Acilius holds forth about his favorite 1960s daytime soap opera
Episode 76: His own shadow
Dashing action hero Burke Devlin pays yet another visit to the great house of Collinwood. He announces to its residents, the ancient and esteemed Collins family, that he intends to take control of all their properties, including the house. He is buying up their debts and will use them to seize their businesses. He offers to pay them for the house, though. He even offers to pay for it at higher than the market value.
Ne’er-do-well Roger Collins urges his sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, to take Burke’s offer for the house. It’s a huge, gloomy, impractical place, and they would be better off without it. He doesn’t mention that the cash might come in handy when Burke starts calling in all the notes they have no way of meeting. Liz won’t hear of it, and vows to fight.
Flighty heiress Carolyn and well-meaning governess Vicki process their feelings about the matter. Carolyn is wounded by the evidence that Burke never really wanted to be her boyfriend- not that he ever said he did, but she kept hoping. Vicki wonders what Burke is thinking, and whether he understands his own motives. He admits that he may not- after all, if he’s trying to avenge the wrongs the Collinses have done him by bankrupting them and collecting their assets, why not just watch their house fall into his lap with the cannery, the fishing boats, and whatever else they may have, leaving them with nothing?
With this post we say goodbye to one of the bloggers who has kept us company. This was the last episode Marc Masse discussed on his blog Dark Shadows from the Beginning. His posts usually include stimulating insights, sometimes remarkable scholarship, and occasionally material that is in one way or another frustrating. Still, he is always well worth reading.
Among his most extraordinary contributions was about the story of the sabotaging of Roger’s car, a.k.a. The Saga of the Bleeder Valve. That story began when we, accompanying Vicki, saw Burke standing by Roger’s car in episode 13.
Burke tells Vicki that he was looking at Roger’s car because he was thinking of buying one like it, an explanation she finds unconvincing.
In his post about episode 46, Masse includes a long section about similarities between the Saga of the Bleeder Valve and a particular episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. He convinces me that Art Wallace and Lela Swift had studied that episode. You’ll notice from his screenshots that that John Cassavetes even had the same haircut that Mitch Ryan wore as Burke:
Source material for the missing brake valve storyline on Dark Shadows can also be found in The Alfred Hitchcock Hour anthology series. In the episode Murder Case (season 2, episode 19; aired March 6, 1964), Gena Rowlands plays an actress (Diana Justin) in London married to a rich diamond merchant (Charles Justin) played by Murray Matheson. Diana isn’t really in love with her much older husband Charles, but since he is the main financial backer of a play she is starring in, her success is ensured… that is until the boyfriend she dropped so she could run off to England and start a production company with her rich husband, a struggling actor named Lee Griffin (played by John Cassavetes), manages to wangle his way through an audition and secure a part in the play by getting Diana to pass a good word along to the author and director of the production. Lee gets Diana to agree to resume their former relationship, and in no time the pair are in cahoots to relieve Diana of her marital obligations and in the process secure a huge windfall by plotting to have the old man bumped off. To accomplish this, they arrange for Charles to have an automobile accident; this is where the similarities to the missing brake valve story on Dark Shadows come into play.
One afternoon, on a visit up to the country home where Diana and Charles live, which is situated high up on a hilly area, Lee gets an idea when he comments on how the type of car that Charles drives is famous for its brakes.
To compromise the functioning of the car’s brake system, Lee first uses a wrench to loosen something, probably the bleeder valve…
…after which he pumps the brake pedal several times so there won’t be any hydraulic fluid left for when Charles next gets behind the wheel.
Just after completing the task, and with the wrench still in his back pocket, Charles walks in to find Lee there standing by his car, just like in Dark Shadows episode 13 when Victoria Winters walks into the Collinwood garage to find Burke near Roger’s car. To diffuse the situation, Lee explains to Charles: “I was, uh, just admiring your car. It’s, uh, fabulous!”
That night Lee and Diana have a performance in London; to set the plan in motion, Lee phones Charles from backstage while the play is still on and concocts a story about nearly having gotten into an accident on their drive into London due to a careless young motorist, which left Diana shaken up, and suggesting to Charles that he drive down to London to take his wife home…
…which he agrees to, just like in Dark Shadows episode 15 when Roger agrees to drive into town to meet with Burke at the Blue Whale.
Similar to how Roger in episode 17 is shown to have miraculously escaped with just a sprained arm and a few stitches to the forehead, Charles winds up crashing head on into a tractor that was just starting up the hill; despite that the car ended up a total loss, Charles was extremely lucky in having sustained only a couple of cracked ribs and a slight concussion.
The missing brake valve story on Dark Shadows never really did feel like something that would ordinarily be presented on a daytime serial drama. Instead, thus far Dark Shadows has taken its cue from 1940s film noir for atmosphere, Broadway theater style for acting performances, and nighttime mystery suspense anthology programs for subject matter. Is it any wonder that Dark Shadows would go on to evolve into the cultural phenomenon it would later become? A truly one of a kind blend of widely varying influences.
In his post for episode 76, Masse includes the audio of Joan Bennett singing “Sentimental Moments” in the 1955 film We’re No Angels. I’d never heard of the song, and had no idea she sang. Indeed she was not a Singer with a capital S, but her gentle, precise phrasing is perfect for this strange, sad little tune. I think of it as a farewell to Masse and his blog.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 