Too Hot For TV
A podcast dedicated to the expanded universe of your favourite franchises.
Too Hot For TV
S01 E10 - Everlasting Blood Sucking
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In this episode Dylan is joined by Martin to discuss the expanded universe of Dark Shadows. First up they look at the film 'House of Dark Shadows' from 1970, then they review the audio play 'The Death Mask' from 2011.
Welcome back to Too Hot for TV. We are the podcast that looks at all things expanded universe. Today, we're delving into the worlds of dark shadows, and I'm joined by academic and recent podcaster Martin. Martin, welcome. Hello, it's very nice to be here. It's wonderful to have you here. Now, we're covering two things from the Dark Shadows universe today. And Dark Shadows is something I wasn't really aware of until about 10 years ago, and I think there might be a few people out there that don't know what it is. So Dark Shadows is an American gothic soap opera that aired weekdays on the ABC television network from June 27, 1996 to April 2nd, 1971. The show depicts the lives, loves, trials, and tribulations of the wealthy Collins family in Collins Port, where a number of supernatural occurrences take place. There is a lot of dark shadows, right? Like thousands of episodes.
SPEAKER_02Is it 1,200 and something? It's one of those where they never match up because they they preempted episodes. So some of the episodes are like three numbers, but it's only one episode. Right. But it's something like it was, I think it's I think it's 1,200, something like that, episodes of the original series. Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01That's a lot of a lot of telly. So presumably you're a Dark Shadows fan.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've been aware of Dark Shadows for a really long time, but I hadn't always watched it. So I came to it in the early 90s from an uh an issue of Dreamwatch magazine, the the posh DWB, um, where there was an article in it, this was about 1993, 94, there was an article in it about the planned Tim Burton Johnny Depp film, which did happen a long, long time later, but it had been sort of pitched from about Edward Scissorhands onwards, and they were saying, we really like this show, we really want to do it. And something about the article, like there was a picture of Jonathan Fritz who played Barnabas Collins, who's the vampire in the series, and something just kind of stuck in my mind. I thought that sounds cool. Like I'd like to know what that is, but it wasn't available. It may have been on Sci-Fi Channel at some point. I didn't have Sky, I didn't get to see it. And the only things I ever saw of it was clips on one of those shows. I can't remember if it was Dennis Norden. It was like TV nightmares. And they'd show the same clip, which would so you'd have the clips from there'd be clips from Doctor Who, there'd be clips of where things they make things look really terrible. And actually they're really out of context, as we know. But they they had one of Barnabas being bitten by a bat, which is not the best moment, not the best special effect. It's not and so that was all I'd ever seen of of the show. And then when Big Finish announced they were doing the range, they were picking it up. I thought, oh, I'm actually gonna watch it before I listen to to the audios. And I, with my student loan, I went and bought some of the DVD box sets. I I bought one thinking, right, it may be dreadful. I'm just gonna get it, I'll see how I feel. And then I very quickly bought a lot more. And the thing with the box sets is they started from, so Barnabas Collins, the vampire, he's kind of the he's what made the show go stratospheric. Right. But before that, so when they started releasing the DVDs, they released them from Barnabas' episode, the start start of his storyline. Right. And they didn't release the earlier stuff for a while. And what you get was this kind of recap, 10-minute recap of like previously on Dark Shadows, and they make it look really boring. And then a couple of years later, I thought, do you know what? I'm gonna go back and start this from the beginning and see what I actually think to the beginning stuff. And the beginning stuff is amazing. And uh, it's really, and to this day, it remains really underrated, how kind of how good the early first 250 episodes are. Um Just the first 250, you know. Just the first 250, just the first 250. But it starts off as as a it's it's gothic in the genuine gothic sense. It's not actually supernatural at the beginning. So it's about this young girl who goes to work at this old house in the main countryside on the cliffs, and mysterious things are happening, and there's like crying in the night and strange characters, but it's not actually supernatural for the first sort of like 50 episodes, and then it starts getting a bit a bit supernatural. But there's a storyline that happens in those first 250 episodes, which is the most kind of original and interesting storyline they do, which is where you've got this woman who's the mother of one of the characters who comes back from being away and having something mysterious going on, who is a phoenix. And this is something where they just kind of invent this, like they take the idea of the phoenix and apply this to this character and create this supernatural character who's amazing. And that's the first big supernatural storyline they do. And then they go into doing the vampire and werewolves and all sorts of things, classic things. But the phoenix is actually the one thing they'd sort of completely create from scratch.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02Um, and it's br and it's brilliant, it's just amazing. And and and the things they were doing that were going out at 4 p.m. on an afternoon is just wild to think that this is what they were kind of doing and how inventive it is, and just how different it is to anything else that was sort of around before that.
SPEAKER_01That's interesting. So I listen to Big Finish's Doctor Who range, some of the Blake Seven range, things like that. And at some point, you know, in the 2010s or whatever, they announced Dark Shadows. I think nothing of it. I've never heard of it. I've never heard of Pathfinder Legends either, which they also do. So it's much of a muchness for me. And so I just go about my life, not giving much thought to dark shadows. And then I was at a big finish do a convention every now and then, and they had a panel on dark shadows, and I sat in on it, and I was like, oh, that sounds all right. And then they had a sale one year and there was a dark shadow story for about $1.99. I thought I'll buy that. I listened to it and I remember thinking that was fine. I couldn't tell you what it was, couldn't tell you what happened within it. That was it. I saw the Tim Burton Johnny Depp movie, and I can't remember anything about that, and I've just never really given it any thought. Uh, there's always been a joke with my brother, who's always been like, your end-of-level boss for cult television is to watch all of Dark Shadows. And so when you mentioned doing it, I was like, yeah, sure, but I don't know anything about it. So you said, well, here's four episodes, watch them and uh see how you feel. And I thought they were fucking brilliant.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01I I will, I don't know when, but I will at some point. I'm not gonna watch it all, but I'm certainly gonna I'm certainly gonna watch some more Dark Shadows because there's a quality to it, and it is a little bit hokey, but I think if you're a fan of cult television, you're used to it. Yeah. But it's this American gothic that also feels strangely British, and it's a style of television production that you're both familiar with as a fan of cult television in the UK, but it feels slightly alien because it's American. And it's just this concept of doing a soap with supernatural elements is kind of mind-blowing. And yeah, it's just very, I would say almost unintentionally stylized in places. It's sort of building its own style as it goes. But it's it's fabulous.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think one of the things as well, that I sent you a range of different episodes, but one thing, I don't know if you noticed this, but the earlier, so it's in black and white until episode 300 and something. And the black and white episodes, partly just by being in black and white, but they look super classy. And it gets, once it goes into colour, it dates quite a lot more just because of the look of the videotape and stuff and um the the telecene recordings and whatever. But it but it was like really, it looked great early on. And it's and you get outdoor filming in the early uh episodes and stuff that just makes it look a bit classier. But it does have, I mean, I assume, I don't know this, but I assume it was the first soap to do the supernatural thing because American soaps subsequently kind of relatively frequently do the supernatural thing. Like General Hospital that's been going for 60 years, they they have wildly sort of science fiction plots and vampi vampires crop up and stuff. And there was on um channel five, I think it was 2000, soap Sunset Beach, which I remember catching an episode where I lived, we didn't have Channel 5 because we lived in a valley and we didn't receive it. But I was at a mate's house and this episode of the sh of the soap came on. And um suddenly someone turned into like a withered corpse. And I was sort of like, what is happening? And it's because there were these cursed gemstones. But this is just in a storyline that's this sort of glossy US soap, and then suddenly it just goes fully supernatural. And so it is something that since Dark Shadows, this has happened more. And I'm assuming Dark Shadows, oh yeah, I mean, Sunset Beach is absolutely wild. I mean, you just sort of watch it, think things happen, but General Hospital, I think, goes for longer without supernatural stuff, and then they'll throw something in. I think there's a really famous 80s storyline about someone who's trying to freeze the world, and Elizabeth Taylor comes in playing as his wife, and it's just you can find some clips on YouTube of this absolute batshittery.
SPEAKER_01There was Days of Our Lives or something like that. Is that an American soap?
SPEAKER_02And they've Yeah, they do sort of it's a lot of the time, also it's it's the stuff that's just wildly unbelievable. So it's like people get it's not sci-fi, but it's people get caught up in the sort of international drug smuggling, whatever. There's a lot of doubles and and things like that that they do with the characters.
SPEAKER_01I'm sure they did a time travel plot at one point.
SPEAKER_02Oh, probably, yeah. I think that's and that's something also that Dark Shadows then got into later on once they'd exhausted all of their.
SPEAKER_01Why aren't East Enders and Coronational Street doing this stuff?
SPEAKER_02Well, I genuinely, I mean, we were mentioning earlier on talking about neighbours. When neighbours got rebooted by Amazon for a couple of years, and I um they were trying to appeal to the US and they were trying to get kind of daytime Emmy nominated and stuff, and I genuinely thought they might go down a slightly supernatural route, and I was all for it. I was really kind of excited about the possibility that we might see like ghosts coming back and stuff. I mean, ghosts, there is ghost magic every so often. You do see, you do get the odd neighbour's ghost.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but that's more of like a sort of surrealist flashback type thing, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's just yeah, that's just like a little sweet kind of nod. It's not, they don't go full out on the, but I mean I think because to bring about to Dark Shadows, that they sort of they start off very much in the kind of Jane Eyre gothic. It's that it weird things are happening, it's sort of hard to explain, it's very creepy, but it's not supernatural. But then they start relatively early bringing in the idea that there are ghosts, and then you do see a ghost in one episode, and you see sort of pages of a book being turned and whatever. But it stays relatively sort of soft on the supernatural till you get Laura, who's the phoenix, who comes in, and then it goes very, very supernatural. And then pretty quickly after that you get the vampire, and that's when they go all in, and they're just like, right, we we are now a supernatural soap opera.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's a really great idea for a soap opera, and you kind of think now where television is looking for cheaper options that perhaps somebody somewhere must be thinking we could explore this if it's not dark shadows, but like, does all sci-fi and horror have to be these big budget shows, or is there room for sort of a twice weekly, three times weekly, 30-minute? I think the answer's probably yes if you if you pitch it right.
