'Dark Shadows' Literally Lost an Episode You'll Never Get to See (original) (raw)
Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) staring down with bared fangs at an unconscious woman lying on her back on a table in Dark Shadows
Image via ABC
Published May 5, 2024, 9:45 PM EDT
Kelcie Mattson is a Senior Features author at Collider. Based in the Midwest, she also contributes Lists, reviews, and television recaps. A lifelong fan of niche sci-fi, epic fantasy, Gothic horror, elaborate action, and witty detective fiction, becoming a pop culture devotee was inevitable once the Disney Renaissance, Turner Classic Movies, BBC period dramas, and her local library piqued her imagination.
Rarely seen without a book in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, Kelcie explores media history (especially older, foreign, and independent films) as much as possible. In her spare time, she enjoys RPG video games, amateur photography, nerding out over music, and attending fan conventions with her Trekkie family.
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Summary
- Dark Shadows is a groundbreaking horror soap opera showcasing an innovative blend of Gothic elements and supernatural tropes,
- Part of Dark Shadows's mythos surrounds an infamous "Lost Episode" that's impossible to watch; however, a fan's audio recording helped the Dark Shadows team assemble a loose reproduction.
- Dark Shadows's enduring legacy influenced modern vampire lore, especially Barnabas Collins, a vampire antihero mourning his lost love and tormented by his bloodthirsty nature.
Dark Shadows, the only horror soap opera of the swinging '60s and grandparent to the paranormal romance, developed a cult classic mythos that outlives its five-year run. Airing five days a week on ABC from 1966 to 1971, creator Dan Curtis's Gothic tale focuses on the mysterious, reclusive, and affluent Collins family, who live high atop a hill in their gloomy mansion abode overlooking the equally gloomy seaside town of Collinsport, Maine. Waves crash over rocks, candelabras flicker, trains billow steam, and dress hems flutter. Yet for all its comforting Gothic trappings, the series didn't find success until it supplanted its human main characters with a 200-year-old vampire. Adding the supernatural — an unheard of development — catapulted ratings into the stratosphere. Dark Shadows scored roughly 18 million viewing households per week, according to Rosemary Guiley's The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters. Children raced home from school to catch the next plot twist. Even First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy proclaimed herself a fan.
From there, Dark Shadows sinks its pointy teeth into horror. Nothing's off limits, and everything within that boundless sphere of imagination is a camp lovers' dream: ghosts, werewolves, witches and warlocks, time travel, and remixing Victorian literary classics. Three movies, a 1991 television revival, a canceled CW reboot, and an active fanbase followed. In 2016, for its 50th anniversary, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences recognized the series as "ahead of and before its time, present, past or parallel time" (that will make sense later).
Beyond fusing pulpy sensibilities with transcendent eerieness, part of Dark Shadows's legacy includes "the Lost Episode." The soap produced 1,245 total episodes. Only one — Episode 1,219 — is lost to time, which is pretty remarkable given the decade's unreliable archival techniques. A reproduction pairs the Lost Episode's audio track with still imagery and narration, but no other remnant exists. Nada, zero, zilch. A fan's actions are the only reason the audio survived.
Release Date
June 27, 1966
In an eerie seaside mansion, the Collins family grapples with love, betrayal, and curses. Their lives intertwine with vampires, ghosts, and witches as they uncover dark family secrets and navigate the chilling mysteries rooted within their ancestral home.
Main Genre
Seasons
6
Creator(s)
Dan Curtis
How Did ‘Dark Shadows’ Lose an Episode?
Although stylistically dated by today’s standards, Dark Shadows's goofiness holds an irresistible charm. All those melodramatic music stingers, actors somberly turning toward a zooming camera, and episodic cliffhangers stay engaging because they had to be. Resting on their laurels would lose viewers, and 1960s network finances couldn't match Dark Shadows's groundbreaking ambition as a nationwide phenomenon and — per The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters — the first soap opera "to attract a large young audience [and] use special effects." Dan Curtis employed creative solutions to the conundrums of shifting audience interests, a tight filming schedule, and a severely under-budgeted production.
