‘Dark Shadows’ Remembered: 17 Surprising Facts About TV’s Only Horror Soap Opera

Throughout the years, the entertainment industry has been filled with film and TV shows about angsty, sexy vampires, ranging from Interview with the Vampire 's Lestat to The Twilight Saga 's Edward Cullen and Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff Angel , but as these Dark Shadows facts reveal, there was an original dreamboat bloodsucker who predated them all. His name is Barnabas Collins, resident member of the undead on television's only gothic horror soap opera, Dark Shadows .

Airing each weekday afternoon on ABC from June 1966 to April 1971, the series was far more than just a “vampire soap opera.” Dark Shadows facts reveal that the show brought vampires, werewolves, zombies, demons, warlocks and much more to daytime television and America's living rooms, making superstars of Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins, David Selby as Quentin Collins (who had the distinction of being a ghost, a zombie and a werewolf) and Lara Parker as Angelique Bouchard (a witch), among others.

And by "superstars," we mean superstars . When Frid went out on public appearances, he was regularly swarmed by thousands of fans who wanted to catch a glimpse of him. “It was the time of The Beatles,” he said, “and I was getting something of the same kind of treatment that they were.” He was also getting tons of fan mail, including naked photos of women from around the country who were begging him to bite them. It was an odd time.

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If you're one of the many people who used to run home from school every day to watch the fantastic oddity that was Dark Shadows , you're officially a member of Generation DS, and this collection of little-known Dark Shadows facts is for you.

1. The Concept Came from a Dream: Dark Shadows facts

Dan Curtis, the creator of Dark Shadows , very specifically recalled to the media that the concept for the series came to him from a dream. More specifically, in it he saw a woman riding on a train, who was reading a letter and gazing out the window. “The voice over,” he said, “explained that she had been hired as a governess at an odd place along the New England seacoast. It ended with her standing at a deserted station in the middle of the night as the train pulled away. I forced myself away, lit a cigarette, thought about it and it was brilliantly logical to me.”

2. The Show Was Not Supernatural in the Beginning

The way series director John Sedgwick described it, in the beginning the show was kind of a tame mystery literally filled with dark shadows. “Actually,” he said, “in the first few months there wasn’t all that much happening.”

Writer Art Wallace, who is credited with developing the show’s original storyline, pointed out that the premise pretty much fit the typical Gothic romance novel: A woman arrives at a big house to be governess to a kid living there and the house is very mysterious without being supernatural. The house in this case was the Collinwood mansion, home of the Collins family in fictional Colllinsport, Maine.

“It became supernatural in the 10th or 11th week on the air, which I give total credit for to Dan Curtis,” he pointed out. “Dan insisted that it had to become supernatural without the escape clause of ‘it might be’ supernatural. He was absolutely right, and that’s when our first ghost appeared.”

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3. Early Supernatural Visitations: Dark Shadows Facts

Once a ghost appeared on the show, its sluggish ratings began to show a bit of life. What followed were a few more ghost stories, with one leading into Laura Murdoch, the ex-wife of patriarch Roger Collins, arriving at Collinwood and revealing herself to be a Phoenix, determined to lead their son David into the flames.

Noted producer Robert Costello, “The ratings began to go up. We tried a few more eccentric things, getting a little bolder and bolder. We found that dealing with the supernatural seemed to increase the audience and there was a better response to the show. We realized that that was the road to follow.”

4. Dark Shadows was Almost Canceled in Its First Year

Their realization might have been too late. “The show was limping along, really limping,” head writer Sam Hall remembered, “and ABC said, ‘We’re canceling it. Unless you pick up in 26 weeks, you’re finished.’ Dan Curtis had always wanted to do a vampire picture, so he decided to bring a vampire — Barnabas Collins — on the series.” That's when everything changed.

The concept was that the 175-year-old Barnabas was inadvertently freed from his chained coffin by Collinwood handyman Willy Loomis (John Karlen) and immediately showed up at Collinwood. Once there, he passed himself off as a cousin from England and was invited to live in the family Old House (where he had lived until his extended stay in the coffin) on the property. He did so, and began a secret reign of terror, as vampires are wont to do.

