Imaginary Worlds - The Bright Legacy of Dark Shadows

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Next year marks the 60th anniversary of Dark Shadows. The gothic soap opera wasn’t originally intended to include a vampire, but when creator Dan Curtis introduced the character of Barnabas Collins in a last-ditch effort to avoid cancellation, he inadvertently launched a cultural phenomenon. As portrayed by actor Jonathan Frid, the character of Barnabas sparked a never-ending debate among horror fans as to whether vampires should be depicted as pure predators or tragic, misunderstood outcasts. I talk with Danielle Gelehrter (host of the podcast Terror at Collinwood) and authors Mark Dawidziak and Jeff Thompson about why the show had a meteoric rise and fall, what the series reflected about the 1960s, and whether Dark Shadows can have eternal life as a form of IP. This week’s episode is sponsored by Hims and Remi Get your free online visit at hims.com/IMAGINARY. Go to shopremi.com/IMAGINARY and use the code IMAGINARY to save up to 50%. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There you are, pushing your newborn baby in a stroller through the park. The first time out of the house in weeks. You have your Starbucks, then tea, because, you know, sleep deprivation. You meet your best friend, she asks you how it's going, you immediately begin to laugh, then cry, then laugh cry, that's totally normal, right? She smiles, you hug, there's no one else you'd rather share this with. You know, three and a half hours sleep is more than enough. Starbucks, it's never just coffee.

You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky, along with my assistant producer, Stephanie Billman. Hello. So you came to me with this topic. You said we should do an episode about Dark Shadows.

And I had heard of Dark Shadows. I'd always heard that there was this daytime soap opera in the 60s which had a vampire in it, which always seemed really weird to me. And I also remember there was a Tim Burton movie of Dark Shadows, like over 10 years ago, which bombed. And that's pretty much all I knew. So what interested you about Dark Shadows?

Well, I don't think you really knew this until we started talking about wanting to do this topic, but I've always been fascinated by vampires since I was a little girl. Like, the first time I read Brom Stoker's Dracula, I was five, at the most maybe six. And that kind of like, no pun intended, sucked me into the world of vampires.

And for me, while I understand and I appreciate the scary vampire, the monster, the predator, what I've always been fascinated by are the emotionally complex portrayals of vampires. So those who are conflicted about the fact that they've basically lost their humanity, they have to feed on other humans to eat, those who, you know, also have to like watch their people that they love die. So for me, those have always been the juicy vampire roles.

And one day a couple of months ago, I was sick. And as you know, when I get sick, I like to watch pop culture documentaries. And I came across one about dark shadows. And that's where I learned that Barnabas Collins, who was the vampire you're talking about, in dark shadows helped establish that particular vampire trope in the mainstream. So I wanted to kind of explore how dark shadows came to bring in the supernatural and how it inadvertently created this trope that still exists to this day. Yeah, it's funny because I have to admit I was still kind of skeptical even when you pitched it like that because I feel like the way the zeitgeist is going right now, I feel

like people want scary vampires again. Like Sinners is a big hit and and those vampires actually did scare me, much to the disappointment of people I know who love the movie, just like, oh, really. Including my husband. Yeah, so in the remake of Nosferatu from last year was gruesome, but it was excellent. And I feel like the sort of emotionally conflicted,

brooding, romantic vampire has become kind of passe. But then when I sort of dug into the research, I couldn't believe how important Dark Shadows was. And actually, my reaction was, how have we not done an episode about Dark Shadows? I know exactly. So tell me about the guy who created Dark Shadows, Dan Curtis. Dan Curtis, back then, was a known television producer and director. He was mostly known, though, for golf shows, of all things.

He loved golf, so that kind of made sense. But he was looking to branch out. And that's kind of where Dark Shadows came in. So I talk with three experts who are steeped in the lore and history of Dark Shadows. First one is Danielle Galater. She's the host of the podcast, Terror at Collinwood, which is about dark shadows.

