Episode 1018: The doctor’s verdict

Dave Woodard, MD, was on Dark Shadows from April to November 1967. Woodard was introduced as physician to Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Maggie was the victim of vampire Barnabas Collins. Woodard was the show’s answer to Dr John Seward, the commonsensical local physician in Bram Stoker’s Dracula who called in his old mentor Dr Van Helsing when he found that his patients were suffering maladies he could not explain. Woodard’s call went to his medical school classmate, Dr Julia Hoffman. As Van Helsing was an incredible polymath, equally at home in several branches of medical science, of esoteric philosophy, and even in the law, Julia was dually qualified as a blood specialist and a psychiatrist and just so happened to have a theory about curing vampirism.

This Van Helsing proved a traitor to her patient and to her friend. In order to persuade Barnabas to agree to cooperate with her experiment, Julia betrayed Maggie, using her magical powers of hypnosis to erase Barnabas’ abuse from Maggie’s memory. As time went on, Woodard figured out Barnabas’ secret and Julia’s complicity in his crimes. To keep him quiet, Julia prepared a lethal poison and helped Barnabas administer it to Woodard in #341.

From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows traveled back in time and was a costume drama set in the 1790s, the period when Barnabas first became a vampire. It was then that we were introduced to wicked witch Angelique, who often caused pain to her victims by sticking pins in dolls. When suspicion spread that witchcraft was going on, Angelique framed well-meaning governess Victoria Winters for her own crimes.

Now, the show has traveled in time again, not backward but sideways. Barnabas has gone to an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” Maggie’s counterpart in this universe is married to drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins, master of Collinwood. Angelique’s counterpart was Quentin’s first wife. She died last year, but has risen from the grave. When she was alive, Angelique built a cult around herself, some members of which reacted to her death with the firm conviction that she would come back to life. Now that she has done so, she has kept most of her devotees in the dark. She has told only two of them who she really is. Everyone else, friend and foe alike, thinks she is her identical twin sister Alexis.

One of the two people who knows Angelique’s true identity is her aunt, Hannah Stokes. Angelique forced Aunt Hannah to act as her henchman from #1003 until we saw her for the last time in #1014. In #1015, Angelique revealed herself to her most devoted follower, the housekeeper at Collinwood. This person is named Julia Hoffman.

Alexis really was staying at the great house of Collinwood from #984 to #1001, when Angelique rose from the dead, murdered her, and assumed her identity. When Alexis showed up, she found that Maggie was uncertain of her position in the house because everyone was so obsessed with Angelique. Hoffman deliberately and very blatantly worked to exacerbate Maggie’s insecurities, in the manner of Mrs Danvers in Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. Unlike Maxim de Winter in the novel, Quentin caught on to what was happening and sent Hoffman away for a time. And unlike the second Mrs de Winter, Maggie refused to put up with Quentin’s miserable behavior, including his alarmingly affectionate relationship with Alexis, walked out on him and went to stay with her sister in New York. The absences of Hoffman and of Maggie coincided with the work Grayson Hall and Kathryn Leigh Scott, along with the other survivors from the summer 1967 cast, did in the feature film House of Dark Shadows.

Today, we open in Quentin and Maggie’s bedroom. Quentin is in the hospital, so Maggie is alone in bed. But she is not alone in the room. Barnabas is there, about to bite her. He bared his fangs and plunged his head into her pillow in the last scene of yesterday’s episode; he does the same in the opening reprise. But when we come back from the title sequence, he is showing us his teeth again, and there is no blood on them. Evidently he just wanted to rub his face in Maggie’s pillow for a second while he worked up his appetite.

Barnabas is going in for a second round when the doorknob starts to turn. He retreats into the shadows, then turns into a bat and flies away. Hoffman enters. Maggie wakes up. She is startled to find Hoffman in the room. Hoffman explains that she thought she heard a prowler. Maggie tells her she doesn’t believe her.

Indeed, it is hard for us to believe Hoffman. The only sound we could hear Barnabas make was his squeaking in his bat form. Any sounds of footsteps the microphone did not pick up must have been much quieter than the squeaking that was going on while Hoffman was already in the room. Hoffman does not appear to have heard the squeaking, so it would not seem she could possibly have heard anything that would lead her to believe there was a prowler. Later, we hear Hoffman on the telephone to Angelique, gleefully reporting that Maggie was unnerved to find her in her room. So apparently she did not hear Barnabas. She went into the room to advance her plan of making Maggie look foolish. When she brought up the idea of an intruder, she was only accidentally pointing towards the truth, not saying something she believed or had reason to believe.

In the hospital, Quentin meets with his doctor, Cyrus Longworth. Quentin had severe chest pains the night before, so bad that Cyrus was for a time certain he had only minutes to live. Cyrus is deeply disturbed when he comes into the consultation room. He tells Quentin that he has run every relevant test, and that the results prove beyond a doubt that there is nothing physically wrong with him. Quentin asks how that can be, and Cyrus says that his chest pains were probably the result of a supernatural influence. His preliminary diagnosis is that a witch pushed a pin into a doll. This is correct. Angelique did indeed push a pin into a doll representing Quentin.

It took Woodard months of exposure to a pile of evidence before he would use the word “supernatural” without hesitation. All Cyrus needs is to see a man who is sick one day and healthy the next, and he’s right there. In #985, we learned that Cyrus had worried his friends by presenting a paper on black magic at a scientific conference. He was a member of Angelique’s cult, and at her suggestion he devised a Jekyll and Hyde formula that he has used to indulge his sadistic desires, which include murder. He is a mad scientist, less Woodard than Julia.

Back at Collinwood, Maggie gets dressed and opens the front door. She finds Barnabas standing there, about to knock. She says she is on her way to the hospital to visit Quentin. The telephone rings, and she finds that Quentin is on his way home. Barnabas asks to stay with her while she waits for her husband to return, and she agrees.