SPEAKER_02Oh god, I think yes. I don't go mad to neighbours. When neighbours was cancelled, I I said a streamer should pick this up, Netflix should pick this up and have a like multiple time aw-times a week thing that will bring subscribers on board. And then Amazon did and was like, okay, great, and then now they've dropped it again. But I think that sort of thing of four times a week, five times a week that gets addictive. I mean, Dark Shadows, the closest I can think of is if in the 90s Buffy had been on five times a week and they cut the episodes into sort of short. But the the way that everyone got really addicted to Buffy, that would be what would happen with Dark Shadows. I think, and you know, the whole thing of there's lots of people that talk about running home from school. Because it was on at 4 p.m. It what it was, it's not even Doctor Who type, like you know, it's sort of it's early in the day. So people would have to kind of race back from school to catch it. And I think that really became like a cult thing. And there's a real engagement as well. I think they were very aware of having an active fan base and they filmed in the studio in Manhattan, and people don't wait outside the doors. Like it was literally just off the street, and people would stand outside to get autographs from the stars and stuff like that. And I think they they really engaged with that and they do all the interviews in teen magazines and things like that, and get really they that they were aware of kind of manipulating this fan base from quite early on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So let's jump into our first spin-off from the Dark Shadows Universe, which is House of Dark Shadows, which is a film no less, released on the 28th of October 1970, directed and produced by Dan Curtis and written by Sam Hall and Gordon Russell. Now, other films out that that year. We've got The Bird with the Crystal Plumage from Dario Argente. We've got I Drink Your Blood, The Beast in the Cellar, and then from Hammer, we've got The Horror of Frankenstein, Scars of Dracula, Taste the Blood of Dracula, the best Dracula film. Uh, and uh The Vampire Lovers. So that's sort of the landscape of horror films at the time. Quite a good year for horror films, I think. I own all of those films on Blu-ray or DVD. Oh, have you got The Beast in the Cellar? Yeah, yeah. Fucking it, fucking out. Do you admit to do you watch it? Do you know what? I I have to say it's still in its cellophane. I haven't watched it yet.
SPEAKER_02That's the one that kind of lets the side down a little bit there. Because ah, burped with the crystals playing picture. Oh yeah, oh I mean, I love Darien Argento. When I we were talking about this before, and I was saying I was gonna talk about Hammer, and I was gonna talk about the decline of Hammer, but the problem is that 1970, that's a banging year. It's like the the decline will come pretty soon afterwards, but they're still but yeah, Taste of Blood of Dracula is incredible. Scars of Dracula terrified me as a kid. Terrified me. It's not a good film, but it terrified.
SPEAKER_01No, no, it was my first Hammer Dracula film, and I'm very fond of it, but it is. Was it on Channel 4?
SPEAKER_02Yes. Is that where you saw it too? Yeah. I couldn't sleep. Like the bit at the beginning when they all get massacred in the church, it really upset me. And then Patrick Trouton getting beaten.
SPEAKER_01I thought, no, don't do, don't do this. He's Doctor Who? You can't do that. Pinky fucker probably liked it. It is a good year for Hammer, and it's It's a good year. They're at their most commercial, I'd say, where it's very much violence and boobs, and that's yes. And that's the sort of thing they're delivering, as opposed to when you go to the earlier Dracula and Frankenstein films, they're a little bit more reserved in what they're showing and what they're doing, but it's it but some great movies nonetheless.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, Taste the Blood of Dracula is probably the last one that retains a certain classiness because it's then gone. Like, I mean the whole time, and I think even I'm assuming Christopher Lee's still absolutely had a horrible time making it and whatever as he always did, but I think it's it's a good one. Like it's it's fun. He's a miserable fucker, Christopher Lee, though, isn't it? He wasn't a miserable fucker, yeah, that's true.
SPEAKER_01People only remember him as Dracula and Gandalf anyway.
SPEAKER_02So But some some of the um some of the uh the later stuff. So I mean it's not saying that the 70s for Hammer, and but Hammer's a good point of comparison, it's not saying that the 70s for Hammer is uh all bad, and some of the stuff in the 70s, some of the stuff is brilliant, things like Hands of the Ripper, things which are absolutely outstanding, but they they were later on in Hammer's time. But I think it's a general decline from 1970 onwards. And yeah, they didn't last, they didn't last as a film studio, they didn't last a decade, yeah. And I think House of Dark Shadows shows a a possible different path for this kind of gothic horror that Hammer didn't take. And I feel like there were there were legs for something much longer term from the Dark Shadows kind of stable, or at least from from Dan Curtis. And it's not what happened because he made one more Dark Shadows film, and for a lot of reasons that didn't really work. And then he made uh Burnt Offerings later on in the 70s. Oh, is that him? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I like burnt offerings. But well, if you if you watch Night of Dark Shadows and then you watch Burnt Offerings, it's basically the same film. Like I mean, it is really ripped, but there's something quite one of the reasons I think Night jumping forward, but Night of Dark Shadows didn't work is because it's very, very uh dark in a way that is quite cruel and nasty. In a way that burnt offerings is. It's not, it's it's just horrible. Everyone suffers. And Dark Shadows, even though it's sort of horror and creepy, there's a warmth to it. And I think the fans really didn't respond to Night of Dark Shadows. Right, got more appreciation with time, but I think even today people are a bit like, eh, like it kind of it looks good, acting's good, but it doesn't really have any heart, and that's quite a bit of a problem.
SPEAKER_01Right, I say, when Barnabas Collins, a vampire who is accidentally released from his coffin after being in prison for 175 years, returns to the Collins family estate. He poses as a distant relative while secretly preying on the residents of Collinsport. Barnabas becomes obsessed with Maggie Evans, believing she is the reincarnation of his long-dead fiance, Josette. As a series of murders leads investigators to suspect a vampire, Dr. Julia Hoffman attempts to cure Barnabas of his condition. However, the treatment fails and Barnabas returns to his murderous ways. After kidnapping Maggie in an attempt to make her his bride, Barnabas is confronted by Jeff Clark and Willie Loomis. During the struggle, Barnabas is seemingly killed, but there is a hint that he may have survived. So where does this come in the Dark Shadows timeline? Because the TV show's still a thing at the time, right?
SPEAKER_02The TV show is still a thing, and this is where it all becomes the the production of it is fascinating. I mean, just the fact that we're talking about a film, a proper feature film. I mean, you when you get the MGM title card at the start and then the Dark Shadows music, the sort of cognitive dissonance of that is like, what's what's happening? Like, and because no one else gets this.
SPEAKER_01You don't it's it's that Disney logo on Doctor Who, isn't it? We all remember that.
SPEAKER_02What was what was sort of happening is that they Dan Curtis, I think he'd always wanted to make films. And he would go on to he made some films, but he stayed more in TV. But he made some excellent TV movies um and TV miniseries later on. I mean, really like well-regarded, classy stuff, not all sort of horror stuff, um, but some very well-regarded horror stuff as well. And he wanted to make a film, and I think he'd always wanted to make a vampire film. And this was part of what happened in the Barnabas storyline was basically the studio were like, uh some of the actors I interviewed from Dark Shadows were saying they were like, we weren't a failure, but we weren't winning our demographic, we weren't winning the the slot, you know, in terms of audience. And the studio were kind of like, Well, you're not doing great, we'll give you a couple more weeks, but if you don't, you know, get a better viewership, you're you're done. And so Dan Curtis, I think, had always wanted to do a vampire. And I think he chatted to his daughter, he said, Oh, vampires are cool or something. And then he did this vampire storyline, and everyone went for the vampire storyline. It just hooked people in. So then that made the show just explode and become really popular. So then later on, he uh he still had this idea of doing a film. So then he managed to sort of wing it that they let him do a Dark Shadows film. But the show was still going on, and Dan Curtis was a producer, he didn't really have directing experience. So he kind of hops onto the show and directs a few episodes under, I think, the kind of tutelage of um I think notably Layla Swift, who was just a fantastic sort of trail-blazing director. Um, she did just the incredible work on the show. There were, there were kind of three big directors on the show, and she's one of them. I think she basically taught him how to direct um and did a really good job. And so so what happened was though that because the show was in production, they started the film, but they had to kind of take actors out of the show. So you get a sort of B team of actors on the show who take over the storylines, and then you lose most of the main characters. Uh not that not that the B team are kind of less some of the B team were huge stars of the show in in their own right. So it's not that the show was terrible, but I think it definitely had an impact. Right. And the show didn't last that long beyond by the time Night of Dark Shadows comes out, '72, the the show is over, like it's done. I think I don't think the production, I don't think those productions crossed over. They may have done a little tiny bit, but I don't think they did much. Um, not like House of Dark Shadows and the show. So it it's kind of, but it is the whole thing is just why it's like when I worked for a TV website in 2009, and it was that point where there was the rumour about there g there being a Doctor Who film. They were like, There'll be a David Tennant film, and I had to write news stories every single day. No news about this Doctor Who film. And but I think people genuinely thought this might happen. There might be a cinema film that could possibly come out. And obviously there wasn't, but but um And it turned out just to be a the big secret was that advert where he's riding the reindeer on the target and his appearance in Sarah Jane adventures. It was like these are the two secrets. But the fact that this happened in itself is kind of wild that you got a cinema release, cinema film based on a show that's still going on, that that has the same actors that crosses over. And it was pretty well reviewed. I mean, I think it caused problems because it is very violent compared to the show. And some people suggested that kind of parents stop their kids watching the show because they'd been to see the film and were like, oh no, that's horrible. You can't watch that. So I think maybe the film had a bit of a detrimental effect on the TV show. Right.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_02What elements does this draw on from the TV show? So this is basically a remake of the start of the Barnabas storyline. Which is the Barnabas storyline is oh well, what's interesting about the Barnabas storyline is they are still for a while pretending to be a normal soap. So you have all these sort of ongoing storylines, and then just people being attacked by a vampire as it goes on, and then they get to a certain point and they're like, no, fuck all the rest of it. We're done. And there is the biggest mystery of the show, which the show starts with, is you've got this orphan called Victoria Winters. And for the first, you know, 300 episodes, that's how it starts. It's my name is Victoria Winters. And I on this night I'll experience more terror than I've ever experienced since yesterday. And and but then they just give up, and that it's all about who her parents are. And then they're like, oh fuck that. And and to be honest, I mean, she is the most boring character in the show. And the the actress, I think, was everyone else gets to play more than one character, or almost everyone else. And the actress, Alexandra Molka, who played her, she was like, please can I play someone else? And Dan Curtis was like, No, you are Victoria, you are like the heart of the show. And I think that's why she just bugged off. She's like, I don't want to do this. I'm so it's so boring. Yeah. I mean, she was pr she was pregnant, and I think her excuse was I'm pretty, I'm gonna leave. But I think really she would have come back if there'd been the possibility of getting any interesting work, but they were just not giving her anything. So Barnabas comes in and takes over the show, and the Barnabas storyline was supposed to be a kind of 12-week storyline, and he was gonna get killed, and that was that was what was gonna happen. But he was so popular uh that they were like, no, actually, we can't do this. We've got we've got to sort of soften him and he's gotta become like an ongoing. And it's really one of the first, I think, that sort of friendly vampire. You've had sort of elements of that in earlier vampire stories, but it's the it's the first kind of main, I think, um, popular culture, nice vampire. He's not nice to begin with, but he gets there later on and you go, they go back in time and you find out about why he became how he is and whatever. Yeah. So the film is basically taking that storyline, racing through it. I mean, you if you watch the, I know you've seen the the first of those episodes, but if you watch that storyline in the show and then you watch the film, you get whiplash from how quickly you know, you'll get you're getting 20 episodes in two minutes, like in the film. It's like bam, bam, bam. Like you you race uh and the problem is the things you lose from that is you lose any character development. You you lose any sense of who these characters even are, because it's like, where are we? What's happening? Ah, a vampire. Like, you know, within the first kind of by the end of the title sequence, you've basically got the vampire out and attacking people, which takes you know about sort of four episodes of the show um just to get him out of his coffin. And it it so it's quite wild. And there was actually, is we haven't really talked about the the overarching sort of history of the show, but there was a 1991 reboot of the show that only lasted 12 episodes for various reasons. But it's great, I really like it. But the the reboot is seems more like a reboot of House of Dark Shadows because it's much more violent, it's much quicker, it kind of races through. But so what what in the reboot is about four episodes, so four hour-long episodes in the film is sort of over and done in under under two hours.
