. Frid spent each evening at home, cramming the lines that would get him up again at 6.30 the next morning. He recalls, “I was panic-stricken every day. I had to wing it like mad.”

As he wearily discovered, “a work bonanza like this means no social life at all.” He rarely salvaged enough time for the small rites of daily living: buying stamps, paying bills, fetching laundry. When his clean underwear ran out, he wore bathing suits to work.

This year the pressure finally eased, and the scripts came under control. Frid turned down an offer to spend the summer touring as Dracula because he doesn’t want to be typed. Instead, he passed the summer decorating his apartment, a five-room extravagance with three baths, seven closets, a genuine rock garden and a stereo system piped everywhere from johns to rocks. While we talked, Frid looked around the apartment’s half-finished splendor and sighed, “I still feel like I’m staying in a hotel. My grandparents had an old house in Waterdown, Ontario, where we used to go in summer. There was a home, and it takes years and generations before a house is really that.”

Now what he wants is “someone who will lick me into shape and tell me ‘learn this’ or ‘rehearse that.’ I’ve been dilettantish for two years in terms of hard-boiled management of myself.” When the Barnabas-fever first crested he brought down advisers from the family firm in Hamilton and consulted an eminent lawyer; they told him not to bother with a business manager — “ridiculous advice, just so wrong,” he moans now.

When the gravity of his chaos weighs down on Frid, he is apt to grasp at the nearest available straws. Last summer he was considering installing his decorator, a middle-aged friend named Ruth, as general factotum to answer fan mail, retrieve laundry and “put some order in my life.” In the fall he was thinking of making actor friend Bob Teuscher his business manager. A friend as business manager — an actor-poet friend? The hapless Barnabas himself could not do better.

In fact, Jonathan and Barnabas have much in common. Both are gloomy, brooding chaps, civilized and vulnerable, given to lonely ruminations and courtly Victorian manners. Both stumble from one crisis to another with the help of inordinate good luck. Both give off an air of kindly helplessness, which may actually be the catnip element of the Barnabas sex appeal. In interviews, Frid habitually compares Barnabas to Macbeth, Hamlet and Richard III. Yet he gives short shrift to critics who express dismay that a Shakespearean specialist with all those years of theatrical academics behind him could soil his high brow with TV melodrama. “Listen, this role reaches about the limits of my intelligence,” Frid says. “Shakespeare is pretty big potatoes, and how I ever coped with it I’ll never know.”

In a curious way Jonathan Frid seems to be, like Barnabas Collins, a refugee from another time. A casting agent who knows Frid well calls him “kind of square and old-fashioned, almost too nice for this business.” His favorite suit is actually a Barnabas costume, an Edwardian double-breasted that he bought from the show’s wardrobe department. Chainsmoking, he gives off a bored serenity that masks 'an impressive amount of insecurity and indecision.

Actor friends agree he has changed very little with success. His loner streak still runs deep. He relaxes by reading the obituaries in the New York Times: “Such marvelous pieces of history. Fascinating!” He prefers a bar to a cocktail party because “you can be a dud at a bar as long as you buy your own drinks. Some of my best creative thoughts happen when I’m sitting alone at a bar surrounded by noisy people.”

Frid has no idea how many fan clubs have been organized in his name, though he does know he gets more than 5,000 letters a month. One euphoric New Year he spent $1,000 on a special mailing to his fans (“My God, Clark Gable wouldn’t have done that”). Since then he has limited his personal answers to gifts and really interesting letters; but all his mail is answered in one way or another. Yet the phenomenon rolls on. When Frid took two weeks off to do Dial M For Murder in Sullivan, Illinois, the tickets were sold out weeks in advance. Coming up is the shooting of the first Dark Shadows feature film, possibly one of a series. His co-star is Joan Bennett.

Sitting in his walnut-paneled study, flanked by mounds of Dark Shadows scripts, scrapbooks lovingly assembled by the faithful, and bronze plaques with such inscriptions as “16 Magazine 7th Annual Geegee Award” and “Barnabas We Love You, Charleston, S.C., Teens,” Jonathan Frid stretched out his long legs and put himself in a nutshell: “The summing-up of my life, if you get down to the real nitty-gritty, is there isn’t anything terribly exciting there.”

Even so, the vampire business is a little more diverting than teaching drama somewhere in California, which is what Frid was about to do when his agent persuaded him to audition for the part of Barnabas. And, besides, it’s not everyone who can inspire the opposite sex to demand: “Bite me, Barnabas. Bite me!”

Dark Shadows, The Road to Bloodline: The Curse of Shurafa

By JUSTIN PARTRIDGE

S-P-O-I-L-E-R-S Ahead!

Andrew Collins’ Barnabas shines in the viscerally entertaining The Curse of Shurafa!

Hello and welcome back to the Road to Bloodline, my latest foray into the Big Finishverse, detailing all the adventures our goth heroes took in the time after Bloodlust! Today we are discussing a legit “Greatest Hit” for the range, 2015’s The Curse of Shurafa, written by Rob Morris and directed by the ever steady Ursula Burton and David Darlington. Starring the newly regenerated Barnabas and well deployed original audio clips of Dr. Julia Hoffman herself, Grayson Hall, this icky epic is centered around a “lost episode” in Barnabas’ life in which he, Hoffman, and Professor Stokes faced down an evil Egyptian sorcerer once imprisoned by blood magic. This story was always one people told me I needed to get on and after listening to it, I now completely understand why. Packed to the gills with skin crawling horror and plenty of grist for the mill that is shipping the Barnabas/Julia paring, The Curse of Shurafa is an all around winner of an audio.

