Dark Shadows

When I was in Jr. High School, I used to rush home from school to watch a soap opera. Not just any soap opera, mind you, but a soap opera with VAMPIRES!!! You see, I was hooked on Dark Shadows, the original Vampire-love story. I don't count those hokey Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee vampire movies, because no one really loved nor felt sorry for those guys. In Dark Shadows, although not physically attractive like the luminous Edward Cullen, Barnabus Collins had an attraction that could not be denied, not by the women of Collinsport, nor teenagers. He was refined, spoke with a British accent, and was so tragic. He spent his entire life, after being turned into a vampire by an evil witch, trying to bring back to life his beloved Josette, who flung herself off the cliff at Widow's Hill after she had a vision of herself as a blood sucking corpse (all because she had been tricked into marrying someone other than her beloved Barnabus by her maid who was jealous and who was also the evil witch who tricked Barnabus into marrying her but when he found out she was a witch, he shot her and killed her but not before she cursed him as a vampire!! Now Josette Collins ghost, which looks just like Maggie Evans, warns the Collins family of impending danger by appearing to a disturbed little boy named David and his orphan Governess Victoria Winters. Doesn't this just sound like One Life to Live? - Don't judge me, but I checked out the first disc from Netflix so I could catch up on what I had not seen before the vampires entered on the scene. It was just a dark run-of-the-mill soap opera with a dark brooding mansion, maybe some ghosts, and secrets and was almost cancelled before Barnabas showed up and shot new life into the story if the undead can shoot new life into anything. After that, there was time travel, parallel universes, werewolves, phoenix-like people who could burn up and come back to life, etc.

When we moved from Seattle to Ohio, our television set died and my parents wouldn't get a new one or get it fixed. My parents thought we were obsessed/possessed. My dad used to refer to my car as the BarnyBus. Thankfully, I befriended this red-headed girl in study hall, and she would bring me up to date every day on the happenings in Collinsport. It got really odd after that, not that you can get much more odd than vampires, etc.

Anyway, after watching episodes 1-9 on Netflix, I am hooked again. Maybe I do understand what all that Vampire fuss is about.

PS: I hear that Johnny Depp is being considered to play Barnabas in a movie!! He could redeem himself for the awful "Pirates of the Carribean III"