The most hypnotic witch of the TV age discusses horror, history and the magic of Dark Shadows legacy.
After a half century, the enduring allure ofDark Shadowsis undeniable.
The series created two enduring symbols of supernatural entertainment.
Jonathan Frids Barnabas Collins is well-known as an icon of the reluctant vampire figure.
Lara Parkers Angelique is one of the most recognizable witches from the television age.
What could be more liberating than witchcraft?
A life-long progressive thinker, Parker continues to explore social hypocrisy in her books.
I thought you were in Salem, Massachusetts.
No Im in Oregon.
There are two Salems.
Did you spend a lot of time in the other Salem while writing the second Angelique novelThe Salem Branch?
I went there for about a week or so and tried to soak in the atmosphere.
I went to all the tourist shops and shows and demonstrations of witchcraft.
Its quite a tourist town, especially at Halloween.
Did you see the Elizabeth MontgomeryBewitchedstatue?
You and Montgomery both played iconic witch characters.
No, I wasnt aware of the statue.
Her work was in comedy, yes.
Do you see your character and Montgomerys as the historic symbols they were?
Ive been asked that so many times because the womens movement had begun.
Looking back historically, Angelique was one of the earliest strong women characters portrayed on television.
She was really the first Bitch Witch that became so popular later.
But at the time I wasnt aware of being any kind of social figure.
But I certainly didnt see myself in the larger sense of being any kind of a social influence.
I think its rare to pick up on that in the moment.
I see you as more than that.
At the time, were you aware of how differentHi Mom!was from the Hollywood machine?
Well again, no.
Brian De Palma cast me and they actually put in my two children.
He was doing improvised theater.
We were improvising on film, without lines, without a character to play.
It was a whole different thing and I actually was not very good at it.
I was very young and I wasnt really very aware of what Brian De Palma was trying to do.
He was young too.
He was experimenting but he went on to do some wonderful films.
Dark Shadowscorresponded withStar Trekand both have endured for fifty years.
You both took on social issues, them at night and you during the day.
Sometimes we say were a mini-Star Trek.
I think you put your finger on it.Star Trekis definitely the heros journey.
All the aspects, including Greek mythology, are there.
WhereasDark Shadowswas more gothic romance.
But both had good stories, which tend to be rare in the world of entertainment.
Theres a lot of pizazz.
How does it feel to hand a character you created over to another actress?
You had to do that twice with Eva Green as Angelique and the actress in the TV movie.
It doesnt bother me.
I think that they people who played Angelique have made her bitchy and witchy.
Eva Green made her very haughty.
Lysette Anthony played her as a nasty little girl, but thats not how I pictured Angelique.
But that was my choice.
I dont think it should bother anyone.
But I was hoping it would be Charlize Theron.
I wanted her to play Angelique.
She would have been my choice.
Was there something in you that was predestined to become an icon for witches and vampires?
No, I think I was very lucky to get that role.
Sometimes an actor and a role meld and that transcends the usual job.
I never think of myself as predestined to doing anything.
Writing books, for instance, is a lot of work.
It takes a long, long time.
When you performed rituals on stage, were you in a different frame of mind than just acting?
Starting, of course, withJane Eyreand the orphan girl goes to the spooky house to be a governess.
Theres a creepy guy there and everybodys very strange.DraculaandFrankenstein, Henry JamesTurn of the Screw,Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Oscar WildesThe Picture of Dorian Gray, all the Poe stories.
Young ladies were keeping it hidden under their pillows because their husbands didnt want them to read them.
It was a fascinating time in literature.
All of those tales got rewritten forDark Shadows.
So yes, there were seances, we traveled back in time, we went to different periods.
We got to play parallel characters.
The really popular actors, if they died, they got to come back as another character.
We did all kinds of magic.
We even had a warlock, a devil.
Im sure the writers scratched the bottom of the pan and found everything they could.
You even had a Humphrey Bogart lookalike.
[Laughs] Yes.
Your witch inDark Shadowsis also supernatural.
I watched theKolchak: The Night Stalkerepisode The Trevi Collection to get ready for this.
First of all, great laugh and I love great laughs, maniacal things.
How do you get into that kind of evil giggle mania?
I just pushed it.
The directors always said, can you laugh louder and harder?
Your laugh is not good enough.
So I pushed it and pushed it.
I tried so hard to laugh that Id run out of breath.