Barnabas Collins is having a quiet (read: brooding) night in when his kinfolk Amy Jennings-Cunningham asks him to keep an eye on his young relative Harry. The ancient vampire first blanches at the idea, but quickly finds himself regaling the young man with a tale of his mispent immorality, attempting to cure his affliction with Julia Hoffman and Prof. Stokes in Egypt. At first, I was kind of let down by the reuse of the “major character tells a new character” motif Panic introduced. Again, I was EXPECTING something set in real time after Bloodlust as this one, again like Panic, explicitly mentions the events of the serial in the lead up to Barnabas’ tale.

But my frustration quickly melted away as Andrew Collins launched into this absolute belter of a story. Unlike Panic, this audio’s concept is much, much stronger and has a real drive to it thanks to Rob Morris’ steadily horrifying script and Collins’ dynamic performance of it. Though Scott Haran and Stephanie Ellyne pipe in occasionally with banter, Shurafa is 100% Collins’ show and he more than rises to the occasion. Starting with a haughty, low toned timbre and building to a roaring fury, much like Jonatrhan Frid at peak powers, Collins commands the audience’s attentions, setting up the scenes in beautiful tandem with the detailed script and really allowing us to drink in the details through his performance. I have lamented a bit that I wished I could have spent a little more time with this new Barnabas during Bloodlust, but Curse of Shurafa has more than made up for his resignation to side-character in that serial.

Also? When I say Rob Morris’s script is horrifying, I mean, like, truly gross and off putting. Wallace actually had warned me prior to starting this one that it had some choice moments of body horror in it, and readers, he weren’t friggen kidding. You see, Shurafa’s whole terrifying gimmick was that he liked to put people to death using Egyptian fly larvae, sealing them in sarcophagi with thousands of them and opening the caskets to a newly born horde of flies. Well, naturally, now that he’s trying to come back to life, he just loooooves taking over people USING flies and swarming them inside and all through people and it is just as nasty as it sounds. Burton and Darlington’s sound design really amps up the ick factor of these scenes as they really layer the sound effects and background noise heavily on top of the mix, providing an unsettling score and support for Collins’ arresting performance.

You’ll notice that I haven’t really talked about the Julia Hoffman of it all, because frankly, the few times the production used Hall’s voice, it never really stood out that much for me. A few people had told me before I listened that it was a cool selling point of the audio, so you can imagine my disappointment when they were only a few incidental clips of Hall reacting to something. That isn’t to say that isn’t a cool touch! Because it totally is! And one I could see myself being really into should they pursue that further, but as it stands in this one, Hall’s contributions to the story were little more than a novelty to this listener. I know that might be an unpopular opinion, but know that it comes from a place of love and sincere criticism.

But that nitpick aside, I REALLY, really enjoyed The Curse of Shurafa and I could see it becoming a story I put on a regular rotation around my new Seaview’ed digs! Masterfully directed by David Darlington and Ursula Burton and blessed with a wonderful, largely solo performance of Rob Morris’ script by Andrew Collins, this audio is an early stand out for this column. As it stands now, this one is the one to beat! But it is still early days, my creepies so we shall see what we get into further down the Road. If you liked this audio, let’s talk about it over at The CHS Drawing Room on Facebook! It is a new discussion space we here at the CHS moderate and it has already pulled in a groovy crowd of fellow goths and weirdos who have already started all manner of great discussion. We hope to see you there. We have plenty of brandy for everyone!

NEXT TIME! The Scribe Award nominated In The Twinkling of An Eye! The return of Marie Wallace’s Jessica Griffin and Sheriff of my Heart, Jackie Tate! That should be a pretty good time. Until then, Be Seeing You.

---

Justin Partridge has always loved monsters and he thinks that explains a lot about him. When he isn’t over analyzing comics at Newsarama or ranting about Tom Clancy over at Rogues Portal, he is building Call of Cthulhu games, spreading the good word of Anti-Life, or rewatching Garth Marenghi's Darkplace for the dozenth time. He can be reached at the gasping Lovecraftian void that is Twitter @j_partridgeIII or via e-mail at justin@betweenthepanels.com Odds are he will want to talk about Hellblazer.

Here's your Dark Shadows lineup this week on Decades

Dark Shadows airs Monday-Friday at midnight on Decades, a digital broadcast television carried by  local television stations. The network has developed a handy guide to help you find out if Decades is available in your area and, if so, how to watch it. If you're among the lucky ones here's what you can expect from the series this week:

Monday, Feb. 25
Episode 296: Unconvinced that Maggie is unable to recall the identity of her kidnapper, Barnabas plans to kill her.

Tuesday, Feb. 26
Episode 297: Maggie tells Barnabas about her visit from Sarah. Later, Barnabas tries to kill Maggie and hears Sarah.

Wednesday, Feb. 27
Episode 298: Burke asks Elizabeth to sell Seaview to him. Maggie’s memory of what happened begins to return.

Thursday, Feb. 28
Episode 299: Julia warns Barnabas to stay away from Victoria. Barnabas learns of Victoria’s interest in Burke.

Friday, March 1
Episode 300: Victoria dreams someone entered her room. Barnabas is alarmed that Victoria may marry Burke.

Welcome to The CHS Drawing Room

I'm open to new ideas. Especially when those ideas are old ones. In that spirit, today I've launched a Facebook group devoted to The Collinsport Historical Society. The general idea is to open up discussion about the content of this website in a way that's less restrictive than what's available on the standing CHS Facebook page. You can create original posts. You can respond. You can pitch ideas. Just please keep things civil. The group will be heavily moderated and I'll have the first "code of conduct" drafted later this week. In the meantime, head on over and sign up today! Let's talk about Dark Shadows!

