In a 1970 episode of the classic daytime serial, Dark Shadows, 14-year-old David Collins returns to his room to find several of the adult characters waiting there for him and turns angry. “What is this, a convention?” he explodes.
No, it wasn’t a convention yet, but if he waited thirteen more years, it would be.
As loyal readers know, I’ve just spent the last six columns covering what I saw and did at 2003’s Comic-Con International in San Diego, the largest popular culture convention in the United States. A month and a half later I attended another longrunning pop culture convention that provides a sharp contrast to Comic-Con’s immensity. This was the twentieth anniversary Dark Shadows Festival, held at the New York Marriott Hotel in Brooklyn over Labor Day weekend.
What, some of you may ask, is Dark Shadows? To be brief, it was a daytime serial created by producer Dan Curtis, which ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971, and was the first soap opera that delved into the supernatural. In its day it achieved extraordinary popularity, and its lead character, the vampire Barnabas Collins, became a pop culture icon. It was the Buffy the Vampire Slayer of its day (and, indeed, my friends who used to watch Dark Shadows religiously back in the day are all Buffy devotees today), and Buffy might not ever have happened had Dark Shadows not prepared the way. I’ll say more about this later.
I’ve been attending the Dark Shadows Festivals nearly as long as I’ve been going to the San Diego Comic-Con. The Festivals began twenty years ago, in 1983. The initial East Coast Festivals were held in a hotel at Newark Airport; the first was very small, indeed, but over the next few years actors from the series began to turn up at the Festivals. The East Coast Festivals moved to Marriott hotels in Manhattan. There were also West Coast Festivals, usually in Los Angeles. Dark Shadows was shot in New York City, in the studio now used by The Montel Williams Show (and for a time it was a night club, the Red Zone, where DC Comics once held a Christmas party I attended, delighted in my knowledge of its Dark Shadows connection). Many of the cast members are now based in Los Angeles, while others remain Manhattanites. In some years Festivals were held on both coasts, but lately there has been only one Festival a year, alternating between coasts. I’ve been to every New York Festival, and three of the West Coast editions, one of which was memorably held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Last year’s West Coast Festival was in Anaheim, allowing attendees easy access to Disneyland.
For some years the New York fests were held in the new Marriott Hotel in Times Square, but their most usual venue was another New York Marriott. Indeed, the last New York fest before this one took place in the now familiar setting of the New York Marriott, World Trade Center, on August 17-19, 2001, less than a month before September 11. This hotel is no longer there. I stopped by my friend Ed Via’s hotel room during the Festival. Where that room was is now thin air.
So for 2003 the Dark Shadows Festival found a new location, the Brooklyn Marriott, thereby providing me with the impetus finally to do something that all New Yorkers should do: walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, which surpassed my expectations: the bridge itself, towering about me, provided even a greater spectacle than the downtown skyline.
No, September 11, 2001 did not stop the Dark Shadows Festival. But something else did. This year’s Festival was announced as the “20th Anniversary Festival and Farewell.” The last one.
How could this be? And why? There was no explanation.
Was it simply getting too expensive to stage a three-day event in a major hotel? Were the organizers simply getting tired of holding the Festivals but unwilling to farm the work out to someone else? Or was there a darker reason for the Festival’s demise? There were rumors abounding on the Internet about direly inappropriate behavior by certain fans: ranging from stalking to things I will not repeat here, but are as bad as things get. Were any of these rumors true? I do not know. But, as we would learn, it was not the actors, the supposed targets of much of this fan misbehavior, who decreed the end of the Festivals.
So what would this year’s Festival be like? What is it like when a longrunning popular culture convention comes to an end?
THE CHARM OF IMPERFECTION
It is time to face the inevitable, by which I mean a topic that comes up in every article about Dark Shadows, and it is best that I get out of the way early on: the bloopers.
Dark Shadows has a reputation as a camp classic, primarily because of its notorious bloopers, all now preserved for the ages on home video. Actors would forget or muff lines; props would fall; the shadows of boom mics would loom into view; houseflies visibly pestered the actors, occasionally a crew member would even be caught on camera.
