Dark Shadows

Back in the 60's, there was a gothic soap opera that kids raced home from school to watch. Had vampires, ghosts, time travel, alt dimensions and...spanking references! They attempted a re-make in the 90's which is how I learned about the series. I've stumbled across the original (entire series, btw, in catalogs lists for about $800) on the Internet Archive. Can listen as a radio show, while doing things online, or watch as a program but the writing is outstanding and acting not bad better than much of what's available today.

So it was called "Dark Shadows"?

I can offer a different opinion as someone who watched it after school.

I don't recall spanking references, however, while I did watch the show in its early seasons, I eventually got bored with it, so maybe I missed those episodes. (I certainly would have remembered them had I seen them) As a kid I was a fan of all things creepy and for the 60's, it delivered. There was even a character, Quentin, (the resident werewolf) who had his own original theme music used somewhat as leitmotif in the show, which I had my mother get me as piano sheet music. I think I still have that somewhere.

Anyway, Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins (the vampire) was the scene-stealer. However, as the show went on, it got VERY daytime soap-operalike and subsequently the show went from a show for everyone to a show predominantly followed by moody, pre-Goth girls. If you look there is a whole world of "Dark Shadows" fan fiction, fueled by these girls now all grown up. A few years ago, as Hollywood likes to do, it brought it back as a movie with Johnny Depp, which was ....................IMHO, flat.

So, better than stuff today? I suppose. Good? Hmmm, I'd say the first couple of seasons were decent. Anything to rave about? I guess that depends on who you are and how your tastes run. I do know that for nostalgia, I tried watching the old show as an adult and to show it to my kids, and I found it a Gothic yawn.

kdpierre
I'm listening to it now, like an old radio show, while I do computer work from the very first episode and there's been 6 to 8 spanking references so far and I'm on episode 21.

kerrsutherland
Thank you for that. Even at that age such references for me would be as memorable as the Flintstone episode where Wilma and Betty try to infiltrate the Water Buffalo lodge initiation, and yet......ziltch, nothing. I wonder what that implies. The references must have either been too subtle to my tender ears. LOL.or...... I still think it's more likely that I must have given up on the show before the spanking references surfaced. Even at that age I had little patience for formulaic redundancy. As much as i have (and still) love "all things creepy"....................they still have to have to have some merit to hold my attention. But I'm admittedly a finicky pain in the ass, so .........I'm going to go with my initial assessment about "Dark Shadows" as a initially decent venture that degenerated and pandered over time, appealing primarily to horny 12-year-old girls with a "goth" fetish, leaving boys like me to prefer watching the animated (but still shitty by todays standards) Spiderman.

I'll have to go back and listen to Dark Shadows again. As I remember the show, it had lots of creepy atmosphere, but took forever to actually move the plot forward. Did they ever get around to the actual spanking? Victoria could have used a good lesson for snooping about if I remember right.

That was a soap opera filmed back in the times where spankings were something that happened. They were also used as a substitute for sex (see John Wayne films). I'll have to watch / listen to them for the spanking references. I did try watching them years ago (on VHS) but the melodrama was so very melo that I couldn't finish those VHS tapes.

There are other Dark Shadows things out there. There were a couple of movies made back then - with no spankings. I've seen both.

It was relaunched as a Johnny Depp movie in 2012. Chloë Grace Moretz (Hit Girl from Kick Ass) was 14 / 15 when she played a 15-year-old character, a teenage girl who wanted to move from backwater Maine to NYC. Alas, it wasn't the late 60s / early 70s, so there was not any references to spanking her (just being locked in her room). There wasn't even spanking references towards her younger brother. That said, it's an interesting movie to watch. Johnny Depp playing a vampire from the 18th century interacting with Hippies... Depp's character commenting how ugly a woman hired to sing at a party is - and Alice isn't even a Cooper. Yes, Alice Cooper plays the Ballad of Dwight Fry, with Chloë Grace Moretz doing the little girl intro. And the four surviving stars from the original made cameos during the party scene.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ-6ZqMNAo8 for the song.

There were Golden Key comics made about the show. Dan Ross (writing with one of many pen names) wrote many Dark Shadows novels. I meet him at a con and he said that the series was very successful / profitable.

After the show ended a company called Big Finish started making audio dramas set there, the same way they made audio dramas of Doctor Who. Often they had the original actors reading their characters' part, but those actors have mostly died off. See https://www.bigfinish.com/hubs/v/dark-shadows for more.

The Dark Shadows fan community is still going strong across the generations.

I must be deaf or I'm watching the wrong Dark Shadows. Though there are ample opportunities for spanking references to be used, I am on episode 28 and have only heard one slight reference to the character (a male) being spanked when he was 10 sneaking into the supposedly haunted estate! What am I missing?

Please, a few examples, or just one?

Jim

The noted spanking actress Erica Scott is a huge "Dark Shadows" fan, although if I recall correctly she truly hated the movie remake.

Just started watching Dark Shadows on Prime Video. So far it seems quite slow-moving - taking out the intro, the recap of the previous episode, a second mini-recap in the middle after the commercial break and the outro, there's barely twenty minutes of actual show in each episode. The style's quite melodramatic, too.
Haven't spotted any spanking references yet, but I'm only about twelve episodes in...