likens Barnabas to any tortured man with a dreadful secret, torn between essential humanity and whatever it may be that is haunting him.

Frid has just finished his first film for MGM. It is, of course House of Dark Shadows and is based on the TV series. He and co-stars Joan Bennett and Grayson Rail head a cast drawn almost entirely from the serial. U was a hectic period for all of them, silence the series continued daily, and there were times when some of the cast were alternately taping for television one day and making scenes for the film the next. The film revolves around Barnabas and his entry into the Collins family, but will be entirely different from that episode on TV. It will also have a different quality from the standard vampire film, having been shot on location in various antique mansions in the New York area, and abounding with romantic complications, as befits its origins.

Jonathan Frid away from his fangs is a soft-spoken, friendly and almost shy actor still adjusting to the hysterical adulation he receives from tans. During the film's last week of shooting, in an enormous old house in Norwalk. Conn., the site was ringed with fans chanting "we want Barnabas" and subjecting him to virtual imprisonment on the set, an inconvenience he accepted with characteristic good grace. His handling of the younger children, torn between delight at seeing him and fear that he might bite, was charming, as was his manner with even the most bedraggled teen-age hero worshipper.

Basically a classically-trained actor (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Yale Drama School), the Canadian-born Frid hopes that he won't be constantly chained S the casket of the Barnabas portrayal and will someday be able to take temporary leave of it to play some of the Shakespearean roles that are dear to his heart. However, he will not admit to looking down on Barnabas. There vast scope for variety within the role," he says, and adds wryly, "vampires are immortal, you know."

With the vampire returned as romantic hero, who knows what next? Snuggling up to a werewolf may be conceivable, after all.

Dressed in his 18th century party costume, Jonathan Frid, who has been taken to the bosom of the female afternoon television audience because of his circumstantial vampirism, has expanded his TV role for MCM's House of Dark Shadows