Nights of Dan Curtis, Second Edition: The Television Epics of the Dark Shadows Auteur

The award-winning producer-director Dan Curtis could do it all—and did. For television, Curtis created the Gothic serial Dark Shadows and made horror movies (The Night Strangler), crime dramas (The Great Ice Rip-Off), trilogies (Dead of Night), family dramas (The Long Days of Summer), love stories (The Love Letter), and more.

The revised second edition of this book provides an overview of all four dozen of Dan Curtis’s productions, from Challenge Golf (1963) to Our Fathers (2005). Nights of Dan Curtis takes an even more detailed look at the auteur director’s influential production of Dracula (CBS, 1974); two of his crime dramas, Melvin Purvis, G-Man and The Kansas City Massacre (ABC, 1974, 1975); his exuberant Western, The Last Ride of the Dalton Gang (NBC, 1979); his pair of epic miniseries, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance (ABC, 1983, 1988/1989); and his UFO miniseries, Intruders: They Are Among Us (CBS, 1992). Also included are rare photographs, factual “significa,” and information about newer events in the world of Dark Shadows, such as Tim Burton’s 2012 film Dark Shadows and David Gregory’s 2019 documentary Master of Dark Shadows.

Nights of Dan Curtis features more than 115 photographs, a foreword by CHiPs star Larry Wilcox, a preface by My Music producer Jim Pierson, and an afterword by Loon Lake director Ansel Faraj.