ATTENTION "DARK SHADOWS" FANS

[Pumpkin_Man]

Hi Folks:

I'm afraid it's a rather sad day for me, and for all "Dark Shadows" fans who post here to Halloween.com. I think this is very appropriate for Halloween General, since "Dark Shadows" is a Halloween standard and allways has been. What other tv series had it all? "Dark Shadows" had vampires, wearwolvs, ghosts, whtches, haunted houses, dopplegangers, e ching, paralell time, their own version of the Frankenstein Monster AND Dr. Jeckyl & Mr Hyde. At Collinwood, it was Halloween all year around.

Anyway, the sad news is that the main star of "Dark Shadows," Johanatin Frid, a.k.a. Barnabas Collisn died at the age of 87. I think this just happened today if I'mnot mistaken, but I am rather bummed out about it. IT seems that with both Frid and Dick Clark gone, all the icons that made my child hood what it was are disappearing into History. This is possibly the worst news I heard since Ford decided to discontinue the Mercury brand.

At any rate, what Bela Lugosi was to the movies, Johnathin Frid was to tv. Where most people's first introduction to the world of vampires was Bela Lugosi and Count Dracula, my very first exposuet to vampires was Johnathin Frid, and Barnabas Collins. Come to think of it, "Dark Shadows" is what initiated me into the world of the accult and my love for everything Halloween. IT was on "Dark Shadows" where I saw my first vampire, my first transformation into a wearwolf, it was the first Haunted House story I got into, the first Witch story I got into, the first Ghost story I got into, the list goes on and on. Some of the hardest peddeling of my bicycle I did as a kid was when I was racing home from school to see what Barnabass Collins was up to. One of my fondest memories was when we got our very first color tv. As usual, I raced home on my bike from the 3rd grade, and sitting inour living room was a brand spanking new color tv, and "Dark Shadows" was just beginning. The colors really brought the show to life.

At any rate, I don't want to take up too much server space with this. I just thought that all my fellow Pumpkin Heads here at Halloween.com has suffered what IMHO is the greatest loss since the death of Bela Lugosi. The death of a true icon of gothic horror.

Mike

[Rising Dead Man]

So right when the Dark Shadows movie is about to come out, he dies? That can't be a coincidence.

[ancient whitelighter]

Thanks for letting us know, I hadn't heard that about Jonathan. I grew up with Dark Shadows, my favorite show actually as a child, and I love it still.

I was especially fond of Barnabas. I think his character evoked strong feelings of sympathy...a tragic figure, cruel yet at his core a good man.

I still have my Dark Shadows board game!

Sad. I shall miss him. I'm glad that he lived a long life, hopefully a happy one.

aw

[Murfreesboro]

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/04/19 ... ies-at-87/

It says in this link from Fox News that he died Friday. That was the 13th, wasn't it?

Man, Jonathan Frid was very, very special to me in that role. He made Dark Shadows great. Barnabas will always be my favorite vampire, and Frid was Barnabas.

[Pumpkin_Man]

It was Johnathin Frid that made "Dark Shadows" into the show it was. Without Frid, "Dark Shadows" would have just been another soap opera, which is what it actualy started out as. It was originaly intended to be another "One Life to LIve," or another "Edge of Night," until they experimented with supernatural story lines like Laure the Pheonix, and Barnabas the vampire.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

I've been talking a lot about Frid's Barnabas on another forum I frequent, one that has nothing to do with the supernatural or Halloween. I've been trying to explain to people there what was so special about Barnabas Collins. Of course, he created the template for the conflicted vampire, which has become a cliche nowadays, but was totally original with that character. I also think that casting directors since his day have understood, as the Dark Shadows people could not have anticipated, that the vampire is going to be an attractive character to many viewers. So they tend now to cast attractive leading men in those roles. But Frid was cast to be a traditional, scary, Dracula-type vampire. He wasn't particularly young or, to my 13-yr-old eyes, especially handsome. I was prepared to be frightened by him, and I was. But I was unprepared to find him sympathetic, tormented, complex. And he was all of those things. Frid's Barnabas never entirely lost his threatening edge, which is a quality I find missing in most latter-day vampires.