The CHS Drawing Room Public group · 11 members Join Group A hangout for readers of The Collinsport Historical Society.

Vandalizing the Famous Monsters "Dark Shadows" covers

If you follow the CHS on social media, you might have seen a "remix" yesterday I created of the cover for Famous Monsters of Filmland #82, which showcased House of Dark Shadows. I like the original cover just fine, but always wondered what we might have gotten had Forest J. Ackerman asked Basil Gogos to create the cover rather than the graphic design department. Basil is sadly no longer with us, so I knocked together a colorful homage to his Barnabas Collins cover from issue #59 on Famous Monsters. It wasn't intended as a criticism of the original cover ... it was just something fun to do. (I'm not fit to carry Basil's water, so the complete impossibilty that I might create something as good has his work was actually a liberating. It's OK to fail!)

Today I took a stab at the cover of Famous Monsters #88, and this felt a little more like a crusade. Nothing against James Storm (he's terrific on Dark Shadows) but the cover devoted to Night of Dark Shadows is among the worst in the magazine's proud run. It's just a weirdly tinted photo from a scene that's not even of real significance to the film ... WTF, guys? The Frid cover was an excuse to polish my vandalism skills, but the Night of Dark Shadows issue was an opportunity to right a wrong. I mean, Lara Parker should have been on that cover, right?

Below are my vandalized covers, as well as thumbnails as they were originally published.

Jonathan Frid's "hair" apparent

I'm going to begin this story at the end, because linear narratives are overrated.

In my living room is a small, plastic red and yellow table that my son has been using for several years for meals, play and other activities. It's actually a pretty neat design. If you remove the yellow tabletop lid, inside is a tiled board you can use with Lego blocks. There's also space to store Lego blocks, which is nice because we all know what it feels like to step on one of those little bastards.

Last September I used this table to take a few photos of items that had arrived by mail from the United Kingdon to my home in South Carolina. Inside the package was a letter signed by Kathryn Leigh Scott from 1996, and business envelope with the Dan Curtis Productions logo with its original address from the 1960s. The words "Barnabas Hair" were written in pencil on the outside.

Inside, as you probably guessed, was a rather large cutting of human hair. After taking the photos and reassembling the items safely back into their envelopes, I had to ... sweep tiny pieces of Jonathan Frid's hair from my child's table. Because that is the place this website has taken me.

How this package arrived at my doorstep is an interesting one. A few months earlier I'd received an e-mail from a reader named James in the United Kingdom about an oddity found in a book they'd recently purchased. He's bought a hardback edition of Dark Shadows Almanac and found the letter from Scott and the hair clipping inside.

"Pictures attached," he wrote. "Any chance this is genuine? The timeline date would surely be late 67 not 66. So maybe just weirdly committed hoax," noting that the envelope "still has someone's hair in it."



I reached out to Kathryn, who confirmed that the items were genuine. According to the letter found in the book (dated 1996 with Kathryn's Beverly Hills, California business address) Frid had just begun to receive his first wave of fan mail, which was beginning to accumulate in his dressing room. She went to see him in the makeup room, where Frid was having his hair cut, and told him "I could make a fortune selling your hair clippings!"



There are a few details in the story that appear to be wrong, though. She remembers the date of the event as 1966 (Frid didn't join the cast until 1967) and says the hairdresser wrote "Barnabas hair" on the envelope. Several people who have seen photos of the handwriting on the envelope believe it's actually Frid's handwriting. But that's memory for you.

Kathryn tucked the envelope into the pages of the script they'd taped that day and forgot about it. From there, the envelope traveled around the world. Kathryn would later spend time in France, England and California. It was in London in 1996 that she found the script and the envelope, and put them up for auction to benefit the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. The winner was a Dark Shadows fan from Toms River, New Jersey. How the envelope found its way to the United Kingdom is anybody's guess, but I suspect eBay was involved.

Which brings me back to this last September. Once we confirmed that the envelope and hair were the real deals, James let me know his wife "was not keen on this particular piece of memorabilia lingering." He asked if I knew anyone who'd like to have it. I offered to take it off his hands, if for no other reason to make sure it didn't continue making the rounds on eBay in perpetuity.

And then it arrived and I understood why James' wife was a little put off by it. After sweeping bits of Jonathan Frid's DNA off my kid's table and sharing the photos with friends, I put the envelope on my mantle ... where it remained until this past week. It took a while to wrap my brain around it, to be honest. It was clearly an interesting collectible, but it was also a little ... creepy? I'm glad to have it and eternally grateful to James for sending it my way and hope he understands why it took so long to publicly say thanks. Thanks!

It's a weird world, isn't it?

Dark Shadows,The Road to Bloodline: Panic

By JUSTIN PARTRIDGE

“Can we please discuss this like normal people?
You know, academic to lunatic?”

Hello again, my favorite ghouls! It is me! I bet you thought I had forgotten about you, but I would never! I know it has been a while since we’ve last spoken and a lot has happened in that time! Stuff like I now hold an editorial position at a new horror site set up out of Bangor called Dis-Member! I’m gonna be talking all things horror there with some good buddies, but I will also be tackling the whole of Dark Shadows’ TV canon in a column called The Dark Shadows Diaries so keep a weather eye out for more entries coming soon. I also moved house! That’s right, I’m out of that shabby room at the Collinsport Inn and in a wonderful little cottage by the sea that goes by the charming name of Seaview! The landlord is a real prig and he keeps ducking my questions about the previous occupants, but it should be pretty great, you guys!