And she said it all started when. Darren Curtis had a dream one night about a young girl on a train at night. And the train was going to a fog shrouded mansion in New England. And the dream ended when she knocked on the door and the door was going to a fog-shrouded mansion in New England. And the dream ended when she knocked on the door and the door was opening. And he couldn't shake this dream and he told his wife about it. And Dan Curtis's wife said,

that sounds like a really good show. That sounds like a good TV show. And he's like, no, no, no. And he just couldn't shake it. So he had a meeting with an ABC executive to pitch something else. And he brought up this dream that he had any pitch, he did pitch it as a show, he initially actually pitched it as a primetime series. But the person he pitched it to at ABC told him, we want to I want to do this as a daytime show. And Dan Curtis said, No,

no, it's a primetime show. But ultimately, it ended up being a daytime show. He had no intention of doing anything supernatural. He had no intention of making it a horror show. The feel of it was not what we today would call horror. The feel was what we would have called gothic. That is Mark Drwydziak. He's a journalist and author who has written books about Dan Curtis. He launches this in June of 1966 on ABC, and it's an immediate failure. The way I always like to put it is there was nothing scary about Dark Shadows during the

first year of its existence except the ratings. And then Dan Curtis has a flash of inspiration. The show was going down the tubes, and Dan was watching the show at home with his daughters. Dan Curtis' kids said to him, daddy, make it really scary. They didn't say supernatural. They said, well, gee, dad, you're going to get canceled anyway. Why not make it scary? So he goes into the writers and he says, let's put a ghost into this.

We'll resolve this storyline by having a ghost emerge from the painting in the old house and the ghost will save the Victoria Winters character. That's the character he first dreamed about, the young woman taking a train to a spooky old mansion. They'll kind of understand one thing. They're crossing a line at this point. There had never been anything supernatural in daytime storytelling. Daytime television up to that point, soap operas, if you will,

the primary audience was women at home during the day. And now for the next 30 minutes, As the World Turns. My grandmother watched As the World Turns. That was, she used to do her ironing when she would come for visits. She would, every afternoon, set up the ironing board in our living room

and turn on the television set and announce to the world that she was about to watch her story. She never called it As the World Turns. She never called it a soap opera or a serial or anything like that. She called it my story. And it was. And she could have it because it was the most boring thing I'd ever seen in my life.

I didn't know why anybody would want to watch a soap opera when I was nine, 10 years old. So what happens when they introduce a ghost into dark shadows? There's a noticeable blip in the viewership, not big, not major, but Dan sort of starts to think, well, maybe we're onto something here. So now they have another character who's coming back from Phoenix, Arizona.

So one of the writers says, well, the ghost worked. She's coming from Phoenix, Arizona. Let's make her a Phoenix. And he's like, what? What? What? What? What's a Phoenix? You know, a Phoenix, a mythological fire creature. And the Phoenix fends the fire with its wings. Hurry, David, hurry before it's too late. Now they're using special effects on a soap opera. It's not sophisticated by today's standards, but they do have overlapping images of fire

on top of the actress playing the phoenix. And the ghost was actually quite well done. But Danielle says, The show was still in danger of cancellation, even though the ratings had gone up a bit with the ghosts and the Laura the Phoenix storyline. So Dan Curtis thinks to himself, what's the scariest thing I can put in this show? The scariest thing for him as a kid was Lugosi's Dracula.

I bid you welcome. He said it scared the hell out of him when he was a kid. And that was the scariest thing you could think of, was a vampire. So he said, well, I'm going to put a vampire on the show. A vampire named Barnabas Collins. Yes? I'd like to see Mrs. Stoddard, if you'd be so kind. Mrs. Stoddard?

This is Collingwood, isn't it? Yes. Then perhaps it would be the courtesy to inform Mrs. Stoddard that her cousin is calling and wishes to pay his respects. Cousin? Yes, her cousin from England. When the character of Barnabas appeared in April of 1967, he mesmerized not just the housekeeper, of 1967. He mesmerized not just the housekeeper, but everyone watching. And no one was prepared for what would happen next. In some ways, if you use hymns for treating hair loss, it's kind of like being bitten

by a vampire. I mean, for us humans, time works differently. We're not immortal. We can also see ourselves in the mirror. So you might be looking in the mirror and seeing your hairline recede every year. But hems can give your hair brand new life in as little as three to six months. And you know the rule that vampires have to ask permission to come through a door? Well, if you order hems, there's no need to go to a doctor. Hems will come right to your door for free, which is very useful if you can't stand the sunlight. The process is simple and 100% online. Answer a few questions and a medical provider will

decide if treatment is right for you. No insurance is needed, and one low price covers everything from treatments to ongoing care. It's convenient and gives you access to a range of treatments that work. Start your free online visit today with HIMS.com slash imaginary. That's H I M S dot com slash imaginary for your personalized hair loss treatment options. HIMS.com slash imaginary. Results vary based on studies of topical and oral minoxidil and finasteride. Prescription products require an online consultation with a healthcare provider who will determine if a prescription is appropriate. Restrictions apply.

