XPost: alt.tv.dark_shadows, rec.arts.tv, alt.games
“Satan is determined to take over Collinwood!”
In the summer of 1969, the young set gather every afternoon at four
o’clock to watch one of the great pioneers in educational
programming.
Not Sesame Street, of course; that doesn’t start until November. For
the summer, at least, the kids’ choice is Dark Shadows, and what
they’re learning is that murder is awesome, and you can totally get
away with it.
Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but lately the show has
responded to its rising popularity with the young set by getting
noticeably scarier and more murdery.
There’s always been a certain amount of Halloween Express haunted
house spookery on the show — your vampire bites, your werewolf
attacks, your witch’s brew voodoo maneuvers — but the mayhem’s
always stayed on the Chiller Theatre side of the fence.
But the other day, Aristede threatened to beat Magda in the face wth
a hammer, if she didn’t tell him what he wanted to know. That was
followed by Quentin telling Charity that he would kill her with his
bare hands if she revealed his secret. We’ve seen an evil stepfather
poison his wife. We’ve seen a man imprisoned under a swinging razor
blade. There’s currently an open question about whether the eleven-
year-old boy on the show still has two working hands.
The threats are getting a lot more physical and a lot more personal,
and they strike closer to home. You can reassure a young child that
there’s no such thing as vampires, but you have to admit that we
live in a world with hammers. In other words, Dark Shadows is not a
show with a suggested age range of 6 to 14.
https://darkshadowseveryday.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/810-dark- shadows-game-box.jpg?w=604
But try explaining that to Milton Bradley, who decided that what
America needs this summer is the Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows Game,
a little gift-wrapped nightmare that promotes grave robbing as the
centerpiece of an occult ritual to summon the living dead. Honestly,
sometimes I wonder if the toys and hobbies industry really has our
best interests at heart.
585 dark shadows game box
This is actually the second Dark Shadows game to reach the public —
we discussed the first one, called the Dark Shadows Game, about a
year ago. That game was produced by Whitman Publishing, who are also responsible for the Gold Key Dark Shadows comics. The way that you
can tell the difference is that Milton Bradley is the company that
actually has a handle on what Barnabas Collins’ face looks like.
Given the trend of the game titles, it’s probably for the best that
nobody made any more games after this, because the third one
would’ve been called the Very Spooky Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows
Game, followed by the Bonus Edition Very Spooky Barnabas Collins
Dark Shadows Game, and at a certain point you run out of space on
the toy shelf.
https://darkshadowseveryday.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/810-dark- shadows-game-pieces.jpg?w=604
But let’s crack open the box, and see what’s inside. There isn’t a
board, surprisingly; the whole game is just a handful of props. Call
me shallow, but I’ve always felt that a board game should have a
board somewhere in the mix, but apparently the Milton Bradley
Company is a law unto itself.
What you get for your suggested retail price of $2.99 is a coffin
full of plastic bones and wooden stakes, a set of cardboard
scaffolds, and a spinner. This is what children had, in the days
before ColecoVision. This is how leisure time worked.
810 barnabas collins game coffin
Now, I have several pictures of the coffin, and it doesn’t look that
impressive when there’s nothing next to it to show the scale, but as
we’ll see later on, this is actually a pretty solid piece of
equipment. If you clocked your brother on the head with this coffin,
it would make a noticeable difference in the way his day is going.
I’m a younger brother, by the way, and that’s how we judge game
pieces. Everything is a potential weapon. Do not let your guard
down. Trust no one.
810 dark shadows game spinner
So there’s no use putting it off any longer, let’s just buckle down
and I’ll explain how this works. You start out with your empty
cardboard scaffold, and you spin the spinner, hoping to get either a
skull or a ribcage. If you land on one of those, you can hang it on
the scaffold.
But here’s the catch: you have to have a body on your scaffold in
order to connect the upper arm and upper leg pieces, and you need
the upper arm and upper leg before you can collect the lower arm and
lower leg pieces. So on your first spin, if you land on lower leg,
then your turn was a waste of time, and you glower at everybody as
you grudgingly hand over the spinner.