But enough about my personal and professional growth! That’s not the dross y’all are here for! You are here for me blathering about the Dark Shadows Big Finishverse (COPYRIGHT PENDING)! So I am THRILLED here today to bring you from my new office here at the CHS (A much, MUCH bigger closet out from under the stairs! Right next to the bathroom even!), The Road To Bloodline! A brand new column covering the post-Bloodlust audios in the lead up to the release of Bloodline! Named for the ridiculous lead up trade dressing comics use in the issues ramping up to big events. I would say Bloodline is going to be a big event, so why not treat it as such?

Kicking off the Road to Bloodline is 2015’s Panic, from writer Roy Gill and directed by good ol’ Joe Lidster and Jim Pierson. Largely told in flashbacks to Quentin Collins’ time in London, Panic follows Professor Lela Quick (played with a sharp wit and hilarious presence by Susan Sullivan) as she attempts to go about her day-to-day as a teacher while contending with a strange tune that seems to haunt her dreams. Complicating matters is her chance encounter with teacher’s assistant Robin Goodman, who also hears the tune, which finds them darkening the door of Quentin Collins’ junk shop Pandemonium Antiques, seeking out the source of the strange melody.

At first I was a little disappointed in the direction this story had started to take. Though the script picks up right after the events of Bloodlust, with Quentin back at Collinwood and looking after a very hungry Tom Cunningham (the affably adorable return of Michael Shon), these “present day” scenes are merely a framing device, encasing the main story back in London. A bit of a let down for a column that expressly about the aftermath of Bloodlust, but what can you do? I was also somewhat concerned that I wouldn’t have much stake in Quentin and Lela’s relationship. At least not nearly as much as the opening suggested I should. I knew Quentin had gotten married along the way somewhere, but since I hadn’t actually heard it yet, I was worried Panic would leave me cold.

But thankfully, due to Lela’s overall wonderfulness as a character and Gill’s breezy, two-handed plot, my concerns were lifted once the thing really got going. Sure the main crux of the narrative gets literally deus ex machina’ed with the reveal that Robin is the trickster god Pan, who had tricked Lela into a deal as a child and has now come to collect. But that turn brings out some neat turns from the actor John Askew and adds to the overall engaging dynamic Lidster and Pierson strike up between the core cast.

Obviously Lela and Quentin’s relationship is front and center and both David Selby and Sullivan lean into the flirty antagonistic courtship the two go through, giving this slightly broad plot a real fun grounding. A lot of this grounding is centered around Quick and her wryly hilarious reactions to the various supernatural elements of Quentin’s life, which Sullivan nails with consistently dry deliveries. Readers of my Big Finish coverage will know that I really love when audio scripts lean into the “civilians” of the universe being thrust into very, VERY spooky situations and in that regard, Panic delivers in spades. Though I was worried at the start that I wouldn’t really care about this relationship, by the time Panic ended I was singing quite a different tune. I mean, they aren’t like my One True Pairing or anything but I am curious to see where these two end up in the coming stories. If they get featured at all, who knows?! I certainly don’t!

So, yeah, not exactly the most grand start to this new column, but Panic nonetheless is a solid start on the Road to Bloodline. Filled with Thin Man-esque banter, eloquently acted by Sullivan and Selby, and tied together neatly with some tight framing from the directors, this first post-Bloodlust story must have been a welcome downshift from the nerve shattering tension of the epic serial. Could have used a bit more juice for me personally, but hey, the more Quentin Collins the better is good with me from where I’m sitting. I know at least a few of you out there agree with me.

NEXT TIME! The Curse of Shurafa! One of Big Finish’s Greatest Hits (or so I’m told)! This thing had me at “Julia Hoffman in Egypt”. Until then (which I promise won’t be nearly as long as last time), Be Seeing You.

---

Justin Partridge has always loved monsters and he thinks that explains a lot about him. When he isn’t over analyzing comics at Newsarama or ranting about Tom Clancy over at Rogues Portal, he is building Call of Cthulhu games, spreading the good word of Anti-Life, or rewatching Garth Marenghi's Darkplace for the dozenth time. He can be reached at the gasping Lovecraftian void that is Twitter @j_partridgeIII or via e-mail at justin@betweenthepanels.com Odds are he will want to talk about Hellblazer.

Dark Shadows: How to make a monster

This is turning into one of those weeks where everybody involved is just too busy with real-life stuff to find time to blather on about Dark Shadows. Patrick McCray keeps watching episodes for the Dark Shadows Daybook and failing to find time to file the appropriate paperwork. Justin Partridge is still listening to the Big Finish audios and keeping his thoughts on them to himself. And I've been ... busy. My preoccupations have nothing to do with this week's full moon, as I explained to the sheriff at length this morning. No, I can't account for my whereabouts. If I knew there would be a test I would have taken notes. Am I expected to keep track of my comings and goings at all hours of the day?

I did find time to clean up a few images that you detail-loving nerds out there might enjoy. Below are some images relating to the 1969 Barnabas Collins model kit, including a comicbook ad, scans of the instructions, the box art and a hilarious insert included with the kit's 2012 re-release. Whoever wrote the copy for that box really knew their Dark Shadows lore.

Glam, bam, thank you ma'am

In January, the Bodice Tipplers podcast began raising money for RAINN, America’s largest anti-sexual violence organization. The goal was to raise $500 before the end of February, a goal they hit earlier this week. Even though donating to RAINN was a reward in itself, BT hosts Sara and Courtney offered a few incentives. Anyone who donated before March 1 has a chance to win a Bodice Tipplers tote bag packed with most of the shitty paperbacks they’ve read so far for the podcast. Also, if they succeeded in collecting $500 ... they'd release their teenage Glamour Shots photos.

