Category Archives: Ron Sproat

Episode 554: Fresh Blood

August 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , , ,

“Why would you imagine dogs howling?”

It was the best of times.

“Mail for the show recently has been running to almost 6,000 letters a week since Barnabas soared to fame, with Frid himself receiving nearly 5,000 of that total.”

It’s late summer 1968, and Dark Shadows’ ratings have skyrocketed from 2.8 million viewers to 4.5 million, since Jonathan Frid debuted as reluctant vampire Barnabas Collins.

“Ben Cooper has licensed a line of masks and costumes based on the Dark Shadows theme and featuring Barnabas. Western Publishing is also on the way with a boxed board game, comic books and puzzles.”

Call it magic or genius or just being in the right place at the right time, but apparently what American housewives and teenagers want more than anything in the world is a vampire soap opera at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

“Several weeks ago, Frid appeared in three Stern Brothers stores in the New York City area as a guest at fashion shows displaying ‘Monster Shoes’ — the latest in girls’ and women’s footwear. Stern’s officials described his appearance as one of the biggest in memory.”

There’s just one problem: Barnabas Collins isn’t a vampire anymore. He used to be, once upon a time, but he was cured three months ago. Any viewers tuning in to see neck-biting will be sorely disappointed, and so will their 4.5 million friends. Continue reading Episode 554: Fresh Blood →

Episode 543: The Trouble with Harry

July 1968, Ron Sproat, ,

“I know enough to send you back to prison, if I want to.”

Did you know that in July 1968, there were close to 8 million people living in New York City? It’s true; I just looked it up in my well-thumbed copy of What Month It Was When There Were Close to 8 Million People Living in New York City.

So how many of those people do you think were actors? I mean, the only real professions of any consequence in New York are actors, waiters and cab drivers; everybody else is scenery.

Doing a little demographic analysis on the back of this napkin, I would estimate that there were 7,000 young male actors who could have played the role of Harry Johnson on Dark Shadows. And yet they managed to pick the very worst one. How can you account for something like that?

Continue reading Episode 543: The Trouble with Harry →

Episode 542: The Diary of Anne Frankenstein

July 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , ,

“Woman loves man.”

The room is dark, and grim. The single window — if it even counts as a window — lets in stray slices of sunlight through a torn shade. The cobwebs are an inch thick, and there’s a large picture frame dangling at an odd angle from a beam, apparently supported mostly by dust and despair.

The room is more than just unused. It looks like a pack of timberwolves came through sometime around the Civil War, and it never really pulled itself together after that.

Also, there’s a monster in it.

Continue reading Episode 542: The Diary of Anne Frankenstein →

Episode 541: Death of a MacGuffin

July 1968, Ron Sproat, , , ,

“Julia — when you do the experiment again, if both Barnabas and my creation live — if they both live — Barnabas will be free and healthy, as long as Adam lives. Adam will drain Barnabas’ affliction from him, but will not suffer from the disease itself, because he lives. But if Adam dies, Barnabas Collins will be as he was before.”

As we open today’s reckless stumble into the unknown, sinister sorceress Angelique — currently masquerading as Roger’s innocent new wife, Cassandra — is listening to a recording of a man’s voice that young David has discovered on a tape recorder.

On the tape, the man addresses Julia, and tells her that when she does the experiment again, if both Barnabas and his creation live — if they both live — Barnabas will be free and healthy, as long as Adam lives. The man goes on to say that Adam will drain Barnabas’ affliction from him, but will not suffer from the disease itself, because he lives. But — the man warns — if Adam dies, Barnabas Collins will be as he was before.

This is a fortunate coincidence, because Cassandra is on a very tight deadline to find out why her Dream Curse didn’t turn Barnabas into a vampire again. The answer, it turns out, is that Julia did the experiment again, and both Barnabas and the man’s creation lived — they both lived — and Barnabas is free and healthy, as long as Adam lives. In other words, Adam is draining Barnabas’ affliction from him, but does not suffer from the disease itself, because he lives. But — and I honestly cannot stress this point emphatically enough — if Adam dies, Barnabas Collins will be as he was before.

Continue reading Episode 541: Death of a MacGuffin →

Episode 540: Mission: Inscrutable

July 1968, Ron Sproat, ,

“I don’t want to understand about those things; they scare me.”

Okay, here’s what’s going on: I have entirely no idea.

I know that Angelique, spurned lover and secret sorceress, is currently in residence at Collinwood, posing as Roger’s innocent new wife, Cassandra. She’s come to wreak a terrible slow-motion vengeance on reformed vampire Barnabas Collins, and she’s spent weeks and weeks lobbing a hex that never quite landed. And that is pretty much the beginning and the end of the list of things that I understand about what Cassandra’s doing right now.