Now, first of all, these mishaps did not happen as frequently as the legends claim. Further, I think Dark Shadows gets an unfairly singled out. Odd as it now seems, the late 1960s were still the early days of television by today’s standards. In today’s era of home video, camcorders, and editing video on home computers, it is strange to learn that editing videotape was exorbitantly expensive in the 1960s. Hence, Dark Shadows was shot “live on tape,” with no retakes except in the direst emergencies. So any mistake that did not entirely disrupt a scene was left in. Now, surely this was true of every other daytime soap being shot during these years. The difference is that the 1966-1971 episodes of those other soaps have not continued to be shown on TV for three decades. (Well, also the other soaps did not have to deal with pre-CGI special effects, either, which usually worked on Dark Shadows but sometimes misfired.)
To say something is camp, though, implies that it is primarily ironic (whether by intention or not), and has no serious emotional content. What I have observed at Dark Shadows Festivals is that fans of the show simultaneously watch it on two levels. Yes, they watch for the bloopers, or for the exaggerated mannerisms of certain actors, or for lines that don’t work as intended, and laugh appreciatively. But at the same time the fans are drawn into the stories, care about the characters, and take their fates quite seriously.
A brand new viewer might initially be put off by the occasional mistakes, or by the show’s theatrical style, so different from the ironic cool of contemporary shows. (And some people, of course, simply refuse to take horror and fantasy material seriously.) But keep watching: if you’re open to tales of the supernatural, you’ll be hooked. The series consistently rises above its flubs and excesses.
So, too, do the Dark Shadows Festivals themselves. A couple of times at this year’s Festival, something went wrong, and the festival’s longtime director, Jim Pierson, said it was just another Dark Shadows blooper.
San Diego’s Comic-Con International, which began when Dark Shadows was originally on the air, has over the ensuing three decades grown in size, professionalism, and sheer spectacle. The Dark Shadows Festivals began twenty years ago, in 1983, but they have changed comparatively little since their beginnings. One has come to expect that panels will not always start on time, or that the wrong video clip will occasionally turn up on screen. Just like the on-camera mistakes do for the show itself, seen in the proper perspective, these small flaws provide part of the Festivals’ charm. They do not run with flawless professional precision. They are, in fact, a lot like early comic book conventions. The Dark Shadows Festivals remain close to their roots, as events run for and to a large extent by fans: they represent the fantasy/sci-fi convention in a close to pure form.
Comic-Con International, remains a nonprofit organization, and I believe them when they state that their primary purpose is to promote comics as an artform. Their guest list and programming bears this out. Even so, Comic-Con is a means by which comics companies, art dealers, and back issue dealers promote and sell their wares, and, increasingly, a showcase for Hollywood to promote its fantasy and science fiction projects. Moreover, there are other comics, fantasy and S. F. conventions that are decidedly not nonprofits, and I have grown to loathe the tacky conclaves of comics dealers that have made New York City a no man’s land for comics conventions with higher aspirations.
On the other hand, the dealers’ rooms at the Dark Shadows Festivals remain small, primarily offering old memorabilia from the 1960s and providing a place for some of the actors to hawk their current projects.
The Festivals are dominated not by sales or promotion, but by the simple desire of Dark Shadows aficionados to celebrate the show and the people who made it.
And, surprisingly, it has not been just us middle-aged Boomers who watched the show in its original telecasts who comprise the Festival audiences. On Friday night at this year’s convention, one of the actresses, Lara Parker, asked for a show of hands from people attending for the first time, and it was over half the audience. Festival director Jim Pierson estimates that seventy-five percent of the attendees are newcomers. Thanks to the series’ continual exposure on the Sci-Fi Channel and home video, new generations have discovered the show. It’s not the massive popularity Dark Shadows had in the late 1960s, but enough to sustain its ratings on the Sci-Fi Channel, video sales, and several books published about the show.
The 1960s were a golden age of fantasy and science fiction on television, giving rise to numerous series that found fervid support from the new generation of Baby Boomers. Many of these are now regarded as classics: Star Trek, of course, The Twilight Zone, The Avengers, The Prisoner, The Wild Wild West, yes, even, Batman. And Dark Shadows is part of the list as well. It is a remarkable flowering of creativity in fantasy and science fiction, not to be rivaled until the 1990s with the coming of the Star Trek spinoffs, The X-Files, Buffy, the animated Batman and others, all, of course, created by people who grew up watching the 1960s classics.