SPEAKER_01Because obviously, you gave me uh a couple of episodes to watch, and I was like, Oh, hang on. Is this just a remake of that episode? And then like two minutes later, they've got through everything episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's like more of more of a refresher. It's a reboot of about of about 200 episodes done in sort of 60 seconds, yeah. And I mean, it I like it for that, but and I I it it was weirdly. I mean, you look at contemporary reviews, and people were weirdly positive about the film. I think it's like Roger E, but people who are normally horrible about horror, but were like, yeah, it's quite fun. And it is, but I don't know how people who were familiar with the show would have felt about it at the time, being kind of like, all the characters I love are being brutally murdered, and it's racing. And it's there are bits of the sh of the film that really kind of upset me because of how I feel about the characters in the show. And you get there and you're like, oh, that's not nice. Like, what don't do that. Are those characters dead in the show? Or they just everyone lives. No one dies in the show, no one dies in the show. No, none of them die in the show. There's uh one character dies in the show who isn't really in the film because they replace him with someone else. And one of the problems in the show is the film, sorry, is that they include characters who haven't been introduced yet on the show. But by the time the film was being made, they were in the show. And so they wanted to cross them over. So you get Professor Stokes. Professor Stokes isn't in that original Barnabas storyline. So he kind of takes the role of other people in the film, but it means you don't have any clue of like who he is. He's just some random that's hanging around. Yeah. Um, and but then he g he becomes a vampire. And that is like not only is it a really scary scene, but it's quite devastating. You're like, no, not Professor Stokes. Like, this isn't this isn't fair. He's like the lovely like beacon of light in the show. Uh and so yeah, it's quite a wild experience watching it having seen the the show.
SPEAKER_01Does it transfer to film easily?
SPEAKER_02Uh I mean so I um I cannot say, I can't objectively say, I mean, you'd be better at giving an opinion. Oh, you'll get my opinion. Yeah, because I don't think that it really works as a film because I think you're missing so much information that you sort of float along with it, but by the end you're kind of like, I don't really know what we're where where I am or what's happening, or like who any of these characters actually were. But I think it looks great. I think the style of it is really good. I think Dan Curtis did a really good job kind of putting it together. And because I like the actors in it, I'm sort of invested in the experience of watching the film. I think it's very messy as a as a film.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think so. The thing that drew drew me in to the the four episodes of the TV series was the soap element of it, like the environment of it, the pace of it. It's such a slow thing, such as such is the nature of soaps at the time, I think. But like it even though each episode's only like 22 minutes, they're weirdly slow but pack a lot in. I know that sounds weird. But you just get to spend you enjoy spending time with the characters. When you turn it into a film like this, which is fine, you know, it's an okay film, it just becomes another horror film in a year of good and a couple of middling horror films. So it loses the charm, but it also loses the thing that I think makes the TV series special, from my limited knowledge of the TV series. Like, I don't particularly want to watch the other film, but I do want to watch more of the TV series. So it's like, I'm glad I saw it. It's an interesting, it's it's a really interesting thing to go, oh, so this is a a film spin-off of a TV soap and what it looked like. So, sort of from a historical point of view, uh for somebody who's interested in spin-off media in general, it's a great thing to uh be a part of. But I don't think I'll be rushing to get the remastered Blu-ray from Avo or whoever um release it. But you know, it's fine as a film, I guess. So let's talk about the story, because as you said, it's it's a much quicker horror film. And it's an out and out horror film. Whether it stands up today is another matter, you know. But I can imagine at the time it feeling quite gruesome, and there is by the end where the character of the vampire is aging and stuff like that, it's quite horrific. And, you know, I I don't I doubt they ever did anything like that in the soap opera.
SPEAKER_02But well, well, you say that where when you watch it, they do the aging storyline and the makeup, I think I want to say it's the same person. The makeup on the show is incredible. Like when you watch it, you're like, wow, like how did they manage without any budget, without it's but it's very different and it's less disgusting. It's more just old man rather than like old monster. Yeah. But yeah, I think you'll be impressed. I thought I think if we see that it's but yeah, I mean, the storyline, what you have is a vampire who's been sort of locked away for reasons that are touched on in the film, but not really, is awoken and basically tr tries to take a bride and goes through and he's he he returns to his family in the present day and inveagles him his way into with them and then tries to basically bites his way through quite a lot of them and kills off half of them. And that sort of is the storyline from the show. Yeah. Um, except that pretty quickly he well, and very, very quickly actually, he becomes really quite sympathetic in the show. And in the film, he is sometimes, but he's generally just a monster. Like a lot of the film he is quite horrible. And the problem is as well that you've got too many characters in the film. Like I said, they they bring out, they didn't want to lose a lot of those actors, so they bring them in, but I a lot of them don't really serve any purpose except just to get killed off at the end.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh and this is always this happens again in the Tim Burton film. They have a character uh who they just he just walks out, he just kind of leaves, and it's because there's nothing for him to do. There's too many characters. When you've got a family unit that's sort of already four characters plus like three hangers on, plus all the sort of um collateral damage characters. Which works in a soap opera format. Which works in a soap opera format, but in the yeah, once you you shrink that down to two hours, you're really struggling to have anything for anyone to do. And there's the character of Julia Hoffman, who's a scientist who is sort of just hanging out at the house in the film, as far as you can tell, who in the show has this great arc where over about sort of 30 episodes, she finds out about all these victims with this weird kind of blood bacteria, virus, whatever. And so she thinks she's investigating what's happening, and she sneaks into the house and sort of pretends that she's writing a family history of the family, and they let her stay there. And then she slowly works out that Barnabas is the vampire, and then she sort of goes and he he he finds out that she knows, so he tries to murder her, but she's waiting for him, and she's like, aha, I've been expecting you. And then they and then she's like, I think I can cure you, and you get this kind of back and forth, and it goes on for sort of a really long time. And in the film, that's in about sort of five minutes of oh, a vampire. Oh, that's fascinating. Oh, I'm in love with you. Ah, like and you know, you just don't get any time. And the character who sort of unearths the vampire, Willie Loomis, in the show, he comes on as this horrible, like really sort of aggressive, nasty character. And he ends up working for the family for various reasons, and then they sort of fire him and he goes to try and steal the family jewels, and then he get he becomes the servant of the vampire, and then slowly develops into this sort of pitiful character, but who also becomes genuinely caring and sort of lovely. And they still kind of do that in the film. And props to John Carlin for trying his best to sell the character progression. But when it's in like 20 minutes that you've gone from this properly evil character to this sort of really pitiful, sort of sweet character, it's so hard to do. Like it's just, and that's one of the big things, I think. The character development that there just isn't in the film.
SPEAKER_01There is a lack of character development, and I suppose there's a little bit of like they're hoping that most people will know who these people are. Yeah. What about their performances? Because obviously it's a very different thing. You have you tend to have more time in film, uh, whereas soaps, I don't know whether it's exactly as live that they used to do it, but certainly you don't have a lot of time when filming a soap compared to a film. So do is there a sense of they up their performances?
