by Alex Service
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For me, Dark Shadows began with the 1991 remake, which aired when I was a freshman at UCLA. I fell in love with the story and the characters, and was especially fascinated by the interactions of Ben Cross’ Barnabas and Jim Fyfe’s Willie. I took part in campus protest rallies against the first Gulf War, but I have to admit that the conflict’s most vivid impact on my life was when TV war coverage pre-empted Dark Shadows episodes from airing.
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When the remake was cancelled, I took part in a Save Our Dark Shadows rally outside the studio. It was a huge thrill for me when Lysette Anthony, the remake’s Angelique, stopped by the rally to chat with fans, including me. Around that same time, I joined the Dark Shadows Official Fan Club based in Maplewood, NJ. My tattered lifetime member card, adorned with two little bats, is still lovingly tucked away in a corner of my wallet.
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Over the years I continued to be a fan of the remake, but I had only watched a few fragments of the original show. When the 2012 movie was released, my husband and I thought it was good fun. More importantly, it inspired us to explore Dark Shadows’ roots and to learn for ourselves where the whole thing began. My husband bought me a few DVD sets of the original show for my birthday that year, covering the introduction of Barnabas and the 1795 flashback.
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We thought we could just watch selected sequences and then stop. Needless to say, we were wrong! We were immediately hooked. Now, four years later, we have watched our way through the entire series twice, and are wondering how we will wean ourselves off the show enough to have room for other entertainment in our lives besides just watching one or two episodes of Dark Shadows every night.
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More often than not, if I particularly love a film or a show I find myself writing exceedingly long and in-depth fan fiction for it. For our first year and a half of watching DS, I resisted the fan fiction bug. Then we began watching The Beginning and met Bill Malloy, the ill-fated Collins Cannery manager from the early days of the show, and I could resist no longer. I have now completed writing about two-thirds of my Bill Malloy survival/1795 time-travel fan novel, Stand Fast and Damn the Devil. When that project is complete, I still won’t be free from the DS fanfic-writing compulsion.
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Next on my list of projects is In Darkness, a DS 1840 fan novel starring Gerard Stiles and Angelique. Just as Collinsport proves impossible to escape for so many of the show’s characters, Dark Shadows will continue to enmesh us in its fascinating webs for years to come.