Dark Shadows began in 1966 as a soap opera that sought to capture the feel of Gothic romance: it began with a young (and permanently naive) woman, Victoria Winters, an orphan unaware who her parents were, journeying by train to the small seacoast village of Collinsport, Maine. She had been hired to work as a governess – Jane Eyre’s old profession – at Collinwood, the enormous old mansion near the cliffs, owned by the wealthy Collins family, who had lived there for generations. The current Collins family comprised its head, the imperious Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, her cynical brother Roger, her feisty daughter Carolyn, and Roger’s young son David. As Vicki would learn, Collinwood was a house full of dark secrets. None of those secrets as yet involved the paranormal, though, and the show suffered from poor ratings.
Comics aficionados may recall that Stan Lee co-created Spider-Man for a comic that was facing cancellation, so he felt free to take chances and innovate. Similarly, with ratings so low, producer Dan Curtis was willing to move into uncharted territory for soaps.
First he introduced the ghost of an 18th century woman named Josette. Then he brought in Laura Collins, a woman who would die in flames only to return to life, renewed. She called herself a phoenix, a decade before Chris Claremont and Jean Grey would use the name in X-Men.
Finally, feeling he had nothing to lose, in 1967 Curtis brought in a vampire: Barnabas Collins, an 18th century member of the family who had once loved Josette. Freed from his coffin by his future servant, Willie Loomis, Barnabas introduced himself at Collinwood as a descendant and lookalike of the original Barnabas of the 1790s. Ensconced in another mansion on the estate, Barnabas secretly proceeded to mesmerize Maggie Evans, a young villager, into believing she was his lost love Josette.
Initially Curtis believed that the vampire story would only last several weeks, and then he would kill the character off. But to everyone’s surprise, Barnabas was a hit with the audience, and the ratings began to rise.
Why? In large part it was due to the casting of Jonathan Frid, a fairly obscure Shakespearean actor from Canada. Having played Macbeth and Richard III, Frid could project a sense of menace that was larger than life. But, perhaps more importantly, Frid, through his performance, and the writers gave Barnabas an appealing subtext. Barnabas was multidimensional: he was genuinely happy to be back home at Collinwood, he feared exposure of his secret, and he longed for his lost Josette.
Months passed, and Barnabas not only remained on the show, but had clearly become its central figure. Towards the end of 1967 Curtis took another gamble. In the course of a seance, Victoria Winters was thrust back in time to the year 1795, where she met Barnabas when he was still human. All the regular actors were recast as characters in 1795. (The series’ time traveling turned the cast into something of a repertory company, in which virtually all the regulars got to play multiple parts. Actors learned they might be killed off in one part only to return as someone else, giving them a kind of job security that actors on normal soaps lacked.)
This gave the writers the opportunity to show Barnabas’s origin: how he began as a kindly aristocratic gentleman, albeit one with a streak of temper, who was engaged to marry the French aristocrat Josette. But Barnabas had had a liaison with her servant, Angelique, who refused to give him up, and secretly practiced witchcraft. The vengeful Angelique ended up putting the curse on Barnabas that transformed him into a vampire. Now the audience could watch as Barnabas, under the sway of his vampiric instinct to kill, grew more violent and ruthless.
Yet this Barnabas did not quite evolve into the villain we had first met on the show. He was now consumed by guilt, unable to control what was clearly an addiction to human blood. However cruel he became to his enemies, Barnabas still cared for his loved ones – Josette, his mother, and his sister, each of whom died as an indirect result of his curse. And Frid was superb in conveying Barnabas’s longing, guilt, and anguish.
Instead, Barnabas’s spirit was projected back through time to 1897, the year of Quentin’s death, where he was once more released from his coffin as a vampire. But this time things were different. Barnabas was once again unwillingly compelled to attack victims for their blood. But he retained the conscience he had developed in the 1968 episodes. While he was in 1897 Barnabas had a mission: to do whatever he could to save the Collins family members of both 1897 and 1969 from the dangers that threatened them.
And thus Barnabas became a genuinely unique character. It is in the 1897 sequence, during which Dark Shadows reached its peak of popularity, that the writers depicted Barnabas in his prime. Barnabas was now the protector of his family, indeed, their guardian through the ages, willing to risk his own existence to save theirs. And yet he labored under a curse that was not his doing, and which he cannot control.