If you land on Barnabas’ black onyx ring, then fortune smiles on
you, because that gives you a free bone of your choosing. Grab
anything you like.
From there, according to the rules, “Play always progresses in a
clockwise order.” I repeat: Always. This is not a laughing matter
for the Milton Bradley people; this is what they do for a living. Do
not fuck around with the clockwise order.
810 barnabas game stake
If the spinner lands on a stake, then what happens depends on how
often you’ve played the game.
If you’ve just opened the box and this is the first time you’re
playing it, then landing on a stake means that you take one of the
little wooden stakes from the coffin. If you collect three stakes,
then you have to give back one of your bones.
If you’ve played the game more than once, then you’ll have to make
other arrangements, because it’s guaranteed that every single stake
in the box will be irretrievably lost about three-quarters of the
way through the first game. Nobody knows what happens to game pieces
like these. After a while, they’re just not part of the picture
anymore, and you adjust your expectations. That phase of your life
is over.
It goes without saying that the stakes are exactly the optimal size
and shape to completely freak everybody out when you swallow one.
I’m not sure when it was that people went crazy about the safety of
children’s toys, but it was apparently sometime after 1969.
BoardGameGeek says that this game takes 60 minutes to play, which
seems impossible to me. Watching the show only takes half an hour,
and they get a lot more done. Besides, it’s not like there’s room in
this game to develop your own individual style. You spin the spinner
and you take a bone. Even in elementary school, I think I would’ve
put a hard limit of eighteen minutes on this experience.
http://youtu.be/LFa1ZK5ESS0
Now we need to discuss the commercial, which is by far the most
interesting thing about the game. The ad actually set up as if it
were a one-minute episode of Dark Shadows, which as far as I’m
concerned it absolutely is.
The ad is included on one of the extras discs in the complete Dark
Shadows DVD box set, and apparently the only copy that they could
find is from a really shitty second-generation black and white
kinescope. Ordinarily, that would be a shame, but in this case I
think the bad reception is an essential part of the Barnabas Collins
Dark Shadows Game aesthetic. This is what the commercial looked like
in 1969 on the little black and white set in the den, and this is
how Milton Bradley intended you to see it. Their entire pitch relies
on your inability to see the game clearly.
810 game commercial collinwood
The ad begins with your typical opening shot of Collinwood. There’s
some whistling organ sounds strumming on the soundtrack, trying to
organize themselves into a tune with no great success.
810 dark shadows game commercial barnabas
This fades to a quick glimpse of the fireplace, and then a shot of
Barnabas sneaking up on Carolyn, who’s reading in the Collinwood
drawing room. This is the actual Barnabas and the actual drawing
room, and in one split-second, it sums up what everybody who doesn’t
watch Dark Shadows thinks that Dark Shadows is like. He just sidles
up behind the pretty girl, baring his fangs in the most unnecessary
way, and this startles her all the way out of the picture.
That isn’t the real Carolyn, but it’s the next best thing, which is
Terry Crawford pretending to be Nancy Barrett playing Carolyn. It’s
all the same at this resolution anyway.
810 dark shadows barnabas collins game fangs
“This is Barnabas Collins,” the announcer groans. He’s doing his
sonorous Paul Frees Haunted Mansion voice, with extra reverb. “He
lives in a strange world! A world of vampires, werewolves and dark
shadows!” And then there’s a dramatic ZING! courtesy of the Hammond
organ.
810 dark shadows game shot
The shot of real Barnabas cross-fades to a shot of Barnabas on the
box, and then we pull back to reveal the product. Make-believe Paul
Frees says, “Now the world of Dark Shadows is yours — in a strange
new game by Milton Bradley, the Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows Game!”
ZING! There’s a total of six dramatic stings in this one-minute ad,
and every one of them is right on the money. I will not hear a word
said against those stings; they are phenomenal.
By the way, that’s the actual screencap of the product shot, framed
so that you can’t see the left side of the box. That’s because they
knew you’re watching this on a shitty black and white TV, and they
had no faith that you would be able to see anything other than
Barnabas, the bat and the words BARNABAS COLLINS. So they put that
in the middle of the shot, and screw the left side.
