Dark Shadows Fashion Show #3: Maggie’s 1968 Stewardess Uniform for a Shattering Phone Call from Barnabas

I love shocking phone calls on Dark Shadows – almost as much as the unfortunate bad-news recipients’ answer-wear.

Learning of Joe’s hospitalization from Barnabas, who, if I am not mistaken, is making his first phone call of the series run (aside: Does the Old House even have a line? Did Willie give him a lesson in rotary phone operation?), Maggie has chosen a simple sunflower yellow blouse paired with an arresting magenta vest/mini-skirt combination, accented by a necktie with a polka-dot pattern incorporating both colors. I’m a little disappointed in

Dark Shadows Fashion Show #2: Maggie Evans in a Floral Bedspread Gharara

Dr. Woodard has been murdered, Sam is despondent, and Maggie (Kathryn Leigh Scott) is putzing around the house in the most outlandish outfit yet to grace Dark Shadows by 1967.

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I showed this clip to a co-worker, who, rather than focus on Maggie’s Ohrbach’s-provided attire, expressed disappointment that Sam and Maggie were “normal people” (not vampires, ghosts, or whatever else she imagined Dark Shadows to be entirely composed of).

“That dress isn’t normal!” I decried. “Is it even a dress? I can’t tell if the seemingly velour top is connected to what appears at first glance to be a bedspread with a floral quilt pattern. Is it a floor-length skirt?”

I found Maggie’s choice of clothing for hanging around the house to be far more alarming than most of the supernatural phenomena on the

Mandatory Retirement for Tim Burton after Dreadful Dark Shadows

Tim Burton, please wave goodbye and promise to never come back.

Tim Burton has now successfully taken three of my cherished childhood œuvres d’art: Planet of the Apes, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and now Dark Shadows, and pissed his signature all over them.  Dark Shadows is especially painful because I’ve recently re-discovered it as an adult and love it all the more.

I suppose the overlap in our mutual fondness for specific works demonstrates that we must share some of the same tastes, but only in nostalgia, not in re-creation.  In fact,  I would say for Tim Burton it’s less re-creation and more defecation.  He’s got the money and the star power to run wild, which result in self-indulgent travesties that showcase The Tim Burton Experience™ but leave

A few months ago I noticed that Netflix was streaming the original Dark Shadows ABC daytime soap opera, no doubt coordinated with the release of the film adaptation set for May 2012. After a moment’s hesitation, I knew that I had to go back – return to my five-year-old self and confront one of my deepest fears: Barnabas Collins, the agent of many childhood nightmares that left an imprint of anxiety on my psyche that may have never been fully erased.   I was about to conduct