SPEAKER_02I think the big difference, as you said, because I mean one of the things you mentioned earlier on is that there's not really a diff. You know, we like uh cult television, 60s television, so we're used to the this kind of you know, flub lines and things like that. And I think if you compare Dark Shadows TV show uh to, for example, the early Avengers, like the the David Keel, Kathy Gale early 60s Avengers episodes, where people will walk into the camera, they will flub their lines, someone will walk through the background. Um, it's just in Dark Shadows you kind of notice it a lot, partly because, you know, all the almost all the episodes still exist. And so you see lots of examples of these things that there probably are lots of them in lost episodes of The Avengers. What I think of the film, they have more time to rehearse. So the performances are more sort of refined. But the problem is each character basically has to pick one aspect of their well, each actor has to pick one aspect of their character and go for that because they don't have any time to develop them, apart from John Carlin, who has to do every single thing that Willie ever does in the show, like it in in 20 minutes. But I think they I think most of them kind of equip themselves quite well, but they don't get much to do. And the big one that I think the big two that are ironically the only survivors, but um, well two of the only survivors, is you get Elizabeth, who's the kind of matriarch, who's played by Joan Bennett. Joan Bennett was the star. I mean, she was a proper film star. She worked with Fritz Lang, she was in the original Father of the Bride. Right. She was a big Hollywood star. And in the show, she gets a lot to do. She flubs her lines worse than anyone, but she gets a lot to do. In the film, she gets nothing, nothing at all. And she is a really good actress, and even later in her career, she's still really good because she's in talking about Darion Argento that you mentioned at the beginning. But Suspiria, just his 1977 supernatural horror film, which is my favorite film. She's great in that as one of the sort of villains. She's brilliant. And so she could have done a lot more and just doesn't have anything to do because she doesn't have much to do in the original vampire storyline. Because she's still tied into a soap opera storyline at that point. So the vampire attacks are happening, and she's dealing with the mysterious man from her past who knows what happened to her husband and is trying to force her into marriage, and he's the one who brings Willie Looney. Anyway, it's all very, very complicated. And then the other one is David Hennessy, who plays David, like the young son, who, as a lot of other actors have pointed out in interviews and things, he was one of the most accomplished actors. He was 10 years old, but he'd been a Broadway actor. So he came in as sort of a really quite good child actor. And in the film, and he only gets better, as the show goes on, he just gets better and better. He gets great storylines. And he plays the character possessed by other characters brilliantly. And in the film, he gets one or two good scenes. There's the scene in the old swimming pool, which I think is brilliant, where he's like chuckling the ball and he's like, Oh, if if I catch this ball, then my cousin's not died. And it and that is creepy and lovely. But he doesn't get much to do. He just sort of disappears at the end of the film. And and and the same with Elizabeth. They both survive, but they're not mentioned. And in the sequel film, it's like someone inherits the house from Elizabeth who's died, but they don't mention what happened to David and why he's not inherited the house. And it's all, yeah, it it I think that so not everyone gets much to do. I think Barnabas, Jonathan Freder's Barnabas comes across quite, really quite well. And he is also a terrible line flubber. So in the film, he's a lot better because he's been able to sort of re do retakes and stuff like that. So I think that comes across. So I think mostly the actors come across pretty well.
SPEAKER_01I'll tell you who does benefit. Louis Edmonds. Louis Edmonds. I messaged you when watching the TV series and was like, is this guy drunk? Because there's something about the way he says his lines, and it's like the words aren't fully coming out of his mouth, and he stumbles over them. I can only put my own experience on this of I remember once being far too drunk on a podcast and listening to it back and going, you sound like a drunk, drunk man. And I that's what I felt like Louis Edmonds' performance on the TV show was in the episodes I saw. Less so be Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think I think he uh but again, I mean, he doesn't get that much to do really as well, because again, he he has a a whole there's a whole storyline which the film doesn't touch on at all, which is from the first episode of there's um a man who's uh out for revenge against uh Louis Edmund's character, Roger Collins, because he framed him for killing someone in a uh hit and run. And it's sort of he gets a lot of work there, and he gets a lot of work because David is an absolute fucking psychopath in the show. At the start of the show, he's an evil child, demon child. And so Roger's dealing with him being so evil, and he's dealing with his ex-wife, who turns out to be a phoenix and wants to burn their child in a fire and all these things. So he gets he doesn't have much to do either in the Barnabas storylines, apart from just coming in and being like, oh, hello, I'll have a sherry. And uh yeah, he may well have been actually drinking sherry while he was filming it. So no, yeah, I think he but I mean, equally though, he was a very, very respected and he a soap actor, but in um I want to say to call all my children, but I could be wrong. But he was in American soap sport his whole life and was sort of very, very well regarded. But yeah, I think he a lot of the time, but I mean you do have Mitch Ryan, who is the character who's out for revenge on, uh the actor who's plays the character who's out for revenge on him. Mitch Ryan was fired because he was an alcoholic. Right. And you get a lot of the which he was very open about later on, but you get a lot of that, his performance. There are episodes where he is steaming drunk. And to be fair, he's doing a great job. Like he's writ he's holding it together, but you can see that he is like out of it. You can smell it, you can smell it, and I think the other actors can smell it, and everyone's a bit like, oh um uh yeah, Lou Edmonds, I don't know. I don't know, but it's like you say it's true. I think he benefits from having, you know, a little a little bit more. A second take. A second take, the second take. Also, just time to read the script because I think they basically learned the script after 3 pm. They recorded from uh 11am to 3 p.m. and then read the script for the next day and then came in the next day. So just probably having a script for more than a day was also quite good for all of them, I think.
SPEAKER_01One thing that's really struck me about the story was this talk of a cure for vampirism, which is not something I mean, you certainly don't see it in those hammer films, and it's not something I really remember seeing in films at the time. I'm sure it's been done since. And I thought that was quite a like actu to have a vampire as well that actually doesn't want to be a vampire, and it's less about that seductive nature of all come and join me and everlasting bloodsocking.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there is there is so I mean, Dark Shadows, there is this whole thing that I think better people than I have mapped this out, but um, there is a progression that you get from Dark Shadows to a TV movie that Dan Curtis did later on, which was called Bramstoker's Dracula, which has Jack Pallance as Dracula, which you would think is terrible casting, but my god, does he do a great job? And I can't explain the credits to it. Dracula just kind of strides through the credits of this film. Right. And it's amazing. You're like, fuck it out. Dracula, what a b what a beast. Like, it's just amazing. Um, and and it so this he so basically they kind of came up with this idea of the the the the love sick, the the the vampire who doesn't want to be a vampire who's sort of pining for his lost love, which is all in the background of the backstory. Then you get that their version of Dracula that adds that into the to the Dracula story, which isn't in Bram Stoker's original Dracula. Then you get the 1991 Dark Shadows reboot where they go far more into the, and you can, if you look at all the sort of promo pictures, it's all like the the vampire in his velvet outfit holding his girlfriend and with the candles, and it's all really that kind of gothic romance. And then the next year after that, you get Francis Ford Coppola's Brampsoker's Dracula, where James Hart script kind of takes that idea and runs with it, and I I think does even better. But there's a real sort of evolution across that. And I think Dark Shadows is a lot more innovative than people give it credit for. And yeah, the cure, you don't see that. I mean, there are examples of it later. I mean, depressingly, Catherine Bigelow's Near Dark, which is a near-perfect film if you ignore the last five minutes where they cure it. Um, but that it does get, it has been discussed. But I think Dark Shadows, they really do play with that thing of the sort of scientific reading of the vampire. And they come up, there are other things that happen later on in the show that involve sort of soul swapping into constructed bodies, and they do the sort of Frankenstein's monster kind of storyline, and that ties into the vampire storyline. But I think basically they were really thinking on their feet, and they were like, what can we do? How can we like extend this? What can we, what can we add to this? And they basically just start later on taking all the gothic classics, having started with the sort of true gothic of like Jane Eyre, Anne Radcliffe's Sicilian romance, this idea of going to a big dark house where there are big dark secrets and lots of family intrigues. Having gone from that, they then do Dracula, they then do Frankenstein, they then do Werewolf Legends, and and and by the end, they sort of circle back into pure gothic. Yeah. And they're doing like Shirley Jackson and the lottery and things like that. But they do explore everything. And most of the time they get it pretty spot on. Some of them aren't as good. You can cherry pick storylines. They do. A whole sort of HP Lovecraft inspired run which goes on way too long and is way too sort of theoretical. It's like you're you're thinking it's like, yeah, it's good to think about these kind of ancient evils, but we're not really we want to see like werewolf, we want to see stuff on screen, and it doesn't work quite so well, though it has been picked up again by Big Finish, who, as usual, take their ideas and sort of do something a bit neater with them. But yeah, I so I think, yeah, I think it is innovative, and I think that comes into the film. Obviously, in the film, that whole cure thing only really lasts about 10 minutes, so then it's back to more brutality and things like that. But I think that I do quite like that you have a version of the show where everybody dies. I quite appreciate that. Like that you get a different perspective on what you could do with these characters.
SPEAKER_01And quite a shocking thing to do as well, just to sort of go, they're alive in the TV show, but here they dead.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it's and it's the the fact that it is like half of the main characters get killed off. And I say uh r probably the two most shocking ones, I think, is Carolyn, who gets the proper like staking of the vampire death. Yeah. Um, and Professor Stokes. So Professor Stokes is just lovely. He's this sort of charming, delightful character who sort of potters around solving problems. And then in the show, he gets this horrible, he just and you don't even see him get attacked, he just is a vampire suddenly, and he just goes after Jeff, and it's in the d and he just looks horrible, and it's just a really nasty, kind of brutal scene. And uh that really shocked me the first time. So I was like, Whocking hell, I can't do that to Professor Stokes.
SPEAKER_01One thing that obviously this improves on is the production values, and there's nothing wrong with the production values of the a soap. It is what it is, but the episodes I've seen, there's very much a couple of standing sets, and they spend most of their time in there. But here we're out on location. I know you said early episodes they did locations as well. Little bits, yeah, yeah. You mentioned that abandoned swimming pool earlier, which is a really cool location. The house is a real, tangible house, and there's lots of lovely sort of directorial choices. There's a lot of low angles and things like that. That's just that that really sort of elevates it. And I think that's what you want if you're going to do a film version, you know. You have to somehow condense it all into 90 minutes, but it it feels bigger and sort of rightfully so, and like that it's earned it, I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and there are some interesting choices they don't use. So the mansion, so in the show, you get the sort of opening shot of the mansion, and in the earlier episodes you do get the occasional, but I mean they really are like filmed inserts. So you get one character just walking down and they cut that in. Um there's no there's no kind of dialogue scenes happening outside or anything. But you get Sea View Terrace, which is the the original Collinsport mansion that looks like a sort of Scooby-Doo mansion, and then you get Lindhurst, which is the one in the film. And the one in the film is that's in Tarrytown, which is like Sleepy Hollow. That's so that they got it's even more gothic credentials, but it looks great. I mean, I don't know why they chose a different house, it may have just been easier for filming. But I think the yeah, the the Lindhurst mansion in the two both films looks amazing, and I think they do really great work outside. And there are, like you said, there's just some lovely choices. I think Dan Curtis is really going for it. He's like, Look, I'm gonna I'm I'm the director now, I'm gonna show like what I can do. Yeah, and I think things like the funeral scene I think is really beautifully shot. I think the swimming pool stuff is really lovely. Yeah, even just some of the choices he makes in um some of the attack scenes, that the first attack scene on Daphne where she's like running to get into her car and something's stalking her, like I think is really, and that's also really nicely done in the 1991 reboot. They do that, which is also a lot bloodier and a lot darker, and they do kill kill off a few people. Um, not as many as the film. They need to, it's an ongoing series. They need to keep a few people alive, but they do kill a couple of people. But um, yeah, I think I think it's very nicely directed. And I think Night of Dark Shadows, that the follow-up, is even better direction, but it's just that the storyline is there isn't really a storyline, and it was meant to be for some reason he submitted this cut that was like three hours long. And GM were like, absolutely fucking not. What are you talking about? Like, of course we're not going to release this. So they cut half of it out, and it just doesn't make any sense.
