really fresh.
really strange.
how unlike television.

Best soap opera ever!

Daytime favorite

Looking backwards over forty years might put some rose-tint into your viewing glasses, but this was well done and had sufficient spookiness and dark themes to make it extremely watchable.

Like Tequilafied, I fell in love with Lara Parker as a young boy (she still looks good) and raced home from school like much of the rest of the country at the time to catch each episode. I was forbidden to watch this show after awhile as I got nightmares from it, if you can believe that. I actually remember walking to school with an older schoolmate and asking him hopefully if it were true that vampires preferred older victims. Sadistically, he told me no, that vampires actually preferred schoolboys of about my age and bloodtype. Talk about the horror! About a year or so ago, I started to buy the DVD's, just to see if the show lived up to my long-ago memory. It didn't. The acting was often horribly bad (nobody could chew up the scenery like Grayson Hall), and the stories were often illogical and dragged on interminably. Still, it does manage to exert an odd, quirky charm that TV shows in general just don't have anymore. Great fun can be had watching Jonathan Frid flubbing and forgetting his lines in nearly every episode, or watching the special effects go so horribly wrong, or laughing at some of the over-the-top dialogue. So, no, it doesn't live up to my memories of it, but it's still diverting, nostalgic fun, and Lara Parker still stands up as one of the sexiest women ever to grace a TV screen.

Ran home from school everyday to see this show. Barnabas was a great vampire, very romantic yet controlling and obsessive too.Too bad it's been taken off of the Sci Fi channel... Lucky for me though, I have the entire show on VHS. Something to watch at night instead of the BORING primetime line up on the 3 major networks....

Boring, overblown soapopera-esque drama with little to no redeeming value.

Dark Shadows was a cool show to watch. Especially if you are a person that is into horror movies and tv shows like I am. The whole concept of vampires living next door to you is bizarre. My favorite horror movie character has always been Dracula. The house that Barnabus Collins (actor Jonathan Frid)character lived in on the show was right in the backyard of the home where I grew up. It used to sit on a small hill in our backyard just above our house. The kids who lived in the house were friends of mine at that time. Their dad worked for the tv station that the show was on. If I remember right I think it was NBC but I am not sure. Anyway, my other friends who would come over and visit me at night would alway freak out if you looked out our back door at night and saw the house sitting there because it was a big house and was an eerie house to see at night. Especially since we knew the show was filmed there. So my other friends never liked going out in our backyard at night :) In fact, our backyard and another neighbor of ours was used for the cemetary on the show. The house inside is real cool to. Just like it looked on the show. Very spooky and eerie looking. Especially when you come into the house and see that dark wood and the long winding staircase with the portrait above the steps which was of the original owner of the house. Supposedly according to what was said back then, the house was supposed to be haunted by the guy who originally had the house built and owned it. Upstairs in the attic is where they used to keep the headshot photos of all of the stars on the show which were hung on the wall plus the gravestones and downstairs in the cellar there were holes dug to look like graves. I do have to admit as a kid it did kind of freak me out to go in there. Especially when one of my friends who lived there once took me up into the attic to show me the stuff from the show that was up there. At that time the other friend (the sibling) was downstairs banging real slow on the ceiling with a broom to make it sound like the supposed ghost of the house was there LOL Anyway, it was real cool back then to be able to actually see this houe both inside and out. It is a cool house and the show was cool and it's cool that they still run the show in reruns on tv today.

Very cool still today.

Very campy show. I remember it being quite popular in its heyday. My best friend's grandmother, Joan Bennett, was in the cast, and I'm told that most of the time while they were taping she was totally smashed on scotch and painkillers. So wrecked that she couldn't remember her lines and they had to print them on idiot cards positioned just off-camera. Ah, the twilight efforts of one of the iconic legends of Hollywood's golden age!!!

Campy with bad acting, but I raced home every day from school to watch it.

Greatest show of all time. Hands down. Nothing comes close.

This was good back then but oh so boring now!