Its one of those mysterious things.
Now, some people think its very scary but I never thought it was good enough.
I thought tell me a funny joke so I can laugh harder.
Its an actual pushed, fake laugh, but I guess thats what makes it spine-tingling.
Yes, its maniacal, on par with Mr. Burns or Sideshow Bob.
Right, its maniacal.
At conventions theres always someone who stand up in the crowd and says do your laugh for us.
Oh [laughs] when did I have the evil giggle?
I dont remember that part.
I barely remember doing that show.
Darren McGavin, right?
I bring it up also because it was of Dan Curtis.
I didnt even have to audition.
That was one of the few times they just called me up and gave me the role.
Well, Dan Curtis said thatDark Shadowswas not horror.
He said it was gothic romance.
I think there is a difference between horror and terror.
Horror is the actualization of terror.
It is the result.
Whereas, terror is the scratching at the window or the footsteps down the hall.
Its imagining what could happen.
Horror is seeing what did happen.
There are two different reactions to it.
Terror draws you in because it employs your imagination and your sense of dread.
You want to get out of the way of it.
Dan said he didnt like to use too much blood.
He didnt like to use corpses.
He liked for the audience to participate and to engage their imagination.
You say oh my god, what do they see?
It got a little heavy.
The best part ofDark Shadowswas when it was more in the imagination.
Do you have a particular favorite period inDark Shadows, any particular favorite time line?
Well, I think the 1795, the triangle.
The romance with Barnabas and Josette and Angelique, I think that was probably the best story.
That was a really good story because there was no way out of it.
There was no way to resolve it.
There was unrequited love on all three parts.
They worked in a little Julia Hoffman, she was also in love with Barnabas.
That was my favorite period sure.
Of course, I always wanted to play the heroine.
I didnt want to be the heavy.
I wanted to be the ingenue I wanted to be the one Barnabas was in love with.
But it was boring.
It wasnt nearly as interesting as the Angelique and Barnabas story.
Well, as the horror fan, I always saw you as the heroine.
I think that was part of the success of playing it.
Other people who have been cast as Angelique just play her as the witch.
Shes just evil and mean.
And her heart was broken.
Thats much more sympathetic than just being a mean old witch.
I felt that her acts were acts of desperation, not acts of evil.
And Jonathan played the vampire the same way.
But because he played it with his regret on his sleeve, hes more of a traditional hero.
You were a subversive hero.
He is more of a traditional hero.
Hes the Byronic hero.
He has the heros journey.
Hes the Aristotelian hero.
Im glad you see her that way.
I never saw her as dark as that.
To try, although she continually failed, to get back what had been taken from her.
There was also the social thing.
She didnt want to be a maid.
She wanted to be the lady of the house.
I think that also made her more of a heroine.
But Im glad you see her as the hero.
I always see her as the villain.
But I also cried when King Kong died.
I thought the Frankenstein creation was a tragic figure.
The monsters are just misunderstood to me.
But so was Kong, he died for our sins.
Were you a horror fan before you got onDark Shadows?
I still am not.
I mean,Nightmare on Elm Street, I guess I saw that.
I sawthe Blair Witch Project,yes, I thought that was great.
I thought that was wonderful.
But Im not somebody who regularly goes to horror films.
I also did research on a lot of other aspects of horror writing to make it do my thesis.
You taught a horror writing class at NYU.
Im curious, did you read Stephen KingsDanse Macabre?
No, but I have read Stephen Kings discussion of the four categories of horror.
Terror is the highest category, then horror.
There is low-brow horror and high-brow horror.
Do you infuse your writing with social commentary?
If it doesnt, it just kind of hangs there in limbo.
So I decided to make that one of the priorities in my books.
Ive chosen to talk about people that there is prejudice against.
Those discarded members of society that are treated badly because theyre different.
Whatever it is we decide we dont like.
Why do our brains make that decision?
They were treated so viciously.
It was a horrible life for them.
That was the beginning of slavery in this country and that introduced the African Americans into society.
That was an important topic.
Angelique had slave servants.
In the second book,The Salem Branch, there, of course, is enormous prejudice.
The settlers moved across the ocean but, sadly, the devil came with them.
They truly believed the devil was in the forest.
Of course, they werent.
They were impoverished or lonely or abandoned women who were kind of a strain on society.
It is marvelous dialogue and scenes for my book.