We are familiar with one kind of secret identity: the Clark Kent figure who is secretly Superman, the seemingly ordinary and mundane person whose heroic qualities the world does not suspect. But Barnabas has a different kind of secret identity: the gentlemanly “cousin from England” who fears that the family he loves will discover that beneath his refined facade he is a monster. (And indeed, in 1897 Barnabas’s secret is exposed and the family turns against him.)
Barnabas strives for the happiness of others, but can achieve none for himself, as he is continually thwarted in love by his curse or simply by the workings of fate. He is devoted to family, and yet he is cursed to be an outsider, even potentially an outlaw.
Perhaps you can see from this description that Barnabas Collins was very much a 1960s hero. Indeed, he fits into the same zeitgeist as various classic Marvel heroes, created in that same decade: the heroes distrusted and feared by the very society they protect, continually unable to find happiness for themselves, flawed in their own personalities, and whose powers are both blessing and curse.
A consistent, but perhaps accidental, theme of Dark Shadows is redemption. Numerous characters, including Barnabas, began as unpleasant or even villainous, became popular, and grew more sympathetic and heroic. In 1897 Barnabas met the living Quentin, the untrustworthy rogue whose silent ghost terrorized Collinwood in 1969. But history repeated itself: David Selby, who portrayed Quentin, radiated charm once the series moved to 1897 and allowed him to speak, and brought to life Quentin’s one saving grace, his paternal devotion to his nephew Jamison.
Quentin proved immensely popular with the fans, and once he fell under the werewolf curse, his sufferings made him considerably more sympathetic. Quentin soon the series’ second heroic lead, and Barnabas’s intervention in 1897 resulted in changing the course of history so that Quentin never died. Instead, thanks to a Dorian Gray-style portrait that neutralized his curse and made him immortal, Quentin was able to join the present day Collins family. Following Barnabas’s lead, he would tell the contemporary Collinses that he was a descendent of the 1897 Quentin.
Dark Shadows evolved into what today we might term a postmodern pastiche. Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Turn of the Screw, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, and even H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Sometimes Greek myths turned up in new guises: an artist painted a portrait of a woman who came to life, as in the story of Pygmalion and Galatea, and another man sought to bring her back from the land of the dead, as in the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Elements of classic Gothic novels were blended into the mix, including Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Though Dark Shadows became famous, it seems clear that intellectual property lawyers weren’t watching it, because the writers got away with “borrowing” plot and characterization elements from numerous novels, films and plays that were still under copyright. Among these were properties that recognizably fit into the milieu, like Rebecca, Laura, Gaslight, in each of these cases with major plot twists not to be found in the original. But there were also “borrowings” from sources one might not expect: Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Richard Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate, John Fowles’ The Collector.
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when Buffy and company encountered a character who used a drug to transform into an evil version of himself , they acknowledged in the dialogue that he was a Jekyll and Hyde type. In one episode Buffy not only met Dracula but told him she had seen all his movies. In contrast, Dark Shadows engaged in none of this ironic self-awareness. None of the characters ever referenced the books that inspired story arcs: Barnabas and Julia could bring a Frankenstein-style monster to life without ever betraying any awareness of his fictional forebears.
Dark Shadows strikes me as being similar to Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the subject of a coming column). Moore’s guiding principle in League is to combine all the classic stories of literature, high and low, into a single fictional reality, in which Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Captain Nemo, and H. G. Wells’s Martians, among many, many others, all coexist and can interact. Dark Shadows did not bring fictional characters from other works into its milieu: when Shadows did its riff on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the writers created a somewhat different character named Dr. Cyrus Longworth, who metamorphosed into John Yaeger, a man with a distinctly 1970 fashion sense. But in the world of Dark Shadows, plots and characters inspired by past classics of horror and Gothic romance become components of the same overall story.
“House” was a big hit in its day, but surely fans of the show must have been disappointed not to see the tragically heroic Barnabas. And perhaps the film was one of the nails in the TV series’ coffin, so to speak.