You can still donate to RAINN and enter to win the tote bag o'books HERE, but because the $500 target has been reached they've already shared their Glamour Shots. Just click on the photo at the top of this page to head over to their website!

Catch Master of Dark Shadows on the big screen April 13

By now you've probably already heard about the upcoming documentary about Dan Curtis titled Master of Dark Shadows. (If not, you can read about it HERE.) Set for release on Blu-ray on April 16, you've got a chance to catch the documentary on the big screen earlier that week in New York City ... with members of the Dark Shadows cast! Click on the image above to read the details about the event and to find out how to get tickets. And click HERE to pre-order Master of Dark Shadows today!

(Note: At the moment only the Blu-ray edition is available for pre-order. It seems unlikely that a DVD edition will not be offered at some point, so stay tuned!)

The Dark Shadows Daybook: FEBRUARY 13

By PATRICK McCRAY

Taped on this date in 1969: Episode 693

When Julia recruits a seductive occultist to exorcise Collinwood, will the vengeful spirit of Quentin Collins meet his match? Timothy Stokes: Thayer David. (Repeat. 30 min.)

Chris wrestles with leaving until Julia tells him about the haunting of Collinwood and David’s possession. He is further shocked to learn that he may be a person of interest to the spirit. Meanwhile, Stokes manipulates David into confirming the haunting. He conducts an exorcism of the house as David screams for him not to and must be restrained. The professor seems triumphant. However, as Stokes maintains a vigil that night, Quentin appears in the mirror and taunts him with his failure.

Even though he’s not in every scene, and even though the “star” of the episode is Professor Stokes, the real lynchpin to 693 is Chris Jennings. Not so much for what he does, but for what he almost does, namely, get the hell out of Dodge. When Donald Brisco’s Jennings finds out that David is possessed, his stunned reaction is quietly authentic. In the jaded world of theatre insiders, werewolves are not known for their muted representation of dramatic truth, but Jennings is really struck by how deep this situation runs. He’s been a lycan for years. He’s responsible for Sabrina’s catatonia and hairstyle. Sees pentagrams on foreheads. It’s not a life devoid of the fantastic. And even he is thrown by this one.

This is one of the few episodes of the horror series to contain actual horror rather than the mere symbols of horror. Chris has consigned his young sister to live in a house with a boy whose relatives believe to be possessed. Moreover, so does their -- and his -- doctor. And the doctor further believes that he is somehow important to the possessing entity on a level she can’t pin down. Maybe it’s true. Or maybe they’ve got a wicker man on the other side of Widow’s Hill. Either way, there is no safe option among the people you once thought were the only safe option. A werewolf is a monster, and because monsters are special effects, they are rarely, legitimately scary. The horror factor in a werewolf movie has little to do with the werewolf. It’s with the amnesia of the human within. As much as you fear for the safety of those around you, you’re also grateful for them. They see what you can’t. They can restrain or even destroy you when the time comes. They are the last line of defense when you go mad. But what if they end up being mad themselves? Worse yet, what if they don’t, but just sound like it?

As abstract as Chris is, he is still us when we started watching the series. He’s an outsider to Collinsport. Unlike Chris, we’ve gotten used to the town. We’re hard to shock, as are the Collinses. It takes a real world surrogate to make us step back and appreciate just how jarring the situation is. Outside the house, Chris, a visitor, tries to leave. Within the house, another visitor -- Quentin -- is such an unwanted guest that the Collinses have to call in an exterminator: Stokes.

Never again will Stokes be given such an arc, largely because the defeat he suffers is humiliating on a level tantamount to his arrogance. Because of his charm, that’s an easy fact to lose in the sandpile of 1,225 episodes. Fortunately, he doesn’t take his crystal ball and go home. He advises. Time travels, himself. However, compared to the build-up he’s been given, Stokes never delivers like he tries to, here. Nor is he given the chance. Perhaps he doesn’t even give himself the chance. Where is he at the final climax of the Leviathan arc? I don’t recall. Where is he when Gerard reaches a fever pitch? Allegedly out of the country, but if I learned that he just put on a fake mustache and waited the whole thing out at the Blue Whale, I couldn’t blame him. Under other circumstances, looking in the mirror and seeing David Selby staring back would be a delight, but not cackling madly.

Stokes’ first and last major defeat has been coming since we met him, and Gordon Russell's dynamic and gritty script both roots and elevates the professor as both all-business and there to do nothing but take care of same. He smokes like a noir detective. He roars at David after snapping a symbolic pencil of him, making himself more viscerally threatening than Quentin has ever been. And thus, more of a match for the silent giant. Stokes lays traps but lays off the epigrams and witticisms. The bon vivant mask discarded at last, perhaps it was just a tool to bring him close enough to Collinwood to fight a danger he always knew was in residence. And then there’s the exorcism, which has an immediate sense of emotional violence that defines horror. It’s a perilously uncomfortable situation, and that’s the kind of authentic fear I referenced.

If it were merely Stokes conducting an uncharacteristically Abrahamic ceremony with his characteristic panache, the whole thing would be just TV. And if it were David writhing and screaming, I’d write it off as Desperate Bid for Attention #538. Putting them together is a deeply unpleasant alchemy, and it makes Quentin vaguely more sympathetic. As nasty as Quentin has been, there’s something unsettling-yet-necessary about seeing Stokes press David while deliberately withdrawing his warmth and sympathy to the point of humiliating him with a lie. By the time the exorcism happens, David’s raving response has an immediate panic to it that seems a little too real. Is David afraid that Quentin will retaliate or afraid that Quentin will once more leave him alone and defenseless amongst these increasingly angry adults? Either way, he seems like a victim of abuse from all sides and his helpless, hapless agony during the ceremony blends with Thayer David’s thunder to make this one of the show’s most disturbing installments.