SPEAKER_01Does that other half still exist or not?
SPEAKER_02So they managed to rescue, I think, about 30 minutes of it. Right. And uh no, oh no, I think they rescued an hour. I think they've got two and a half hours, and so it's missing half an hour of footage, and also they've only got half an hour of audio. Right. So that somebody did get the uh some of the original actors to dub in some scenes. Of course they did. Yeah, I don't know where that is. I don't know, it's never gonna get released. Someone, there was a point this rumor started a few years back where they were like, you know, MGM are gonna release the extended cut of Night of Dark Shadows. And pretty quickly people were like, of course they're not. They're not gonna spend that much money on this film that no one even likes anyway. Like it's not even like, you know, it's really kind of like a a dream. Uh so I'm someone must have it. I'm sure there's someone that's got a cut of it. I'd love, I'd love to see it one day, but but even if they did, I don't really know that it's a salvageable film. But it's the same thing. Burnt Offerings is exactly the same. It's really stylish, it's really creepy, but ultimately it's not very well written. Like it's sort of like it's one of those things. And that's what Night of Dark Shadows is like. But Night of Dark Shadows is is particularly nasty. Like there's something really quite cruel about it, which, if you're in the mood for it, like sometimes I love a nice horrible horror film, and 70s 70s do that really well. But sometimes but I think if you have come in, basically I I would say, uh I mean, I'm speaking, I don't really have the authority to say this, but I think fans of the show tend not to like the two films. Right. And they especially don't like the Tim Burton film because they have no sense of humor. Um but that is also, yeah, I think so I think it's it's too dark. It's everything you've said, it's like it's too dark, you don't get the character development, you don't get the time for the storyline to breathe. Yeah. Um I think there is a happy medium because I think the 1991 reboot, it goes a lot faster than the original show, but it slows it down enough to get some character development. Because the original show, lovely though it is to stick it on in the background, you could probably skip about three of the five weekly episodes and still follow the storyline. You know, you'll have a an episode where you only ever have about five or six characters in an episode. So you get five or six characters, we'll find out something. Then the next episode is the other characters who weren't in the last episode, then finding it out themselves and being like, oh, did you hear about it? And they're like, Yes, I did. Thingy told me this. Oh yeah. And you go round and round, and that is quite lovely if you just want to have something on in the background. But sometimes it can you do get, and there's the early storylines, there's a whole storyline about a pen, a missing pen, and you would swear it goes on for eight months. They're just like, Where is the pen? The silver fountain pen. And and there's and then something about a um, oh, there's something from a from a car, a brake lead or something. And oh, where's the brake? Oh, it was in my pocket. Oh, no, it's not in my pocket anymore. Oh, and it just doesn't stop. And but you know, because you love the characters, you're willing, you're happy to spend time with them. But sometimes you're like, okay, chop chop, let's go. Let's we can we can move this on a little bit.
SPEAKER_01So the fan consensus is this isn't very good, but presumably it did well enough because it got a sequel.
SPEAKER_02So I think I think the first one did really well. And I say that the critical reception of it was, I mean, obviously, there were some who didn't like it, but I think it did really quite well. And I I'm saying, fans, I think, you know, some people probably did enjoy it. I'm sure, I'm sure kids enjoyed it. I'm sure young people really enjoyed it. I think it's more the ones that had really bought into the whole romantic side were like, oh, but now this is not a romantic like hero. This is you know, a tortured hero. This is a nasty fucker. Like, this is someone who's just going around killing everyone. And at the end, he's basically just roaring.
SPEAKER_03He's like, come down here, I'm gonna kill you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, um, and it's not really, there's nothing sort of like lovable about Barthes at the end by the end of the film. Yeah. Um, and yeah, Knights of Dark Shadows, it's not got any of the people from the first one. It's got the it's got the sort of B team, including David Selby as Quentin Collins, who's great, but he's like proper romantic hero in the show, and he's younger, and he's really like the sort of the the cover the magazine cover star lead. And then he just gets a horrible like time in that film. So it's again, it's it there's nothing really like there's nothing for the sort of lovesick teenagers in these films. It's a lot more like the horror fans and maybe little kids who like the blood.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Um do you have much more to say on this film?
SPEAKER_02Uh I don't think so. I think it's like I say, I think it is really well directed, I think it's quite classy, and as we sort of touched on earlier on, I think this sort of, as you said, the American gothic thing. I think Hammer could have learned a few things from this approach because it's not going just for the like tits and blood. Like he's going for the blood, but it's doing something a little bit different. And if it had had more space and and like maybe they'd done a sequel, they were supposed to do a sequel, and I think ultimately the actors didn't some of the actors didn't want to. I think Jonathan Fred was like, I don't want to do another film of that character. Yeah. Um so then they moved on to different characters, and then it just did the second film, which didn't do well. I think if they'd have done a Barnabas sequel when the show ended, it would have done really well again because people would have been like, oh, the show's not on anymore, I'd love to see more of that. I think it could have been a bit more, you know, slow the pace down, just give us a bit more character stuff. They could have done some of the time travel stuff. Yeah. I think they could have done a really good sequel that would have worked and it just wasn't what was happening. And also I think perhaps as well, Dan Curtis didn't, he quite likes bleak horror. And so I think he really wasn't that interested in doing a sweet gothic romance. He wanted just nasty stuff, and then he got to do that, and then in burnt offerings, that's what he does again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. So is it a clanger, a banger, or an average meander?
SPEAKER_02It's I think objectively, it's an average meander. I think it is I think it's fascinating. I think everyone sort of should watch it and see how you do that. Because as far as I'm aware, it's the only proper film adaptation of a soap. I'm saying that that could be untrue, but and definitely when the soap's still in production. I don't think that's the kind of thing that's happened. Um, but I but I think in itself, there's too much missing for it to properly work. I don't think it can be a banger because it it doesn't have the time to develop the characters.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No, I agree. I it's an average meander. I think, as you say, it's a fascinating step into a spin-off of a soap. It's a pretty run-of-the-mill horror film from the time. It's 90 minutes of an average horror film. Like I didn't have a bad time, but I was not, I was not blown away by it.
SPEAKER_02No, and I think if you go in, I I sort of I wanted you to have seen at least some of the episodes as well. Because I think if you just see the film and you're not even seeing where they're coming from, I think you're kind of missing a lot. It helps with a bit of context, I think.
SPEAKER_01If I'd just seen the film, I don't think I would have gone, oh, I can see 30 minutes a day of of these, you know. So it's not really an in from that point of view, but uh, you know, it was fine. It was fine. So meander. So the next thing we're going to cover is The Death Mask, which is a Dark Shadows audio play from Big Finish Productions. It was released in May 2011. Directed by Darren Goss, written by Mark Thomas Passmore, and produced by James Goss and Joseph Lidster, and line produced by Stuart Manning and Paul Sprague. Now, the landscape at the time, I just thought I'd have a look at what 2011 held for Big Finish and the audio world. So The Eighth Doctor and Lucy Miller were on season four of their audio adventures. Jay Go and Lightfoot series two and three. Uh, if you're a fan of the first Doctor, the Oliver Harper trilogy had begun. Then we had an audiobook of Rob Shearman's Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical. The Mervyn Stone mysteries were a couple of novels from Nev Phantom that were published by them. The Doctor Who's season 27 audios. Then we had some big finish originals. We had Not a Well Woman with Katie Manning. Unintelligent Design with Jeffrey Beavers. In Conversation with an Acid Bath Murderer by Nigel Fares, Graceless Two, and Mary Shelley also joined the Eighth Doctor for some adventures. So there we go. That is the audio landscape. I haven't experienced quite a few of those, to be honest.
SPEAKER_02There's a lot of that. I mean, I've I've I can picture the Mervyn Stone stuff, but I've never heard it.
SPEAKER_01I re- I read the first one. I I I think I ended up buying all the books and only read the first one, and they went to a charity shop years ago.
SPEAKER_02I've got all the Big Finish originals somewhere. Like I've definitely bought those on a sale somewhere. Don't think I've listened to any of them. No. Oh no, have you ever listened to Louise Jameson Pulling Faces? Was it that was one? I listened to her one. I don't think I've got the Jeffrey Beavers one, the Katie Manual. I didn't listen to those. Some of those are great. I mean, Lucy Miller, season four of those ones is amazing.
SPEAKER_01Love those ones, yeah. And the Oliver Harper stuff was great. Season 27. They were good, yeah, yeah, they were good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, sort of. I guess I'm sort of happy about that, sort of.
SPEAKER_01Be careful what you wish for, Doctor Who fans. Be careful what you wish for. Tony Peterson travels to a remote island for a gathering hosted by wealthy collector Harrison Pierce. Among the guests is Cassandra Collins, whose presence immediately troubles Tony due to past involvement with her and her family. When a storm cuts the island off from the mainland, Pierce is apparently murdered and a mysterious golden mask vanishes. As Tony and Cassandra investigate, a series of bizarre deaths occur, each linked to the powers of the legendary death mask that is said to command the elements. The mystery culminates in the revelation that Pierce faked his own death and used the mask's supernatural powers against those he believed were exploiting him. Tony eventually stops him, but Cassandra disappears with the mask, leaving its fate unknown.
