We open with the most spectacular dream sequence Dark Shadows has yet attempted. Strange and troubled boy David Collins is tossing and turning in bed. We cut to his dream, where he sees his distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, approaching. Barnabas gets closer and closer, grows enormous, and opens his mouth, exposing the fangs of a vampire. David screams and wakes up.
As it happens, Barnabas really is a vampire. He has heard a rumor that Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is recovering from amnesia. Since that amnesia was induced by his associate, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, in order to keep her from remembering that Barnabas is an undead ghoul who abducted her and held her prisoner, he is on the point of a panic attack.
Jonathan Frid turns in a bravura performance as Barnabas today. He plays Barnabas’ mounting anxiety compellingly when we see him in his house alone with his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie, waiting for Julia. When she does come, he rages at her and demands she go to Maggie at once to reinforce her memory loss. When Julia admits that she is no longer Maggie’s doctor, Barnabas’ rage mounts and he threatens to kill her. She keeps talking, and eventually he composes himself and suavely tells her that he won’t kill anyone tonight. She smiles, and goes off to her laboratory to resume meddling in God’s realm. Willie knows Barnabas better than Julia does and has none of her self-assurance; he doesn’t for a moment believe that Barnabas has relented. When he gets Barnabas to confirm that he is indeed going to kill Maggie, Frid moves from the cool suavity he had achieved just before Julia’s exit back to the near-panic he had displayed before she entered. The whole trip from panic to rage to suavity and back to panic is remarkably well executed.
Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is sick of being cooped up at home all the time. But the person or persons unknown who abducted her and held her prisoner is still at large, and has bothered another girl. She herself cannot help in the investigation, since she has amnesia covering the entire period of her captivity. So when addled quack Dr Woodard says he has a plan that might catch the villain, she jumps at it.
Woodard put forward his last plan when Maggie had escaped from her captor. That plan was to tell everyone Maggie was dead and hide her in a mental hospital, in the hope that the abductor would think that he had got away with his crime and would therefore… become a nice guy? It was never very clear how that was supposed to solve the problem.
This plan has the same shortcoming that one had. Maggie’s father, artist Sam Evans, is supposed to start a rumor that her memory is returning and that everyone will soon know who abducted her. That is supposed to prompt the guy to come after Maggie again. When he does, they will… find him outside the house and charge him with trespassing? Let him kill Maggie and charge him with murder? Woodard isn’t good at the end-game.
Maggie persuades Sam and the sheriff to go along with Woodard’s half-baked scheme. Sam and the sheriff go to Collinsport’s only night spot, The Blue Whale Tavern. Sam, who for the first 40 weeks of Dark Shadows was an alcoholic, pretends to be drunk. He throws out one broad hint after another that Maggie’s memory is returning, and the sheriff pretends to hush him.
The important plot point in this scene is that Willie Loomis is in the tavern. Willie is the servant of old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. Unknown to the people of Collinsport, Barnabas is a vampire, and it was he who abducted Maggie. Willie hustles off to report the news to Barnabas.
But what really matters in the scene are the thirteen lines delivered by Bob the Bartender. This is Bob’s 42nd appearance, but only the sixth time he has spoken audibly. It is by far his meatiest part, but alas, it is the last time we will hear him speak. Actor Bob O’Connell will play other bartenders in later stories, and one of them will have a substantial speaking part in an episode, but Bob will be mute from now on.
This episode marks another landmark in Bob’s development. During his drunk act, Sam says “Bob-a-roonie, give me a double mar-toonee… on the rocks!” Picking up on that, many Dark Shadows fans have decided that Bob’s last name is “Rooney.” The Dark Shadows wiki lists him that way, and one of Big Finish Productions’ Dark Shadows audio dramas incorporates that name.
*The first five were #3, #156, #186, #269, and #270.
In the outer room of the Tomb of the Collinses, Sam Evans and Dr Dave Woodard recap the story so far. In the hidden chamber on the other side of the wall, vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman eavesdrop on their conversation. When they hear how close Evans and Woodard have come to discovering their terrible secrets, Julia squirms and Barnabas looks shocked.
Busted.
When Dr Woodard mentions that Julia had used the word “supernatural” in a conversation with him, Barnabas nearly blows their cover. He grabs Julia by the throat and she lets out a yelp. Sam hears this, Woodard does not. Woodard suspects that there are ghosts at work in the area, but he cannot believe that Sam’s hearing is better than his, so he dismisses the idea.* He notices the plaque marking the burial site of Sarah Collins, 1786-1796, and says out loud that the little girl named Sarah whom everyone has been looking for lately is the ghost of that Sarah.