The series was never able to match the ratings and sustained creative brilliance of the 1897 sequence, which lasted a full nine months. Subsequently, the writers took on a surprising challenge, drawing on Lovecraft’s works in their story arc about the return of primeval creatures called the Leviathans. These beings captured and mystically brainwashed Barnabas into serving as their leader. This probably struck the producers and writers as an intriguing plot device, enabling Frid to enact pure villainy, as he did so well. But the arc proved unpopular with the viewers, who had had their hero taken from them. (It seems like an earlier generation’s version of Buffy Season 6, inasmuch as Buffy creator Joss Whedon has theorized that it proved unpopular with many viewers since Buffy no longer acted like her familiar heroic self.) Midway through the arc, the writers hurriedly restored Barnabas to his guilt-ridden noble self (and to vampirism). But, though the series remained intelligent and involving, it was palpably on the decline over the next year. By the summer of 1970, it was recycling its own story lines, as children once more became possessed by ghosts (with no one admitting this had happened two years before), leading to another extended visit by Barnabas to the 19th century, 1840 this time, to set the present aright.
So it is easy to believe that one reason that Dark Shadows ended was that the producers and writers were running out of ideas. But ratings appear to have sharply declined as well. It is understandable that a show that ran five days a week, advancing plots at a rapid clip, would not only consume enormous amounts of story material, but would also put a strain on much of the audience. How many people were committed enough to keep up with the show for more than a few years?
And so Dark Shadows abruptly came to an end in early April, 1971, at the conclusion of a story arc set in a parallel world that did not even involve Barnabas! Tiring of the character, Jonathan Frid played Bramwell Collins, an analogue to Wuthering Heights‘ Heathcliff, in this final story line. There were still plans to make a sequel to House of Dark Shadows, but Frid would not return for a second movie. So the next film, Night of Dark Shadows, became a ghost story built around the series’ second lead, David Selby as Quentin Collins. At least in “House,” even if Barnabas was killed, the good guys triumphed at the end. Night, however, ends in bleakness and despair, with all the sympathetic characters dead or permanently possessed. Perhaps Curtis was trying to move in new directions, but the tone of Night was wholly out of keeping with that of the TV series. There would be no more Dark Shadows films after Night. (The invaluable cable channel Turner Classic Movies shows House of Dark Shadows every year in October, usually very late at night, and sometimes shows Night as well. This year House turns up at 3:30 AM EST early on Monday October 13, appropriately following the Bela Lugosi Dracula: check it out.)
Curtis, however, continued on, filming the real horror classics, like “Turn of the Screw,” for television, making successful horror movies like “Trilogy of Terror,” and directing the original TV movie of “The Night Stalker,” acknowledged by Chris Carter as an inspiration for his creation, “The X-Files.” In time Curtis became the producer and director of the serious, big budget and prestigious television mini-series, “The Winds of War” and “War on Remembrance” (now on DVD).
And meanwhile, Dark Shadows: became the Show That Would Not Die. For the more than three decades since its cancellation, Dark Shadows has been on the air in reruns more years than not, first in syndication, then on PBS stations, and for much of the last ten years, on the Sci-Fi Channel (currently showing two episodes on weekdays from 8 to 9 AM EST).
In 1991 Curtis even produced a new prime time television version of Dark Shadows for NBC. Rather than picking up the continuity from the old series, he rebooted it from the beginning, with an entirely new cast playing the original roles. We are surely all too familiar with remakes of classic movies and TV series – or reboots of comics – that make appalling changes in the very elements that made the originals work. In contrast, aficionados of the old Dark Shadows series like myself must have been pleased to see how closely the new “DS” hewed to the plots and characters of the original. Some major changes that were made were actually well-considered improvements: now, not only was Victoria Winters the reincarnation of Barnabas’s lost love Josette, but the new Vicki actually was smart, befitting a leading lady circa 1991!
And yet the new Dark Shadows lasted a mere 13 episodes, though that was enough to take the story through a rapid-fire version of the 1795 flashback. The show’s failure is often blamed on the fact that its early episodes were pre-empted by coverage of the 1991 Gulf War. A bigger problem, I think, was that once again it was not clear that Curtis fully understood the appeal of the property. One might think that with the wisdom of hindsight, he would have played Barnabas as the reluctant vampire from the beginning. But instead the early episodes of the new series were basically a remake of House, minus Barnabas’s exposure and demise. Barnabas was nearly wholly a villain, even murdering one of his cousins onscreen. Why would a new audience want him as the hero? Moreover, the actor now playing Barnabas not only lacked Frid’s charisma and dramatic presence but did not effectively convey what Frid had from the start: the subtexts of guilt, fear, angst, and romantic longing. By the time the new series’ 1795 flashback was done, the new Barnabas had made the transition to the role of reluctant vampire, but then it was too late.