The two have a remarkably cozy conversation. They are so close together that her hair bounces in his breath. My wife, Mrs Acilius, said it looked like Barnabas was about to kiss Maggie at any moment. “You mean bite her,” I said. “Same thing,” she responded.

This conversation includes one of the most interesting of all the show’s countless bloopers. Maggie confides her insecurities about succeeding Angelique as Mrs Quentin Collins. Barnabas asks “Did Quentin really love Josette?” We cut to a closeup of Maggie. For half a second, Kathryn Leigh Scott visibly struggles not to laugh. Cast members almost never corrected each other on camera, just delivering their next scripted line no matter how bad the preceding miscue had been, but this one was so extreme that she improvised “Josette? I think he loved Angelique.” Once she had contained her laugh, she slipped right back into character. It really sounds like Maggie is caught off guard by Barnabas’ stumble, not like Miss Scott is caught off guard by Jonathan Frid’s. And when we cut back to Barnabas, his face is just as it was when we cut away to the closeup. That is an impressive bit of professionalism.

“Did Quentin really love Josette?”

Quentin comes home, and Barnabas excuses himself while he and Maggie have their joyous reunion. Maggie tells Quentin that she wants him to dismiss Hoffman. When she describes the awkward moment in her room, he grows impatient and irritated. He refuses to dismiss “someone for walking into a room!” Hoffman enters. Quentin orders the two of them to feel better about each other.

This is puzzling in a way. Before Maggie left, Quentin had caught on to what Hoffman was doing, and he seemed to be thinking of firing her. But regular viewers will not be entirely surprised. The confrontation that led to Maggie’s departure was all about Quentin’s habit of treating her like a child, and the whole time she was away he kept saying that he was not going to indulge her childish behavior. Quentin has got so deep into the habit of belittling Maggie that he cannot resist doing it even when he knows that she is in the right.

In their room, Maggie is getting ready to go back to bed while Quentin looks in her suitcase. He finds the voodoo doll there. As Mrs Acilius pointed out, Maggie was still in New York when Quentin’s pains started, so she is not very likely to be the witch. Also, the room has been open and vacant all night, so anyone could have walked in and left the doll. No reasonable person could take this as any kind of evidence against Maggie, but Angelique and Hoffman don’t have to concern themselves with reasonable people- their target is Quentin.

Episode 1017: Without hesitation

In April 1967, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis found a chained coffin. Believing the coffin to be loaded with jewels, he broke the chains and opened it. To his horror, Willie found that the coffin contained vampire Barnabas Collins. Barnabas bit and enslaved Willie, then ventured forth to prey upon the living.

In #230, Barnabas was in the process of taking Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, as his victim. Willie secretly tried to save Maggie. When the rescuers Willie had tipped off appeared, he and Barnabas hid behind a wall and eavesdropped on their conversation. Barnabas realized what Willie had done. Enraged, he beat Willie with his heavy cane. In #232, Willie’s sometime friend, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, visited Barnabas’ home, the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Jason saw that the left side of Willie’s face was covered with large bruises. Up to that point, the keynote of Barnabas’ character had been the care he took to conceal his evil nature from the world. It came as a shock to see that he had been so crazed that he left marks on Willie where anyone could see them.

After Maggie escaped from Barnabas, her memory of what he did to her was erased by several magical interventions, and she came to regard him with warm affection. By March 1970, a romance was blossoming between them.

In that same month, Barnabas discovered that an alternate universe could occasionally be glimpsed in a room in the long-disused east wing of the great house at Collinwood. Hoping to be cured of his vampirism, he managed to cross over into that universe in #980. He found that he was still a vampire, and that he was surrounded by strangers, albeit strangers with names and faces that were very familiar to him.

Willie’s counterpart is alcoholic author William H. Loomis. The new universe is a mirror image of the old one, so that while Willie unchained Barnabas’ coffin, Will puts chains on it. Barnabas kept Willie as a prisoner in the Old House and used him as a slave, while Will owns the Old House and keeps Barnabas prisoner, extracting information from him that he plans to use as the basis of a new book. Eventually Will became careless, and Barnabas bit him. Now Will and his wife, the former Carolyn Collins Stoddard, are both victims of Barnabas’ bloodlust.

Barnabas has managed to persuade the occupants of the great house that he is their distant cousin whose ancestor left Collinwood for Peru in the nineteenth century. While he was at the great house, he met Maggie’s counterpart. She is the wife of drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins, the master of Collinwood. Barnabas eavesdrops on their joyous reunion, which brings his own loneliness into sharp focus.

Maggie’s joyous reunion with Quentin brings misery to the lonesome Barnabas.

Barnabas goes home to the Old House. He eavesdrops while the Loomises argue. Carolyn has shaken free of her dependence on him and wants to warn people that there is a vampire in their midst; Will says Barnabas would kill her before she could ever do such a thing. Barnabas interrupts the conversation. He tells Carolyn that since she is a Collins, he feels a kinship for her that makes him reluctant to harm her in any way. When she asks if he would kill her and Will if they turned against him, he says flatly that he would do so “Without hesitation.” The show is often marketed as the story of a “reluctant vampire” who is determined to protect his family; this exchange shows both the basis for that description in Barnabas’ words and the limits of its accuracy regarding his deeds.

Barnabas goes into the hidden chamber off the front parlor of the Old House where his coffin is currently being kept. Before he turns in for the day, he tells Will to come back at nightfall with a cross and to prevent him leaving the chamber that night. He refuses to explain why.

Will follows the strange command. While he is keeping Barnabas in the hidden chamber, Maggie comes to the house. Will and Barnabas hide behind the wall and eavesdrop on her conversation with Carolyn. Maggie goes on about the fine impression Barnabas has made on the Collinses, and she sounds quite taken with him herself. That leads to another reversal. While in #230 Barnabas and Willie’s eavesdropping led Barnabas to realize what Willie had been up to with Maggie, today Will and Barnabas’ eavesdropping leads Will to realize that Barnabas is afraid he will bite Maggie.