SPEAKER_02Why did you pick this? Well, I mean, there are a lot of uh options for Big Finish Dark Shadows. I think what I feel about this one is it's doing something really interesting where it's not continuing the main storyline. They do that, they continue the sort of series as it would be if like it had carried on with a bit of a jump. Maybe it's I need to give a bit of context. So that what they do in Big Finish is you have the you have sort of four mini-series which continue the storyline of the show, uh, roughly sort of like 10 years later. Right. And what they're doing is they are happening before an audio that wasn't Big Finish that was called Return to Collinwood, which was done as a play or a live reading at a convention. Right. And then recorded as an audio. And then there was actually a sequel to that that was never recorded called Vengeance at Collinwood, which never happened never was ever recorded. And so what Big Finish did was they filled the gap, but they took Return to Collinwood as a fixed point. And then between the end of the show and Return to Collinwood, they did their own series. Oh, interesting. So they have these four mini-series. They've got one that doesn't have a name, then they've got Kingdom of the Dead, then there's Bloodlust and Bloodline. And then there is also 50, what they call dramatized readings, of which the Death Mask is one. And these happen at different places. So some of them just happen random times in the show. They take a couple of characters, do something with them, and then towards the end, they link up with the miniseries. So you start having little kind of side stories happening at the same time. Um, and there's 50 of these. So they started off with a two-parter, which was a uh reading of uh Lara Parker, who plays the character of Angelique, who's a witch. She wrote a book, she wrote four books, but she wrote a book called Angelique's Descent, which basically adapts her own storyline from the show and was pretty successful. And they adapt that as a two-part audio, and then they start doing what they call these dramatized readings, which start off as basically two voices, just do it. So two characters doing story, a bit like companion chronicles. By the end, they become much more complex and they're basically full cast audios. And they're really, really great, really, really good. Then there's a couple of others here and there, other box sets and specials. They did Roy Gill did a 50th anniversary special called Blood and Fire, which I considered choosing that one, but it's really long. And that was the only reason I thought it might be better to go for a kind of one-hour drama rather than a four-hour drama, but it's brilliant, I highly recommend it. And so what they do in a lot of these stories is they take a couple of characters and they just expand on their storyline, on their sort of personalities, just give you a bit more depth to the characters and just a lot more space than they were afforded on the show. And so this one is the first of five in that range. Right. And then they also gave them three box sets that happen within those five stories because they were so popular. And you take two characters. So you take Angelique Bouchard, who's known as Cassandra Collins at this point in the storyline, and Tony Peterson, who is a character who was in not that much of the show, he sort of was in a few episodes. And they had a storyline where she was a witch and he was sort of investigating odd goings on, and she ended up sort of hypnotising him and making him work for her. And then he leaves and it's done, and they move on to other things. And so this is the first of a series of stories that return to those characters and just explore their relationship and like what would happen if they met up again. And I just think they're a lovely series. There's five of them. One of them is a bit of a weird sort of outlier because it's only really got one of them in telling a story. And so it's mainly basically you get a series of four stories, and they just have this lovely relationship that develops across them. I've I'm a big fan of both of the actors. I think they're both great voice actors. And I just think this is a good representation of the way Big Finish deals with and develops the Dark Shadows universe.
SPEAKER_01There's there's familiar elements to it in terms of not Dark Shadows itself, but the Big Finish approach to expanding on uh existing franchises. Uh, that I you mentioned the Companion Chronicles earlier, which is you know, various Doctor Who actors sort of doing a one-hander or a two-hander telling stories that for whatever reason, because the cast are dead or just because that it's it's a complicated story that they've that the they choose that that method to tell the story. I think it's exactly kind of what you want from a a niche sort of audio spin-off. It's like, actually, we can spend some time with these characters doing this that you probably wouldn't do if you were doing a all guns blazing sequel or or reboot. So I like when Dark Shadows came to Big Finish, I was cynically like, hey, what the fuck is this? And uh why why should I be interested in this? You haven't done quite a mass. Why are you doing Dark Shadows? Obviously, rights, blah, blah, blah, blah. Does Big Finish and audio feel like a natural place for Dark Shadows to be in 2011? I would say yes.
SPEAKER_02I was also a little bit, I was like, how do you make this work? And I think part of it is because we didn't have points of reference. So when Big Finish started with Doctor Who, we had already had examples of Doctor Who on audio and we knew that it could work. And then I hadn't heard Return to Collin Wood before hearing the Big Finish stuff. And I thought, oh, how's this going to work? But I think actually one of the key things that works about Dark Shadows is it is about the character work, and it was never really about the special effects, particularly, or not in a good way. And so I think it's quite nice that you just get it's all audio. And what Dark Shadows also really has, which I don't think should be understated, is that much though people criticize it, they had great actors and they had actors who went on to have really great successful careers. They had some actors who'd had careers, good careers beforehand, and they had other ones, like, you know, almost none of them were kind of out of work. They went on to, they may not have been the most famous uh names, but they'd gone on to like, you know, really quite strong careers in film and and television, or even the ones that stayed in basically just doing soap operas, but they were very successful in that, in that world. There are quite a few sort of who died really tragically young and things like that that would have had uh, I'm sure, bigger careers as well. So I think Big Finish is really able to kind of capitalise on the fact that you've just got some great actors with very distinctive voices somehow. Oh, yeah, which particularly in this one, and so you can they can then just use those and and really kind of uh do do an interesting job of expanding on those on those characters, while throwing in one of the one of the big criticisms I think I would have, and it's not just in Dark Shadows, but it's Big Finish and Americans, or rather not Americans doing American accents. So you get the Dark Shadows cast who are all American, but when they have to fill out the numbers sometimes, not all of them, some of them are really good, some of them are really good, but some of them it's a little bit agonizing to listen to when you get the English actors doing these accents.
SPEAKER_01I know there are American actors of all levels in the UK, so I'm always just like, why the fuck are you? Why are you doing this? It always frustrates me, but you know, that that that's a niggle that I think you can spread across all audio drama and a lot of television, to be perfectly honest. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. So this is interesting. Only I really enjoyed this. It sort of whipped along, it's an hour long, and I thought it was a a a good little story. Ultimately, it's a story with you will have seen before in sort of various horror films, sci fi things, and things like that. But there's nothing wrong with that. It's a who done it. Essentially. Yeah. It's it's adapting that for this show in this format. And I think it works really well. You know, it's a bunch of rich people trapped on an island being picked off one by one. And I think you genuinely don't know who done it when it starts, and there's a there's a lot of good twists and turns. What are your thoughts on this story and this script?
SPEAKER_02Well, as you said, I think the key thing, especially here, is that they're setting up the the dynamic of what they'll go on to do. So yeah, the storyline is very much classic. It's like you've got Tony, who's a lawyer, who's working for this man called Harrison Pierce. He's invited to a party, he doesn't really want to be there on this island. Um Harrison Pierce has a collection of weird things that he's sort of showing off. He's also very rich. At the party, Tony then bumps into Cassandra, who is Angelique, who is a witch, who is the one who made Barnabas into a vampire. She's very important to the sort of backstory of Dark Shadows. Um, but basically, Tony was someone that she sort of fucked over, didn't care about. It was a very minor part of the storyline. He got in her way, so she sort of ruined his life. And then this posits the really interesting thing of okay, but then what happens then if they meet up again? What will happen when so she doesn't particularly care about him, but from his perspective, she ruined his life and he really doesn't like her. But they're thrown together in this storyline and they have this kind of grudging sort of respect for each other that then develops into more as the story goes on. But this one is all about putting them in a situation where they meet up again and they have to work together. And I think it does it really, really nicely.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a really nice little character piece and getting them to sort of understand each other's point of view. And I think the the relationship that they build over the course of it is quite an interesting one. Are these two characters that interact a lot in the TV series and indeed the audio range?
SPEAKER_02No, no. What's interesting is the actors interact, but not as those characters all the time. So their actual interaction as those characters is very small. Like, you know, she they've they sort of have a storyline of he gets introduced just before they do a big trip into the past. So his storyline kind of begins and then they go on to something totally different, and then they catch back up again in the present day. She's introduced in the past storyline, and then she comes back into the present-day storyline. And yeah, she's just trying to manipulate various people. He gets in the way and she sort of uses him as her plaything for a bit and then moves on. So they don't, those actual characters, and he is not an important Tony Peterson is not an important character in Dark Shadows. He's a bit of a throw, they bring him in as a sort of potential romantic interest for a couple of characters. He sort of hangs around, he doesn't like the family, he's got a bit of a grudge against the family, but there's nothing really done with that. And then he's just gone again, and he plays, he he stays with the show playing a different character who's who's great, who he's much more associated with as a character. Whereas Angelique think she just carries on bit being Angelique and and she is in the second, she's in Knight of Dark Shadows, she's one of she's one of the main characters in that. So yeah, they don't really that's so they're really building sort of something from nothing, really, or from from very from very little. And I don't think anyone would ever have expected that this would be a thing that people would do. They're not if you think about, okay, if even if you think about this um structure of these dramatised readings, you're like, okay, we've got two actors. Who are we gonna have? Who are we gonna put together? And some of them you're like, well, of course, those two are gonna go together. You know, this just makes sense. You would have those two interacting. I don't think anyone would have thought of these two characters interacting particularly. Uh well, except obviously somebody did, but uh I don't know. It's a bit of a master stroke, really, to put these these two particular characters together.
SPEAKER_01I also think it's interesting, like all of the people writing for this must have a vested interest in the range. Because like, even the name Mark Thomas Pasmore.
SPEAKER_02I he wrote he writes all of the or he writes the four of these kind of main stories they have together. And I don't know who he is. I don't know anything about him.
SPEAKER_01No, like he's not somebody who's like, oh, he's written a Doctor Who, he's written a Blake Story. No, no. I think you need people who, if they don't know the series already, are going to get invested in it and sort of want to go through and go, actually, that's a story can tell, that's a story can tell, rather than just carrying it on. How does the script work in terms of being both a dark shadows script and an audio script?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think this is something that's sort of explored a bit later on because they do have references back to the dark shadows sort of universe, but at the same time, they're quite happy to move away from that as much as possible. Because this then sets up, so in this one, he's a lawyer and she's just a witch, and they just happen to meet up, and then he becomes a private detective, and eventually she's working alongside him, and that kind of their relationship develops, they end up investigating things together, which is brilliant. I mean, it's just it's a great, it's a great run. I I love it. And I just recently did re-listen to all of them, and I still love it. And then they got these three spin-off box sets as well, just to give them more time uh to work together. What I think this does is it it takes just certain elements, but it really does something totally different. It doesn't necessarily feel like a dark shadows, it feels like a supernatural caper, uh, but it doesn't necessarily it doesn't necessarily feel like it's come for the Dark Shadows universe. But I think that's almost a strength really. It's just showing that the Dark Shadows universe is rich enough that you can do things with just certain elements from it and put them in totally different situations, but they'll still work really well.
