Dark Shadows rises from the vaults

Tomorrow I'll blog about what All Hallows Eve really means to me. But lest you think I don't appreciate the creepy/kooky/mysterious/ooky part of the occasion, here's "one from the vaults," as Dr. Frankenfurter sez.

When I was a boy, a new soap opera appeared on daytime TV: Dark Shadows. Because it came on right around the time I got from home school, my brother and I used to watch it while we had our afternoon snack. It was supposed to be a gothic romance, like Wuthering Heights or Rebecca. Only this was set on the spooky Maine coast -- the very area Stephen King would later mine so much from -- and though the show got the moody, claustrophobia-inducing atmosphere down pat, it was (pardon the expression) deadly dull.

And not just to kids, apparently. Ratings plummeted. Finally, in a desperate move, the show's creators took the show in a radical new direction ... and the rest is television history. Feast your eyes on that episode of the no-budget, semi-unintentionally camp horrorfest, Dark Shadows, where you were guaranteed a live blooper in nearly every airing.