The end result is the same. His craving for Maggie’s blood overwhelms Barnabas. When Will tries to obey his original command to keep him in the chamber, Barnabas uses his mind control powers to weaken Will’s will. Will manages to continue resisting, holding the cross towards Barnabas. It looks like a fair fight, until Carolyn opens the panel and bumps into Will. Barnabas thrashes him with his cane and runs out. Carolyn tends to Will, paying special attention to the badly bruised left side of his face.

Barnabas goes to the great house. He finds Carolyn at the front door. He reminds her of his threats, and recedes into the bushes. When Maggie comes out to see what is happening, Carolyn makes a weak excuse for her late visit. The puzzled Maggie thanks her for her concern, and they part.

We then cut to a bedroom where Maggie is sleeping. A bat squeaks at the window, and Barnabas materializes. He bares his fangs and plunges his head towards her neck.

This is the 26th of 26 episodes of Dark Shadows to survive only as a kinescope after the original videotape master was lost. It’s always a pleasant surprise for me when these crop up, but it’s probably just as well there won’t be any more of them. The “Parallel Time” segment is the first part of the show to make really good use of color, so that the two kinescopes from it, this one and #1006, are the only ones to represent a significant artistic loss. One more videotape master went missing, for #1219, but they had stopped making kinescopes by then, so MPI Home Video whipped something up from an audio track that a fan recorded off the air at the time of the original broadcast. They added narration by Lara Parker and some stills from #1218 and #1220.

This episode marks an epoch in the development of Dark Shadows. For the first time, videotape editors are named in the closing credits. They have done a fair bit of videotape editing in the last few months, but now they formally acknowledge the editors as a permanent part of the show. Dan Rosenson and Robert Steinback, hail to thee!

Episode 1016: Fire, be my kinsman now

Maggie Evans Collins is staying with her sister Jennifer in New York.* She writes a letter to her estranged husband, Quentin Collins. Maggie says that there is no point in being married if they aren’t going to live together, so she is going to talk with Jennifer’s lawyer. She crumples the letter up and tosses it in the wastebasket. A moment later, the telephone rings. It is Quentin’s sister, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Liz tells Maggie that she must come home immediately.

Maggie at Jennifer’s place in New York. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin appears to be having a heart attack. Liz found him writhing in pain in the drawing room. He was accompanied by someone Liz had never seen before. Eventually this person identified himself as Barnabas Collins, a distant cousin of theirs. Barnabas told Liz that Quentin had collapsed with severe chest pains, and urged her to call a doctor. She telephoned Cyrus Longworth, a friend of Quentin’s.** Cyrus doubts that Quentin will recover. Barnabas suggested Liz call Maggie, saying that she could get a flight and be at the great house of Collinwood within hours.***

The source of Quentin’s trouble is his first wife, the late Angelique. Angelique has risen from the dead, murdered her identical twin sister Alexis, and taken Alexis’ place as a houseguest at Collinwood. Angelique wanted Quentin to bring Maggie back to Collinwood so she could make them fall out of love with each other and reclaim her old place as his wife. To that end, she stuck a pin in the heart of a voodoo doll representing him. When that results in a possibly fatal cardiac event, she picks up the doll and cries that “You failed me!” She pulls the pin out. Cyrus’ prognosis that Quentin would die within minutes is thus defeated, but he is still gravely ill.

The camera settles on the clock in the foyer. It is 6:00. The shot lasts for five or ten seconds; they really want us to know it is 6:00. Barnabas has been in the house for several hours. He only exists when it is dark, since he is a vampire. When this episode premiered on 18 May 1970, the sun rose in central Maine at 4:29 AM and set at 8:00 PM. We may be able to believe that the date of broadcast doesn’t match the dramatic date, and accept that Barnabas can still be around at 6:00 AM. But it is not clear why they are asking us to do this.

We cut from the clock’s big closeup to another room, where Liz and Angelique are talking. Liz says that Cyrus was called away to attend another emergency. Angelique asks who is with Quentin. Liz says that Barnabas is. That left us wondering if the writers somehow forgot that Barnabas is a vampire. Why on earth would he agree to keep a vigil at an hour when the roosters are already crowing?

Maggie enters. She assumes Barnabas is the doctor. He tells her he is not. She apologizes; he dismisses it as a logical mistake. He hangs around when Liz and Angelique return and talk with Maggie. He accompanies Maggie when she goes in to the drawing room to see Quentin. He is still there when Quentin regains consciousness. He takes it upon himself to tell Quentin that Maggie is there. Quentin shouts that Maggie must not stay in the house. She does not go anywhere, but neither does Barnabas. He gives a shocked reaction, and is still lingering when the credits roll.

It is understandable that Barnabas would take a risk if it meant he could meet Maggie, and even more understandable that he would be reluctant to part from her once he had. He is not in fact related to anyone in this episode at all, not even as the extremely distant cousin he claims to be. In fact, he is from an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” He knows another Maggie Evans there, one who looks and sounds just like this one but who is not married to Quentin. Barnabas had a long and fraught history with that Maggie. When he left his own continuity to come here in late March, he and the Maggie he knew had been moving towards a romance for several weeks. There was a bit of a bump in the road when Angelique’s counterpart cast a spell causing Maggie to fall in love with Quentin’s counterpart, but that was something that came and went. Barnabas never found out about it. So of course he wants to connect with this Maggie in some way.

*Presumably the city, though they never specify.

**Some in fandom protest that Cyrus is not a medical doctor. But he wrote a prescription for his fiancée, Sabrina Stuart, in #989, and in #1015 he resolved to give up his evil ways and “be a doctor again.” So I think these protests are ill-founded.