SPEAKER_01I I also think even my limited knowledge of Cassandra mainly, it felt like Dark Shadows characters in that story. So you've been able to transfer them there without losing the core of the show.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they definitely they keep their, they've all got their sort of uh unique selling points. Some of the actors said, Oh, when we started Big Finish, we we felt that it was very far from what we'd done before. But I think they all sort of slowly realized that it was still very much like in the lineage of what they'd done before. It's just that it it was it's being done, you know, 50 years later. And the way that we react, the way that we respond to characters have changed. And I also think that what's nice about it is it take it shows you the impact of what's a very small thing on screen. And they do this a lot in the big finish, where they'll return to, oh, but then do you remember when that that little thing happened? Right. And they turn that into a much bigger thing. And I've just been listening as well to one of their mini-series where they basically pause the action uh in one episode to just have a two-hander between two characters with a lot of backstory, and basically each one just kind of explains why they don't like the other one essentially, and then by the end, they've sort of come to understand each other. But they're referring to all these little things, these little events that might seem relatively unimportant in the show, but then they apply them in this thing of like, but actually, if that happened to you, you wouldn't get over that. You'd definitely still be holding a grudge about that. And I think that's particularly nice here, where I don't really think that many fans would have particularly cared about Tony Peterson. I think they like Jerry Lacey, they like the actor, and he is great, but he plays another character, Reverend Trask, who's this kind of horrible, sort of bigoted, nasty priest who has who doesn't like Angelique. And he people think of him as being Reverend Trask, and I don't I think they kind of forget Tony quite a bit. But it's nice to go back and be like, okay, but like what would happen to Tony? Like, Tony went through a lot, like in this short space of time. Um, and what does that what would that mean for the character? And I think that's played really nicely in these audios.
SPEAKER_01You mentioned there how the actors responded when they were first doing these big finish audios. Do you know what the response was from Dark Shadows fans to the series continuing this way?
SPEAKER_02I honestly don't really actually. And I do what I mostly seen uh responses from is from Doctor Who fans who then discovered Dark Shadows through the audios. Um, and there were a lot of reviews on kind of timescales and things where people are saying, well, like, I didn't know what this was, but then I listened to it and I really liked it. And I think they what they do have, I think, especially the early ones they do, is they have a great atmosphere. And I don't think they're necessarily the most accessible. So the first miniseries they do that doesn't have an overarching name, but it's just four stories. And it basically just brings all the characters back in. That's that they've all sort of been away and they all come back. But it has this fantastic atmosphere. Like the sound design is just beautifully done. And they do some recasts, but they're really good recasts, and they sort and then they bring back the kind of main key characters who are still with us. And I think it's very appealing. Like I think it just works really well. So I think it worked even for people that had no idea, and it does make you want to listen to more. You're kind of like, okay, but who's that? And like, I wonder what that means, and I wonder who this person is. And they sort of really set it up very well. And what was nice is you get so you get that kind of um full cast extension of the TV show, and then at the same time, you had the dramatized readings that then develop on the characters. And if you're listening to both at the same time, you get this really nice, rich sort of introduction to the universe. And it's interesting what you were saying about people being invested in the characters, because I think they get some great writers who I'm assuming weren't particularly fans, like Jonathan Morris writes a couple, and Nev Fountain writes a couple, but they're just good writers. So they do something really interesting that's maybe not anything like the show particularly, but they take a concept. There's one that's just basically Colin Baker. It might just be, I don't even know if there's other voice actors in it. And it's Colin Baker getting involved in events in the town, but it really ties into loads of the ongoing sort of story, the overarching storyline and stuff, and brings back a character who you've not seen before in a in a kind of new way. But it's great, it's really like it's really fun to listen to.
SPEAKER_01I think that Colin Baker one might be the one other one that I've heard. I'm trying to.
SPEAKER_02Is that the one you've heard?
SPEAKER_01I think so.
SPEAKER_02Because I do think this is an accessible story for an outsider like what this oh, this one is. This one. That's that's another reason. I like it because it's the start of something, but it gives you all of the elements that you really need to kind of get into the storyline. By the end of this one, you sort of know who everybody is, you know what's going on between them, and well, from in my case, you're ready for more. Like you want to know what's happening next.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Jumping back to the fan thing, I vaguely remember from this panel I sat through. I say sat through like a begrudgingly or something. Oh god, vi this panel I attended, it's uh this big finish day. And I think they said the thing about Dark Shadows fans is it's a bunch of predominantly women in their 60s and 70s, and they're not online. There's one forum, and we're talking 10, 15 years ago at the time, where they post about these things. So, in order to promo these things when they got the license, they they had to be sort of feet on the ground at the Dark Shadows fan club meetings and conventions and things like that, because that was the only way to get through to it. They just it wasn't an audience that spent a lot of time on Twitter or Facebook that you could go, you could do some direct marketing to.
SPEAKER_02The fan community is which I mean, I'd say I'm sort of on on the edges of it. I'm not like a kind of die hard Dark Shadows fan, but I think they are incredibly passionate, but and it's the same in, you know, fan communities across the spectrum, you know, the um Doctor Who can be very similar. You have a lot of sort of inflexibility, and they're like, we don't we like what we like and we don't want anything else. And I think that sometimes can have an effect when people are trying to do something a bit different. And I know Joe Lidster's thing, when he took over the uh product producing of the range, he was saying he wanted to make it feel like the show had moved forward. So he because he was sort of like, okay, well, we're 20 years beyond well, 10, 15 years beyond that where the show ended in turn in the timeline, what would have happened? And he was like, Well, you know, okay, the original Dark Shadows, for example, there's no gay characters because it's 1967. But he was like, well, but like there would have been if it was still going in the 80s, so we're gonna like bring this up to date. And I think there's stuff in there, and when you're doing things that you change the relationships between the characters because you're trying to move it forward. Move it on, yeah. I think, yeah, I think some people get a bit, it rubs them the wrong way, I think. And and this is, I mean, the big thing is the Tim Burton film when it finally happened. I mean, I don't think it's what anyone expected, because it's a comedy, it's not but I think it's really fun, and the fans hate it. I mean, they vehemently, like really, they they won't kind of accept any sort of like comment about it. Like if you go on the forum and people will mention it, someone will be like, oh, I just saw this film, I thought it was quite good, and they're like ripped to shreds. It's like, no, you can't possibly like that. It it betrays the show. And I think there was an issue that they bring in four of the actors from the series, they bring them in for a little cameo, but I think the main actor, Jonathan Frit, who who played Barnabas, by that point he wasn't very well, and they shipped him over to Pinewood, and I think he had sort of onset of dementia, and and so basically they they just appear in like one shot, and they couldn't really do. I think they were supposed to have a little bit more of like a presence. And so I think the actors had quite a bad time, and I've spoken to three of them about that, and they were like, Yeah, we were all quite upset because we were sort of brought there, but then we didn't get to do anything, and I think so then they had a bad experience, and then the fans then went with that as like, oh, even the original actors hate this. And I don't think they actually do. I think they've sort of come to terms with it, but they just had a bad experience on the day, and so yeah, there's a lot of like criticism that I don't think is very is entirely justified criticism that comes from the Dark Sundays fans, but they're also very passionate and very lovely and you know, sort of that they really love what they love.
SPEAKER_01I mean, things can't stay the same, can they? So I think it's why I I was sort of drawn to this approach of taking two familiar characters and putting them in a different setting that could be and again I don't mean this in a disparaging way, but could be any old horror or side-fire series. Absolutely series. But it's not about the plot, which is a perfectly serviceable and interesting plot, but it's it's it's the characters at the heart of it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and what I think I think the Death Mask particularly, it it sounds like the kind of thing that could be it could be on Radio 4 of an afternoon. It's like, you know, it's it's quite sort of it's like a love, it's quite lovely and sort of uh even though it's sort of horror in the background, but it's it's a character piece and it's sort of it it's it doesn't tax the uh the mind too much. It's just sort of quite nice to listen to. And I think as they go forward, they do become partly they become f fuller cast audios, and they go a bit further down the sort of they how they have a relationship and it's like and it investigates that and it leads to the ending, which has Sarah Saturn is in the final story that they do. I'm sold. It's yeah, I mean to be honest, it's probably my favourite performance she's ever done. But it's um it's it's good, it's good. And and they and as I say, I think the fact it's the same writer through most of them that that that kind of carries it through. I sort of get the impression that Passmore turned up at the office and was like, right, I've got these scripts, can we just do these? And they were like, Yeah, cool. Like, you know, that's probably not what happened at all. But it kind of feels like he had a vision, right? And I think it works really well. And then what is nice is that they then did these other three box sets. So you do have more time, but because they're set within the existing stories, they don't really progress the characters that much, but they're just there to have more time with these characters that we really like. So it's really nice that they exist.
SPEAKER_01And what about the the titular death mask? How does that play into the story? Do you think that works?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I think it works, but they're all sort of because you've got there's the death mask, then there's the voodoo amulet, the phantom bride, and the devil cat. They're like the four main, then there's the last stop, which is a bit of a separate one. But that they're the main, but each one basically the things are essentially just the MacGuffin that you get the to get these two characters together. Because it is very, I mean, it's not screwball comedy, but it is that sort of like you've got this pairing who could be a sort of Hollywood pairing, and they just sort of do their they they get involved in the adventures. And the but the death ask is Harrison Pierce and he's got this mask, and the what is quite nice is that uh you get you still have the sense that Angelique or Cassandra is not necessarily a hundred percent good because she has been sent in to basically kind of verify and potentially steal this mask, and at the end, that is what she does, and she's still sort of lying to Tony at the end. So you have she's not redeemed, right? Uh she's still a little bit edgy, which is what you want because you honestly don't want Anjali to become a nice character. I mean, there are times when she does, and she definitely sides with the good characters, but you want her to have a bit more agency than that. And I think that's something Dark Shadows did very well, is having so female characters that are sort of have agency. And what's quite nice is that you get ones where that they're sort of out for themselves, and for whatever reason, they're doing something, but they're not really affected by the behavior of the other characters. And this is especially in going back to the Laura, Laura the Phoenix storyline, is that Laura comes in and all she wants is to burn herself to death with her child. That is what she wants, that is what the character wants. So she sort of fucks over everyone else, she'll get involved in their storylines, but only because she wants to get towards like her progress progress her life cycle. And it's it's really kind of nice and refreshing. And when Laura comes in, she really galvanizes all the other characters because all the other characters, there are characters that care about her and are interested in her, but she doesn't give a shit about any of them. She's just playing everyone. And Angelique, her thing is that she loves Barnabas and she loves him so much that she curses him to be a vampire, and she loves him so much that she destroys everything around him. But it's this sort of powerful thing, and that is all she cares about. So what we see in um The Death Mask is that she is still kind of out for herself, but she can also care about other people and starts and kind of develops into, you know, a warmer character. But you've still got this thing in the background of she's still a very powerful person who knows what she wants and she's doing things because she is trying to get to a certain point and she'll she doesn't mind using other people. So we get this storyline where they've by the end they've sort of made their peace, but she's still lying to him, she's still misleading him, she's not sort of she's not fully on his side, maybe. And I think that's great. I really like that.
