Dark Shadows, the only horror soap opera of the swinging ’60s and grandparent tothe paranormal romance, developed a cult classic mythos that outlives its five-year run. Airing five days a week on ABC from 1966 to 1971, creatorDan Curtis’s Gothic talefocuses on the mysterious, reclusive, and affluent Collins family, who live high atop a hill in their gloomy mansion abode overlooking the equally gloomy seaside town of Collinsport, Maine. Waves crash over rocks, candelabras flicker, trains billow steam, and dress hems flutter. Yet for all itscomforting Gothic trappings, the series didn’t find success until it supplanted its human main characters witha 200-year-old vampire. Adding the supernatural — an unheard of development —catapulted ratings into the stratosphere.Dark Shadowsscored roughly 18 million viewing households per week, according toRosemary Guiley’sThe Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters. Children raced home from school to catch the next plot twist. Even First Lady Jacqueline Kennedyproclaimed herself a fan.
From there,Dark Shadowssinks its pointy teeth into horror. Nothing’s off limits, and everything within that boundless sphere of imagination is a camp lovers' dream: ghosts, werewolves, witches and warlocks, time travel, and remixing Victorian literary classics.Three movies, a 1991 television revival, a canceled CW reboot, and an active fanbase followed. In 2016, for its 50th anniversary, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciencesrecognized the seriesas “ahead of and before its time, present, past or parallel time” (that will make sense later).
Beyond fusingpulpy sensibilities with transcendent eerieness, part ofDark Shadows’s legacy includes “the Lost Episode.” The soap produced 1,245 total episodes. Only one — Episode 1,219 — is lost to time, which is pretty remarkable given the decade’s unreliable archival techniques. A reproduction pairs the Lost Episode’s audio track with still imagery and narration,but no other remnant exists. Nada, zero, zilch. A fan’s actions are the only reason the audio survived.
Dark Shadows
In an eerie seaside mansion, the Collins family grapples with love, betrayal, and curses. Their lives intertwine with vampires, ghosts, and witches as they uncover dark family secrets and navigate the chilling mysteries rooted within their ancestral home.
How Did ‘Dark Shadows’ Lose an Episode?
Although stylistically dated by today’s standards,Dark Shadows’s goofiness holds an irresistible charm. All those melodramatic music stingers, actors somberly turning toward a zooming camera, andepisodic cliffhangersstay engaging because they had to be. Resting on their laurels would lose viewers, and 1960s network finances couldn’t matchDark Shadows’sgroundbreaking ambition as a nationwide phenomenonand — perThe Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters— the first soap opera “to attract a large young audience [and] use special effects.“Dan Curtis employed creative solutions to the conundrums of shifting audience interests, a tight filming schedule, and a severely under-budgeted production.
An add-on problem was the archival process or lack thereof. Preservation practices were limited because technology was limited.It wasn’t unusual for series to lose their analog episodes, especially since the prevailing belief was that current media wouldn’t stay relevant. Re-broadcasts were rare and usually reserved for made-for-television movies. The VHS revolution was years away. It’s why dozens ofDoctor Whoepisodes from the 1960s no longer exist in any form.Gizmodo explained:
“The BBC didn’t have a concrete policy on archiving its programs until the late 1970s. Before then,the BBC’s Film and Engineering departments destroyed or recorded over much of their archived programmingon a regular basis. And different groups kept different recordings — Engineering kept the original 2” videotapes (known as quadruplex videotape) the episodes were shot on, while Film kept the 16mm Film versions that were “telerecordings” — known as kinescopes in America, literally just film recordings of the original videotapes transposing the footage into a more widely used format — to be sold to international broadcasters.”