***Nowadays the idea of going to the airport in the middle of the night and buying a ticket for the next flight to central Maine seems to be of a piece with the most fantastic elements on Dark Shadows, but it wouldn’t have in 1970. Not that I can remember 1970- it was the year I was born, if you want to know- but well into my adult years it was still possible to show up at an airport gate with a handful of cash and buy a ticket for a plane that was already waiting there. I never did that myself, but I saw it done many times.

Episode 1015: A debt to be paid

Vampire Barnabas Collins has left the universe where the first 196 weeks of Dark Shadows took place and found himself in a universe chiefly populated by counterparts of people he knows. His own counterpart lived a quiet life and died in 1830, so he won’t be running into him.

In his own universe, Barnabas had an affair with wicked witch Angelique Bouchard in the 1790s, dooming his chance to find happiness with his true love, the gracious Josette. We saw the events associated with this disaster from November 1967 to March 1968, when Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in those days.

That Angelique came to the estate of Collinwood as a lady’s maid. In #372, she met much-put-upon indentured servant Ben Stokes. Ben thought Angelique had a romantic interest in him, only to find that she had cast a spell to turn him into her slave in furtherance of her scheme to take Barnabas away from Josette.

In the current universe, it is 1970. Angelique’s counterpart was born in the village of Collinsport in 1939 and died at Collinwood in 1969. Three weeks ago, she came back to life, murdered her identical twin sister Alexis, and took her place as a houseguest at Collinwood. Angelique and Alexis’ maiden name was Stokes; their father is Tim Stokes, counterpart of Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, who is Ben’s descendant. Today, Barnabas talks with Angelique, who tells him that a Ben Stokes who was an indentured servant at Collinwood and an Angelique who came to the house as a lady’s maid in the 1790s are her ancestors. She also says that the Angelique of the 1790s is buried among the Stokes family. So we learn that we are in a “time-band” where Barnabas left Angelique alone and Ben wound up married to her.

The main event today is that Angelique reveals her true identity to Miss Julia Hoffman, housekeeper at Collinwood and most fanatical member of the cult Angelique built around herself in her lifetime. When Angelique admits she is not Alexis, she addresses Hoffman as “Julia,” the first time anyone has called her this. Julia admits that she is afraid of Angelique, since she is dead. Angelique orders Julia to hold her hand and feel her warmth. When she does, Julia asks how she managed to defeat death. Angelique resists telling her, but Julia insists. She dwells on the lack of sensation during the period when she was physically dead. In response to Julia’s continued prodding, Angelique says that her tomb was opened by her widower, drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins, with assistance from his friend, mad scientist Cyrus Longworth. Finally Julia can’t conceal her jubilation at the resurrection, and they cackle gleefully as they start discussing their plans to reestablish Angelique as Quentin’s wife and therefore as mistress of Collinwood. Angelique manages not to tell Julia that she murdered her sister.

Reunited at last. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The episode number “1015” signifies that this was the last episode of the 203rd week of Dark Shadows. There were some days in 1966-1971 when no episode of the show premiered on the ABC network. They skipped episode numbers on those days to keep the Friday episodes divisible by five. So far, there have been fifteen of these preemption days. That makes this the one thousandth episode aired. And therefore the one thousandth I have reviewed. A bit of a personal milestone, that.

Episode 1014: Violence in love

Wicked witch Angelique has returned from the dead, murdered her twin sister Alexis, and assumed Alexis’ identity. Angelique’s widower Quentin had already welcomed Alexis as a more or less permanent guest at the great house of Collinwood. Quentin’s new wife, the former Maggie Evans, has left him. Angelique wants Quentin back, but has decided that she cannot overcome his obsession with Maggie unless Maggie returns to Collinwood, where she will be able to fight her directly. So she has cast a spell on Quentin to inflame his feelings for Maggie. Angelique expects this will cause him to bring Maggie home. Once she is there, Angelique will be able to complete her evil plan, which the writers don’t seem to have come up with yet.

Angelique’s spell goes awry. At the beginning of the episode, Quentin slashes a portrait of Maggie; at the end, he believes he has killed her, and is getting ready to hang himself so that he can join her in death. In between, he goes off and tells his friend, mad scientist Cyrus Longworth, how miserable he is. Angelique and Cyrus have a conversation about how sad Quentin is.

The performances are all good, but the only one that serves a purpose in the story is Christopher Pennock’s as Cyrus. Cyrus has devised a potion that changes his appearance so drastically that even the people who know him best do not recognize him when he is under its influence. This is supposed to be a Jekyll and Hyde story in which the innocent Cyrus is being consumed by his evil alter ego, “John Yaeger.” But it is all too obvious that Yaeger is just a disguise Cyrus puts on when he has decided to commit acts of rapine and slaughter. Today, Pennock really makes Cyrus seem like a well-intentioned nerd. When he puts the potion back in his safe and resolves never to become Yaeger again, we can believe that he is a better person when his hair is red than he is when it is dark.

Cyrus resolves to break his addiction to “Do Not Touch” juice. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Also, he and Lara Parker have a fun moment when Cyrus and Angelique are talking about Quentin’s feelings. He gets carried away with a mad scientist rant about the horrible evil that dwells at the base of every human heart, prompting her to give him a puzzled look. It’s an effective comic take.

This episode marks the last appearance of Paula Laurence as Angelique’s aunt, Hannah Stokes. As Hannah, Laurence imitated some of the most recognizable mannerisms Parker incorporated in her portrayal of Angelique. This helped longtime viewers believe she was related to Angelique, and when she had scenes with Alexis the contrast showed us that Parker really was playing a different character. But the show isn’t big enough for two Angeliques, so Hannah’s days have been numbered for a while.

Episode 1013: Your reflection is getting smaller

Since late March, Dark Shadows has been set in a universe parallel to the one we saw in the preceding 196 weeks. One of the most important characters in that original continuity was Angelique, a wicked witch who has been wreaking havoc on the estate of Collinwood at irregular intervals over the last 175 years. Angelique’s counterpart in this universe was born in 1939 in the village of Collinsport. She died in 1969, and came back to life in #1000, in April 1970.