It’s not just me, either. The writers have had the better part of three months to figure out what they were going to do with Angelique after the Dream Curse storyline. They have not used that time effectively.

Continue reading Episode 540: Mission: Inscrutable →

Episode 539: Grieve a Little Grieve

July 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , ,

“I’m not delirious. You know what she is.”

One of the things that you learn when you watch Dark Shadows is that there are several different kinds of weird. This is not a particularly helpful thing to learn, and learning it will not improve your life in any measurable way. It just happens, and there’s not much you can do about it.

There’s the everyday, domestic kind of weird, which involves eccentric people doing unusual things — say, a college professor taking an enormous feral Frankenstein home with him, and teaching it to read the word “clock” off a flash card.

There’s the fancy, bespoke kind of weird, which involves people acting in a completely illogical way just for the sake of an exciting cliffhanger — like burying their dead friend in the woods, and then realizing that he’s come back to life, and they only have half an hour to dig him up again.

And then there’s the kind of weird where you honestly have no idea why the scene that you’re watching even exists. That’s the kind we’re going to be talking about today, thanks to scriptwriter Ron Sproat, among other mistakes.

Continue reading Episode 539: Grieve a Little Grieve →

Episode 530: Requiem for a Dream

July 1968, Ron Sproat, ,

“For a moment, when I first saw him, I felt a stirring in me.”

Looking back, I think the thing that really matters is that we did it together, you and I. It was hard, of course; anything that’s really worth doing is hard. But we stuck with it, day after day, and we were strong, and now we’re reaching the end of this journey together.

This is the last week of the Dream Curse, Angelique’s three-month battle with story progression. The witch’s spell created a chain-letter dream which passed from one person to another, until practically every character on the show had the same slow, pointless dream sequence. Then they had to describe the dream, in detail, and tell us all about how petrified they were of this entirely unscary experience.

But finally, after almost three months of this tedious nonsense, we’ve reached the final week, where we’ll see the last two iterations of the dream. And then the Dream Curse will be over, thank goodness, and there will never be another boring storyline on Dark Shadows ever again.

Continue reading Episode 530: Requiem for a Dream →

Episode 529: Missing Adventures

July 1968, Ron Sproat, , , ,

“I must throw them off the track! The secrets which are mine must remain buried within me! Ahhh… darkness!”

“I know this is going to sound incredible,” Maggie says to Joe, “but tonight, I saw a ghost!”

Joe says, “Don’t you think you’re letting your imagination play tricks on you?” because Ron Sproat wrote the script today, and in Sproat’s world, characters never learn anything, or accumulate experiences in any way.

It’s a recap-heavy show today, in a way that they haven’t really done in a while. Maggie and Joe cover the Dream Curse and Angelique’s portrait, and then we go over to Stokes’ place, where we get a lengthy recap of Adam’s entire storyline, in the form of a word association exercise.

So, forget it. If Sproat’s not going to bother writing an actual episode today, then I’m going to go read the first issue of the Dark Shadows comic book.

Continue reading Episode 529: Missing Adventures →

Episode 526: Nothing But Vengeance

July 1968, Ron Sproat, , ,

“I will concentrate on vengeance, and nothing else!”

You know, I’ve been throwing the word “exorcism” around a lot lately, but I’m not sure that’s the correct term for what’s going on here.

This is the situation: A witch was murdered in 1795, but then her restless spirit moved through time to be reincarnated in 1968. A group of well-meaning occult experts held a séance to call on the ghost of an 18th-century witch hunter who was sealed up behind a wall in their basement, and that ghost tied the dead witch to a tree and said a prayer over her to cast out the demons possessing her, which made her crumble into ashes and disappear.

I don’t think there’s a word for that, because it has never occurred to a single person in the history of the world to even imagine that such a thing could take place. Except for the writers of Dark Shadows, obviously, who can’t think about anything else.

Continue reading Episode 526: Nothing But Vengeance →

Episode 525: The Blair Witch Project

July 1968, Ron Sproat, , , , , ,

“She believes she fell into the hands of a witch hunter, a fellow who roamed the countryside exorcising witches and hobgoblins.”

His name is Blair — Nicholas Blair — and he’s in Collinsport on His Dark Majesty’s Secret Service, to rescue a comrade who’s fallen into the hands of an enemy combatant.

The fallen agent — code name, Cassandra Collins — has been working undercover at Collinwood, as Roger’s innocent new bride. Her mission was compromised a week ago, when she was tied to a tree and exorcised by the spirit of Reverend Trask, an 18th-century witch hunter.

Nicholas is now staying at Collinwood, posing as Cassandra’s brother, and his mission — if he chooses to accept it — is to locate the tree where the witch was burned, and bring her back.

Continue reading Episode 525: The Blair Witch Project →