STRANGE PARADISE

STRANGE PARADISE was the bastard offspring of the 60's hit DARK SHADOWS. Ours was a quirky little show, dealing with a group of malcontents on a Caribbean island, not unlike Haiti. An eccentric called Jean Paul Desmond (Colin Fox), who lived in a creepy mansion named "Maljardin," (evil garden) ruled the tiny islet. His only companions were two servants: a five hundred year old harridan, Raxl (Cosette Lee) and a Neanderthal thug, Quito (an ex-wrestler who fought under the name of Angel). And the rest of the cast, as best I can recall, were the usual suspects: a defrocked priest, a wealthy widow, her beautiful daughter, an earnest doctor, a sleazy lawyer, and so on. I played Tim Stanton, a disillusioned artist, who according to the script, eked out a meager living on the beach doing sketches of tourists.

But after only fifteen or so episodes, the characters had all fought or had sex with each other, or both, and there was nowhere to go. So the writers were all fired. The producer then brought in new writers and told them to fix things up. Their solution was to kill off all the regulars except Jean Paul Desmond and his wacky servants. The killer was to be Jean Paul's dead wife (Tudi Wiggins) who, as luck would have it, lay frozen in the cellars in a Cryonics capsule. (I am not making this up). Anyway, something or other woke "Sleeping Beauty" from her icy coffin and she went on a murderous rampage, killing off the cast until only the last three remained. And then someone put a stake through her heart, or some other such gothic horror, and she expired..

It was to be the bloodiest week in Canadian Television history. The series was called STRANGE PARADISE. Of the ten lead characters, seven were to die, one a day for a week. It was a frightening prospect for all the actors. When the scripts were handed out each day, we would tear through them to see if our characters were still present in the last scene, If we weren't, it meant that one of us had died somewhere in the middle of that day's story line. We were simply desperate to live: "Just one more day, oh Lord; one more day!" for the pay, if nothing else. It would have been some solace to say that these terrible, heart-wrenching deaths were the result of brilliant idea on the part of our scriptwriters a coup de theatre from the hacks who came up with our bizarre plots. But no, the directive had come from our producer.

To save money the producer had set us up in a converted barn in the middle of nowhere: a field outside of Ottawa. This being the 60's Ottawa, although the capitol, was also pretty much in the middle of nowhere. So the cast had to be flown in every week from Toronto. The crew, though, were hired locally, most of them having only worked on televised hockey games. They never ceased to be amazed when the actors spoke in complete sentences. Hockey players it seems, don't speak much, just tearing up and down the ice, emitting expletives. The directorsâ only previous experience had been in children's TV. They too were amazed when we spoke in whole sentences as were we, frankly, given the appalling dialogue in the scripts. But even though the pay was horrendous and the conditions deplorable, we were all thrilled to be in a real TV series.

I was the second last to die. "Tim" had been invited to Maljardin to paint the portrait of the now resuscitated wife. The insanely possessive Jean Paul attended most of the sessions, but one day business called him to another part of the mansion, leaving Tim alone with the murderess. When Jean Paul returned, Tim lay dead at his wife's feet, "the smell of bitter almond in his coffee cup." Jean Paul never seemed to be able to put it together that his wife was always the only one present at each of the grizzly deaths. I guess he loved her so much, he couldnât see through her little mischief making maneuvers.

In the actual shooting, my dead body was hauled onto the bed and covered up, while the rest of the scene continued. But because we had worked such long hours and were utterly exhausted, once the bed covers were drawn over my face, I fell sound asleep. The cast and the crew finished the scene, called it a wrap and went home. I, on the other hand, woke up much later in a pitch-black sound stage. Perhaps because the episode had been about my characterâs death, when I awoke I was convinced that I was dead. I lay there in the dark, wondering in what anti-chamber to what circle in hell I had arrived. And then I felt the bedclothes beneath me and reasoned that I must be in some kind of actor's hell: a never-ending re-enactment of my last job on earth. I was doomed to spend eternity on an unlit sound stage. In the middle of nowhere. In a field outside Ottawa. In the 60's. This must be God's punishment for all the awful acting I had done on the show.

I rose from the bed and walked slowly and silently in the dark until I saw a red light: the devil's own throne room. Like a moth to the flame I approached, prepared to face Lucifer in his own fiery furnace, until I realized that the red light was an EXIT sign. Then my mind began to race. Oh my God, I was still alive. Everyone had left. I was utterly alone. In a sound stage, and it was after 3 AM, according to my watch, barely visible in the dim red light. What was I going to do? Well, to cut to the chase, I called a cab, which arrived an hour later and took me back to the hotel. Later that morning I got on a plane and left for Toronto. And that was the end of STRANGE PARADISE for me.

But it was not entirely the end of STRANGE PARADISE, because our sleaze-bag producer had sold the rights to a shell company in the Bahamas to avoid paying us residuals. By the time our union caught up with him, the payments only amounted to a few dollars since by that time the show was only playing in Paraguay at four in the morning. Then thirty years later I got a call from the head of the STRANGE PARADISE fan club, here in LA. I was invited to a monthly meeting where they showed clips from my scenes in the show. However, unbeknownst to me someone had also set up a little camcorder; so when the video ended and we saw the end of young Tim Stanton, on the screen came a grotesquely wizened troll, which made everyone in the place scream. It was only when I saw myself gasp that I realized that the image on the screen was me! And then to day a fan e-mailed me from Florida and asked to write something about STRANGE PARADISE for my website, and so I did.

© Bruce Gray 2000