For a show that had a stake driven through its heart 28 years ago by ABC, the vampire soap opera "Dark Shadows" is having a remarkable afterlife.
A fan-driven quarterly newsletter, "Shadowgrams," has collected 50,000 names over the last three decades for its mailing list. An annual convention, which alternates between coasts, draws thousands of fans.Cable TV's Sci-Fi Channel airs an hour block of "Dark Shadows" at 10 a.m. weekdays. Most of the episodes are available on videotape, too.
The show's hard-core fans are folks in their 30s and 40s who recall fondly racing home from school to catch the show in the 1960s. The gathering gives them a chanc to finally meet cast members, many of whom have given up acting by now.
"Dark Shadows," which ran from 1966 to 1971, was an unconventional soap even by today's standards. Instead of storylines about unplanned pregnancies and lust run amok, it centered on an odd family from Maine called the Collinses, whose ancestor Barnabas (Jonathan Frid) was a vampire released from his coffin after 200 years.
The show also featured stories about werewolves on the prowl, witches with axes to grind and ghosts haunting the Collinses' gothic homestead of Collinswood, too.
But it was Barnabas' quest to become human -- or at least remain humane -- that is the show's trademark and made portrayer Jonathan Frid, a Shakespearean-trained actor, one of daytime TV's first legitimate stars.
" 'Dark Shadows' is an escape, an escape into mystery, an escape into the grave. It's another place to go because the world is such a scary place all unto itself," says Lara Parker, the actress who played the wicked witch Angelique on the series.
When it came down to storylines, the show's writers did some grave robbing by shamelessly borrowing plots from classics such as "Frankenstein's Monster," "The Picture of Dorian Gray," "Wuthering Heights," "Jane Eyre," "Dracula" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."
"What (series creator) Dan Curtis did was to say, 'Let's tap into these classic stories and rewrite them for "Dark Shadows," using our characters.' A lot of people watching then may not have known where these stories came from, but they know they liked (the plots)," says Parker, who penned a 1998 gothic romance novel about Angelique's mystical origins.
Virginia-born actor David Selby, who played werewolf-cursed Quentin Collins and later went on to be a prime-time heartthrob on the '80s soap "Falcons Crest," says the show's quirky energy and off-balance melodrama makes it an enduring classic.
"Dark Shadows" was known almost more for its bloopers than for its stories. It was not unusual to see a technician walk into a background shot or to spot flies landing on an actor's nose in the middle of a dramatic speech.
The late actress Grayson Hall played her role as Dr. Julia Hoffman with the kind of drama usually reserved for drag queens. Her tense delivery and quirky body gestures brought high camp to almost every scene she was in.
"No matter how melodramatic or innocent the show was at the time, or however over the top it was, the show created its own kind of magic," says Selby. "People are still connected to it today."
That "energy" found on "Dark Shadows" was "created by fear. You know, it was made from actors searching for lines or wondering where they were suppose to be next," Selby says.
But for actress Katherine Leigh Scott, who says she never watches "Dark Shadows" repeats, the show has taken on a life of its own and given her a new career.
"I feel like I have mined the first five years of my adult life," she says. "'Dark Shadows' is something that people can't let go of.