AustLit

'“My father was an Opal Miner. My mother was a child of the Stolen Generation. From the Red Centre to the streets of LA, I chased fame and glory. I found so much more.” Michael, an 8 year old child in the outback town of Coober Pedy embraces the drums. Becoming a professional musician, his quest for fame and glory takes him to the streets of LA, where he learns so much more.'  (Production summary)

'Millie Jackson, a nerdish introverted virgin, shares an old crumbling mansion with fellow uni student Sara. Sara's friend Britt, desperate to move in, hatches a cruel and cunning plot to push Millie out. Party drugged, Millie is seduced by Sara's boyfriend Nathan, to awake, naked and confused, with no memory of the night before. Deep in denial, Millie is confronted by startling images of her night of passion, filmed and mailed through the internet.

'Distraught, confused and plagued by conflicting emotions, Millie seeks help from her family psychiatrist Dr Charles Webster. During hypnosis, Dr Webster unwittingly awakes Millie's repressed alter ego, unleashing the wild, sexy Carmilla Hyde. Armed by a post-hypnotic trigger, Millie now has the perfect vehicle to take her revenge... to beat her tormentors at their own game of cruel deception.

'But the battle is with more than just her housemates. Plagued by childhood memories, and with her alter ego Carmilla slowly taking over, she returns to Dr Webster in a desperate bid to regain control'.

Source: Official website (http://www.darkmirrorpictures.com/synopsis.php). (Sighted: 29/6/2012)

De Vries's title evokes two influential earlier horror texts: Robert Louis Stevenson's novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Jospeh Sheridan Le Fanu's vampire short story 'Carmilla' (1872).

Four children stumble into the secret underground lair of a long-dead super-hero, the Silver Shadow. Defeated (and killed) by his arch-nemesis, The Crab, in the 1950s, the Silver Shadow lives on as a digital recording in his base's computer. Just as he convinces the four to take up his role as the city's defender, The Crab, now an old man in a retirement village, trains his grand-daughter to be his own successor.

As with other programs produced by the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF), Legacy of the Silver Shadow concentrated strongly on questions of self-identity, peer pressure and conformity, and individualism.

Australian Screen includes some clips from Legacy of the Silver Shadow: http://aso.gov.au/titles/tv/legacy-silver-shadow-feral/clip1/ (Sighted: 23/2/2012). The program is also available on DVD via the ACTF.