This Angelique had an identical twin sister named Alexis. Alexis stayed at Collinwood as a guest of Angelique’s widower, gloomy sourpuss Quentin Collins, from #984. In #1001, Angelique murdered Alexis and took her place. Though Angelique had assembled a cult around herself, the most devoted members of which expected her to rise from the dead, she has disclosed her true identity only to her aunt, Hannah Stokes, whom she has used to do some of the dirtiest of the dirty work she has needed done these last three weeks.

Lara Parker played Angelique and Alexis, Paula Laurence played Hannah. Laurence’s approach to the part has involved an imitation of the mannerisms Parker brought to her portrayal of Angelique in the original continuity. Laurence even imitated the laugh Parker developed for Angelique. This helped us to believe that Hannah was a relative of Angelique, and it worked very well indeed when Hannah and Alexis were opposite each other. Longtime viewers could see that Parker really was playing a different character.

It was tricky when Angelique and Hannah had their first scenes together, in #1003. They pulled it off, because Angelique was pretending to be Alexis at the beginning of the first scene and Hannah was reeling in shock after she learned the truth. So Parker could dial down her Angelique-isms, and Laurence could dial up some non-Angelique-derived business she does. But today the two of them share a scene where they are arguing about a spell Angelique wants Hannah to help her cast, and neither Parker nor Laurence has any choice but to go all in on the most distinctive qualities of Angelique’s line delivery. The result is a few minutes of Dueling Angeliques, and it is embarrassing.

A climactic moment in the Angelique-off.

There are a couple of stories underway in this one. The spell Angelique wants to cast is one that will inflame Quentin’s love for his second wife, the former Maggie Evans. She wants Quentin to persuade Maggie to come back to Collinwood and live with him again. She has decided that as long as Maggie is living with her sister in New York, Quentin will be obsessed with her and she will never be able to win him away from her. Hannah points out some of the flaws with this plan, and indeed the episode ends with Quentin, under the influence of the spell, about to stab Angelique.

Maggie’s portrait arrives from Paris. This mirrors the arrival of the portrait of the gracious Josette from Paris in #402. Unfortunately, this portrait is far inferior, not only to the portrait of Josette, but to most of the paintings that decorate the set, including the portrait of Angelique Stokes Collins that is one of the major props in the current segment. It looks like it was done by some photo-transfer process. I think Dan Curtis Productions probably just overspent on the portrait of the first Mrs Quentin Collins, but it makes it look like Quentin didn’t care enough about Maggie to hire a real artist to paint her.

A portrait of the second Mrs Quentin Collins.

Vampire Barnabas Collins has crossed over from the main continuity. Today he runs into strange and troubled teen Daniel Collins, who suspects something is wrong with him and is about to go report to Quentin. Barnabas does a “Look into my eyes!” and makes him forget they met. There are a couple of infelicities with that scene. We see Barnabas’ reflection in a mirror. The show has made a big point of his inability to cast a reflection, so it’s always awkward when that happens. This one is especially bad, because Barnabas tells Daniel to examine his own reflection in his eye, putting the concept of reflections front and center. They’ve been stressing that we are in a “Mirror Universe” by cramming every vertical surface with mirrors, so we’re going to see Barnabas’ reflection again.

Also, Quentin and others are aware that there is another universe near them, that someone named Barnabas Collins went missing from it recently, and that that Barnabas is under a “terrible curse.” Had Barnabas used the power we saw earlier in the episode and vanished into thin air as soon as Daniel saw him, he could have used that as evidence that he was a different Barnabas. He could explain the vanishing by suggesting that Daniel had glimpsed the other universe just as the portal that allows people to see into it was closing. Since the scene takes place in the very room where the portal is visible, the audience may well have been expecting him to do something like that, and it certainly would have been interesting to see him play it out.

Episode 1012: Does he look to you like a man under a curse?

Vampire Barnabas Collins has escaped from the continuity in which Dark Shadows took place until late March 1970 and found himself in an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” This universe is largely populated by people who remind Barnabas of their counterparts in his own world, but their personalities and relationships are very different from those he knew. His own counterpart is a case in point. That other Barnabas Collins never became a vampire, but lived a quiet life and died a natural death in 1830.

Barnabas’ first few weeks in Parallel Time were spent trapped in a coffin. Alcoholic novelist Will Loomis found out about Barnabas after he saw fang marks on the neck of his wife, the former Carolyn Collins Stoddard, and decided he could force Barnabas to give him a complete history of his career as a vampire. Will was under the impression this would make a good book. Will’s irresponsibility in keeping a vampire as a pet, his cruelty in exploiting a fellow creature for his own gain, and his lack of literary judgment in imagining that a recounting of the plot of weeks 43 through 196 of Dark Shadows would be both a bestseller and a critical favorite come back to bite him. More precisely, Barnabas comes to bite him when Will lets him out of his coffin and turns his back on him for a moment during their interview, taking the cross out of his sight and freeing Barnabas to attack.

Barnabas forces Will to burn all the pages he has already written. The idea of a book detailing Barnabas’ crimes featured in #326, #510, and #756, and may have planted the seed for the whole conception of Will Loomis.

Will and Carolyn live in the Old House on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, which in the original continuity belongs to Barnabas. The pages are still in the fireplace when drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins, master of the great house of Collinwood and proprietor of the family businesses, bangs on the door and demands admittance.

Quentin interrogates Will. The name “Barnabas Collins” has been cropping up in the oddest connections lately, and Quentin is convinced Will knows why. Their exchange is getting quite warm when Barnabas enters and introduces himself.

