DARK SHADOWS DVD COLLECTION 1 (2002)

It isn't just the doors that creak throughout the 40 episodes assembled in this gothic soap opera's DVD debut. Though the set skips past the first 209 half hours to get to the arrival of the show's breakout character -- brooding vampire Barnabas Collins (Frid) -- Dark Shadows DVD Collection 1 is still a drag, inching along at a typically glacial daytime drama pace. Despite all the gabby characters' talk of murder, ghosts, and bloodsuckers, it's hard to see how the chronicle of the cursed Collins family became such a '60s cult hit. Maybe you had to be there.