Quentin’s returns, and by now, our responses are a carefully programmed ambiguity. I mean, of course he’s going to return. He’s the next threat and he has yet to say a word. And of course it was too easy. While I, like all red-blooded Americans, would be happy to watch an extended scene of Thayer David sitting in a chair (which was Warhol title, I think), I also know that  Selby is cosmically obligated to get him out of it. Stokes, nervously smoking away, has a seedieness here. He’s a man all too happy to terrorize a kid. Quentin? Oddly triumphant in his reassurance to Stokes that his skills are meaningless. Could this be intentional on Russell’s part for the short-and-long term planning of the show? Stokes must be defeated for us to more fully understand Quentin’s powers… and to catalyze Barnabas’ trip into the past. But Quentin is our next hero. And by showing him taunting a character who was, at least in this episode, an occasionally self-important bully who made a child scream (if for the best reasons)? It’s hard not to start liking him, already.

Maybe that’s the real reason behind Quentin’s laughter. Sometimes he’s better than the people he haunts.

This episode was broadcast Feb. 19, 1969.

Behind the scenes of Master of Dark Shadows

Nancy Barrett and Kathryn Leigh Scott prepare to record their segments during the initial Master of Dark Shadows video shoot in 2016. This behind-the-scenes photo was taken in the basement of the Lyndhurst Mansion during the weekend of the 50th anniversary Dark Shadows Festival in Tarrytown, N.Y., and comes courtesy of Jim Pierson.

Narrated by Ian McShane, the feature-length documentary from David Gregory (Lost Soul, Godfathers of Mondo) is due out April 16. Also featured in the film are Oscar-winning writer-producer Alan Ball (True Blood), screenwriter William F. Nolan (Trilogy of Terror), author Herman Wouk (The Winds Of War), actors Whoopi Goldberg (Ghost), Barbara Steele (Black Sunday) and Ben Cross (Chariots of Fire), Dark Shadows stars Jonathan Frid, David Selby, Lara Parker, John Karlen, Jerry Lacy, Roger Davis, Marie Wallace, Chris Pennock and James Storm, plus other colleagues and family members.

For those of you keeping score at home, the last few years have been pretty good for fans of Dan Curtis. The Tim Burton film prompted Warner Bros. to release gorgeous restorations of House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows on blu-ray. In 2014 MPI Home Video released the uncut European version of Dan Curtis' Dracula (i.e., "the one with all the blood") on blu-ray. Since then, Kino Lorber Studio Classics released his third and final theatrical directing credit, Burnt Offerings, on blu, and then followed that with 4K restorations of the The Night Stalker*, The Night Strangler and Trilogy of Terror. Click on the image below to explore the avaialability of these movies on Amazon.



(* Yes, I know Curtis only produced The Night Stalker. Don't @ me.)

Remembering Jonathan Frid is a worthy a tribute

By WALLACE McBRIDE

I didn't have much to say about Remembering Jonathan Frid when it was released back in 2014. I quite liked the book but felt my opinion was beside the point. It's a collection of essays about a notoriously secretive man written by some of the people who knew him best. There was nothing for me to bring to the conversation, and it was enough for me to just point people toward the book whenever possible. It's essential reading for any Dark Shadows fan.

With time, though, my perspective on Remembering Jonathan Frid has deepened. I've spent the years subsequent to its publishing rummaging through magazine, newspaper and television interviews with Frid, leading me to this conclusion: He wasn't that secretive a person. No, he wasn't interested in having Dark Shadows fans ring his telephone at all hours, and he had an understandably complicated relationship with the series. Having read decades worth of interviews with him, though, he has always maintained a truth that fans refuse to accept: Jonathan Frid was not Barnabas Collins. In fact, he wasn't even especially secretive.

Frid was an even-tempered man who simply didn't much care that much if anyone else shared his interests. Complicating things was the predictable nature of journalists, who tended to harp on the same topics during his interviews. It didn't matter if it was 1969 or 1992, the questions were almost always the same. After a while his participation in interviews was hardly even necessary.

Which is why Remembering Jonathan Frid is so absolutely necessary. In it, his friends and family recount stories about the actor that no reporter would have thought to ask. And, coming from so many perspectives, it presents a multi-faced humanity about its subject that might never have emerged had it been the work of a single author. It's as worthy a tribute as anyone deserves and you should be so fortunate as to have these kinds of friends.

If you haven't read it yet, you can find in in paperback on Amazon. It only gets better with age.

LINK: https://amzn.to/2E21Wn5

A shared interiview with Jonathan Frid, 1969

A shared interiview with Jonathan Frid

“He looked us straight in the eye. He didn’t talk down to us — the girl from the private private school and the unpublished celebrity interviewer."

By Derek Gilbert 
Afternoon TV, November, 1969

“Hello,” said. “I’m here to see Mr. Frid.”

“Mr. Frid?” the blank-faced receptionist repeated like she’d never heard the name before.

“Yes, Mr. Frid,” I assured her. “I have an appointment.”

A bearded publicist on a sofa next to the desk explained: “He wants to see Jonathan.”

“Oh.” Now she understood. “Well, he’s downstairs taping the show. He should be up shortly.”

It was four o’clock, and I was on the second floor of ABC-TV’s modern two-story studio on Manhattan’s West Side. It is built between tenements and warehouses and practically in the Hudson River.