810 dark shadows barnabas game kids
Then they fade to what I think must be the single most thrilling
shot in any Dark Shadows episode — four elementary school kids
sitting around a table, playing the Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows
Game in the middle of the Collinwood drawing room.
They’ve presented a lot of weird, surprising spectacles on the show
— that’s the entire purpose of Dark Shadows — but I think this tops
them all. It’s the very definition of avant-garde filmmaking.
The ad transitions from a hazy, dreamlike vision of the show as your
parents imagine it to be, to a shot of the box top, and then
suddenly there’s you — yes, YOU, with your brother and sister,
magically transported inside the television set, so that you can
play the game based on the show within the confines of the show
itself.
And the most thrilling thing of all is that in this moment when your
dreams are actually real and alive and all around you, these black-
and-white kinescope children aren’t looking around in wonder and
terror and awe, touching all the furniture and then rushing over to
the wall, scrambling to be the first one to open the secret panel,
like any ordinary child would do. The Collinwood drawing room and
its amazing and terrible secrets means nothing to these amazing and
terrible children.
The kids have something even more engrossing to attend to. They are
focused like four pint-size lasers on the most important thing in
the entire universe — the Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows Game.
This has got to be the greatest game ever made.
810 dark shadows barnabas game coffin
One of the kids spins the spinner and takes a bone, and do you see
what I mean about the size of the coffin? It’s bigger than you’d
think. Notice how all of the other kids lean in close, like who even
knows what’s going to come out of the mystery box.
“Each player spins,” says the breathless announcer, “and then
selects bones from — ZING! — the coffin! But watch out for the
dreaded — ZING! — stake!”
810 dark shadows barnabas game glow in the dark
“You struggle to complete a skeleton,” the announcer gasps. “A
skeleton that GLOWS in the DARK!” Oh, by the way, the skeleton glows
in the dark. I didn’t mention that before, because it has no impact
on the gameplay.
In fact, the rules on the inside of the box actually say, “The bones
and the skull of the skeleton GLOW IN THE DARK, an eerie feature
which adds a little extra thrill but is not a part of playing the
game.” It’s nice in these cynical times to see that kind of
transparency in the game publisher/game consumer relationship. There
are no secrets between us and the Milton Bradley Company.
810 dark shadows barnabas game set of fangs
This is the point when the narrator starts to morph from Paul Frees
into Frank Nelson, the “mmmm-Yeeeeessssss?” guy from I Love Lucy and
The Flintstones. He gets kind of over-excited, and his voice rises
at the end of each sentence. To be fair, what happens next is pretty
exciting.
“If you win the game, you get a set of Barnabas FANGS!” Yes, that’s
the prize for winning the game — you get the honor of wearing the
pair of plastic fangs that comes with the game.
On the inside box lid, Milton Bradley acknowledges the issues with
this eerie feature as well: “The Toy Fangs are not part of the game
and belong only to the owner of the game. They are placed over the
teeth of a player to play the role of Barnabas Collins. (They should
be washed before a player uses them.)”
This is a complicated concept to get your head around — they’re not
part of the game, and they belong to the owner of the game — and all
you can say is that it’s Art, and it does not need to explain
itself.
810 dark shadows barnabas game child
Still, as the kid with the Toy Fangs glances offscreen to see if
it’s okay for him to close his mouth yet, we should take a moment to
consider the implications. The instructions say that the purpose of
the game is to construct a complete skeleton, and once you do that,
you get to play the role of Barnabas Collins, fangs and all.
So this is a game of competitive grave robbing, and the winner
becomes a member of the living dead. I have to stress that, because
by this point we have drifted so far away from human civilization
that I’m not sure we can find our way back.
But kids don’t really analyze these things in a broader context.
They just know what’s fun, and this commercial actually goes some
way towards explaining why elementary school kids are watching Dark
Shadows, even as the show grows progressively darker.
Kids want to play the active role, and when they’re playing, they
don’t think about the morality of the situation. Adults can stand
around and fret about what children are learning from this game, but
the kids actually have a better handle on what’s going on.
