This is really shocking: Entertainment Weekly left Dark Shadows off its 2014 list of the greatest cult TV series of all time. TV Guide, at least, ranked it 23rd on its 2007 ranking of the Top 30 Cult Shows; that’s ahead of Strangers with Candy and H. R. Pufnstuff, but behind Jericho. (Nuts!) But Dark Shadows has to rank with Star Trek, which also debuted in 1966, for fan devotion and afterlife. It aired its last episode in 1971, but has rarely been off the air since, airing on outlets ranging from Syfy to PBS.
Dark Shadows inspired two feature films, one with Frid’s Barnabas, House of Dark Shadows, and one without, Night of Dark Shadows. In 1991, NBC mounted a short-lived revival. Two decades later, Tim Burton resurrected the Collins clan with his more comic than creepy feature film, Dark Shadows, that featured cameos by Parker, Scott, Frid and David Selby, who portrayed werewolf Quentin Collins, a character who inspired the 1969 top 40 hit, Quentin’s Theme by Charles Randolph Grean Sounde. The week Burton’s film premiered, Mad Men aired an episode titled “Dark Shadows,” in which Don Draper’s wife, aspiring actress Megan, prepared to audition for the show.
Michael Culhane was one of those kids. In Chicago, where he grew up, it aired at 3 p.m. when he was getting out of school. “I was a flat-out fast runner,” he told Vanity Fair, “but most days I was lucky if I got home in time to catch at least one scene.” The family then moved to New York, where Culhane’s father John worked as a media editor for Newsweek magazine. The elder Culhane was assigned a story about the Dark Shadows phenomenon and he visited the set with Michael in tow. Michael would later find his diary record of that day and write a song, “I Wrote It Down.” The music video features a photo of Michael next to Barnabas himself and sporting fangs.
Source: Donald Liebenson, Vanity Fair, October 28, 2016.