Dark Shadows (TV series)
| Television series | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Dark shadows |
| Country of production | United States |
| Year (s) | 1966-1971 |
| Production company |
Dan Curtis Productions |
| length | 30 minutes |
| Episodes | 1225 |
| genre | Soap opera |
| Theme music | Robert Cobert |
| idea | Dan Curtis |
| production | Robert Costello |
| First broadcast | June 27, 1966 on ABC |
| occupation | |
|
Joan Bennett as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard a. a. | |
Dark Shadows is an American Gothic - soap opera of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), which aired from 1966 to 1971. A total of 1,225 episodes and two films were made in five years. The first film was made in 1970 with The Castle of the Vampires , followed a year later by the second film with The Castle of the Lost Souls . In 1991 a twelve-part reprint of the series was produced, but could not build on the success of the original and was discontinued after just one season. In 2012, another movie adaptation by director Tim Burton with Johnny Depp in the leading role was released under the same title Dark Shadows .
action
The series begins with Victoria Winters taking up her job as a nanny for the Collins family in the small fishing town of Collinsport, Maine. Thematically the series processed or linked the family history of the Collins, whereby numerous motifs of the Gothic novel were found . Six months after the soap opera began, more and more supernatural elements were introduced. The stories about Collinwood, the property of the Collins family, soon included vampires , werewolves , ghosts and other fantasy figures. The figure of the 175-year-old vampire Barnabas Collins, who soon became the protagonist of the series, gained particular popularity .
literature
Novels
From 1966 onwards, several novels by Dan Ross about the vampire Barnabas Collins appeared in the USA. Some of these have also been translated into German.
A second series was written by Lara Parker (played Angelique Bouchard Collins on the series).
Comic
Stories related to the Collins family have also been published in comic book form. In Germany they appeared in 1983 in the short-lived series "Dracula and Co." from Condor Verlag.
continuation
The series has been continued since 2006 with a series of radio plays and dramatic readings. Actors from the original series could be won for both. One plot that was resolved by these sequels was the longstanding question about Victoria Winters' parents. Elizabeth Collins Stoddard announces in her will that Victoria is her illegitimate daughter and entrusts Carolyn with the search for her older sister, who has been held captive in the past.
New version
In 1991, a new version of the soap opera was created, which ran as a weekly series on NBC . The series started with terrific odds, but was soon postponed a few times due to coverage of the Gulf War , causing the ratings to drop rapidly. After half a season of thirteen episodes, NBC discontinued the series. The new version was based on the original series, but used a different character in certain plots in the story. So it was Victoria Winters who reminded Barnabas Collins of his great love Josette DuPres, not Maggie Evans. Joseph Gordon-Levitt played the role of David Collins here.
The new version was broadcast in Germany on RTL in the 1990s .
Motion picture
In 2007, the Warner Bros. film studio announced that they had acquired the film rights to the Dark Shadows TV series from the late inventor Dan Curtis. The film studio teamed up with Hollywood actor Johnny Depp , who was himself a big fan of the original series, and now wanted to tackle a feature film with Depp in the lead role. Depp, with his production company Infinitum Nihil, and Graham King produced the film together with David Kennedy , who ran his production company Dan Curtis Productions until Curtis' death in March 2006. In June 2008 it was announced that Tim Burton would direct and John August would write the script. Just a month later, it was announced that August was no longer involved in the project and that Seth Grahame-Smith would henceforth be responsible for the script. Production of the film began in May 2011. Eva Green was cast as Angelique Bouchard, Bella Heathcote as Victoria Winters and Jackie Earle Haley as Willie Loomis. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and Jonny Lee Miller plays her brother Roger Collins. Christopher Lee , who played the title character in the horror film Dracula from 1958, can be seen in a supporting role.
influence
Dark Shadows was considered the pioneer of the supernatural elements in a daily series, followed by the Canadian series Strange Paradise , which had 195 half-hour episodes from 1969 to 1970. In later years, the soap opera satire Soap - Trautes Heim took a story of exorcism into the plot, thus parodying the far-reaching possibility of a daily series. In 1986, hit producer Aaron Spelling made a pilot for a supernatural series called Dark Mansions . In the 1990s, the controversial story followed, in which Marlena Evans, heroine of the soap opera Time of Longing , was possessed by the devil. The Joss Whedon series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel - Hunters of Darkness continued the telling of supernatural stories in a series in the late 90s. The popular gay and lesbian channel here! produced two soap operas with stories about vampires and werewolves, Dante's Cove and The Lair . Dark Shadows is also known for the concept of "compassionate vampires" who are on the side of good and looking for a way to escape their curse.
publication
So far, Dark Shadows has only been released on DVD in different editions in the USA, the country of origin .
Web links
- Dark Shadows in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Episode Guide (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ comicguide.de
- ↑ Olly Richards: The Weird Bunch in Empire (magazine) , November 2011 issue, page 70