Tag Archives: spidey-sense

Episode 933: King Kong vs Godzilla

January 1970, Violet Welles, , , , , , , , ,

“I’m caught in something — a web!”

So Dark Shadows is pivoting, is the point, away from a weird story that nobody likes, and off into the uncharted territory of an even weirder story that nobody expects. And when Dark Shadows pivots, god damn, they pivot hard. Today, Fortune’s wheel takes a hairpin turn, directly into traffic.

There’s action and adventure today, up to and including frantic phone calls, rickety bridges, slammed doors, abrupt edits and giant fuck-off spiders, and if we’re not careful, we might lose a couple cast members before we’re done. And it’s only Wednesday, too. Nothing happens on Wednesdays, everybody knows that, but giant spiders don’t punch a timeclock. That’s a thing that you need to understand about giant spiders.

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Dark Shadows Comic Strip, part 6: The Thousand-Year War

Ken Bald, October 1971, September 1971, , , , , , , ,

“Are you trying to make us doubt our senses? We saw you fling a man over the sea cliffs!”

So that’s where we find ourselves, halfway through this special feature on the 1971 Dark Shadows comic strip — on the knife edge of a story untelling itself. Starting just a few weeks before the television show jumped into a gypsy caravan and drove off into the night, the daily comic strip stayed behind, performing a dark ritual of — well, what’s the opposite of summoning? Cause that’s what the comic strip is doing.

Distilled down to three characters and a house, the Dark Shadows comic strip was the remains of a party, after most of the guests have gone home. Gee, look at the time, they all said, glancing at the calendar. See you all next week, on Ryan’s Hope. Then they were gone, chased off by the dreadful chimes of the church bell tolling April Third, April Third.

Now, only Barnabas is left, accompanied by the pale shadows of Elizabeth and Carolyn, performing his dark ritual of dispersing.

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Episode 673: The Shambles

January 1969, Ron Sproat, , , , , , , ,

“The blast from that gun should’ve killed any living creature. And it should’ve.”

Eccentric millionaire Barnabas Collins is out on the grounds of his family estate in the middle of the night, hunting for werewolves by the light of the full moon.

He hears something moving in the woods — and as the vicious beast advances, Barnabas lets fly with a rifle shot, smacking the animal right in the heart. But this is a supernatural creature with the raw power of whatever demon cursed its malignant soul; it shrugs off the gunshot, and comes back for more.

Thinking quickly, Barnabas tosses the rifle aside, and prepares to beat the snarling beast to death with his cane.

You know, they don’t make eccentric millionaires like this anymore. It’s a lost art.

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Episode 671: The Phone Book of the Dead

Gordon Russell, January 1969, , , , , , , ,

“You know how girls are, they’re always having dizzy spells.”

Carolyn’s heading out for a moonlight stroll over to her mother’s private mausoleum. Elizabeth died three weeks ago, but Carolyn insists on paying regular visits to the crypt, just for old times’ sake.

Before she clocked out, Liz was convinced that she would be buried alive — everyone would think she was dead, but she’d really be lying in a comatose state, trapped in a coffin and unable to call for help. So she built herself a state-of-the-art mausoleum, complete with a push-button at her fingertips that she could press if she suddenly got better.

So Carolyn goes to visit every day, wondering if her mother will ever revive. Maggie tells her that it would be better if she could just accept her mother’s death, but Carolyn says that she still keeps hoping.

Maggie finally blurts out, “It’s not possible for someone to come back from the dead,” except on Dark Shadows, of course, where they never do anything else.

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Episode 398: No Rest for the Wicked

Gordon Russell, January 1968, , ,

“Strange things have begun to happen in this house, things that even I can’t explain.”

A seance has been held at Dark Shadows Every Day, which has suspended time and space, and sent one writer on an uncertain and frightening journey into taking the day off. Danny is playing Phyllis Wick for today, and in his place you’ll find writer, lyricist and recent Dark Shadows convert Charlie Mason…

Since I am but a guest here — and have no intention of painting a target on my back like that simpering Miss Winters — before beginning to write this blog entry, I traded my immodest modern garb into something more period-appropriate. Unfortunately, since I can scarcely tell 1795 from 1975, I still may have made a misstep with my choice of bell-bottoms and a Lee Majors T-shirt. Perhaps none of you will notice…

We begin this episode with what I believe is customary — a voiceover, and some still photos from a Collinsport Board of Tourism brochure. (Its title would probably be “Fancy Places… After Dark.”)

At Barnabas’ house, Angelique is downstairs pacing. At first, it appears that she’s trying to figure out which weighs more — her hair, which is voluminous (though I guess no more so than usual, for her or Lady Bunny) or her nightgown, which has the same flow as those lead vests that they make you wear at doctors’ offices during X-rays. But then, helpfully, she think-speaks about her befuddlement over Jeremiah’s haunting.

“Why did he turn on me?” she wonders.

Sadly, no one think-suggests, “Maybe because you magically got him interested in Josette and then, almost as bad, got him shot to death.” She can’t be bothered to think about it, much less think-speak about it, for too long, anyway. She has bigger problems — like getting some shut-eye.

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Episode 322: To Bite or Not to Bite

Ron Sproat, September 1967, , , , ,

“I have to stand by and let her die. All of them… one by one.”

For the last few episodes, it’s mostly been Barnabas, Julia and Willie standing around in the Old House and discussing whether Barnabas should kill Maggie Evans or not. At the top of the show today, Barnabas has finally made a decision, and he’s on his way out the door — and there’s Julia on the doorstep, ready for another round of negotiations.

No wonder vampires sleep all day. Their nights are just one long staff meeting.

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