As a very young Unimonster, I had two
passions that consumed me—Scary Movies and Star
Trek. Both had latched onto my soul
with an attraction that has yet to fade, and which, hopefully, never will.
About the time I was in the first
grade, I was fortunate enough to be able to feed both of my ‘addictions’ on a
daily basis, as one of the local TV stations aired an after-school-hours
double-feature of Dark Shadows at
four, and Star Trek at five.
Dark Shadows was a ground-breaking daily series revolving around
an orphaned young woman, Victoria Winters (played by newcomer Alexandra
Moltke), who arrives in the small coastal town of Collinsport, Maine, seeking
answers about her past, shrouded in mystery.
She soon enters the employ of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (portrayed by
veteran actress Joan Bennett), mistress of Collinwood Manor. If this sounds like the set-up for a soap
opera … well, it was. The first season
of the show was a fairly standard soap opera of the 1960s, albeit with a darker
tone than most. And it was not very
well-received, either by critics or by audiences.
But beginning with episode #211, the
show found both it’s inspiration and the star to embody it. The episode introduced the character of
Barnabas Collins, a mysterious relative visiting from England, played to
perfection by a Canadian-born stage actor named Jonathan Frid. In reality, Barnabas was an ancestor of the
present Collins family—one who supposedly died two hundred years before, but
who was, in actuality, a vampire. For
the next 1,014 episodes, Collinwood would be visited by ghosts, witches,
werewolves, even time travelers. It
would be unique among it’s contemporaries in it’s focus on supernatural
plotlines, a fact that would establish it as a niche hit, and would endear it
to an audience not known for watching the soaps—young people, both male and
female. Frid’s performance as the iconic
vampire Barnabas played a huge part in that success, and in the show’s status
as a cult classic. On Saturday, 14 April
of this year[i], this
gentle man who had made a career out of one unforgettable character, passed
away at a hospital in his hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, from complications of
a fall. He was 87.
Fans of modern series such as True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, even the TWILIGHT films, would recognize in Dark Shadows the well from which those
later programs sprang. Frid’s vampire,
for all his classically gothic trappings, had far more in common with Robert
Pattinson’s Edward than Bela Lugosi’s Dracula.
Frid himself, in an interview published in the November, 1969 Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine
[#59], spoke of his vision for the character.
“… I portray him as a lonely, tormented man who bites girls in the neck,
but only when my uncontrollable need for blood drives me to it. And I always feel remorseful about it
later. He has a nasty problem. He craves blood. Afterwards, like an alcoholic or an addict,
he’s ashamed but simply can’t control himself.”
Driven by his longing for his lost love Josette, Barnabas spent the next
four years of the series run, as well as two feature films, searching for a way
to end the loneliness of his existence, whether by transforming someone into a
replacement for Josette, or by finding a way back to her through a time-portal
in the mansion, or by turning to a doctor who promised a cure for his
vampirism. Happiness, or at least an end
to his lonely life-after-death, always eluded him, however.
My connection to Collinwood came at an
early age. A daily dose of vampires,
ghosts, and ghouls was tailor-made to fuel my growing love of Horror,
especially when I might see only one horror film a week. Barnabas Collins was far more familiar to me
at that age than were the more established movie vampires played by Lugosi or
Lee. The first issue of Famous Monsters that I ever bought was
that aforementioned #59, with Basil Gogos’ fantastic portrait of Barnabas on
the cover. For a five-year-old in 1969,
50¢ was a fortune … at least in my neighborhood it was. It was a measure of my love for the show that
I would lay down that much (or convince my mother or father to do so … I can’t
quite remember how the magazine was acquired) for one item.
Dark Shadows left the airwaves in 1971, when I was seven. By that age I was a confirmed Horror addict,
and, through the pages of Forry Ackerman’s Famous
Monsters, had gained a greater knowledge of other film vampires. The adventures of Barnabas and the Collins
clan were quickly left behind, replaced in my affections by Hammer horrors,
1950s Sci-Fi, and the classic Universal monsters. By the time I reached adulthood, Dark Shadows had faded into the deep
recesses of my childhood.
Some time back, I had the opportunity
to watch several episodes of that beloved old show, and, at least to the
Unimonster’s tired old eyes, time had not been kind to Collinwood. The fact that the program was, after all, a
soap opera—something that had escaped my notice as a child—was all too apparent
to me in retrospect. The plots were
utterly, unbelievably contrived and convoluted; the dialogue was dated; the
acting, for the greater part, only mediocre.
Only two things kept it from being a total disappointment: the fantastic
gothic atmosphere of Collinwood, and the consummate television vampire, Mr.
Frid.
Recently, Tim Burton’s upcoming big-screen
‘reimagining’ of the Dark Shadows series
has captured much of fandom’s attention, and opinions regarding Johnny Depp’s
comedic interpretation of Barnabas are a hot topic among fans of the original series. Frankly, the less said regarding Burton and
Depp’s efforts in this direction the better.
However, it is fitting that Jonathan Frid’s final screen appearance was
a cameo in this movie. It’s just
unfortunate that he didn’t live to see his creation once more preying on
vulnerable necks.
[i]
Some sources say Friday, 13 April.
According to his obituary in the New York Times [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/arts/television/jonathan-frid-ghoulish-dark-shadows-star-dies-at-87.html?_r=1],
the date is actually the 14th.
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