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And for those wondering where the character got his name, producer Robert Costello remembered, “I took Barnabas from a tombstone in Flushing, Queens [New York]. I don’t remember the last name, but it was registered in Flushing and dated back to, I think, the 18th Century. The name just sounded right.”

5. Barnabas Collins Wasn't a Vampire at First: Dark Shadows facts

As writer Ron Sproat explained it, “Originally we were having a cousin coming from England. It was another blackmail plot that had been projected. It was Dan Curtis who said, ‘I want to go for broke I want a vampire in there.’ I loved it. The only concern I voiced was, ‘What are we going to do to top it?’ I just couldn’t think of anything we could do after that which would. But we did it and Dan said this was Russian Roulette. So we went with it and had lots of story meetings. I remember one meeting that lasted 27 hours, because we were fighting deadlines and making this stuff up. It was exciting and fun.”

6. Barnabas Collins wasn't originally supposed to be a major character, much less a hero.

“Barnabas was brought in because I wanted to see exactly how much I could get away with,” Curtis said, “never intending that he would be anything more than a vampire that I kill. I wanted to see how far I could go on the show into the supernatural, and I figured there was nothing more bizarre than a vampire. If it didn’t work, I figured we could always drive a stake into his heart.” Obviously, things didn’t go exactly as planned.

Barnabas was an instant pop culture sensation, gradually becoming a “hero” of sorts to the viewers, despite the fact that he was quite literally a monster. Given that popularity, it created a new problem for the show: How do you keep a character around who spends his evenings murdering people?

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7. Sympathy for the Vampire: Dark Shadows Facts

The answer to the above question was to make him more sympathetic. And to do that, the writers did something pretty much unprecedented for television in general, let alone a daytime soap opera: It shifted back in time to 1795, where we met the pre-vampire Barnabas

To do that, the show did something unexpected: It shifted back in time to 1795 where we met the pre-vampire Barnabas and the rest of that era’s Collins family (giving the regular actors an opportunity to play their own ancestors in what became a true costume drama).

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In the past we learn that Barnabas — a largely good man — was engaged to be married to Josette du Pres (Kathryn Leigh Scott, who played Maggie Evans in the present day storyline), but had had an affair with Josette’s servant, Angelique Bouchard (Lara Parker). When he attempted to end their tryst, Angelique, revealing herself to be a witch, cursed him with vampirism, setting him down his long, lonely path.

The blast-to-the-past storyline concluded when Barnabas’ father, who was unable to kill his son, imprisoned him in the coffin from which he'd be freed in the present-day narrative.

“We just felt we couldn’t get that much mileage out of a character who is pure evil,” Sproat said. “When you’re dealing with two-and-a-half hours a week and you’re seeing a lot of the character, it just has to have more dimension than that.”

The backstory approach worked: Barnabas Collins connected with the audience in an even bigger way and became Dark Shadows' vampire mega-star. “Barnabas was a sympathetic vampire,” Jonathan Frid said. “He was a man with an addiction who drank blood only to survive. The audience felt pity for him, and many of the women wanted to mother him. Secondly, I’ve always felt that there was a love/hate relationship between the audience — particularly children — and Barnabas. In some ways, he was looked upon as a darker version of Santa Claus: friendly enough that you were intrigued by him, yet mysterious enough that he frightened you.”

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8. Jonathan Frid almost wasn’t cast as the 'undead sex symbol’

The role of Barnabas Collins went to Canadian actor Jonathan Frid, though Sproat recalled that another close contender was actor and game show host Bert Convy. “Dan didn’t like that,” he explained, “because it wasn’t scary enough. He handed me a picture of Jon and said, ‘This is our new vampire.’”

For his part, Frid was classically trained, had just wrapped up a role as a defense attorney in a national tour of the play Hostile Witness , and had come back to his New York apartment to pack things up. He was moving across the country to California and planned to take a position as a professor of drama.