To judge from the Dark Shadows Festivals, the 1991 series has gradually faded from fans’ attentions. But now MPI Home Video has released the entire original series on videocassette, and starting last year has rapidly been issuing the series on DVD as well. You know what that means: Dark Shadows has achieved permanence.
THE LEGACY
What does this have to do with comics? Well, there were Dark Shadows comics published by Gold Key during the run of the original series. More importantly, there was a handsome Dark Shadows newspaper strip, drawn by Ken Bald, which has been collected in a paperback edition published by Pomegranate Press, a small press headed by former Dark Shadows actress Kathryn Leigh Scott; the book includes an admirable introductory essay by Claypool Comics editor in chief Richard Howell, whose own Deadbeats is considerably influenced by Dark Shadows. (Go to www.pompress.com to learn about this and Pomegranate’s many other Dark Shadows books.)
Dark Shadows influenced comics when the show was originally telecast, as well. Roy Thomas, Stan Lee’s first successor as Marvel’s editor in chief, was a Dark Shadows fan, and even wrote a homage about a horror soap in Daredevil #65 and 66, published in 1970. More importantly, Dark Shadows must have been an influence when Thomas and Gil Kane created Marvel’s own reluctant vampire, Michael Morbius, in Amazing Spider-Man #101 the following year. And then there is Baron Winters, the lead character in DC’s 1980s Night Force comic, whom artist Gene Colan drew to look much like Barnabas Collins, right down to the Roman-style bangs along his forehead.
Most importantly, by radically transforming the vampire archetype, Dan Curtis and company made Barnabas Collins into the first of a new kind of hero: the vampire as protagonist. Not only Marvel’s Morbius and Hannibal King, and DC’s “I, Vampire,” but Anne Rice’s vampiric cast of characters, the hero of TV’s Forever Knight, Angel and Spike from the Buffyverse, the version of Mina in this year’s movie of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Kate Beckinsale’s character in the new movie “Underworld,” are all following in Barnabas’s wake.
How many of the latter-day creators of vampire heroes actually watched Dark Shadows? It’s hard to say. A clip from Dark Shadows turns up on the Buffy Season 2 DVD, and the show’s set designer proudly proclaims himself a longtime Dark Shadows fan. Does this mean that Joss Whedon watched the show? I don’t know.
And in a way it does not matter. Barnabas Collins made it possible for the vampire to become a hero in American popular culture. Even if Rice and Whedon and the others never saw “Dark Shadows,” that series altered popular culture and the public’s image of the vampire archetype in a way that enabled their own vampiric protagonists to flourish.
UNRESOLVED MYSTERIES
So, that’s why Dark Shadows is a landmark in pop culture. It deserves to be commemorated in annual celebrations. So, then, I repeat, just why are the Festivals ending?
Asked about this in an interview (in the August 14, 2003 Queens Ledger), Festival director Jim Pierson said that “there will always be events that the Festival will sponsor,” and that “I certainly do not rule out more three-day festivals in the future.” Not that he is definitely ruling them in, either. “After 20 years, my goal is to keep things fresh and interesting. Three days is a lot of time to fill.” He also said, “I also have to consider the stars who still attend. Do they want to keep telling the same stories year after year? I wouldn’t say that’s a reason for canceling the Festivals, but it’s something for me to consider.” And also, “Ultimately, it was my decision” to bring the three-day Festivals to an end. At the Festival he promised there would be a Dark Shadows event next year of some sort.
Somehow I don’t think that he’s really told us that much.
Moreover, the fact that the Festival lasts three days is an essential part of its appeal. People travel from around the country, and even from Britain, to attend the Festivals. Would they go to all that trouble for an event that lasted only a single day, or even two? Would the actors fly cross-country for a one-day event? Would anyone beyond Southern California attend Comic-Con International if it were merely a day or two long?
So, the question remained: why are the Festivals ending?
Maybe the Festivals will end, but Dark Shadows itself may go on in an unexpected way. But, in the tradition of the daily Dark Shadows cliffhanger, I will leave that answer for next week’s installment.
-Copyright 2003 Peter Sanderson
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