Evans and Woodard leave the tomb, and Barnabas resumes raging at Julia. He opens his old coffin and pushes her head into it, asking if she wants to spend eternity confined there. She talks him down with warnings of what would happen were he to kill strange and troubled boy David Collins.
Woodard goes to the great house of Collinwood, where he questions David. Woodard is much more forthcoming with what he knows than he has been in any previous conversation. David listens closely, trying to find out what he knows. But Woodard’s questions are all about David’s friend, Sarah. David doesn’t know that answers to many of Woodard’s questions, and Sarah has sworn him to secrecy about much of what he does know. So the only new piece of information Woodard learns from David is that Julia was lying to him the other day when she said that she hadn’t given much thought to Sarah. David tells him that she asks him about her all the time.
Julia comes in and tries to stop Woodard questioning David. He ignores her and asks another question, then warns him to stay away from the Tomb of the Collinses. When he tells David that whatever secret Sarah told him about the tomb is also known to someone else, and that that other person is very dangerous, David is horrified. When he was trapped in the hidden chamber last week, Barnabas and his servant Willie entered. David hid from them in Barnabas’ old coffin and eavesdropped on a conversation in which Barnabas dropped a huge number of clues about his secrets. Since Woodard started his questioning of David with a reference to the unknown person who has been terrorizing the area since April, David now has reason to believe that Barnabas is that person.
David leaves the room, and Woodard asks Julia what she was trying to prevent him from finding out. She refuses to answer any of his questions. She hears the sound of dogs howling, and knows that it means Barnabas is getting ready to kill someone. Knowing that she has very little time to try to prevent David’s murder, she cannot focus on Woodard’s questions. For once, she can’t think of any lies that will hold him off. Her reason for being in town, so far as Woodard is concerned, is that she is a doctor treating Sam Evans’ daughter Maggie, Barnabas’ former victim. When she won’t answer his questions, he takes her off Maggie’s case.
Julia goes to Barnabas’ house. She finds him on his way out the door, on a mission to kill David. She opposes him, and he declares that nothing can stop him. At that, the wind blows the doors open. It extinguishes some of the candles in the room. The strains of “London Bridge” begin playing, and Barnabas and Julia realize that Sarah, who in reality is the permanently nine year old ghost of Barnabas’ little sister, is in the room. Barnabas cannot leave. Julia says with satisfaction that nothing can stop him- “except one little girl.”
The whole episode is very strong from beginning to end. Julia is usually so much in charge that the only suspense is what she will choose to do, but throughout this one she is scrambling to bring Barnabas under control. When her final attempt fails, Sarah’s intervention comes as a thrilling surprise.
The performances of both Jonathan Frid and Grayson Hall stand out today. Hall is as powerful a presence playing a character who controls nothing as she usually is playing a character who controls everything. And few could match Frid’s ability to appall us with Barnabas’ plan to kill a ten year old and seconds later to elicit tears by calling out to his beloved little sister.
When Dark Shadows began, one of the most important relationships was that between matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. Liz and Roger each had a terrible secret to hide. In the work of hiding, they embodied opposite extremes. Liz was motivated to conceal her secret by a fear that she would damage the reputation of the Collins family and the fortunes of its members. Her morbidly intense concern for the family’s position both made her a prisoner in her home and gave her a certain air of nobility. Roger’s motives for hiding his secret were wholly selfish, and he was a symbol of lack of family feeling. So much so that he squandered his entire inheritance, jumped at a chance to sell the ancestral seat to his sworn enemy, and openly hated his own son.
Since Roger was living in Liz’ house as her guest and working in her business as an employee, it fell to her to rein in her impossibly irresponsible younger brother. But the very quality that led her to try to exercise authority over him undercut her efforts to do so. Liz’ devotion to the Collins family compelled her to try to keep Roger on the strait and narrow path, but that same devotion prevented her from taking any action against him so harsh that it might actually deter him from misconduct. Further, her own secret compromised her moral authority and kept her from engaging with anyone outside the family. So she wound up less as a commanding matriarch than as a bossy big sister.