See website for full details and important safety information. Danielle Galeiter and Mark Dwidziak told me until Barnabas Collins came along, the archetype of the vampire hadn't changed much since 1897 when Dracula was published. From 1897 to 1967, a distance of 70 years, there is no major advance on the vampire character. The vampire is predator. And there's things, we centralize him, we sexualize him, we humanize him a bit. We have to do that because we've got to clean him up

by the time you get to Lugosi. He's been cleaned up enough that he can enter an English drawing room and not draw attention to himself. But he's still Predator. He still always reverts to his primary job description, which is a predator. They hire a Shakespearean actor named Jonathan Frid to play Barnabas.

Who was a classically trained Shakespearean actor who had gone to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, he'd gone to Yale Drama School. And the only problem was, Jonathan didn't know how to play a vampire. So Jonathan did what a trained actor does. He created an interior life for his for this character because he's got to play it. He's got to find a way in.

Jeff Thompson has also written books about Dan Curtis, and he's written a lot for Dark Shadow's fanzines and websites. Jonathan himself said, I didn't play the vampire. I did not play the bite. I played a guy with a hangup, like an alcoholic, somebody who has to hide and lie. He is posing as a cousin from England, but he is in truth one of their ancestors. So he is infiltrating his own family. It's uncanny.

What is? That portrait over there, have you seen it? Yes, it's extraordinary, isn't it? Well, if it weren't for the clothes, forgive me for staring, but for the moment it seems as though I'd seen a- Ghost? Well, the likenness is remarkable.

The Collins blood always had a certain persistent strength. He said that to me the scariest monster is a liar. Somebody who has to lie and then has to tell another lie to cover up that lie and then another lie and another lie until finally he becomes desperate, frantic and even violent. Jonathan didn't know how to play a vampire, but he did know one thing. He knew how long he was gonna be on the show

because he had a three month contract. And he also knew something else. He knew how it was going to end after 90 days. It was gonna end with a big piece of lumber sticking out of his chest, because that's what Dan intended. Barnabas was brought on to be nothing more than a classic vampire threat. He would wreak havoc for several weeks,

be discovered, hunt it down, and have a stake driven through his heart. That was it. Well, what happens is that the fans start to respond to what Jonathan's doing. I was 10 years old. I start to hear there's a vampire running loose in daytime television.

Now again, remember, as I said, I didn't understand why anybody would wanna watch a soap opera. But I had to check out the fact that there was a vampire in daytime, so I started watching Dark Shadows and I got hooked. I was in the third grade and I was homesick from school. And so I was turning the channels. As I was turning the channels, I came upon a scene. And in this scene I saw two children, a boy and a girl my age, going down into a creepy cellar where there was a coffin.

Sarah, there's a coffin here! And the coffin lid opened and out sprang the vampire Barnabas Collins. So from that moment on I have naturally was hooked. The time slot moved a couple of times and at one point I was not able to run home from school in time to see it. But at that, during those times, my mother, who was a soap opera fan, was interested in the show. And so she would tell me what happened on the show. And now Dan's got a problem,

which is you can't kill off the most popular character on the show. What do you do? They come up with the idea, and I say they, because it's the writers, it's Dan, and it's Jonathan. Everybody gets some credit for this. They decide to give Barnabas something that no vampire had ever had before.

Didn't need it, not required, because it's not in his job description. They give him a conscience. Now, what the hell does a vampire need with a conscience? It's like giving a conscience to a tiger. But they decided, well, you know, let's give this guy a conscience. Let's have him question his own nature.

