Before award-winning director Dan Curtis became known for directing epic war movies, he darkened the small screen with the horror genre's most famous soap opera, Dark Shadows, and numerous subsequent made-for-TV horror movies. This second edition serves as a complete filmography, featuring each of Curtis's four-dozen productions and 100 photographs. With the addition of new chapters on Dark Shadows, the author further explores the groundbreaking daytime television serial. Fans and scholars alike will find an exhaustive account of Curtis's work, as well as a new foreword from My Music producer Jim Pierson and an afterword from Dr. Mabuse director Ansel Faraj.

Table of Contents


Foreword: The Fearless Master by Jim Pierson

Preface and Acknowledgments: Life from a Coffin

Introduction: Dan Curtis and Television Horror

I.¿The Career of Dan Curtis: An Overview

II.¿Curtis's Dream: Dark Shadows

III.¿Big-Screen Shadows: House of Dark Shadows (1970), Night

delete delete delete¿of Dark Shadows (1971) and Dark Shadows (2012)

IV.¿Dead of Night: A Darkness at Blaisedon

V.¿Curtis and the Classics: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dracula, and The Turn of the Screw

VI.¿The Kolchak Papers: The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler

VII.¿In the Night Stalker Vein: The Norliss Tapes and Scream of the Wolf

VIII.¿A Trilogy of Trilogies of Terror: Trilogy of Terror, Dead of Night, and Trilogy of Terror II

IX.¿Curtis's Pre-War Farewell to Horror: Burnt Offerings and Curse of the Black Widow

X.¿Intruders: They Are Among Us

XI.¿Lost in the Shadows: Productions That Never Were

XII.¿Master of Dark Shadows: The Dan Curtis Documentary

Conclusion: Dan Curtis and Television Horror and Drama

Afterword: The Fearless Pioneer by Ansel H. Faraj

Chapter Notes

Bibliography

Index

Jeff Thompson is a professor of English at Tennessee State University in Nashville. He contributes articles on film and popular culture for magazines and books, as well as websites dealing with Dark Shadows and horror cinema.