Quentin is bewildered to see Barnabas. Through a time warp that occasionally manifests in the east wing of his house, he has caught a few glimpses of the original continuity, mostly in the form of people standing around talking about how Barnabas is missing and is under a terrible curse. So he is inclined to be leery of this fellow claiming to be a descendant of the Barnabas who died in 1830. Barnabas specifies that his great-grandfather was the son of that Barnabas, the son who went to Peru in the nineteenth century. Quentin had read that that son of Barnabas died while still in Peru. Barnabas says that he did not die in that country. He does not specify where his ancestor went after leaving Peru, but says he spent the rest of his life in poverty. He was so ashamed of this circumstance that neither he nor any member of his family could bear to reconnect with the rich Collinses in Maine. Barnabas claims that he has now made a fortune of his own, leading him to conclude that the time is right for a reunion. Barnabas invites himself to the great house in an hour. Quentin says that the morning would be better, to which Barnabas replies that he will not be free then. Quentin acquiesces.

Quentin exits, and Barnabas orders Will to accompany him to the grave of his counterpart. Longtime viewers will remember #660, when Barnabas managed to travel back in time by going to a grave and yelling at its occupant. Now he hopes to travel sideways in time, returning to his own universe, by the same technique.

Barnabas and Will enter a graveyard we have seen several times in the last seven weeks. It differs from the cemeteries we have seen in the original continuity in that none of the grave markers is in the form of a cross. Most of the graves in the cemetery from which Barnabas emerged were marked with crosses, and he strolled by them with perfect equanimity. The cemetery set was built for Barnabas, so evidently it was not the original plan that the cross would be formidable to him. It wasn’t until #450, 48 weeks after Barnabas debuted, that he was first held at bay with a cross. Even after that, he still strolled placidly through the field of crosses in Eagle Hill Cemetery. Now the apotropaic power of the cross is a major point, and they have designed the cemetery in this universe to accommodate Barnabas’ special needs.

Barnabas calls on his counterpart. He conjures up a spirit, but it is not that of Barnabas Collins (d. 1830.) It is Joshua Collins, father of that Barnabas. The sight prompts Barnabas to gasp “Father!” Joshua denies that Barnabas is any kin to him. Barnabas tries to explain that, while that is true, he is nonetheless Barnabas Collins, son of Joshua, eliciting an angry command “Do not profane those names!” Joshua tells Barnabas to take his vileness back where it came from. Before Barnabas can explain that is what he is trying to do, Joshua vanishes.

Joshua orders Barnabas to go back where he came from. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Joshua appeared to Quentin and Angelique in #1009. That turn was not particularly effective. The visual composition made it too clear that Louis Edmonds was standing in the same space as David Selby and Lara Parker for the actors to create any sense of the uncanny. And Joshua hung around too long and had too many lines for it to make sense that he couldn’t give any useful information. But this time Joshua is off to the side, lit by his own light, and he disappears after just a few seconds. It is a powerful scene, especially for longtime viewers who remember the relationship between Barnabas and Joshua we saw when the show was set in the 1790s from November 1967 to March 1968.

Will is terrified. The apparition leaves him trembling and speechless. So far Will has cut an arrogant, self-assured figure. He handled his encounter with the vampire with aplomb. Even after Barnabas bit him, his resistance to the command to burn the pages showed that self-assured personality is still partly functional. But the ghost of Joshua has blasted away the last of it.

Barnabas tells Will that he now has only one way back to his own universe, the way he came. There is a room in the east wing of the great house that is bare and vacant in Barnabas’ universe, but that is fully furnished, richly decorated, and brightly lit here. When Quentin’s wife Angelique Stokes Collins was alive, it was her bedroom. Now Quentin has given it to Angelique’s identical twin sister Alexis to occupy while she is his guest. The barrier between the universes is at its thinnest there. Barnabas could occasionally see into Angelique and Alexis’ room from the main continuity, and it was when he was looking through the doors to the room that Quentin has seen that other Collinwood. Barnabas was in the room when it changed, and found himself here. Now he wants to go back to the room, and make the opposite journey.

What neither Barnabas nor Quentin knows is that Angelique has returned from the dead and murdered Alexis. Angelique is now impersonating Alexis. In her life, Angelique had built a little cult of people who expected her to transcend death. The only one she has so far told that she has actually done so is her aunt, Hannah Stokes. Everyone else believes she is Alexis.

Barnabas enters the drawing room of the great house, where Quentin introduces him to “Alexis” and to housekeeper Julia Hoffman, the most devoted member of Angelique’s cult. Hoffman and “Alexis” had been talking about Barnabas before he arrived. Hoffman expressed certainty that Barnabas is a fraud. But after he and Quentin leave to examine the room where the Parallel Time phenomenon can sometimes be seen, she admits that his resemblance to the portrait of Barnabas is too strong to disregard. “Alexis” remembers what Quentin heard while he was watching the people in the room, and asks Hoffman if Barnabas looks like a man under a curse. She does not appear to have expected this question.

Quentin takes Barnabas to the room. Sure enough, the other continuity is visible. Barnabas’ best friend is there, talking to herself about how much she hopes to see him again. She is mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD, counterpart of Hoffman. Julia is as devoted to Barnabas as Hoffman is to Angelique. Seeing her, we wonder how long Angelique can keep it a secret from her Julia Hoffman that she has returned.

Episode 1011: In death he dictates

Mad scientist Cyrus Longworth has developed a potion that changes his appearance so drastically that even those closest to him cannot recognize him when he is under its influence. In this disguise, he calls himself “John Yaeger” and indulges his sadistic impulses. He has just committed his first murder, killing a man who had learned his secret. The potion he needs to restore his usual looks is in his lab, but he can’t get there without passing the police. So he has ordered Buffie Harrington, a young woman he has been terrorizing, to fetch it for him. He was waiting for Buffie in a cave on the beach near the estate of Collinwood when he saw the signs of a secret passage, and decided to see where it would lead him.