Let's have him battle against his own nature. Let's give him guilt, guilt for crying out loud. And so they decided, well, let's take the show back in time and show Barnabas as a human before he became a vampire. And then with the addition of Laura Parker as the vengeful witch Angelique, Angelique cursed Barnabas with vampirism because he would not love her. cursed Barnabas with vampirism because he would not love her. That is my curse, and you will live with it through all eternity. He is bitten by a vampire bat. Or a bat puppet on a string. Typically the power of the vampire comes from the fact that they've been alive for decades

or centuries. In that time, they've honed their skills, acquired wealth and other types of power. But Barnabas doesn't have any of that. Barnabas did not see and experience everything that all of the other immortal vampires did as they lived through the ages. He became a vampire in 1795-96, but he was not free and living in the world all of that time. He missed the 1800s completely in the first half of the 1900s because he was in a chained coffin. He was an 18th century man who suddenly was thrust into the modern era of electricity and telephones, both of

which he eschewed. As a man out of time, he has an aspect of vulnerability to him, even before his conscience kicks in. They came up with this wonderful moment, which really defined him as a character. It was the turning point of the character. And it was that Barnabas is going down this trail of really preying on the current day Collins family. And he feels like he's entitled to it because he has been cursed. He has been locked in a coffin for 200 years. He comes out with a vengeance and vengeance is the key word.

The only person who can touch him is, and it's the ghost of his sister, Sarah, little girl who died in the 1790s. Everybody sees Sarah. Sarah comes and she saves different people from Barnabas during the storyline. And finally she comes to him. I missed you so terribly, Sarah.

Why didn't you come to me sooner? You knew how much I wanted to see you, didn't you? And she reminds him of things that he told her as a little girl about being a good person. She says to him, you know, that she won't ever come to him again. What have I done?

You've hurt people. Only when it was necessary. No, Bondis. That's not true. I know that's not true. So do you. All right, Sarah. That's all over and done with. Everything is going to be fine from now on as long as you're here with me. No, Barbis. You're not through doing bad things.

And he just dissolves. He just absolutely collapses. I forbid you to leave! I beg you to stay, Sam. It's an amazingly active moment. It's an amazingly, you know, and everything you need to know about Barnabas is right there in that one moment. And at that moment, he attempts to reclaim his humanity.

He attempts to turn the corner. They also added a werewolf character named Quentin, who could talk to Barnabas about his humanity. He attempts to turn the corner. They also added a werewolf character named Quentin who could talk to Barnabas about his addiction. Do you think I wanted to do that? Now you're Chris's friend. One moment you're helping, the next minute you're putting... Quentin, please! Now don't make me hate myself any more than I do. I don't care how you feel now. You've got to control yourself. Control myself.

Danielle says this is when the modern vampire was born. Pre-Barnabas, the vampire was typically portrayed as a straight up predator. That is not to say there were never sympathetic vampires before Barnabas, but Barnabas was the first to make a meteoric impact, a game changing impact. There was something else going on in the 1960s which made Barnabas so fascinating to people. You know I taught a course at Kent State University, vampires on film and television. Each decade we showed how the vampire reflected what was happening in the culture and the history at the time.

Well first off the 1960s, to get to 1960s, you gotta go to the 1950s. And the 1950s is a moment of conform, conform, conform. Everything is being turned upside down and inside out in the 60s, and everybody's questioning their place in the 1960s. So how does Barnabas fit that? He's perfect.

He's absolutely perfect. Here's a vampire questioning his own nature and saying, do I have to live like this? During the 60s, where you had this kind of counterculture movement happening, kids felt like outsiders, you know? Kids just went bananas for Dark Shadows. There were tons of merchandise, games, model kits, bubble gum cards, comic books.

Puzzles, masks, trading cards, records, paperback books, comic books. There's Barnabas and Quentin and the Witch, like in Dark Shadows on TV. They make great decorations for your room. They're so soft and cuddly. Now the world of Dark Shadows is yours in a strange new game by Milton Bradley, the Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows game. The teen magazines caught on to it as well. The teeny boppers even reading 16 Magazine,

Dark Shadows was always in 16 Magazine. Right there with the teen heartthrobs like David Cassidy and, you know, and people like that. When Jonathan Frid appeared on the game show What's My Line, one of the blindfolded panelists said, I never heard such a happy audience. And it sounded like a lot of young voices. Are you particularly appealing to the young? Yes. Many adults found him appealing too. The sexual revolution was happening, and vampirism has often been seen as a metaphor for sexuality.