They used to strip search them in the courtroom and search for the devils sucking mark.
It was such hypocrisy because what they really wanted to do was to see them naked.
What they really wanted to do was to take their property.
So, women with nice farms or farmhouses would end up being tried and hung.
I really liked delving into that.
I think there is so much hypocrisy in the world.
I think people just talk out the sides of their mouths, our politicians and our leaders.
There are two sets of rules, one for you and one for me.
A lot of the third book takes place in the twenties during prohibition.
Of course thats one of the biggest hypocrisies we ever had.
If you had a still, you could be arrested and put in jail.
If you were part of the Mafia and you shipped liquor you could be put in jail.
But the wealthy people had plenty of whiskey and they drank it all time.
So, it was one set of rule for you and one set of rules for me.
There was so much hypocrisy during the twenties and the whole idea of prohibition was so ridiculous.
It wasnt until they realized they could tax it and they could make more money that they repealed it.
In the fourth book, I decided to investigate the world of gypsies, probably the ultimate outcasts.
Theres not a single society in the world that embraces or respects the gypsies.
They wont adapt to society or participate in society, so theyre a threat do the status quo.
Theyre held in contempt.
So your social awareness goes back.
Oh I think I was very socially aware.
I went to the March on Washington.
I became very involved in the political scene, the war against Vietnam.
We went to the park and demonstrated.
We were very involved in all of that.
You played five leads in six weeks at the Millbrook Playhouse in Loch Haven, Pennsylvania.
I recently did a piece on James Gregory, fromStar TrekandBarney Miller.
He broke records doing live television in the fifties with a similar workaholic style.
How do you prepare and move from one to the other so quickly?
Well, we rehearsed all day and put up the show the next week.
Im actually a quick study.
I learn lines very fast and I loved changing characters.
Its a facility that I think comes instinctively.
The character becomes alive for me.
Im not a very intellectual actress.
Its much more a feel that I get for a character.
I did stock where I played Moliere one week and Shaw the next and Shakespeare the next.
Its a challenge but its also marvelous fun.
InDark Shadows, we didnt stop and we didnt edit.
Sometimes we didnt have time because we had to tape it 4 oclock in the afternoon.
We would tape the show and every mistake we made went on the air the next week.
It was like doing live theater.
I love the blooper reels.
Well, it gave it an energy, a kind of over-the-top feel.
It was as though we were doing a play.
It was everything that goes with gothic romance.
It was actually a wonderful experience.
It was a lot of fun.
Theyre always thrilled to meet all of us.
I have a lot of fans who say you got me through my adolescence.
I was an outcast.
I so related to your character.
Im really happy about that.
I was glad I was able to be an example for a lot of young people.
The fans love meeting all of us.
We have wonderful fans.
I have fans that have become, over the years, very close friends.
Did you stay friendly with Kate Jackson during herCharlies Angelsyears?
I saw her every once in a while, but I didnt stay friends with her.
Im sorry because we were very close when we were onDark Shadows.
We very close friends.
But she went a different direction.
She became very famous.
Id love to see her again.
I loved her, I really did.
We had a lot of fun together.
Most of the actors onDark Shadowswere stage actors, so we had a sense of doing a larger-than-life performance.
But the scripts were very well written.
They were filled with conflict and so there was a lot there on the page to play.
I think that some people were more successful at it than others.
I think Jonathan Frid was just able to somehow create the reluctant, guilt-ridden vampire and make him sympathetic.
[Laughs] Witches.
Who is the scariest of the monsters?
I think the creatures who come out of the grave are the scariest, the living dead.
I think vampires are very scary.
I think theyre supposed to be scary.
I think the reason we are so attracted to vampires is because theyre immortal.
They are creatures that have eternal life, which is what we all long for.
And they also represent sexuality that can be portrayed on the screen.
Back then you couldnt portray sex on the screen.
With the vampire you have the godlike creature that lives forever connected with something thats dead.
You know how we feel when we see something dead, like a bug or a rat.
You imagine a human being as all these things.
But theres also this great allure of a godlike figure that has transcended death.
So theres this tug and at the same time this push away.
Its a fascinating character.
Young women cannot resist the vampires summoning.
Its the deep power of love.
So I think thats very scary, bottom line, very scary.
Admission is $20 for adults and $10 for children 12 and under.
Lara ParkersDark Shadows The Heiress of Collinwoodis available for pre-order atAmazon.