They’re not learning anything from the game. This is play. Nobody’s
actually getting hurt; they’re just pretending.
I can remember lots of examples from my childhood where an adult
scolded me about the make-believe content in a game I was playing.
There were days when I spent the entire afternoon with my friends
having swordfights with sticks, and we would just massacre each
other in grisly ways. And if somebody’s mom objected, then it
wouldn’t make sense. We’re just playing. That’s why we’re doing it
with sticks.
So kids will happily take the role of an evil pirate captain, or
Darth Vader, or Barnabas Collins. When you’re playing, the
distinction between hero and villain is much less important than the distinction between active character and passive character. Of
course you want to be the vampire, he’s the one who turns into a bat
and breaks into your house. The victim just lies there, pretending
to be asleep. There’s no glory in that role.
810 dark shadows barnabas game bonus
So I think that’s the spirit in which the 6 to 14 year olds are
watching Dark Shadows, and as far as I know, all the kids who
watched the show turned out fine, or as fine as they were going to
be otherwise. All of the elements that make this commercial a safe
make-believe space — the overwrought narrator, the silly dramatic
stings, the weird transitions and mistakes, and the excessive
theatricality of it all — those elements are present in the show as
well.
Yes, Aristede will pick up a hammer and threaten to smack Magda in
the face with it, but we know that he’s not going to go through with
it. There are a dozen subtle cues that we pick up on without
noticing it, which tell us that we’re not going to actually see the
hammer crack open her skull. There’s the lighting, the music, the
acting style, the stage-play sets and blocking, and the fact that
we’re only ten minutes into a half-hour show. The kids don’t lean
back and analyze these things, and most of the adults don’t either.
They just turn on the show, and unconsciously they pick up all the
cues that tell them that this is a make-believe play space. Don’t
worry about it. Before you put those fangs in your mouth, somebody
is going to rinse them off in the sink for you.
“Milton Bradley makes the best games in the world!” the narrator
squeals, seriously tipping over into his “Yeeessss, Mr. Flintsone”
persona. “And the Barnabas Collins Game is the SCARIEST! So GET IT!”
And we do get it. The kids get it, too. I think they’re going to be
okay; they usually are.
Monday: Deadbeat Dad.
Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:
The camera has trouble focusing and framing a shot as Charity opens
the front doors for Magda, and then walks back to the drawing room.
Magda laments, “If she dies, then Barn-banabas says that the future
is dead, too!”
Aristede refers to his twisted knife as the Dancing Lady. It was the
Dancing Girl a couple weeks ago.
Behind the Scenes:
Legendary prop-spotter PrisoneroftheNight sends a note on today’s
sets:
“The room in which Quentin brings the pendant to Lenore — one of the
most frequently redressed sets of the show’s run — dates all the way
back to August 1966, when it was first used in episode 45 as Roger’s
office. Since then, it’s been the Collinsport law office of Frank
Garner in 1967, the original 1795 bedroom of Barnabas, the 1795
waiting room of the Collinsport Gaol, the front room of the
apartment of Professor Timothy Stokes in 1968, and the main
schoolroom in Trask’s school. It’s one of the most perfectly
realized and serviceable rooms Sy Thomashoff ever designed.”
Mrs. Fillmore is played by Mary Farrell, in her only Dark Shadows
episode. In the late 50s and early 60s, Farrell appeared in several
Broadway productions that I’m not particularly familiar with,
including The Ponder Heart, The Loud Red Patrick, Orpheus
Descending, Midgie Purvis and Look Homeward, Angel. In the 1980s,
she had a bunch of guest roles on TV sitcoms that I’m unfortunately
too familiar with, including The Love Boat, Newhart, Family Ties and
Growing Pains.
We see the colorful afghan again today, draped around the crib at
Mrs. Fillmore’s house. It was on Charity’s bed yesterday, as Tessie
breathed her last.
Monday: Deadbeat Dad.
--
Democrat Primary choices:
1. An out-of-touch crusty old relic that wants to tax you to death
2. Bernie Sanders.
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