Jonathan Frid used to talk about how he'd get letters in the mail from, you know, from people who wanted to be bitten by Barnabas. And they were very kind of racy letters that he would get. I mean, he'd get thousands of letters every week and many of them were, he had used to have kids, you know, parties with kids, help him open his fan mail. And he would tell them, don't read it. Don't read them. And some of that stuff was inappropriate. them open his fan mail and he would tell them, don't read it. Don't read the fan mail because

some of that stuff was inappropriate. At the peak of its popularity, Dark Shadows had 20 million viewers. Dan Curtis wanted to go even bigger. In 1970, he made a movie called House of Dark Shadows, a theatrical movie. But rather than cementing dark shadows in the public imagination, the movie ended up making the TV series crumble apart. I used to grind my teeth at night when I was in college, the point where I needed a mouth guard.

If I was a vampire, I would have worn my fangs down to a nub. If you also grind your teeth at night and you're worried that a night guard might be expensive, Remy has come to the rescue. Remy makes dental grade professional quality mouth guards without the painful price tag. They're up to 80% cheaper than what you pay the dentist and don't require you to visit a dental office. The process is simple. They send you an at-home impression kit to create molds of your teeth.

You send those back to Remy. Their team will make your custom-fit guard and send it right back to you. I don't need a mouth guard anymore, but I gave a Remy kit to my brother-in-law, who does need it. He loves it. In fact, here he is.

They're soft, and I have bitten down quite hard, I think, overnight. And my jaw didn't hurt, my teeth didn't hurt, and they performed wonderfully. Remy is for anyone dealing with nighttime grinding, clenching, or jaw pain, who wants an affordable solution to protect their smile and say good night to jaw pain and headaches. Head to shopremi.com slash imaginary and use the code imaginary to save up to 50%. That's 50% off at shopremi.com slash imaginary with the code imaginary. Give your teeth a break without breaking the bank with Remy. The 1970 movie House of Dark Shadows takes place in its own self-contained universe.

So Dan Curtis got to tell the story he originally wanted. Barnabas shows up, he pretends to be a distant relative, and eventually they discover he's a monster. Come back to Collinwood, that house of dark shadows where life and death go on as usual. Mark says it was a real horror movie. It ends up killing everybody. It was a real shock to a Dark Shadows fan who went to see it and had really fallen in love with all these characters.

And then you go see this movie and it's a blood feast and it's so different from in tone than the series. However, that's not really what hurt the series because those were two separate universes. You could, even as a Dark Shadows fan, you could go and say, okay, that was a one-off, that was a movie. What really hurt was the fact that it took them so damn long to film it.

They didn't film in their usual sets. They filmed in historic mansions and other locations outside of New York City. At the same time, the TV show was being filmed back in the city with different cast members. They had a lot of bad weather, a lot of delays, and it kept the major cast out of the main soap opera for a long time.

People kept saying, when's Barnabas coming back? Barnabas is up shooting a movie right now. He can't come back. Jonathan Frid, he didn't like the movie. He didn't like it was gory because it was gory and Barnabas was more of the predator vampire that Dan Curtis initially envisioned him as. He was not as nuanced in that film.

So Jonathan refused to do the second film and Dan Curtis was not happy about that. So he fired Jonathan Frid at that point. I mean, he fired the star of his show. He fired Barnabas Collins, a pop culture icon. He's the one on the board game. So he fired Barnabas, which he couldn't do because Jonathan's people got back to him and said, Jonathan still has three months left on his contract before the option to renew. Dan said, well, if you're not going to play Barnabas in the movie, you're not going to play him on the show either.