Somewhere a TV set dirged the eerie opening musical theme for Dark Shadows.

I was there for my first celebrity interview. And my first subject was the teenagers’ fright delight, Jonathan Frid.

I’d written to Frid, telling him about myself and requesting an interview. Two weeks later, a reply. Yes, he’d see me. Well, the big day came. It was raining. Bleak. Cold. Windy. Perfect weather for a visit to the great estate of Collinwood on the storm-swept coast of Maine. Or, rather, Studio 16 on West Street.

So there I stood waiting in the second door reception area and listening to a teenage girl talk to the publicist about the show.

And then Jonathan Frid breezed in, a script in a black cover under his arm. His tall solid frame looked good in a grey Edwardian suit. And you couldn’t miss those jagged Barnabas bangs.

A warm smile revealed no fangs as Frid approached the girl and me, He knew our first handshake was firm. “l hope you don’t mind if we combine interviews,” he said. “I’m a little rushed for time.”

I looked at the girl and gave a weak smile. We talked a minute while Frid conferred with the publicist. She was Barbara. I asked her what school she went to, expecting her to say DeWitt Clinton High or something. But “a private school” was the answer. The tone told me not to pursue the subject any further. And all the time I was quite  disheartened. Would Rex Reed have shared an interview?



Now Frid was ready, and we followed him down the corridor into a brightly lit make-up room. There was a lone barber chair near the door. It faced a mirror that ran the length of the room. Pasted on the walls were giant blow-ups of Frid with fangs unfurled next to 8x10s of the other actors on the show.

Barbara admired the monstrous black-stoned Barnabas ring which Frid described as tacky. “One day Lela Swift, our director, had me take it off this hand and put it on the other for a ‘better picture,’ I got a lot of letters. Why were you wearing the ring on the other hand? Does it mean something? Is there a curse attached to it?”

I lifted a dinette-type chair over the barber chair and placed it next to Barbara’s. Frid removed his jacket, revealing a pair of maroon suspenders, draped it around the barber chair and sat down.

“What school do you go to, Barbara?” Frid asked.

“Oh, it’s a private school,” she responded. Not even Jonathan Frid was going to know the name of it. Hut then she added: “It’s on Delancey Street.”

Frid lit a cigarette, and I asked him what time his alarm clock went off on a working day.

“About seven,” Frid answered. “I take a cab up here. Rehearsals begin at eight. We read through and block the script. Making changes for time, plot inconsistencies, awkward dialog. We break at for lunch. People send out for sandwiches. I use the time to go over my lines and get made up.
“Then at 11:30 we go down to the floor and catch a bite to eat all this. Then we have the run-through which I call the stumble-through. Finally, we tape the show at 3:15 and finish at 3:45. That is, if there aren’t any special effects that may take more time, Then if I’m on the next day’s show. I read for the ‘dry’ rehearsal and get out of here about 6:30.”

But how does an actor who’s played Macbeth and Marc Antony and Petruchio feel about playing the Swinging Sixties’ answer to Bela Lugosi?

“l don’t look down on Dark Shadows. I’m very grateful for the success it’s given me. All right, you don’t have great lines to speak. But there are plenty dull parts in Shakespeare too, and I’ve played them all. Barnabas is a great character. He was the villain of the show A vampire. But he was sympathetic, too, because he had no control over his affliction. He’s suffered a bad of unrequited love, too. And then when he was cured vampirism he attacked by a vampire ,himself.

“Almost show presents me with one or a dozen nuances I can play on. That gives me, as an actor, satisfaction. And I think that’s all any actor really wants.”

“What about your movies?” Barbara asked.

“l haven’t done any movies.”

“Oh, well. I thought you were in The Picture Of Dorian Gray.”

“Yes, the TV version. But I just had a walk-on. Before Dark Shadows I’d done small parts on TV. But this is my first big part, my first success. I’m very frank about that. I try not to make a big thing out of what I’ve done before this show.”

“But did star on Broadway?” Barbara added.

“No, I’ve only done one Broadway show, a piece of British fluff that flopped here in called Roar Like a Dove. Betsy Palmer and Charlie Ruggles were in it. I understudied one of the supporting actors and managed to get on a couple of times. Got my share of laughs, too. It was a good feeling. I like comedy. I’d like to end up playing the kind of parts Edward Everett Horton does so well.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Frid,” Barbara protested solemnly. ‘”Comedy is all right but you should stick with dramatic parts.”

Frid gave a big laugh. “Well, I’d enjoy doing Richard III on TV someday. Like Barnabas, he’s a  man of irony. I to specialize in men of irony. But I do like comedy, and I’d like to do more.”

Frid lit another cigarette and listened attentively while Barbara told him how she’d considered being an but then decided against it. He looked straight in the eye. He didn’t talk down to us – the girl from the private private school and the unpublished celebrity interviewer. He wasn’t the “somber” or “intense” man in other interviews I’d read. On the contrary, he was able to laugh at himself ant the show.

“I remember one time when when I was sstill young with the show. I was doing quiet little scene with Alexandra Moltke in the hall of Collinwood. During the actual taping, I saw huge flames on the other side of the studio. A fire had started. Lots of commotion. People trying to put out the fire. We got a signal to keep on going. At that time, I didn’t even know where the tire exit was. I could just imagine the last episode of Dark Shadows as Barnabas Collins goes up in flames –for real! They didn’t redo the scene. Tape is expensive, you know. So when this particular episode was aired I received a lot of mail. What happened? What was all that noise? It sounded like Grand Central Station!”

