How a Gothic 60s Soap Opera Saved Me

If you were to search “vampire” in Google Images it is likely that you would have to scroll for some time before you see a photo of Jonathan Frid in his role of Barnabas Collins. Indeed, many are not aware of who Barnabas Collins even is. However, the character of Barnabas Collins so ingrained itself into the pop culture canon during his four years of appearing on daytime TV that his image remains indelibly linked to the perception of what makes a vampire: dark hair slicked down and across the forehead in dramatic bangs, two eyes with a malevolent stare sunken into darkened sockets, lips drawn back to reveal sharp fangs. The fact that the character would morph into an anti-hero and eventually a hero is disconnected from these photographs, which were taken in the early days of the character’s run when he was written purely as an antagonist.

Though ABC-TV’s gothic soap opera was on the air for just five years, the weekday schedule allowed Dark Shadows to produce 1225 half-hour episodes before its cancellation in 1971. The show drew from a litany of literary sources for inspiration, and in the progress crafted something wholly unique in the annals of daytime television, going on to influence the development of horror television and film. Creator Dan Curtis would return to several of the show’s literary sources with a series of made-for-TV horror films, including The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Turn of the Screw, Frankenstein, and Dracula. In a strange twist, this version of Dracula (starring Jack Palance) featured a storyline wherein Lucy is the reincarnation of the vampire’s long-dead lover. This does not feature in the original novel but features heavily in Barnabas’ early episodes. The trope would later find its way into Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which emphasized the sexual subtext of the novel. So, by taking inspiration from classic vampiric literature and expounding upon it, the writers of Dark Shadows would influence future reinterpretations of said literature.

It is also one of the few soap operas produced at a time when tapes were wiped to be reused or dumped for space, whose entire run survives intact (bar one episode which…