InDark Shadows’s case, Rosemary Guiley andThe Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monstersreports that “the video masters of a handful of episodes have been lost, but exist in kinescopes.” The fan siteDark ShadowsEvery Daygives further context, detailing how ABC “phased out the [kinescope] practice in fall 1970, when everybody switched to sending videotapes.” Before 1970,if something happened to the master tapes, syndication broadcasters could use the kinescopes. Episode 1,219 aired in 1971 at the tail end of the series' run, leavingDark Shadowswith no backups. “There was just a blank videotape in the [master] case,“Dark ShadowsEvery Day recounts, “plus a little tuft of black and white fur that nobody could ever explain.” How, then, doDark Shadows’s DVD and Blu-ray sets have a professional reconstruction?
What Is ‘Dark Shadows’ About?
Dark ShadowsEvery Day reports that Wendy “Josette” Kernaghan, a fan who was blind,recorded many episodes' audio during their initial ABC broadcasts. Josette had already circulated her copies with fellow fans before loaning Episode 1,219’s audio tape out for official purposes. Even her recording was incomplete, but editors compiled what remained with imagery from other episodes and a narration track provided byLara Parker, one ofDark Shadows’s mainstay performers and best known for playing the schrming witchAngelique Bouchard. The result is the closest approximation fans have.
The Lost Episode takes place duringDark Shadows’s final Parallel Time arc (and final storyline period, given its impending cancellation). Over the years,Shadowsdeveloped a pre-American Horror Storyanthology style wherethe cast played a rotating set of charactersfrom different timelines and dimensions. Century-wise, Episode 1,219 occurs in 1841 and opens with psychic Carrie Stokes (Kathy Cody) distressed over a troubling vision. She’s witnessed a gravestone bearing the name of Daphne Harridge Collins (Kate Jackson), Bramwell Collins’s (Jonathan Frid) fiancée. Women who marry into the Collins family meet unfortunate fates, so this isn’t a good sign for Daphne’s longevity.
This Major Aspect of AMC’s ‘Interview with the Vampire’ Makes It Better Than the Movie
The show gives the audience a complicated romance they can sink their teeth into.
In keeping withDark Shadows, it’s especially unfortunate because Catherine Harridge Collins (Lara Parker), Daphne’s engaged sister, is pregnant with Bramwell’s child. The scandal!What’s a soap opera without a love quadrangle, and what’sDark Shadowswithouta romantic entanglement predicated upon horror?
‘Dark Shadows’ Changed the Vampire Genre
The creative genealogy of pop culture giants likeAnne Rice,Twilight, andThe Vampire Diariestraces back toDark Shadows,whether intentionally or via coincidental osmosis. Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), a brooding figure forever mourning his lost love and trapped by the curse of his bloodlust, spends the series shifting between villain, antihero, and protagonist quicker than humans change socks. Introduced as a menacing killer, kidnapper, and gaslighter,Barnabas’s unexpected popularitywith audiences — boosted no doubt by Frid, a Shakespearian-trained stage actor —forced the creative team to develop his sympathetic attributes and invent a tragically romantic backstory. Barnabas’s angst, his wolf’s head cane, and hisMy Chemical Romanceeyeliner are largely responsible for spawningthe tormented vampire archetype. Dan Curtis stole from himself by repeatingDark Shadowsplot points for his 1974made-for-TVDraculamovie, one of which might sound familiar to vampire media connoisseurs: a reincarnated love interest.
Against all odds,Dark Shadowsproduced episode after episode withinnovative aplomb and theatrical flair. It wasn’t just a ratings battle that demanded such heft;Shadows’s low budget meant the production filmed scenes in one take. The bloopers stayed in no matter how heinous, because time, money, and tape reels were of the essence. Mistakes range from actors flubbing lines or reading off the teleprompter, stray flies taking up residence on performers' foreheads, and set pieces falling down. Likewise,The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsterscites “Curtis also never expected the show to survive to reruns, let alone international syndication.” The joke might be on him, but becauseDark Shadowscontinues spreading joy 58 years later (conventions are still going strong) it’s a harmless one.
Dark Shadowsis available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.