And what’s the invasion of privacy like for Canadian actor who’s been yanked from to TV Stardom as America’s Grooviest Ghoul? “I was listed in the Manhattan phone book when I started on the show in April of 1967. Then the kids began calling me at home that summer. So I had the number changed to an unlisted one. A fan magazine published a ‘big scoop.’ My home address. That’s when my name came off the doorbell in the lobby of my apartment building.”

But now Frid’s eager fans have his unlisted number. “I think they get one of their emissaries in and copy the number off the address-o-graph on the receptionist’s desk. And then they give it to everybody.”

“Oh, if I had your private phone number,” Barbara said seriously. “I wouldn’t give it to anybody.”

Frid laughed and plunked one of maroon suspenders. “Well, you’re different.”

“But doesn’t all this intrigue bug you?” I asked.

“Actually, it’s quite flattering. And it’s just a game to them. Not an unhealthy game, really. I think some of them will up to make very fine detectives!”

Frid fussed with the pointed Barnabas fangs and stared at himself critically in the mirror. “I was a fan myself as a boy. Although I wasn’t a collector of pictures –autographs–things. But I was a movie fan. I am a movie fan. I’ve been going to the movies since I could crawl. Movies cost about 11¢ when I was a child. I went all the time. I’d collect the money by taking deposit bottles back to the store. My mother was very strict but she let me go. I guess she figured I’d manage to get in anyway!”

“When told my mother I was coming to see you,” Barbara said, “she wanted to come too.”’

“Well, I’m delighted to hear that,” Frid said, walking us to the door. “



Exiting Studio 16, Barbara and I found a bevy of teenage girls armed with autograph books and 8x10s to be signed.

“Did one see him?” one girl asked Barbara, recognizing a kindred spirit.

“Yes,” Barbara said sympathetically. “He’s working very hard.”

I walked Barbara to the Seventh Avenue subway. “Oh, Jonathan’s so nice,” she enthused en route. “Even nicer than Dustin. Dustin Hoffman. I interviewed him on the set of Midnight Cowboy. I even had a picture taken with him. With his arm around me, kissing me. It’d be nice to have a picture like that with Jonathan. He is so wonderful!”

At Ninth Avenue, Barbara asked me what magazine I was writing for. I felt like saying a private magazine. But instead said I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t quite bring myself to say I had this magazine in mind.

“Well, be sure and send me a copy when it comes out,” Barbara instructed at Eighth Avenue, writing down her name and on a slip of paper and handing it to me.

All the while I was scared silly thinking about the article. Was it going to be my first – and last – celebrity interview? And boy, if Rex Reed only knew, he’d be sleeping easier tonight.

“Well, it was nice meeting you,” Barbara said, going down the steps of the Seventh Aenue subway. “Don’t forget to send me a copy of the article.”

I won’t. Barbara. 

UPDATE: Master of Dark Shadows is available for pre-order

UPDATE: Master of Dark Shadows is now available for pre-order on Amazon! Order it today at https://amzn.to/2SCnajd

(The original post is below)

Well, THAT didn't take long. Just a few days after it was announced that David Gregory (Lost Soul, Godfathers of Mondo) had finished production of a documentary about Dan Curtis, the cover art for the Blu-ray release is now making the rounds.

There were quite a few missing details about the movie, titled Master of Dark Shadows, missing in last week's official announcement. Some of those details are beginning to come into focus. The DVD and Blu-ray is expected to be released "on or about" April 16 this year and will include more than an hour of bonus features, including a Dark Shadows "set visit" and additional cast interviews. It will retail for $23.99.

Here's the original Jan. 19 press release about Master of Dark Shadows:

MPI Media Group today announced it has completed production on the highly anticipated Master of Dark Shadows, a comprehensive celebration of the legendary Gothic daytime series Dark Shadows and its visionary creator, Dan Curtis. The feature documentary, which was shot in New York,  LA and London, includes interviews with key actors and filmmakers involved in the undyingly popular story of vampire Barnabas Collins and all the eerie goings-on at the gloomy Maine mansion Collinwood. The documentary was directed by David Gregory (Lost Soul, Godfathers of Mondo) and is set to be released this spring.

Narrated by Ian McShane (Deadwood), Master of Dark Shadows offers insights from Curtis himself in addition to Oscar-winning writer-producer Alan Ball (True Blood), screenwriter William F. Nolan (Trilogy of Terror), author Herman Wouk (The Winds Of War), veteran actors Whoopi Goldberg (Ghost), Barbara Steele (Black Sunday)and Ben Cross (Chariots of Fire), Dark Shadows stars Jonathan Frid, David Selby, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Lara Parker, John Karlen, Nancy Barrett, Jerry Lacy, Roger Davis, Marie Wallace, Chris Pennock and James Storm, plus other colleagues and family members.

In 1966, a phenomenon was launched when Dark Shadows debuted on ABC-TV as a daily Gothic suspense series. Airing in the late afternoon, the show attracted a massive youth audience as it shifted to the supernatural with the introduction of vulnerable vampire Barnabas Collins. Witches, ghosts and scary story lines turned Dark Shadows into a TV classic that led to motion pictures, remakes, reunions and legions of devoted fans who have kept the legend alive for five decades.

The feature-length documentary Master of Dark Shadows reveals the fascinating history, far-reaching impact and lasting appeal of Dark Shadows with a compelling blend of rare footage and behind-the-scenes stories while also exploring the dramatic talents of creator-producer-director Dan Curtis. Known as the "King of TV Horror," the Emmy-winning filmmaker followed Dark Shadows with other iconic genre favorites including The Night Stalker, Trilogy of Terror and Burnt Offerings before earning accolades for the epic miniseries The Winds of War and War and Remembrance.