Dark Shadows: A Vampire TV Show Resurrected

I was listening to MF Doom's song, Hyssop on the way home from work, and it dawned on me that I used to LOVE the 1960's supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows. In the song MF Doom samples from the show's theme. I've always known this, but it was just one of those daily epiphanies that kicks you right in the head, and brought me back to 1996. Exactly 30 years after it first aired, I watched Dark Shadows in syndication on The Sci-Fi channel on summer afternoons. Other 70s sci-fi TV shows like Night Gallery got in the line up as well, but DS was my favorite. The show had hauntings, possessions, witches, mansions, creepy theme music, and it's main character was a 200 year-old vampire named Branabas Collins.




Dark Shadows was an introduction to my interest in the macabre. As a 9 year-old, it was the first time I watched something that was scary but enjoyed feeling unsettled. I became addicted to that feeling. Dark Shadows explains everything from my love of David Lynch to the lady boner I have for True Blood. Dark Shadows can be considered a rough pre-cursor to True Blood, in that the main character(s) are vampire, there are warewolves, witches, and ghosts. There's drama, supernatural perils, and love stories (though True Blood is hard-core porn compared to DS). I still prefer scary movies that are more psychological than gorey.



I was very excited to hear that Tim Burton is making a movie adaptation of Dark Shadows. Do I even have to tell you that Johnny Depp is in it? What's interesting is that the film is set in the 1970s, just like the original version of the show (DS was also remade for NBC in 1991). Burton could have just set it in present day, which obviously was the original intention of DS, but it's clear he wants to be true to the TV series. I'm hopeful for the quality of the movie, but I hope the obscurity of Dark Shadows as a cult TV show doesn't keep the project underground. How many puns can you get out of that sentence? 

Here's one last Dark Shadows video to send you off on. Though the show was not exactly meant for kids, DS clearly made an impact on that demographic. Even 30 years later a kid like me got into it. How very 60s to capitalize off a soap opera by making a children's board game out of it!