A Doctor Remembers

Fan Film
Title:	A Doctor Remembers
Creator:	Tom Soderberg and Owen Robertson
Date:	1985
Length:
Medium:	videotape
Genre:	general
Fandom:	Dark Shadows
URL:
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A Doctor Remembers is a Dark Shadows fan film by Tom Soderberg and Owen Robertson

The film is twenty-minutes long and is a faux-documentary. In it, Julia Hoffman (a character in the show) reminisces about the years she spent at Collinwood.

The film has an over-all camp tone to it.

Hoffman is portrayed in this film by Tom Soderberg.

A Doctor Remembers works in ways similar to a drag cabaret act for those in the know. The tape is ful of witty (inter)textual references. Julia mentions that she is up for a part in Aaron Speling's newest TV show, Dark Mansions, and an alleged photo of her father, "Judge Herman Hoffman, shows DS cast member Louis Edmonds as he was then appearing on another soap opera. Julia tells us that Vicky has run of with a millionaire who supposedly murdered his wife." Soderberg-as-Hoffman satirizes many of the show's more outlandish credibility gaps in a deadpan style of delivery. Standing in the woods between Collinwood and the Old House, Julia remembers how she used to go from "one house to the other, one house to the other, one house to the other... at the end of a busy night I'd go to bed quite dizzy." The sign for Julia's Hospital, Wyndcliffe Sanitarium, reads A NICE PLACE TO GO INSANE. Julia also discusses her ability to wear so many diferent hats: "You see, besides being an MD, blood specialist, biologist, and family historian, I'm also a licensed psychologist" Ultimately, Julia confesses to the camera and comes to "realize and confront the truth, that yes, I had a love-jones" (for Barnabas).

Further reading

• discussed in the book Resurrection of the Vampire and the Creation of Alternative Life: An Introduction to Dark Shadows Fan Culture