An add-on problem was the archival process or lack thereof. Preservation practices were limited because technology was limited. It wasn't unusual for series to lose their analog episodes, especially since the prevailing belief was that current media wouldn't stay relevant. Re-broadcasts were rare and usually reserved for made-for-television movies. The VHS revolution was years away. It's why dozens of Doctor Who episodes from the 1960s no longer exist in any form. Gizmodo explained:
"The BBC didn’t have a concrete policy on archiving its programs until the late 1970s. Before then, the BBC’s Film and Engineering departments destroyed or recorded over much of their archived programming on a regular basis. And different groups kept different recordings — Engineering kept the original 2" videotapes (known as quadruplex videotape) the episodes were shot on, while Film kept the 16mm Film versions that were “telerecordings” — known as kinescopes in America, literally just film recordings of the original videotapes transposing the footage into a more widely used format — to be sold to international broadcasters."
In Dark Shadows's case, Rosemary Guiley and The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters reports that "the video masters of a handful of episodes have been lost, but exist in kinescopes." The fan site Dark Shadows Every Day gives further context, detailing how ABC "phased out the [kinescope] practice in fall 1970, when everybody switched to sending videotapes." Before 1970, if something happened to the master tapes, syndication broadcasters could use the kinescopes. Episode 1,219 aired in 1971 at the tail end of the series' run, leaving Dark Shadows with no backups. "There was just a blank videotape in the [master] case," Dark Shadows Every Day recounts, "plus a little tuft of black and white fur that nobody could ever explain." How, then, do Dark Shadows's DVD and Blu-ray sets have a professional reconstruction?
What Is ‘Dark Shadows’ About?
Dark Shadows Every Day reports that Wendy “Josette” Kernaghan, a fan who was blind, recorded many episodes' audio during their initial ABC broadcasts. Josette had already circulated her copies with fellow fans before loaning Episode 1,219's audio tape out for official purposes. Even her recording was incomplete, but editors compiled what remained with imagery from other episodes and a narration track provided by Lara Parker, one of Dark Shadows's mainstay performers and best known for playing the schrming witch Angelique Bouchard. The result is the closest approximation fans have.
The Lost Episode takes place during Dark Shadows's final Parallel Time arc (and final storyline period, given its impending cancellation). Over the years, Shadows developed a pre-American Horror Story anthology style where the cast played a rotating set of characters from different timelines and dimensions. Century-wise, Episode 1,219 occurs in 1841 and opens with psychic Carrie Stokes (Kathy Cody) distressed over a troubling vision. She's witnessed a gravestone bearing the name of Daphne Harridge Collins (Kate Jackson), Bramwell Collins's (Jonathan Frid) fiancée. Women who marry into the Collins family meet unfortunate fates, so this isn't a good sign for Daphne's longevity.
Related
In keeping with Dark Shadows, it's especially unfortunate because Catherine Harridge Collins (Lara Parker), Daphne's engaged sister, is pregnant with Bramwell's child. The scandal! What's a soap opera without a love quadrangle, and what's Dark Shadows without a romantic entanglement predicated upon horror?
‘Dark Shadows’ Changed the Vampire Genre
The creative genealogy of pop culture giants like Anne Rice, Twilight, and The Vampire Diaries traces back to Dark Shadows, whether intentionally or via coincidental osmosis. Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), a brooding figure forever mourning his lost love and trapped by the curse of his bloodlust, spends the series shifting between villain, antihero, and protagonist quicker than humans change socks. Introduced as a menacing killer, kidnapper, and gaslighter, Barnabas's unexpected popularity with audiences — boosted no doubt by Frid, a Shakespearian-trained stage actor — forced the creative team to develop his sympathetic attributes and invent a tragically romantic backstory. Barnabas's angst, his wolf's head cane, and his My Chemical Romance eyeliner are largely responsible for spawning the tormented vampire archetype. Dan Curtis stole from himself by repeating Dark Shadows plot points for his 1974made-for-TV Dracula movie, one of which might sound familiar to vampire media connoisseurs: a reincarnated love interest.
Against all odds, Dark Shadows produced episode after episode with innovative aplomb and theatrical flair. It wasn't just a ratings battle that demanded such heft; Shadows's low budget meant the production filmed scenes in one take. The bloopers stayed in no matter how heinous, because time, money, and tape reels were of the essence. Mistakes range from actors flubbing lines or reading off the teleprompter, stray flies taking up residence on performers' foreheads, and set pieces falling down. Likewise, The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters cites "Curtis also never expected the show to survive to reruns, let alone international syndication." The joke might be on him, but because Dark Shadows continues spreading joy 58 years later (conventions are still going strong) it's a harmless one.
Dark Shadows is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.