SPEAKER_01I thought it was a a decent little drama. I had a great time with it. I would be re-interested to hear some more, you know. I'm sort of suitably intrigued by the universe of the audios and the TV shows, less so the film. I don't have too much more to say on this because it's a fairly straightforward story. It's a great character piece. I think both the cast members give a great performance, and I want to see more of them. Uh, do you have anything to add?
SPEAKER_02No, I like I say just to pick up on that point, I think they're both very good actors. Um, he's doing his sort of Humphrey Bogart thing, and and she's doing her sort of because I mean Lara Parker, she had a really quite interesting career, and she she appears in a lot of shows just for like one episode, but she's David Banner's wife in The Incredible Hulk who dies at the beginning, and she's in an episode of Kolchak, and she's she appears in the and she's in a film called Race with the Devil, which she's got with with Peter Fonda, which is a great sort of underrated horror thriller where a load of people on a caravan holiday see a I've seen that movie.
SPEAKER_01It was one of those films that I saw in my childhood and got burned into my mind.
SPEAKER_02It took me years until I discovered what that film was actually for. And she's in that, she's one of the wives in that, and she and she's great. And I think, you know, so I think she she is a really good actress. She has a great voice, as does Jerry Lacey. So they're a really good pairing because they're both they've both got these sort of excellent, rich voices. Yeah. Um and it's good to hear genuine Americans in Big Fitness. And you're hearing genuine Americans, and then and so that is just delightful. And again, that's something that you don't get necessarily all the way through, but you you get it in this one. And it's one of those as well where it still kind of feels I had to I'd sort of forgotten that it wasn't a full cast audio. I I was kind of like, oh, like, yeah, there's actually like no, it's just them, basically. And I'd sort of forgotten that because I think they do such a great job and it's very well put together. As you say, it's it's quite a simple story, but it's uh but it's a solid story, like it works really well. So I think yeah, I think it's just lovely to spend more time with these characters and with these actors.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's a good gateway in if you're curious about the Dark Shadows audio range.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, yeah, definitely. It's one of it's one of, I would say it's one of the best genuine entry points. There are other ones, and there is also the there's the Bloodlust miniseries, which was kind of designed as a stepping on point. But I think once you get further into it, it is still the third miniseries. So it there is still backstory that you're missing. Whereas I think this one, they tell you everything you need to know, and by the end of it, you sort of know everything. That's going on. I think that works really well.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. So then we must rate it. Is it a clanger, a banger, or an average meander? It's a banger for me. It's a banger for me too. A lot of fun. Great to listen to. And, you know, generally colour me intrigued by the Dark Shadows universe. That was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed dipping my toes into Dark Shadows, the TV series, and the audios. Do you think there's Life Left in Dark Shadows as a franchise?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we haven't, we haven't talked about this yes. I really think there is. And they came, from what I've read and what I've heard, they came really close to doing a reboot. So there was the 1991 reboot that is great. Highly recommend it. Again, a lot of the fans are like, oh, it's not the same actors. But it's really, really, really well cast. And it's the same kind of thing. They have great actors in Ben Cross is Barnabas, and Joanna Going plays Victoria, who's an actress who I think is absolutely brilliant, who's really underrated, but really, really good. Joseph Gordon Levitt as a little child is in it. It's a brilliant cast. And it works really well, but there was the Gulf War and they had to keep rescheduling it and no one watched it and it just got dropped. And I think it could have done really well. I think if it had been released three years later, two or three years later, it would have been a massive hit and it would have carried on for th through the whole of the 90s, I think. It was a little bit just too early, I think. If it had come out after Bram Stoker's Dracula, where that taste for sort of romantic vampires was in the air, that would have done really well. Then they tried to reboot it again in 2004. They made a pilot which is absolutely batshit. And if we think House of Dark Shadows moves fast, the pilot, it's like it adds in an extra like 200 episodes into what they're covering. And you're like in an hour, by the end of it, you're sort of like, I think I'm gonna be sick. Like you've and and it's it's interesting. It's got the cast. Oh god, who's that actress? I've forgotten her name. I don't think she's actually a very good actress, but she always gets loads of awards. Jessica Chastain is in it. Right. It's got um Marley Shelton, who's in various things, screen four and screen five, I like her in. Uh it's it's another really interesting cast. Uh, I don't think and that, but it's flawed. It's like a last ditch attempt from Dan Curtis to reboot it, and it's like, it's not what it needed to be, so it doesn't quite work. Although some of the actors in it, as with the actors from the 1991, Big Finish have also used them in their stuff, which is nice. But then somebody tried to reboot to do a sort of legacy reboot thing a couple of years ago, that I think was called Dark Shadows Resurrection, which would have brought back some of the original characters. Right. And I was honestly a bit surprised it didn't happen, or at least that a pilot didn't happen. I really thought it would. And I spoke to some of the actors and they were like, Yeah, we've we kind of were pretty sure it was gonna happen, and then it didn't happen. And now I think one day it will come back. But I think what is a bit of a shame is that I think now we've lost a lot of the actors from the original show. And I mean, like one of them said to me, I I met up with one of the actresses and she said, How would you bring it back? And I said, I would bring, I said, to be honest, I would bring you back, but I would kill you in about five minutes because ultimately, like, you're too old, like you can't have an 85-year-old that's really key to the story with well without a lot of risks. And I said, basically, I would bring you in for a little cameo, I'd kill you off, and I'd film you in front of a green screen and do loads of like ghostly apparitions for later on, but realistically, you're not gonna be in it, you're not gonna be the star of it. She was like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fair. But I think there is, and I think what the big finish audios show is that there are lots of different ways it could be done. Like, my thing is that, you know, and I've discussed this with I was discussing this with some producers, and I said I wouldn't have Barnabas in it till season three.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02I would do other characters, and I would always have people knowing that that was coming like later on, because there would be that thing of, oh, but where's the vampire? You know, so but I think there are, I think there are ways it could it could happen. I think it will happen. I think the Burton film harmed it in a way in that it just it it it wasn't what people expected. And it and I I actually think on its own terms, I think it's a great little comedy, and I think it's really well cast, but I just don't think it was what the franchise needed to kind of reboot it.
SPEAKER_01Fortunately, though, for Dark Shadows, it didn't really have the cultural impact where there's like a whole generation of moviegoers going, well, that's what Dark Shadows is, you know.
SPEAKER_02No, that's true. It's just gone. It's like we've moved on, which is a real shame. I mean, I think some of the people in that are sort of the best versions of the characters that we ever got, basically. But and I think some of them, I mean, Michelle Pfeiffer's brilliant in it, but it yeah, it wasn't the the tone of it was all over the place and it just didn't do what it needed to do. But I think one day someone is gonna go, this is really interesting, you know, sort of IP. Yeah. We should do something with this. And and there's still what's fascinating is that for a show that only lasted five years, the longevity of it, the fact that there's been 50 audio dramas that have come from it, the fact that there's been a fair few comic book adaptations that they've done, the fact that there was a film 40 years later, I think it shows that there is love for it. And it's basically such a flexible format that I think somebody one day is gonna, it's gonna click and they're gonna be like, this is this is how we need to do it. Um I think a lot of it is just it's bad luck, I think, especially for the 1991 thing. I think it's just it wasn't the right time for it. But in itself, it's 12 great episodes, really fun watch, like you know, sort of highly recommend that as well. I I think I think somebody, I think it will come back. I don't think the the the doors are sort of shut on it, but I think what is a shame as well, I think for Big Finish, what's a shame is that too many of the actors that are are are dead now to to really continue it because they did some recasts, they did some interesting recasts, but ultimately you need some of the original actors in it really to kind of keep it being dark shadows. Yeah. And some of them are still they're still some of them are still working and they're still going and they're still they probably would, but I think it's getting to the stage where it's going to be harder and harder. And I think because of the production, because it was they were a lot of them were recording from the US, it was like they're essentially co-producing it with Jim Pearson, who runs the Dan Curtis estate. I think they couldn't bank stuff in the same way they do with Doctor Who, for example, where they're like, right, let's just get you in and we'll record hundreds of things for the next 20 years. I don't think that's necessarily that would have been possible for them. And so I think it's a bit of a shame.
SPEAKER_01I think you probably got a situation similar to what you had with Blake Seven where most of the reboots that were attempted featured Paul Darrow as Avon reprising his role, and then now it is gone, a lot of the cast are gone, and it you're really at a point where the only relaunch you do has to be sort of a hard reboot, I think. Because that there's just no way around it. But uh there we go. Well, look, thank you so much for introducing me to the world of dark shadows today. It's been an absolute joy. If people want to find you on the internet, where can they find you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I'm at uh Martang66 on Instagram and X and Blue Sky and everywhere. Not really that interesting. Um, and various things sort of academically. If you look on academia.edu, you find some of my articles on there as well.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Awesome. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as it helps people to find the pod. Look for TooHot for TV on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at TooHotTheNumber4 Pod. That's Too Hot the number four pod for the latest updates and additional content. Next time I'll be joined by Nigel Bromley and we'll be jumping into the expanded universe of Blake 7. But until then, I've been Dylan. And I've been Martin. And this has been Too Hot for TV. Big finish's license has been extended till 2035 for Doctor Who. Wow.
SPEAKER_02Jesus Christ. It's like, and there'll still be those Tom Baker recordings. Oh my god, however long ago they did them.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god. Anyway.