It has led him to the basement of the Old House on the estate, home of writer Will Loomis and his wife, the former Carolyn Collins Stoddard. We have known that this passage was here since #1003, when strange and troubled teen Daniel Collins suggested that his young cousin, Amy Collins, join him in opening it and exploring the basement. Amy refused to go there at night, prompting Daniel to taunt her as a scared-y-cat. We also know, if only because the opening voiceover has been telling us every day for the last five and a half weeks, that vampire Barnabas Collins is chained in a coffin in the basement. Will is holding him captive and forcing him to dictate his autobiography to him.

Barnabas is a visitor from a parallel universe. Longtime viewers are familiar with that universe; Dark Shadows was set there for its first 196 weeks. There is a tunnel between the beach and the basement there as well, and each time it has figured there has been a major development in the story. So when Cyrus, disguised as Yaeger, follows the tunnel and discovers Barnabas’ coffin, we can believe something big is about to happen. He starts to unchain the coffin; if he frees the vampire, that would certainly qualify.

Will and Carolyn are upstairs. She hears the sounds Cyrus is making in the basement and tells Will to go down and check. He takes this as an invitation to another of their drunken quarrels, in which he taunts her for being Barnabas’ victim. Eventually he does go downstairs, where he pistol-whips Cyrus into unconsciousness. He and Carolyn rather improbably manage to carry Cyrus up to the parlor.

When Cyrus comes to, he finds Carolyn aiming the pistol at him. He calls her by name. She does not recognize him, and asks how he knows her. He tells her that he makes it his business to know who all the attractive women are. He asks why Will isn’t there. She doesn’t answer the question. He sees that she is trembling so violently that she can barely keep hold of the pistol; he knocks it out of her hands and runs away. Later, he will meet Buffie in the cave, get the potion from her, and shed his disguise in time to get away with his crimes.

Will rejoins Carolyn in the parlor. He scolds her for letting the intruder escape; she says he was wrong to leave her alone with him. He says he was busy sealing up the panel so that no one else could come into the basement through the tunnel. He says that Barnabas’ coffin must be moved. His idea is to carry it up the stairs and hide it in a secret chamber behind the bookcase in the parlor.

This chamber, too, has its counterpart in the original continuity. We first saw it in December 1966, when crazed handyman Matthew Morgan abducted well-meaning governess Victoria Winters and planned to kill her there. After Barnabas joined the cast of characters in April 1967 and became the master of the Old House, he several times used the chamber as a hiding place. Matthew’s plans for Vicki backfired on him when the ghosts of Collinwood and scared him to death before he could carry out his fell design. None of the occasions when Barnabas used the chamber worked out very well for him. So longtime viewers may suspect that, even if Will and Carolyn can somehow transport Barnabas and his coffin up the stairs and into the hidden chamber, things will not go as they project.

Will and Carolyn let Barnabas out of his coffin. They wear large crosses around their necks, and hold them towards him when he looks at them. They get him up the stairs and into the secret chamber this way.

Once there, Will resumes interrogating Barnabas. Barnabas protests that Will has “enough story” and ought to set him free; Will disagrees. One wonders if Barnabas’ line represents Sam Hall’s feelings as one half of the two-man staff currently charged with writing five scripts a week for Dark Shadows.

Story conference. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Will’s counterpart in the original continuity is Willie Loomis, who was Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood thrall. In #326, Barnabas had framed Willie for some of his own crimes, and the police had obligingly shot him several times. Barnabas was worried that Willie was not dying quickly enough. He railed to his associate, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, that Willie continued to “cling to life with leech-like persistence!” When Julia assured him that Willie would probably die without regaining consciousness, Barnabas said that he might just as easily make a full recovery and set about “writing his memoirs!”

The show picked up on that line after it went back in time to the 1790s. We learned in #510 that Ben Stokes, the much-put-upon indentured servant who was Barnabas’ friend before and after he first became a vampire, did indeed write a memoir, and in #756 we learned that Ben’s memoir included the story of Barnabas’ curse. I wonder if Barnabas’ line to Julia about Willie writing his memoirs was the seed, not only of Ben’s memoirs, but of the whole story of Will Loomis.

Barnabas’ cartoonish villainy in #326 was hilarious, but his objections to Will’s behavior today are quite reasonable. Will would have been doing his civic duty had he staked Barnabas, and indeed Barnabas asked Will to let him die when he first found him in his coffin. Keeping him trapped in the coffin endangers the community irresponsibly, and when Will opens it night after night with Barnabas immobilized by the cross and forces him to produce an oral history he can use use as a source of material he is choosing to be as much of a parasite on Barnabas as Barnabas’ curse has forced him to be on his victims.

Moreover, when Will tells Carolyn today that the book he extracts from Barnabas will be “all true” and that “every critic” will hail it as “a classic,” he seems to be delusional. If it is “all true,” the book will be a novelization of the last 160 weeks of Dark Shadows. The show is fun to watch, but that’s largely because the writers know what kind of material the actors and directors can use to create exciting moments. I can’t imagine anyone looking at it as so much text sitting on the page and calling it “a classic.”

Will turns his back on Barnabas and takes a note. Seeing an opportunity, Barnabas grabs the cord by which the cross hangs from Will’s neck, choking him. Will falls to the floor, and Barnabas bares his fangs.

I haven’t read Anne Rice’s 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire. Ms Rice says she wrote a short story about a reporter taking an oral history from a vampire no later than 1969, the year before this storyline premiered. That story has never been published, but biographers of hers report having seen it and they accept the dating. She also says that she decided to turn it into a novel in 1973, not because she had seen Dark Shadows, but because her daughter had died and she thought it would be a way of exploring her grief. So, any similarities are mere coincidence. I bring it up here, because it represents the definitive refutation of Will’s expectation that “every critic” would hail his retelling of Dark Shadows from the time Barnabas debuted as “a classic.” Ms Rice was free to craft a story that would be right for a novel, unconstrained to copy material produced to keep a soap opera spinning, and most of the reviews she received were quite hostile.

