And Guest Starring: Cameraman and Fly
May 19, 2012 4:43 PM   Subscribe

One of the side effects of being a 5-day, live show was that the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows featured regular technical and acting flubs. Many, many, many flubs

And More (with laugh track).
posted by The Whelk (20 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
Is it bad that I can't tell what parts are supposed to be the bloopers?
posted by Rory Marinich at 4:53 PM on May 19, 2012 [6 favorites]


Brings back fond memories of Bill Hartnell.
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:25 PM on May 19, 2012 [2 favorites]


What's sad is that there was a time when all of that would have been incorporated into a Tim Burton version of this show. I'm assuming it wasn't in the movie, and I sincerely hope I'm wrong.
posted by Huck500 at 5:28 PM on May 19, 2012 [2 favorites]


Huh, I guess that I never knew that Dark Shadows was in color. I haven't seen it since it was in first run and we only had a B&W set until '75 or so.
posted by octothorpe at 5:34 PM on May 19, 2012


One of the joys of watching the original Dark Shadows is watching the walls move whenever anyone opens or closes a door.

The same is true of many BBC productions of that era.
posted by jammer at 5:41 PM on May 19, 2012


Saxon Kane : Brings back fond memories of Bill Hartnell.

Waitasec... Bill Hartnell, as in WILLIAM hartnell, the first "Doctor"???
posted by pla at 5:42 PM on May 19, 2012


Huh, I guess that I never knew that Dark Shadows was in color.

The first 14 months or so were in black and white (wiki, imdb).
posted by K.P. at 5:43 PM on May 19, 2012


pla: Sorry, I just realized that my post was confusing. I just meant that all the line fluffs remind me of Hartnell's similar habits.
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:51 PM on May 19, 2012


Jonathan Frid passed away a little over a month ago. Dang.
posted by K.P. at 5:53 PM on May 19, 2012


Tonight... must go... nothing wrong.
posted by en forme de poire at 6:03 PM on May 19, 2012 [5 favorites]


It also cracks me up that the flies love the actors so much.
posted by en forme de poire at 6:13 PM on May 19, 2012


Wow. This show was as camp as a row of boy scouts.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:20 PM on May 19, 2012 [3 favorites]


One of the joys of watching the original Dark Shadows is watching the walls move whenever anyone opens or closes a door.

The same is true of many BBC productions of that era.


And The Honeymooners.
posted by timsteil at 6:26 PM on May 19, 2012


What's sad is that there was a time when all of that would have been incorporated into a Tim Burton version of this show. I'm assuming it wasn't in the movie, and I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

The mistakes weren't. The odd staging, where one person faces the camera to monologize, and the other stands behind them, staring at their back, was. And it's delicious.

I would say the film was a disappointment, but that wouldn't be right. The first sixty minutes were perfect, and the rest was a a disappointment. And I have never liked Michelle Pfeiffer. She was a fan of the show, and lobbied to be in the film, and I think understands what she's doing in the movie better than anybody else. I can't tell people to see it in the theater, but when it shows up on Netflix, watch it, if only for the fact that Pfeiffer manages both to be in a soap opera and parody a soap opera at the same moment. She's fantastic.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:11 PM on May 19, 2012 [1 favorite]


Whoops! And I have never liked Michelle Pfeiffer more. Sorry, Ms. Pfeiffer.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:13 PM on May 19, 2012 [3 favorites]


An old episode of This American Life (#74 Conventions) has a story about a guy attending a Dark Shadows convention.
posted by naturalog at 7:22 PM on May 19, 2012 [1 favorite]


This was the most compelling thing about Dark Shadows for me - the amateurish, DIY quality tipped just enough into the threadbare and squalid to set it apart from everything else I had access to on US TV at the time. As a kid, I wasn't even sure it was an American show - I remember thinking "this is creepy - where is it coming from?"

When I later saw "Videodrome", I immediately thought of "Dark Shadows".
posted by ryanshepard at 8:46 PM on May 19, 2012


As a kid, I wasn't even sure it was an American show

Everybody had accents. English accents, Irish accents, and, when American, mid-Atlantic accents. I think only Willy Loomis had a typical midwestern accent, and everybody treated him with suspicion.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 9:00 PM on May 19, 2012


I had crazy sex with a woman who followed me off the muni and to my door solely because she thought I looked like Quentin Collins.

That didn't go to far.
posted by pianomover at 9:35 PM on May 19, 2012 [3 favorites]


This seems like an incredible amount of people running in front of the cameras. I mean, I get it sometimes when I'm filming a concert or whatever in a church or at a school; you take what angles you can get and sometimes, even if they try to half-duck, someone is going to walk through your shot. But on a set?
posted by xedrik at 11:34 PM on May 19, 2012 [2 favorites]


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