However, the phone began ringing as soon as he entered his apartment. It was his agent on the other end, telling him about Dark Shadows . Frid was reluctant to audition at first, but was told it would be a short gig and extra cash that would help get him to California. Against his better judgment, he tried out for the role. “You know the rest of the story,” Frid said. “It was just that freaky phone call. If I had been two minutes later...”

9. The Arrival of Quentin Collins

Interestingly, next to Barnabas, David Selby (eventual star of primetime soap Falcon Crest ) as Quentin Collins became the most popular character on the show. As noted, he went from being a ghost to a zombie, a werewolf, and a Dorian Gray type. What few people may realize is that Frid was directly responsible for the character’s arrival.

“In 1968, I went to Dan Curtis and said, ‘You’re overworking me. I think you should create another character and give me a run for my money,’” he detailed. “[Curtis] said, ‘You don’t want that,’ and I said, ‘I’d rather have anything than work these hours. Give me some competition.’ They tried two or three things until Selby came along. The ratings were going down at that point, and we were delighted that Selby boosted them. If it hadn’t been for him, the show would have gone off the air in four months. He gave it a much-needed shot in the arm.”

10. Dark Shadows Was Short-Lived Compared to Most Soaps

By soap opera standards, Dark Shadows had an extremely short life, running from June 27, 1966 to April 2, 1971, producing 1,225 episodes over the course of those years. It also spawned wide-ranging merchandise, from board games to trading cards, posters, models, comic books, novels, and Halloween costumes. There were even a variety of big and small screen spin-offs.

So if it was that popular, why did the show only last five years? “Because Dan was so insane,” Sam Hall said, laughing and referring to the bizarre supernatural plots they would stretch out on the series. “After a year of success, he started to say, ‘We’ve got to get more scares, more romance, more mystery,’ and we finally ended up with plots …. We had one plot I didn’t even understand. You needed subtitles to get it. Every plot got stranger and stranger and stranger, and we just 'out-stranged' ourselves.”

Of course, if any of the afternoon soap operas was going to find itself going overboard with their storyline’s theatrics, it would have to be this one! Dark Shadows was never known for being subtle, after all.

11. The Show Was Taped in Manhattan: Dark Shadows Facts

Dark Shadows Facts: Exteriors of the brooding 40-room Collinwood mansion were shot in Newport, Rhode Island, while exterior footage of the Old House (where Barnabas lived) was recorded in Tarrytown, New York. As for the town of Collinsport, it was actually Essex, Connecticut that appeared on the series.

For the show itself, however, actors filmed at the formerly tiny ABC Studios on 53rd Street in New York City. Unfortunately for fans eager to visit this particular landmark, that building has since been torn down and transformed into a residential development.

That said, at the time fans eagerly flocked to the studio’s location while the show was still in its heyday. Each afternoon when an episode finished taping, the stars would exit the studio only to be greeted by throngs of children and adults who would clamor for photographs and autographs — hundreds of them all begging for attention. Curtis described the dizzying situation they were faced with each day: “We’d come out of this little dinky studio on 53rd Street and there’d be 500 screaming kids outside. It was unbelievable. I have never seen anything like it. We had the time of our lives in those crazy days. It really was a lot of fun.”

12. The Show May Have Ended, but the 'Franchise' Did Not

The Dark Shadows original cast made the leap to the big screen in 1970's House of Dark Shadows , while the show was still airing. Basically it's a retelling of the Barnabas storyline, although this time Dan Curtis removed almost all semblances of sympathy from the character. “The feature film wasn’t done like the soap,” he said. “It was done like a very classy piece of film. It was the same premise, except we killed everybody, which we couldn’t do on the show.” Sproat added with a laugh, “Dan finally said, ‘You’re going to do it my way.’”

Night of Dark Shadows , which featured the cast of Dark Shadows , reached theaters in 1971. It used Collinwood as the base of operations, but this time it was a ghost story with new characters (played by series actors David Selby and a pre- Charlie's Angels Kate Jackson) moving in to an abandoned Collinwood. Shortly thereafter, Selby’s character, Quentin, is possessed by evil spirits tied to the witch Angelique (Parker, reprising her role from the show). There was an intent to continue the series of films as an anthology of sorts, with Collinwood remaining the only regular aspect, but those plans ultimately fell apart.