And he created a different character for Jonathan Fred Bramwell Collins in a parallel universe who was Barnabas' son in that parallel universe. HOFFMAN This was another problem with Dark Shadows. Today it's common for a sci-fi fantasy show to have a deep lore and mythology, but not a soap opera. You see, the idea of a soap opera has always been that the story moves very, very slowly. And the whole idea of a soap opera is if you missed a week, you didn't miss anything. You missed a week of Dark Shadows. Forget about it. You were like, oh, what? And then, Danielle says, the executives at ABC told Dan Curtis he had to bring the production

costs down. They had a meeting. They came out of that meeting with Dark Shadows being canceled. It sounds to me like Dan Curtis was done. He was kind of ready to move on. For a while, Dark Shadows was on a similar trajectory to Star Trek. Both shows debuted in 1966. They were groundbreaking in terms of their genres. The fans felt like the shows got canceled too soon. And both shows found a new audience in syndication. That's how Danielle first discovered Dark Shadows. Like Maxwell Smart, when I came around, I missed it by that much.

I was born in the early 70s, so I missed the original run of the show. And they ran Dark Shadows the same four o'clock in the afternoon, every weekday, just like in the old days. And I used to get off the bus, just go to my grandmother's house, grandparent's house and watch Dark Shadows. Then it came out on VHS and eventually DVD. There were fanzines and festivals.

There were Dark Shadows novels and audio dramas featuring actors from the original cast. Dark Shadows also became part of the conversation among horror fans and writers. Some people thought the idea of a morally conflicted vampire was a big improvement. Other people felt the opposite. Mark says you can see the first response to Dark Shadows

in a show called Kulchak the Night Stalker. It began with a made-for-TV movie and became a series in 1974. The show was about an investigative reporter named Kulchak, who came across a range of supernatural characters, including a vampire. And this response to the response, if you will, gives you a vampire who is so animalistic

and so predatory that he's not even allowed to talk. He only communicates and hisses and snarls. And the amazing thing is, who gives us the Nightstalker? Who's the producer behind the Nightstalker? Dan Curtis. Same guy who gives us the response to the traditional vampire in 67, then turns around and gives us the response to the response. Also around this time there are two books two vampire novels on the bestseller list at the same time. The first one is Salem's Lot by Stephen King. That gives us really nasty vampires because Stephen King believes vampires should be monstrous figures with teeth and they ought to use them.

And then in 1976, Anne Rice's book, Interview of the Vampire, was published. She was a Dark Shadows fan. Anne Rice took all of the questions of Dark Shadows and gives them to her immortals. And her immortals take those questions and run with them in every sort of direction. And from Anne Rice, we're going to go and get Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we're going to get True Blood and Vampire Diaries and Twilight and all of those kind of humanized vampires. The influence of Dark Shadows goes beyond vampires. On the show, the actors played multiple characters in different time periods and timelines.

Danielle says that approach of being a repertory company was one of the inspirations behind the show American Horror Story. American Horror Story, the creator of that show, Ryan Murphy, was a huge Dark Shadows fan too. His grandmother used to make him watch Dark Shadows to toughen him up as a kid. Yeah, and he became a fan of it and he used to say American Horror Story was his Dark Shadows. So he did something similar in that he took his company of actors and would use them every

season in different roles. So, but do you feel like, I wonder if it's been strip mined too much? Like too many of the things that were unusual about it have been done by other, in other characters that it would almost, if it came back, would almost seem derivative of the things that were derivative of it? And isn't that frustrating? Because those things were exactly, I mean, that's the, it set the template and then all these things came along and imitated it or took ideas from it.

And then you bring back the original flavor, the original recipe. And it's like, Oh, well, this is copying this. It's ridiculous. But you might be right about that. And other people have expressed that as well. Yeah. Mark disagrees. When, when Jonathan started to become to his own amazement, a star,

people started to really pay attention to the Barnabas Collins character. They started to call it the vampire's hamlet. And if Barnabas is sort of like the Hamlet character of vampire lore and literature, then he is open to interpretation. And the reason Dark Shadows worked was because they came up with a great character. The big lost opportunity was in 1991. NBC greenlit a reboot of Dark Shadows, produced by Dan Curtis.

It was a prime time drama, not a daytime soap. An actor named Ben Cross was cast as Barnabas. He did a great job capturing the way Jonathan Frid played the character. Yes? Good evening. Is Mrs. Collins at home? Who may I say is calling? You may tell her it is her cousin, Barnabas Collins from England.