Liz and Roger both let go of their secrets, Roger in #201, Liz in #270. Roger is still far from heroic, but he no longer gives Liz the nightmares he once did. Liz is still mindful of the family’s good name, but there is nothing keeping her from following through on whatever orders she might give. So Liz and Roger’s Bossy Big Sister/ Bratty Little Brother dynamic is no longer a productive story element.
Now, the show is reintroducing the same dynamic with another pair of characters. Mad scientist Julia Hoffman is conducting an experiment which she hopes will turn vampire Barnabas Collins into a real boy. When Barnabas threatens to murder her, she becomes impatient and tells him to stop being ridiculous. When he threatens to murder other people, she threatens to discontinue the experiment unless he starts behaving. He usually responds to Julia’s orders by pouting, sulking, and giving in to her.
In the opening scene, Julia was in Barnabas’ house. He told her that he was likely to kill Roger’s ten year old son David because he thinks David might know that he is a vampire. Julia demanded that he leave David alone, prompting him to walk out of his own house. She then followed him to the old cemetery north of town, where Barnabas heard her footsteps in the distance and she hid behind a tree.
This woman holds a medical doctorate and is qualified in two unrelated specialties.
Barnabas enters the Tomb of the Collinses. Julia confronts him there, insisting he tell her what secret about the place he is keeping from her. He demands that she leave and threatens to kill her if she does not. He tells her that he ought to stash her corpse nearby, “along with”- then interrupts himself. Regular viewers know that Barnabas killed seagoing con man Jason McGuire in #275 and buried him in the secret chamber inside the tomb in #276. Jason has barely been mentioned since, not once in any scene featuring Julia. When she asks Barnabas what he is talking about, he says “Never mind.”
Julia presses Barnabas with “You’ve shared all your other secrets with me. You have no choice but to share this one with me too.” The logic of this statement eludes me, but all Barnabas can do when Julia has made it is to walk backward away from her, staggering into a corner and pouting at her.
Barnabas, stunned by the force of Julia’s reasoning.
Meanwhile, Sam and Dave are walking through the cemetery.
No, not that Sam and Dave. Local artist Sam Evans and addled quack Dr Dave Woodard have noticed that a series of odd occurrences have taken place in the vicinity of the tomb lately and have come to the cemetery to investigate. They run into the old caretaker, who delays them with his usual warnings about the unquiet spirits of the dead.
Alas, the final appearance of Daniel F. Keyes as the Caretaker.
Back in the tomb, Barnabas is telling Julia everything she wants to know. He lets her into the secret chamber and explains that he was imprisoned there in a coffin for many years, freed only when the luckless Willie Loomis accidentally released him to prey upon the living. Julia listens, showing pity as Barnabas recounts his woes.
Barnabas finds David’s pocket knife, proving that the boy was in the chamber and convincing Barnabas that he must kill him. He takes the knife close to Julia in a gesture that might be threatening, were its blade intact. The broken blade negates the threat and emphasizes Barnabas’ powerlessness before Julia. Since 1967 was the heyday of Freudianism in the USA, it is likely that many in the original audience would have seen it not only as a useless tool, but also as a phallic symbol. As such, not only its brokenness, but also the fact that it was made to be carried by a little boy, would make the point that Barnabas brings no sexual potency to his relationship with Julia. Her own behavior towards him may be childlike, but in her eyes he is a smaller child than she is.
Julia protests, claiming that someone else might have left the knife there. Barnabas dismisses her assertions, but does not regain control of the situation. As they prepare to leave the chamber, he kneels and she stands over him, watching him open the panel.
On his knees before her.
They hear Sam and Dave approach. (Still not the cool ones.) They scurry back into the secret chamber, as David had done when he heard Barnabas and Willie approaching the tomb in #310. They listen to the men discuss the facts that have brought them to the tomb, and grow steadily more alarmed as they realize how close they are to discovering Barnabas’ terrible secret.
This is the first episode not to include any actors who were signed to the show at the time production began. The character of Sam Evans was at that time played by a loud man called Mark Allen; Allen’s last episode was #22, taped on 12 July 1966, and David Ford’s first was #35, taped on 29 July. The Caretaker was introduced in #154, Barnabas in #210,* Dave Woodard in #219,** and Julia in #265.
*As the hand of stand-in Alfred Dillay- Jonathan Frid wouldn’t appear until #211. Though the portrait he sat for was on screen in #204, and was identified as that of Barnabas Collins in #205.