Episode 1010: At the scene of the murder

Mad scientist Cyrus Longworth has devised a potion that alters his appearance so that even the people who know him best, including his fiancée Sabrina Stuart and his attorney Larry Chase, cannot recognize him. When he is thus disguised he calls himself “John Yaeger” and indulges his sadistic impulses. One of his favorite hobbies is beating and intimidating a woman named Buffie Harrington, who submits to his abuse for psychological reasons the show never explains, but for clues to which Elizabeth’s Eis’ performance keeps us watching closely. Buffie does not know that Yaeger is really Cyrus. As Sabrina and Larry have not recognized Cyrus when they saw him as Yaeger, so Buffie has not recognized Cyrus when she has met him undisguised.

The only person who has so far figured out Cyrus’ secret is chemist Horace Gladstone. Cyrus bought a vital ingredient for his potion from Gladstone, who knows that it can be used to change a person’s appearance. He has had dealings with Cyrus when he was presenting himself as Yaeger, has seen his handwriting in both states, and has questioned both Sabrina and Buffie. Combined with several other pieces of evidence, Gladstone was able to build an overwhelming case that Yaeger is merely Cyrus in disguise. Yesterday he demanded Cyrus pay him $10,000 in return for a continued supply of the ingredient and his silence. Cyrus responded by drinking the potion to assume his disguise, going to a dark alley where he had gleaned from an indiscretion on Larry’s part Gladstone would be waiting, and murdering him. Larry arrived at the scene a moment later and pursued “Yaeger” on foot from the alley to the courtyard behind Cyrus’ place. He saw “Yaeger” jump the fence into the courtyard.

As Yaeger, Cyrus enters his laboratory through the door in the courtyard. He is about to take the antidote to change his appearance back to normal when he hears Sabrina and Larry coming downstairs. He hastens out the way he came. Eavesdropping through the courtyard door, he is relieved to hear Larry say that he did not get a good enough look at him to be able to make a positive identification. He hears Larry place a call to the police, and exits.

Cyrus goes back to the alley where he killed Gladstone. Buffie enters, getting off her shift as a barmaid at the Eagle tavern. The tavern abuts the alley, but evidently the police didn’t think it was necessary to bother her with news of the murder. He demands she do him a favor. She says she is too tired to do anything tonight; he says it’s better to be tired than dead. Whatever it is that compels Buffie to keep coming back to Cyrus in his Yaeger form is strong enough that this death threat does not drive her away. She protests that she does not have a criminal record and wants to keep it that way; he tells her she won’t get caught. He gives her the keys to his lab and the combination to his safe and orders her to take the bottle containing the antidote. He tells her to bring the bottle to him in a cave on the beach below the estate of Collinwood.

Buffie goes to the courtyard door. She is about to open it when she hears Sabrina and Larry inside the lab, talking about Gladstone’s murder. When the name “John Yaeger” comes up as a suspect, she looks down. We can see a forlornness in her face. She is as much addicted to his hard domination of her as Cyrus is addicted to violence, but she still does not want to think of herself as a criminal, certainly not as an accessory to murder.

Buffie hears about Yaeger as a murder suspect. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Wiki.

When Sabrina and Larry go upstairs, Buffie lets herself in to the lab. She has removed the painting that covers the safe and is starting to turn the dial for the combination when she hears Sabrina tell Larry she has to go back downstairs to retrieve something she left in the lab. Buffie hides by the door while Sabrina collects her purse. The purse is right next to the painting, but the room is dark. We are in suspense whether Sabrina will see it. She doesn’t, she leaves, and Buffie gets the bottle.

Buffie hides from Sabrina. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Wiki.

In the cave, Cyrus notices footprints going up to a pile of stones that appear to be a natural part of the cave wall. He realizes that the stones must be hiding a secret passage. He is curious where it leads, and figures it will be at least half an hour before Buffie comes. So he starts pulling the stones down.

Cyrus follows the path into the basement of the Old House on the grounds of Collinwood. This house is currently occupied by writer Will Loomis and his wife, the former Carolyn Collins Stoddard. Cyrus realizes where he is, and finds a chained coffin. He wonders what secret Will might be hiding from the world. He decides that if the secret is shameful enough, it might come in handy. He breaks the first chain, intending to open the coffin.

The opening voiceover, delivered arrestingly by Eis, told us what is in the coffin. It is a visitor from a parallel universe. He is named Barnabas Collins, and he is a vampire. Will is holding Barnabas prisoner in the coffin and taking an oral history from him, which he plans to use as the basis of his next book. Longtime viewers of Dark Shadows are familiar with Barnabas’ native universe; the first 196 weeks of the show were set there. As Will put chains on Barnabas’ coffin in the hope of finding a fortune in his stories, Will’s counterpart, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis, took the chains off Barnabas’ coffin in hopes of finding a fortune in jewels. In his universe, Barnabas is the master of the Old House and he keeps his coffin in the space where Will has it here. It has occasionally been opened by intruders; the first time we saw that happen was in #275, when Willie’s sometime friend, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, lifted the lid at sunset, only to be greeted by Barnabas’ hand darting out and crushing his throat. If Cyrus gets the coffin open, Gladstone’s death might be avenged sooner than anyone could expect.

Gladstone’s death marks the final appearance of John Harkins. Harkins’ first appearance was in #174, in which he played Lieutenant Costa of the Arizona State Police. The most famous of his dozens of screen roles was in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, when he played the clergyman who officiates at the funeral of Chuckles the Clown. He also had a recurring role on Cagney & Lacey as Mansfield the drug kingpin. Harkins didn’t have any scenes with John Karlen, who was a regular both on that show and on Dark Shadows.

The Dark Shadows Wiki tells us that this is one of only six episodes with no cast member who appeared in 200 or more episodes. It lists the others as 168, 172, 180, 1141, and 1182. It also says that there is no one in it who joined the cast before David Selby’s debut as Quentin, but since Harkins was on almost two years before Mr Selby that is not so.