According to Jeff, fans of the original show liked the new interpretation, and it could have been a great opportunity to gain new fans, and the network was excited at first. The 1991 Dark Shadows was considered dynasty with fangs. That's how the NBC network thought of it. But the timing couldn't have been worse. Tonight, America at war.

Reporting from Saudi Arabia, Tom Brokaw with Gary Cutley. Unfortunately, the Persian Gulf War broke out. There was even a preemption on the West Coast and a news bulletin interrupting on the East Coast. The Persian Gulf War was a ratings phenomenon. And then the leadership at NBC changed at about that time. And the new executives did not really care about Dark Shadows, although later admitted that canceling the show was a mistake. And then, of course, the 2012 Johnny Depp movie is quite divisive among fans because much of it

is just far too silly. The Tim Burton Johnny Depp movie really played up the idea of Barnabas being a man out of time. Welcome home, Barnabas Collins. How soon can the horses be ready? We don't have horses. We have a Chevy. Again, here's Mark.

They told everybody they were gonna do it seriously and then it turned out to be a farce. So there's been nothing really to re-energize the fan base in a long time. I mean, I can't put a pretty picture on this. The fandom is getting smaller each year. The fandom is getting older each year. And that's because there has been nothing

in the last 25 years to rejuvenate the franchise. It's so interesting because of all the things that people complain about modern fandom, you know, oh, the Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, whatever, it wasn't like it was back when I was doing, when I was into it, these new people, they like it for the wrong reasons, they don't like any of the new stuff, blah, blah, blah. But this is what you get in the opposite, you know, is like, well, if none of that happens, this, you know, I mean, I must be very frustrating to be a fan of Dark Shadows and to watch this, you know,

to watch it kind of fade like that. It is, I mean, I think it's always going to hold on a little bit. I think it's one great advantage is that it is cherished in the horror realm and horror fans are the one group of fans, bless them, that tend to look back. Somebody can say, I'm a comedy fan and not know who the Marx brothers are, not know who Buster Keaton is. Well, you could, you know, your knowledge of comedy could start

with Adam Sandler and you could say you're a comedy fan and nobody would question it. In other realms, you could even look at Broadway and say that. There are people who say, oh, I love the theater. And their knowledge of theater starts around Cats and Les Mis. But horror fans, they can look back. They can be persuaded to look back.

And you can say to a horror fan, like, you know, have you ever seen the 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatch? No, no, no, no. Oh, you'd ever seen it? And, you know, all of a sudden the 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatch? No, no, no, no. Oh, you'd ever seen it? And, you know, all of a sudden there's a crowd of people shaming, oh, you've got to see it.

How could you not? And then they see it and they go, oh, it's amazing. I can't believe it. Are there other things like that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you ever seen the thing? And so I think Dark Shadows will always kind of be there

from that standpoint. That's not a mass audience, but it's something. It is something which I think will at least keep it going. And who knows, maybe somebody will finally find the right way to reboot Dark Shadows. And somebody could do it. If it ended up in the right hands, done correctly, I would not rule out it being able to work in any number of forms, television or film. Who knows?

Who knows? You know, vampires are very hard to wipe out. They're very hard to eradicate. Even though Barnabas has come to represent a newer kind of vampire, he's not really at either end of the pendulum. You can't categorize him as a hero, or a monster, or an anti-hero. He can be all of them, which strangely enough, makes him feel more human and relatable. I'd like to see the character get another chance,

but for the time being, he's still locked in a coffin. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Daniel Galeiter, Mark Dwidziak, and Jeff Thompson. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. We have another podcast called Between Imaginary Worlds. It's a more casual chat show that is only available to listeners who pledge on Patreon. Last week, I talked with Aidan Sugano

and Denis-José Francois, who both worked on the animated film, Nimona. We talked about the incredible effort it took to get this film made and all the subtle things they put into the animation. We designed every single frame of our film to reflect the relationship that the characters had to acceptance at that moment

in the film by using light and shadow. Between Imaginary Worlds comes included with the ad-free version of the show that you can get on Patreon. You can also buy an ad-free subscription on Apple podcasts. If you support the show on Patreon, at different levels, you also get either free Imaginary World stickers, a mug or a t-shirt, and a link to a Dropbox account, podcasts. You can subscribe to the show's newsletter at imaginaryworldspodcast.org.