seen from China
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seen from Malaysia
seen from Türkiye
seen from Jamaica
seen from France
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seen from United States
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seen from Indonesia
Episode 62: On and on
Episode 62: On and on
Drunken artist Sam Evans meets with dashing action hero Burke Devlin in Burke’s hotel room. They recap the events of the previous episode. Burke accuses Sam of killing their mutual friend Bill Malloy. Sam’s anguished denials convince Burke that he is innocent. Well-meaning governess Vicki encounters high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins at the mansion where they both live. They recap the events…
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Episode 57: All we do is talk about death
Episode 57: All we do is talk about death
Screenshot by Dark Shadows from the Beginning In the opening teaser, dashing action hero Burke Devlin is having lunch in the restaurant at the Collinsport Inn. As usual, he’s alone there. He strikes up a conversation with Maggie Evans, who runs the place. She listens sympathetically while he tells her that he’s worried about the missing man, plant manager Bill Malloy. He goes on about the great…
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David Ford joins the cast as Sam Evans, replacing the woeful Mark Allen. Ford was always one of my favorites. He was one of the reasons I started watching the show when it was on the Sci-Fi channel…
In which I am glad that David Ford has joined the cast, glad that Nancy Barrett and David Henesy and Nancy Barrett have a scene together, and distressed that Alexandra Moltke Isles played a scene badly.
Vicki and Burke run into each other at the Collinsport Inn where Maggie serves them coffee, Roger lets himself into the Evans cottage where he makes demands of Sam, Maggie tells Roger that Burke an…
In which I quote from Marc Masse’s observations about the character of Sam Evans.
Marc Masse’s Dark Shadows from the Beginning is in one of its accessible phases now, and his discussion of episode 2 includes some interesting comparisons between the finished episode and Art…
In which I quote what Marc Masse said about the connections between episode 2 and Art Wallace’s twice-produced television play “The House” and embed a YouTube video of the first production of that play, as shown at a Dark Shadows convention.
Victoria Winters is searching for her past. Having been raised in a foundling home in New York, she has taken a job hundreds of miles away in Collinsport, Maine, as a companion and governess…
One of my favorite Dark Shadows fansites is Marc Masse’s Dark Shadows From the Beginning. Between May 2017 and March 2021, he wrote commentaries on the first 76 episodes. I hope he gets back to it!
Sometimes he takes the site private; last time, he left it that way for something like a year. Right now it’s in one of its publicly viewable phases.
It isn’t for everyone. It is true that, among the bloopers and imperfections that fans of the show love so much, there are moments when you can hear a tinny voice in the background saying things like “Ready camera one” and “Cut to camera two.” Masse imagines what it might have been like if a whole lot more audio had leaked onto the soundtrack from the control room microphone, and he constructs a whole soap opera of his own starring director Lela Swift and executive producer Dan Curtis as characters who are as broadly drawn as any of those who appear on the screen.
The post I’ve linked above includes an extreme example of Masse’s “Dan and Lela Show.” In it, he has Lela Swift declaring over the control room microphone that she is crazed with lust for Alexandra Moltke Isles and goes into great detail about what she wants to do, and in fact is doing, about these feelings. The whole thing reads like a pornographic version of Mad magazine. These absurd, and indeed defamatory, tales drive many fans up the wall, which is why he no longer allows comments and so often takes the blog private. But if you’ve ever looked at the old discussion boards about the show, you’ll see tons of gossip and speculation that is barely distinguishable from his most over-the-top stories. I think those are what he’s satirizing, and satirizing effectively. When he did allow comments, I played along with his stories and encouraged him to keep writing them. Again, I hope he does!
M. Masse’s delightful blog is usually private, and for good reason- he gets a lot of hate. Not everyone has the imagination it takes to appreciate it. But it’s one of my favorites, and today, this moment, it’s viewable.
