There are literally hundreds of ex- amples of great moments along the entire five-year-long story. In any case, some points: Dis- cussing Amy’s bullying by David fails to mention that at the time David was being possessed or strong-armed himself by some force (Michael, probably). Page 3 states there are 133 discs, but page 17 states 131. Page 17 fails to comment that, early on, there are strange ghost-like Widows wailing, and Tim Lucas is wrong; the first 35 episodes were not “all about a bleeder valve and the car accident.” Much of those epi- sodes was taken up with the growing terror of Vicki, her past, her acclimating to the house where windows have ghosts wail- ing and books open by them- selves... and later on... strange figures stand over the entry to the drawing room in shadowy silhou- ette. Some of these things are never fully explained, while others have natural causes.


We must remember this was a soap opera like no other. Most other soaps were two people sit- ting in a room for a half hour dis- cussing gossip and having coffee with other rooms suggested by a curtain! In DARK SHADOWS, we had woods, forests, old houses, haunted houses, attics, base- ments, crypts and graveyards, nursing homes, hotels, sheriff of- fices, etc. And cars, location shoots, paintings, teleporations, short visits to Hell, time travel, the future (1995), aged make-up, grass lawns (mats, really) and more!


Maggie’s haunting by the ghost of Quentin and two pos- sessed children is perhaps the scariest scene in all the series. I used to think that the time trips away from the regular family were done to dismiss them, but, in a way, viewers are never happy: many complain about the Levia- than sequence, yet it introduced


80


Paul Stoddard and featured the regular cast (many of them pos- sessed) but then, when time travel took us away from them (for far too long), people still complained. The time stuff was just a way to tell new fresh sto- ries where anyone could die, in- creasing the tension and danger and making us shocked when, say, Roger kills Liz... Thing about DARK SHADOWS is: almost any- thing could happen at any time to anyone. Yes, it was fairly cer- tain the regular cast was safe in regular time... although, from what I read about Dan Curtis and from his own interviews, it seemed that he wanted to kill off almost everyone at one time or an- other—and HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, an inferior movie to the show, did just that, almost. I, for one, had to watch to find out what would happen to each character and how each storyline would work out. One of the most disappointing returns for a villain was Nicholas Blair. He carried a great deal of weight when he re- turned in the Leviathan storyline but, aside from seeing Angelique once (and maybe even Julia once), he had almost no scenes with Maggie, whom he once tried to marry, kill and take to Hell with him! And there were few scenes with Barnabas, if I recall correctly. One surprise is when Julia is try- ing to find a painting to help Quen- tin and Chris Jennings and goes to an island... and Angelique, mar- ried to someone else, answers the door!


I’ve rambled enough, but I did feel your RTD was done with too many people who did not know DARK SHADOWS, though some did. All of it can be seen as inter- minable and devoid of interest, but the truth is that all of it has merit. You just have to take your 2012 sensibility and can it while you watch the series. Frankly, it is a task and was a task, but it was also


fun and eye-opening. In fact, I don’t think DS can be watched any other way except from Episode 1 through to Episode 1245!


Charles Mento E-mail


Much as space limitations pre- vented our DARK SHADOWS RTD from touching on numer- ous worthwhile topics, they pre- vent us from sharing Charles’ very long, generous and opin- ionated letter in its entirety. As I presume most of our readers understood from my preliminary notes, our RTD was undertaken by me in the excitement of redis- covery, which I had every right to share with our readers. That said, I responsibly surrounded myself with fellow professionals and DS fans more informed than I about the entirety of the series, including Darren Gross, one of the program’s official historians. We may have had different views than Charles, but we were hardly the apathetic lot he de- scribes. Furthermore, our RTD was timed to coincide with the release of MPI’s box set and also the death of Jonathan Frid; it was not something I felt I was able to curb for a few years un- til I had earned the “right” to dis- cuss the series. I am continuing to watch the show, am presently nearing the 700th episode, and a number of us on the RTD panel have expressed interest in devoting another issue to DARK SHADOWS. I believe Charles will agree with us when I say that, despite our initial 33-page spread (find another magazine that would have shown it such indulgence, with no commercial uninterruptions!), DS has left us a great deal more to discuss in depth.


Happy Holidays!


VIDEO WATCHDOG IS A TIM AND DONNA LUCAS PRODUCTION...

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