Shadows on the Wall: An Online Dark Shadows Fanzine: MPI Presents ... The Best of Dark Shadows ... and Barnabas ... and Scariest Moments ...

Thursday, May 4, 2017

MPI Presents ... The Best of Dark Shadows ... and Barnabas ... and Scariest Moments ...

When I was a kid in the early 1990s, Dark Shadows was undergoing a fairly sizable renaissance, thanks in part to the 1991 revival, but also because video company MPI began to release the entire series on video. Thinking back, the fact that 5 episodes on one tape set you back $20.00 sounds insane, but this was also two years before the SciFi Channel began running the entire series twice a day beginning with episode 1. And, if you were like me, you set your VCR to record the series while you were at school (in Montana, DS ran at 9 a.m.) and man, did those video tapes go quickly! (I still have some of them, beeteedubs.)

Also, if you were like me, and you couldn't really afford a regular helping of MPI's regular monthly offering, relief appeared in the form of these $9.98 "best ofs" that showed up in the video bins in stores like Kmart and Shopco (or, before it went out of business, the Woolworths in Glasgow). They make absolutely no sense: random clips with no explanation, put into a non-sequential, unrelated order.

And I love them. I love them still. (And some of them were included on the DVDs MPI released years later!)

Here's a taste of some of the tastes MPI offered us in those dim, dead days before the coffin set became a thing.