A collage of stills from Grave Mood Rings, courtesy of Dare-g on Tumblr.

Mixing vampire humor and 1970s tropes (like pet rocks, lava lamps, disco music, bell-bottom pants, mirror balls, and of course mood rings), the web series Grave Mood Rings pokes fast fun at classic slow-moving Gothic soap operas like Dark Shadows and the Canadian series Strange Paradise.  In addition to a vampiric Viscount, a castle is home to a groovy Doctor (a phlebotomist, naturally), a jolly housekeeper with her own laugh track, a werewolf Vicar, and an arch-nemesis riddler wearing a Sphinx mask.  Corny wordplay, the occasional bizarre sing-a-long, and haunted doughnuts punctuate the proceedings, in the tradition of the sketch comedy of MadTV, Kids in the Hall, and SCTV.

A Grave Mood Rings homage to Dark Shadows.

Mixing vampire humor and 1970s tropes (like pet rocks, lava lamps, disco music, bell-bottom pants, mirror balls, and of course mood rings), the web series Grave Mood Rings pokes fast fun at classic slow-moving Gothic soap operas like Dark Shadows and the Canadian series Strange Paradise.  In addition to a vampiric Viscount, a castle is home to a groovy Doctor (a phlebotomist, naturally), a jolly housekeeper with her own laugh track, a werewolf Vicar, and an arch-nemesis riddler wearing a Sphinx mask.  Corny wordplay, the occasional bizarre sing-a-long, and haunted doughnuts punctuate the proceedings, in the tradition of the sketch comedy of MadTV, Kids in the Hall, and SCTV.

A still from Grave Mood Rings, courtesy of Dare-g on Tumblr.

A Grave Mood Rings homage to Dark Shadows.

A surrealist, dadaistic, even post-contemplationist spoof of slow-moving Gothic soap operas of the 1970s, from the minds of Jonathan Caws-Elwitt and Prof. Oddfellow: it's Grave Mood Rings, a weird intersection in the universe of Penetralia.

A surrealist, dadaistic, even post-contemplationist spoof of slow-moving Gothic soap operas of the 1970s, from the minds of Jonathan Caws-Elwitt and Prof. Oddfellow: it's Grave Mood Rings, a weird intersection in the universe of Penetralia.

A surrealist, dadaistic, even post-contemplationist spoof of slow-moving Gothic soap operas of the 1970s, from the minds of Jonathan Caws-Elwitt and Prof. Oddfellow: it's Grave Mood Rings, a weird intersection in the universe of Penetralia.

A surrealist, dadaistic, even post-contemplationist spoof of slow-moving Gothic soap operas of the 1970s, from the minds of Jonathan Caws-Elwitt and Prof. Oddfellow: it's Grave Mood Rings, a weird intersection in the universe of Penetralia.

A surrealist, dadaistic, even post-contemplationist spoof of slow-moving Gothic soap operas of the 1970s, from the minds of Jonathan Caws-Elwitt and Prof. Oddfellow: it's Grave Mood Rings, a weird intersection in the universe of Penetralia.

A surrealist, dadaistic, even post-contemplationist spoof of slow-moving Gothic soap operas of the 1970s, from the minds of Jonathan Caws-Elwitt and Prof. Oddfellow: it's Grave Mood Rings, a weird intersection in the universe of Penetralia.

A Grave Mood Rings homage to Dark Shadows.

A surrealist, dadaistic, even post-contemplationist spoof of slow-moving Gothic soap operas of the 1970s, from the minds of Jonathan Caws-Elwitt and Prof. Oddfellow: it's Grave Mood Rings, a weird intersection in the universe of Penetralia.

A Grave Mood Rings homage to Dark Shadows.