Category Archives: June 1969

Episode 786: The Blog Post About The Original Music From Dark Shadows with The Robert Cobert Orchestra & Featuring Jonathan (Barnabas) Frid and David (Quentin) Selby

Gordon Russell, June 1969, , , , , ,

“Listen carefully, and you’ll hear my dream.”

Charity Trask dreams of sexy scoundrel Quentin Collins, just like everybody else in the summer of ’69. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he says. She replies, “I feel so lonely when you’re not here.” This isn’t the part of the dream where he closes his eyes while she gets murdered by a werewolf. This is the other part.

Charity’s father has suddenly decided that she should marry Quentin, for reasons that are mostly product placement-related. The Dark Shadows soundtrack album dropped on Friday, and today’s episode serves up a full-length music video of the feature single, “Shadows of the Night (Quentin’s Theme)”. By music video, I mean that they play the whole song while Quentin and Charity pose and make thoughtful facial expressions. It’s 1969; they haven’t figured out how music videos work yet.

Continue reading Episode 786: The Blog Post About The Original Music From Dark Shadows with The Robert Cobert Orchestra & Featuring Jonathan (Barnabas) Frid and David (Quentin) Selby →

Episode 785: We Interrupt This Program

June 1969, Sam Hall, , , , ,

“This hand, it is not my servant. I tell it what to do, yes, but it has powers that I do not possess.”

If you think about it, it’s almost like this is a real soap opera. For months, the odious Reverend Gregory Trask has been slowly building a relationship with Judith Collins, the current mistress of Collinwood. He admires her virtue, her generosity of spirit, her strength of character, and (most of all) her enormous family fortune. If you admire somebody at close range like that for long enough, it’s going to make an impression.

Then a couple weeks ago, he arranged for his wife Minerva to be killed, and after a barely suitable mourning period, he laid his heart, such as it is, at Judith’s feet.

Now, looking at the structure of the other current storylines, it’s obvious that they’re just being made up from day to day — all this King Johnny Romano nonsense, and everybody suddenly knowing about the legendary hand of Count Petofi. Last week, Magda said that Julianka was dead, but she’s going to show up two weeks from now, alive and temporarily healthy. Barnabas’ fake “engagement” to Angelique, Edward becoming a vampire hunter, Jamison’s dream that had clues about Quentin’s death — remember that one?

All of those supernatural stories are just drifting onscreen and then off again, bumping into each other with no rational plan. But underneath, the writers have been carefully crafting this Trask/Judith seduction story, one story beat after another. There’s been an actual soap opera storyline just sitting there all this time, hiding in plain sight.

Continue reading Episode 785: We Interrupt This Program →

Episode 782: Don’t Leave Home

Gordon Russell, June 1969, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“When you were putting Miss Balfour’s room to rights, did you find a dead snake on her dresser?”

Shadows of the night, falling silently. “Quentin’s Theme” is steadily climbing the Billboard Hot 100 charts, and pretty soon everyone’s going to be humming that tune, whether they want to or not. In this world that we know now, Quentin Collins is a bona fide Dark Shadows phenomenon, with a hit record and everything.

And this phantom melody is even starting to intrude on the hazy parallel world of the Paperback Library gothic romance novels. This peculiar line of spinoff books has been spinning its own cracked version of Dark Shadows for several years now, first chronicling the adventures of an ersatz Victoria Winters, and then tumbling head over heels for Barnabas Collins.

We last checked in with the Paperback Library four months ago to read Barnabas Collins vs the Warlock — the 11th novel in the series, and the sixth to feature Barnabas. By that point, the PBL was following clear editorial guidelines that the greatest human being who ever lived is named Barnabas Collins, and everybody else can go to hell. His only flaw is that his hands are cold, and hands are not everything.

But even the Paperback Library can’t ignore Quentin forever. They can ignore consistency and common sense and the limits of human patience, but Quentin Collins requires a response.

Continue reading Episode 782: Don’t Leave Home →

Episode 780: The Establishment Vampire

June 1969, Sam Hall, , , , , , ,

“I’m always with fear, Barnabas, but we don’t have time to think about that.”

Okay, I get that it’s a rough way to wake up. It’s dusk, and Barnabas gets up out of his coffin, and the door to the secret room in the mausoleum is wide open. Someone’s been sneaking around his coffin, and obviously that’s an unpleasant surprise.

But then Quentin appears at the door, which is pretty much the best case scenario. If somebody’s going to suddenly appear in your bedroom, then it ought to be Quentin Collins, right? You can’t improve on that.

And this is how out of control things have become for Barnabas: he opens his mouth and bares his fangs. Dude, seriously. What are you planning to do? Put that back in your mouth, and try, for the first time in your long and ridiculous life, to be a grownup.

Continue reading Episode 780: The Establishment Vampire →

Episode 778: Pocket Full of Kryptonite

June 1969, Violet Welles, , , ,

“Why not bring back a strange, powerful hand to solve all our problems?”

It always starts with a box.

But this time, it’s important. At least, that’s what people tell themselves, just before they pop the lock and open the lid. This time, the wolf is at the door, the bad guy is getting away, the emperor refuses to surrender. I have no choice, they say. It’s really important.

And when they say it’s important, what they mean is I’m important. As in, more important than whoever gets hurt. I am important enough to flip this switch, to drop this bomb, to use this power which no one should wield. I am more important than you, and here’s the proof: this hell I’m unleashing.

Continue reading Episode 778: Pocket Full of Kryptonite →

Episode 777: All Points

June 1969, Violet Welles, ,

“I know what the evil force wants you to do next.”

March 6, 1897. Evening.
Village of Collinsport, docks.

Sophie Baker — white female, mid 30s. Discovered in storage area behind the Blue Whale. Severe wounds to the neck, drained of blood. Dead, but still super drunk somehow. Eyes had a haunted look, as if they had stared into a subterranean chasm that would destroy us all. Officers advised to be on the lookout for a metaphor for the lust and greed that drives the exploitation of the lower classes.

Continue reading Episode 777: All Points →