One or two articles I've skimmed have talked about Barnabas as a tragic figure. I think that is a good description of what Frid discovered in the character. And there was that quality of eternal grief about him. He was forever trying to re-create his relationship with his lost love of another century, Josette. That eternal mourning for a lost past, a lost love--that is a deeply human thing.

[Pumpkin_Man]

That's exactly what I saw in Barnabas Collins, too. I could see past the monster, and see some one who one would feel sorry for, but at the same token, he was also suave, sophisticated, and spoke with a very elloquent vocabulary. Barnabas Collins was a childhood hero of mine because of his intelligent and educated way about him. The kids use to razz me about it when I would talk like Barnabas Collins, but they often didn't know what I was saying.

Mike

[NeverMore]

I wonder if he got to see a screening of the new movie before he died? I'm not even sure I'll recognize him in his cameo. Don't think I've seen any recent pictures of him.

• • 

[johnsoneliza52]

Sad to say...I've never seen Dark Shadows. I always wanted to though, but my mother wouldn't let me watch it. The neighbors across the street got to watch; I'll never forget. I was jealous, because I heard about it all the time, and wasn't allowed. (PS they also had an easy bake oven, and went to the YMCA camp..jealous jealous jealous)

[johnsoneliza52]

ooo ooo ooo! And they had a play kitchen..made out of REAL METAL!!

[Murfreesboro]

If you Google Frid's name you can find recent photos of him. He even had a website where he would write little essays about his time on the show, usually prompted by what fans had said or asked. I didn't know about any of that until he died, but I have found some of it in the last couple of days.

Apparently he died as the result of a fall. He took pneumonia because he was bedridden from it. That happens frequently with the elderly.

[Morticia]

Don't feel bad johnsoneliza52, my mother wouldn't let me either. The first chance I really got to watch it was when, I believe it was the SciFi channel ran the series again back in the 90's. I have since bought eppys 4-10.

[Murfreesboro]

My mother never forbade me to watch, but I'm sure she thought it was very silly. She was a no-nonsense type, had zero interest in fantasy of any sort, and claimed to me that she had never been afraid of the supernatural in her life, not even as a child. How she gave birth to someone like me is beyond me!

I never had any idea at all, when I was a kid, that there were so many other people who were responding to that show as I was. My intensity about it was something that I experienced alone. It was only after I was an adult that I learned there had been others like me.

[Pumpkin_Man]

I was not forbidden to watch "Dark Shadows," but I was forbidden to watch "Creature Features" until I was 10. My mom was very simular in that way, too, Murf. She and my father both were very 'no-nonsene' children of the Great Depression and World War II, and pretty much lived in the "real" world all of their lives.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

That describes my mother, too. Great Depression/WWII generation. Maybe that does have something to do with their attitude toward fantasy.

Then again, my mother's mother had a sort of horror of superstition. I remember, when my father died on a Friday the 13th, and I was only 7, she spent the whole weekend lecturing me on how the day had had nothing to do with his death, how he would have died no matter what the date had been. I think when she was young, people associated superstition with ignorance. So she had a life-long aversion to people's giving in to the fantastical or overly-imaginative. I think she and my mother both had a sense of whimsy, but they suppressed it for the most part.

Funny thing--I'm pretty sure my mother actually had some psychic ability. But she rarely acknowledged it. It wasn't part of her world-view. And I know neither she nor her siblings ever had the slightest patience with dreams (the ones you dream when you are asleep, I mean). Dreams were silly nonsense, and they thought it was bad form, rude actually, to speak of them. I was an adult before I found people who would listen to my dreams or take them seriously. It was a great relief to me when I learned that there were highly educated people who were serious about interpreting dreams, because I have always been prone to quite vivid, highly symbolic dreams.