Haunted by Dark Shadows (1966)

I'm Raine (she/they, in my late twenties). This is a sideblog of being-of-rain, and I finished liveblogging my way through 1225 episodes of Dark Shadows!

[collins-crypt]

Here's a cleaner image chronicling The Trask of Amontillado

[edw-lugh]

Daily affirmations:

No one will find the picture in your attic.

It's not your fault the person made of cadavers you sew together and you revived killed your family.

It's perfectly normal to enter your house climbing like a lizard.

The fact that you killed a man doesn't make you guilty, it was just your silly alter ego.

That raven who won't stop saying "nevermore" is an asshole, don't listen to it.

Your fiancé is definitely NOT hiding his mad spouse in his attic.

The big ass dog that killed members of your family isn't real, dw.

You deserve revenge for having been abused as a child, go back to moors and show them!

Go and kidnap that singer!

[mustbepure]

[widowshill]

CASSANDRA You love me. You told me so. I believe you. You do love me, don't you? (HE LOOKS AWAY, HESITATING) Don't look away. Not until you've told me. I won't let you look away. (HE LOOKS AT HER FOR A BEAT, AND SUDDENLY IS MESMERIZED BY HER EYES) ROGER (DIFFERENT NOW, NOT FIGHTING HIS SENSE OF THE REALITY) Yes, I love you.

[tortoisesshells]

#i mean. this is obviously horrendous and terrifying — a loss of will and bodily violation that makes you sick at your stomach.#they pretty narrowly skirt around any hints of sexual assault by having cassandra pretty outright reject sex with roger;#and she avoids consummating the marriage by drugging him on their wedding night. which is. well. it's not great.#and this plot using roger as its mechanism at all is — frankly — devastating from a character perspective.#roger — for whom authentic emotion; certainly romantic love! — is much like flaying; laying him bare;#sick from loneliness; simultaneously both craving desperately and rejecting intimacy;#finding (he thinks) a whirlwind romance with a woman who finds him desirable; who loves him; who is willing to uproot her life for him#having long since given up his notion of achieving happiness — especially via romantic love and particularly via marriage.#but now he's delighting in being openly affectionate — having someone not only to *give* him love;#but who is willing to receive — and; he thinks; greatly enjoys! — his attention; affections; adoration#cassandra's spell lances his underbelly — his most vulnerable point which he's prone to shielding either through distance or 12 layers#of sarcasm or flirting as a game instead of sincerely — that he's fundamentally undesirable; that love is not achievable for him#(which is wrapped up in all kinds of things. his queerness; his being the lesser sibling; his nuclear loveless first marriage)#and of course the dramatic irony is that we know cassandra is fundamentally uninterested in roger:#he's the lesser collins compared to his ancestor; much as he's always been.#but! also i really like this scene because roger is suchhhh a pathetic lovesick loverboy when he's under her spell.#he's adorable. he deserves smooches and to look at someone like that without being robbed of personhood <3#vicki could be stroking under his jaw while he loses his breath just looking at her. cmon. (tags via @widowshill)

[widowshill]

[collins-crypt]

Holy shit, 1991 Vicky did it. She actually figured out that Barnabas is a vampire. Revolutionary.

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Also! A police force armed with chunky crosses and letting a professor stake their culprit to death may have fit in a kinda goofy and clunky '70s horror movie, but putting it in a '90s show that's trying to be more grounded was a truly bizarre choice.

[collins-crypt]

Finished 1991 episode 2. Wow, I was not expecting a scene-for-scene (sometimes a line-for-line) remake of House of Dark Shadows. What a weird choice. And not I'm a choice I'm a fan of, partly because I only just watched that film for the first time, and partly because it immediately flies in the face of all the changes that would naturally be made when adapting Dark Shadows to a modern TV show. Too many characters with no purpose, Vicki has somehow already been sidelined. And to top it all off, rather than a cast who've spent years learning how to deliver these weird lines and weird plot, this time they've got a bunch of actors who have no idea how to deliver the (tbh not very good) script in a naturalistic way.

[collins-crypt]

Maggie and Roger??????

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Watched the first episode of Dark Shadows 1991. There's a lot of House of Dark Shadows in its DNA huh. It's not strongly grabbing me, and I worry about my ability to tell all these characters apart, but I'm curious how Dark Shadows is going to be paced over a season of TV—the first episode has already hit a lot of plot points. And what with the usual problem of too many characters, I wonder what compelled them to add in Daphne as another Collins daughter, especially since that then gives Carolyn nothing to do.

[movieposters1]

[horrorme]

Night of Dark Shadows, 1971 

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Aaand I watched Night of Dark Shadows! I really liked that! It relied on slightly clumsy recycling of the TV show a lot less than House did, and was a big improvement on pacing and editing too (outside of a few sequences anyway). I'd heard that the movie got messed up in an edit at some point, but I found it all very understandable. The slowed down Quentin's Theme was very cool and chilling. And the protagonists were so likable... I'm tempted to just ignore the last 5 minutes 😂 Taking out someone in the final scene was really rough, but taking out someone in the closing captions?? 😭 Why.

[collins-crypt]

I watched House of Dark Shadows! I don't know if this movie was particularly badly edited and paced or if '60s/'70s horror movies were just Like That 😂 At first I wondered what attracted Dan Curtis to making movies, but I got the answer when I reached the action and more explicit horror. That was pretty cool! There were some fun character moments too, particularly with Stokes, Hoffman, Willie, and Barnabas. I'll probably watch this again sometime, maybe show it to a friend.

[widowshill]

i just know she hates him being so much taller than her

[widowshill]

60 years since the most adorably morbid meet cute in the world happy anniversary to Them <3

[collins-crypt]

I did my presentation for the powerpoint party and it went welllll! People said they liked it 🥰🥰 And a few friends said they were going to look Dark Shadows up and try watching it!