Dark Shadows

Dark Shadows was a TV soap opera that aired weekdays on the ABC television network from June 27, 1966 to April 2, 1971. It added a gothic vampire story to the standard "soap" plots and stories, and it won a cult following that mirrored that of another long-running science fiction TV series, Doctor Who.

Series production

Working within the restraints of the live on tape format -- with everything done in one take -- Dark Shadows exhibited extraordinary and sometimes truly masterful use of costuming and special effects. Plot expanding trips into the past or future via tape cut and splice became commonplace. These excursions created the opportunity for actors killed off in earlier sequences to return in the guise of characters from another era, resplendent in period clothing of exceptional detail. Seances held in the old mansion were often visited by ghostly apparitions of quivering ectoplasm. Dream sequences hypnotised the viewing audience with colorful psychedelic spectacles superimposed over ethereal, fog filled fantasies. Individuals of normal appearance were transformed into hideous creatures of the netherworld.

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Keeping up with the demanding schedule of a daily half-hour show was sometimes evident in a minor verbal blooper or misplaced stagehand. Microphone boom shadows helped the program live up to its name. In retrospect however, the ability of the troupe of actors who participated in the development of this everchanging panorama of gothic visualizations was particularly commendable, especially considering a new script every day, a brief and demanding rehearsal schedule or the fact that many of the actors often appeared in nearly all of a day's taping. Also, Dark Shadows was not really different from most daytime dramas of its time when it came to bloopers like this.

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Dark Shadows has the distiction of being one of the few classic television soap operas to have all of its episodes, except one, survive intact (although a handful of early episodes are available in syndication in 16MM kinescope format). For the one lost episode, only the original audio track survives (syndicated airings of this episode were reconstructed from this soundtrack and still pictures taken at the time of the episode's production). In fact, there is more scrutiny placed on this series in particular as it has been syndicated almost continuously since its first network run, while almost all soaps from this time period are either locked in a vault or lost forever, due to live broadcasts or the expensive cost of videotape at the time. Recently, however, original network master tapes to the series were discovered in an L.A. warehouse, so it is quite possible the master to the "lost" episode could be among them.

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For many years, the show was syndicated on the Sci-Fi Network. The network stopped airing Dark Shadows in 2004.

Related Topics:
Sci-Fi Network - 2004

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MPI Home Video currently holds the home video rights to the series. All episodes are now available on VHS, and episodes on DVD are released on a sechedule that will result in the complete series on DVD in 2006.

Related Topics:
MPI Home Video - VHS - DVD

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