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| Alexandra Moltke as Victoria Winters, Dark Shadows, circa 1967 |
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Victoria Winters (Alexandra Moltke Isles) should have been awarded a
Daytime Emmy* for Most Fabulous '60s Look.
Followed perhaps by
Carolyn Stoddard (Nancy Barrett).
I'm in full-on
Dark Shadows mode these days. It happens every now and again throughout my life. First in the 1960s, when I used to watch the show with my sibs after-school. Then in the late '80s/early '90s, when I caught it again on videocassette (the VCR! remember when that and the fax machine seemed like the beginning of the Modern Era? No? Trust me on this . . .) with some
Washington friends, one of whom --let's call him
My Companion in Kylieness--I'm still good friends with, 25 years later.
And like
David's mother Laura, Dark Shadows keeps rising like a phoenix from the ashes of my youth: I've watched episodes on DVD with
my Mom and sister on trips to the Plains and New Mexico. And now in the 2010s, I indulge again, first on
Netflix, from where it disappeared a couple of months ago, and now on
HuluPlus, where it reappeared recently.
It was an incredible show. Some would scoff at that claim--it was a soap! The production was amateurish! The acting inconsistent! Every other piece of dialog was a question, repeating the previous statement but with an uplilt at the end!
Any reprise has been fallen flat--the very good remake in the '90s with
Ben Cross and
Joanna Going, and the horrid movie version a couple of years ago, unwisely updated by
Tim Burton as yet another "daring" star-turn for
Johnny Depp.
All true.
So what's the big deal? For me, surely, it stems from good childhood memories--even if it was a neo-Gothic horror serial, it reminds me of great times with
my sister and two brothers, having a regular date to watch the show after school (and hiding behind our old blue-green couch when things got too frightening), a childish refuge from the struggles of life, both macro and micro, playing out around us.
But it's more than that:
Dark Shadows had an incredible sense of place. Every scene, every moment, took place in this dreary
New England seaport along the rocky shores of faraway
Maine. The claustrophobic village of
Collinsport, the cold and gloomy Collins Mansion and the Old House, where the sun never seemed to shine and more often than not, a terrible gale, the angry sea, and diabolical lightning crashed! boomed! and banged! around the characters, who live out a meager existence, forsaken by the gods, with the supernatural and melancholy as both their bane and their relief.
Funnily, in some superficial ways, Collinsport reminds me of my hometown in
North Carolina, also a seaport built in the 1700s. Small, hemmed in, exiled, the comforts found there limited to a warm, kind family (of course), the sound of the bells clanging softly from docked fishing boats, seagull cries, fried seafood, and better weather.
Oh, and no vampires.
In Collinsport you had time travel, tears in the orderly narrative of the universe, transporting characters backwards and forwards, even in parallel eras. In
Swansboro, you had time travel, too. All you had to do was walk down
Front Street and see the widow's walk above the dentist office,
the Porthole, the old house built in 1776 near the post office, and the
Octagon Plantation on the edge of town.
Fort Macon and
Tryon Palace nearby, and
New Bern and
Beaufort, too, old seaports themselves.
The Colonial Era, the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and with
Camp LeJeune and
Cherry Point nearby, even
World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, all coexisting. Not always peacefully, but along side each other. Backward, forward, parallel.
Collinsport is a bubble. Swansboro is a bubble. Black-and-white vignettes in an old photo album, reminding me of where I come from, what I'm made of.
This has not been a
Dan Curtis production, but it's been a good life in many ways.
* * *
*Yes, of course I know the Daytime Emmys didn't begin until 1974, but a guy can dream.
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