The 60's were indeed a time of change; and change seemed to permeate every aspect of our lives back then. In the spring of 1966, a very unusual transformation also came to daytime television in the form of a new, unique and very imaginative program. It started when a man named Dan Curtis had a dream about a beautiful, dark haired young woman who is on a journey to discover the secrets of her past. The heroine of Dan Curtis' dream would become Victoria Winters, and her journey would take her to the town of Collinsport, Maine to serve as governess to a young boy named David in a rambling old mansion called Collinwood. And so an amazingly unique show called "Dark Shadows" was born. A year or so later, reluctant vampire Barnabas Collins would be freed from his coffin ending a 170-year confinement and the ratings and delight of viewers would skyrocket. Over its successful five-year run the show enchanted its viewers daily with gothic tales of romance, intrigue, horror, mystery, and a bizarre selection of fiends, foes and heroes. Though its significance as a cultural icon is overlooked by some it should be noted that this show, probably more so than any other at the time, had a very unique ability to spark the imaginations of countless individuals (especially teens and pre-teens of the day). For some of us, it even served as an introduction to the great literary classics, which often found their way both subtlety and blatantly into the storylines - "Rebecca", "Wuthering Heights", "Jane Eyre", "The Turn of the Screw", "The Lottery", and "Frankenstein" to name a few. What this show mostly provided was just great escapist fun, which included exciting trips into other centuries and bands of time. Its creators managed to accomplish this so well, that, "Dark Shadows" has become a very fond memory for many of us who grew up in the 60's and 70's. And, though it has now been 35 years since its 1966 debut, it still delights a loyal following, as it is daily rebroadcast on cable's SciFi channel. Not surprisingly, this rebroadcast, along with the timeless aspects of this show, have attracted yet another generation of imaginative fans including many born long after production stopped. So, what keeps the fan base growing and coming back? Very simply because, in spite of (and maybe even because of) the bloopers and blunders only live to tape television can produce, the now surreal looking 60's and 70's styles, and a tendency toward being seen as campy at times, "Dark Shadows" also included some top notch writing and excellent performances by a great ensemble cast. If you would like to visit - or re-visit - Collinwood, this coming month would be a very good time. The current run is about to end but, on Thursday, May 17, 2001, Victoria Winters will board the train and begin her journey to Collinsport once more!

'Dark Shadows' was my favorite show when I was a kid during it's original run in the 1960's. I used to race home from school every day to watch it. Now, 30 years later, I tape it every morning on the Sci-Fi channel and race home from work every afternoon to watch it all over again. It's still a fun show.

What a fun show! I couldn't give it anything less than a great rating because I loved it and was thrilled and scared by it when I was a kid; and because when I see it now, I can reminisce and also laugh at the campy aspects of the show that are apparent to me as an adult. I will never forget some of these characters: Angelique, Quentin, Julia, and especially Barnabas. Although it has been labelled a "soap opera," Dark Shadows is truly unique in the history of television, certainly unlike any soap opera before or since its run in the late 60s. Vampires, werewolves, witches, seances, possessions, haunted rooms - ya gotta love it. "House of Dark Shadows" is also a fun feature film that's available on VHS if you want to go even deeper.

I am an original fan. I was re-aquainted with the show in the late 80's and have been into it again ever since. I find the fantasy/supernatural elements fascinating and a welcome change from the normal dramatic fare. The theatricality and low budget may seem "passe" to some, but the influence of the imagination in relation to the enjoyment of the show is more like theatre than typical hyper-realistic and sometimes prurient television or movie entertainment. Also, to my generation, the show is ours and represents the unique coming of age time of the latter baby boom years.

Extremly well done soap opera. It was spooky, and creepy, and then at other times romantic and humorous. I didn't really like the fact that the show was considered to be a soap opera, but it still interested me with Barnabas Collins seducing young women and luring them into coffins, and then that guy would show up and kick his ass!

True camp at its best....Angelique scared the cr*p out of me....probably still could!

Dark Shadows is still the greatest after all these years!!!

A campy show that rocks. I remember it fondly from my youth and seeing it 30 years later on Sci-Fi has brought back the fun from the original showings.

Dark Shadows is a very entertaining and suspenseful program. Part of its charm lies in the ever-evident bloopers and the frequent overacting. In reality, though, there was never anything like it on television before, nor has there been anything like it since. The only problem with the show is the "Parallel Time" storyline, which I find farfetched (even for Dark Shadows).

DS always has and always will be the best gothic and romantic series on television. I "ran home as a kid" and now that I have refound it, I hope it lives on. It is truly a classic.

One of the greatest Horror shows of all time. It feels like you are watching a repertory company as you watch the actors playing different characters, with the fascinating vampire, Barnabas Collins, at its center.

Dark Shadows is the best TV show in the world.

DARK SHADOWS WAS AND STILL IS THE BEST PART OF GOTHIC ON TV. BRAVO!

Dark Shadows is truly timeless. It's as popular today as it was 34 years ago. Don't believe me? I'm a third generation fan, who lives and breaths Dark Shadows. This show was years ahead of it's time! Infact theres never been another show like it. The show had such talented people working on it. This was the first show I ever saw on tv that scared me. Plus what could be better than a show that has a huge house with tons of secret passages and rooms. :)

I watched DS in my youth (from 1969-1971) and it still holds me captive more than 30 years later--whatever DS' spell, it has worked its magic on me!

Dark Shadows is a classic that's withstood the test of time! I watched it as a kid and I still love it now, more than 30 years later. Part of what makes it so special is the excellent acting--there are some days when I'm still on the edge of my seat. And the bloopers and the cheesy special effects are endearing, too...DSF

I loved it then, I love it more now! This is the show that gave it's fans all---thrills, chills, and the greatest Gothic romances ever...

Dark Shadows is the best gothic soap (I hate to call it a soap opera) EVER!!!! There's no contest. I'm 21 years old, and I think it was one of the most fun TV shows ever produced!