**Played by Richard Woods. Robert Gerringer took over the part in #231.
Strange and troubled boy David Collins got himself trapped in the secret chamber of the old Collins mausoleum in #310, and everyone has been searching for him ever since. Most of them want to get him home safe, but his distant cousin, Barnabas, has a different agenda. He suspects that David has learned that he is a vampire, and is determined to be the first to find him so that he can kill him.
Friday, David got out of the secret chamber and walked outside, straight into Barnabas’ hands. Today, we open with a reprise of that scene. After Barnabas greets his young cousin with a richly sinister “Hel-lo, David!,” he questions him sharply. He expresses dissatisfaction with David’s answers, then tells him that because no one is at home in the great house of Collinwood, he will be taking David to his own house. David grows more and more uncomfortable. Just as he is coming to be really frightened, the voice of local man Burke Devlin calls his name.
When Burke reaches them, David throws his arms around him and Barnabas squirms guiltily. Burke dislikes Barnabas, and gives him a suspicious look while he and David explain what has happened. When Burke says that there are people at home in the great house, David flashes a look of alarm at Barnabas. Barnabas says that no one had answered when he knocked on the door earlier, so he assumed everyone had joined the search. The two men take David home.
There, David eats a sandwich in his room while his father Roger asks him where he has been. This conversation is just magnificent. Roger is trying to be stern, but is such a flagrantly neglectful father that David knows full well that he can’t be bothered to punish him. So while Roger puts a series of pointed questions to him, David ignores him and muses aloud about Barnabas. “Barnabas is mysterious, isn’t he, Father?…You know, we don’t know anything about him. He just showed up one night.” Roger keeps urging David to forget about Barnabas and start answering his questions, but gets nowhere. Louis Edmonds and David Henesy were both talented comic actors, and they worked well together, so it’s no surprise this scene is laugh-out-loud funny.
Along with the comedy comes the thrill of a potential change in the show. In his post about this episode, Danny Horn writes: “It’s a great moment. It’s like the ‘logical explanation’ spell was suddenly broken, and David just realized how bizarre his life is.” The structure of Dark Shadows’ storylines has been that someone has a terrible secret, they are deep in denial about the extent to which the secret is deforming their lives, and when they finally let go of their secrets they are free. So matriarch Liz had a terrible secret that kept her from leaving her house for over eighteen years, she revealed the secret in #270, and now she’s happy to go anywhere. She’s on an extended visit to Boston at the moment. Roger had a secret connected with an incident for which Burke went to prison years ago and he spent all his time making a fool of himself as he struggled to keep it hidden; he admitted the truth in #201, and since then he has been a carefree fellow who can make anyone laugh. So the Collins family curse that Barnabas embodies is made up chiefly of denial, and it can be defeated by facing facts. If David has seen through all the lies and is willing to reckon with the truth, he has the power to bring everything to a conclusion. So when he says that Barnabas “just showed up one night,” we catch a glimpse of what it would be like if the entire series came to its ultimate climax.
We end with David still in his room, telling well-meaning governess Vicki that he feels someone evil is watching him. We cut to Barnabas in his own house, staring out the window at the great house in the distance, thinking his sinister thoughts. David’s feeling should be familiar to him- when his mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, was staying in the cottage in the estate, she often stared out her window and caused David to have nightmares.
Laura was a threat to David because the basic conditions of her existence drove to kill her son. Barnabas’ threat to him is a result of circumstances that were always likely to arise, but that might not have, and that might yet be changed. So when Laura was on the show, the suspense was how she would be destroyed before she could kill David. Now with Barnabas, there is a question whether he will try to kill David at all. So the suspense is more complicated, and there are more options for pacing. The plot doesn’t have to be either glacial or rapid, as it did with Laura, but can move at any of a variety of speeds depending on which of the many possible directions they decide to take the story.
In our house, we watch Dark Shadows on Tubi, a free advertiser-supported streaming app. As we click on each episode, we see a summary reading “Freed from his grave after 200 years, a tormented vampire returns home to protect his loved ones in this classic gothic daytime TV series.”
That “tormented vampire” is Barnabas Collins. In the opening scenes of today’s episode, Barnabas is talking with Julia Hoffman, a mad scientist who is trying to cure him of vampirism. They are discussing the missing David Collins, the ten-year old boy who is the last bearer of the Collins family name. This ardent protector of family announces that he must be the first to find David, because he is going to kill him. He tells Julia that he’d been “getting very fond” of David, but that he is pretty sure the boy knows that he is a vampire, so he will have to choose survival over “sentiment.” When Julia objects, Barnabas smiles and tells her that he might also be killing her and his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie soon. He invites her to inform Willie of this fact.