13. Dark Shadows Heads to Primetime

After Night of Dark Shadows , things were quiet at Collinwood until the 1991 one-hour primetime version with a new Dark Shadows cast, including Ben Cross ( Chariots of Fire ) as Barnabas.

“I think one of the first things is the way women might view a vampire and vampire tale is somewhat different to the way a man would,” Cross offered in regards to the appeal of the Barnabas character. “The series gets to a certain point where we simply have to go back to the past and find out exactly what went on. So we see Barnabas as this really very nice guy. Very happy family, and it’s really like a cautionary tale for married men. He actually has a fling with the wrong person, and the phrase of hell having no fury like a woman scorned is absolutely true, because, in fact, she comes from hell. In a sense he makes a human mistake that a lot of people, if they’re honest, have actually made. He regrets it, and then becomes a victim and a vampire. In a sense, he is as much a victim of his own condition in the way that the people he finds himself biting.”

A total of 12 episodes were produced.

14. The CW Attempted a Revival Series

In 2004, the CW produced a pilot for what would have been the third television incarnation of Dark Shadows . By all accounts, that version's storyline would have been similar to the others, though a shift to younger actors could have given it a different sort of energy.

Of Barnabas’ motivation as a character, Alec Newman, who played him, offered, “I think there’s en epic love story driving him. What he has is a supernatural ‘condition’ — he doesn’t treat it as a curse. I mean, he knows who he is.

"Somebody was telling me that in one of the original episodes the character of Dr. Hoffman gave him the option to not be a vampire, and the reason he wanted to do that was to be with Victoria Winters, even though as a man, as a human man, he knows she is not really the reincarnation of his lost love. But such is the height of his pain about what happened 200 years ago. That’s very, very powerful. So one of the essential driving forces of Barnabas emotionally is love and regret, and trying to make that love tangible.”

15. Audio Adventures Continued the Show

Beginning in 2006, a British company called Big Finish Productions began issuing Dark Shadows audio dramas featuring members of the original cast, among them David Selby (Quentin Collins), Lara Parker (Angelique), Kathryn Leigh Scott (Maggie Evans) and John Karlen (Willie Loomis). There have been new additions along the way, including Andrew Collins ( there’s a last name for you!) as Barnabas. There have been over 75 released so far, including Jonathan Frid’s last portrayal of Barnabas in The Night Whispers .

16. Dark Shadows Got the Big Screen Treatment with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp

If you want to talk about a polarizing film, you wouldn’t have to look beyond Tim Burton’s 2012 movie version of Dark Shadows , starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins and Eva Green as Angelique, among others. Here’s the thing: Both director and star have said this film was made from their memories of Dark Shadows . We can honestly say that this campy mis-fire doesn’t represent any of our memories of the show, but there are undoubtedly people who enjoy it as the film has enjoyed a strong afterlife from people who were introduced to the concept here.

17. A New Version Has Been in Development for Several Years: Dark Shadows Facts

For fans, this could be the most important of these Dark Shadows facts: Mark B. Perry, a former writer/producer for the original The Wonder Years , has written and been shopping around a concept titled Dark Shadows: Reincarnation , designed not to be a reboot, but a continuation.

"I want to reassure fans of the original," Perry noted, "that this version will treat the show’s mythology with the same reverence given to Star Trek , but will also make the show accessible for audiences who aren’t yet familiar with the macabre world of the Collinses. My plan is to take as few liberties as possible with the Dark Shadows canon, while bearing in mind a quote from a 1970s episode delivered by the inimitable Oscar-nominee Grayson Hall as Dr. Julia Hoffman: ‘The Collins family history is not particularly famous for its accuracy.’”

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And before anyone asks if Barnabas would be a part of this new version, says Perry, "You can't do Dark Shadows without Barnabas Collins."

Whatever else has come or will arrive in the future, and while there have been many vampire films and TV shows since Dark Shadows went off the air, how could any of them possibly compare to the thrill of having Barnabas Collins and his family enter our homes five days a week?

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