Barnabas goes to the great house of Collinwood, where he visits well-meaning governess Vicki. Vicki is worried sick about David, to whom she is devoted. She regards Barnabas as a dear friend, and he enjoys spending time with her. He has some vague intention of killing Vicki so that she will rise as his vampire bride, and may get around to doing that once he has killed David, Vicki’s fiancé Burke, and maybe Julia and Willie. Perhaps what he is determined to “protect his loved ones” from is aging- with him around, it seems unlikely anyone is going to get much older.
Vicki unwittingly tips Barnabas off as to where David is. David is trapped in the secret chamber inside the Collins mausoleum in the old cemetery north of town. Vicki doesn’t know that this chamber exists, but Barnabas was confined there for 170 years. So when she tells him that the doddering caretaker of the cemetery thought he heard voices coming from behind the stone walls of the outer chamber, she thinks she is giving evidence that the old man has lost his mind. Barnabas, however, knows different.
David learned about the chamber from the permanently nine year old ghost of Barnabas’ sister Sarah. Sarah has been showing up a lot lately, and yesterday we saw several characters starting to admit that she must be a supernatural being. It is Sarah’s friendship with David that has led Barnabas to believe that he knows he is a vampire. In fact, she did not tell him about this, but David did overhear a conversation between Barnabas and Willie which gave him enough clues that he could probably figure it out.
When Barnabas arrives at the cemetery, he meets the caretaker and has a confusing conversation that is straight out of vaudeville. On his Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn compares it to “a summer stock production of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, where Abbott is being played by Count Dracula.” At one point Barnabas is so exasperated with the caretaker that he nearly blurts out that he is Sarah’s brother. That’s the second time in the episode a character almost blurts out a word that would make a major change in the show- towards the beginning, Julia came within a breath of saying “vampire,” a word we have not yet heard on Dark Shadows.
Meanwhile, Sarah appears to David. He asks her how she got into the sealed chamber, and she replies “I can get in anywhere.” David is dissatisfied with this answer, but doesn’t really seem surprised to see her. He seems to know that she is a ghost, and to be holding off on using the word in her presence in the same way that Julia is holding off on using the word “vampire” with Barnabas. It’s just sort of indelicate to use a label people haven’t told you they like. Maybe Sarah prefers to be called a Phantom-American, and it would be this whole big thing if you called her a “ghost.”
Sarah shows David how to open the panel. He does, and when he looks back she is gone. He expresses irritation with her for “hiding,” which is rather strange- he was trapped in the chamber for days, so clearly she wasn’t hiding there the whole time. She must have made her way in through the solid walls. Even if David hasn’t figured out that she is a ghost, he must know that she can get out the same way.
David walks out of the mausoleum, directly into the hands of his cousin Barnabas. It was obvious that he would, but that obviousness is not a problem- on the contrary, it comes with a sense of inevitability that leaves us dreading what Barnabas is going to do to David.
I think that’s too simple an interpretation to cover everything we’ve seen Sarah do so far on the show. It is true that she never really gets anyone out of danger. She helped Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, escape from Barnabas when he was about to kill her, but that escape led directly to her imprisonment in Julia’s hospital. She broke Maggie out of that hospital before Julia could complete her evil plan to keep her in a state of total psychological collapse, only to lead her directly to Barnabas. She prevented Barnabas killing Maggie in her bed, but left him determined to strike again if Julia failed to keep her memory from returning.
Some say that Sarah is really an avatar of Barnabas, that she is his conscience roaming free in the world. Julia explicitly proposed this interpretation on screen in #302, and Sharon Smyth Lentz says that it is direction she was given when she was playing Sarah. So it was an idea that the writers meant to develop, but I don’t think it covers everything either. A guilty conscience can lead a person to take actions that will lead to his own exposure, but the likeliest way Sarah’s latest actions will lead to Barnabas’ exposure will be if he kills David and is caught. That doesn’t really sound like “conscience.”
Dark Shadows is, in all its phases, the story of the great estate of Collinwood and the accursed family that lives there. I would say that, whatever else Sarah is, she is a symptom of the curse that Barnabas also embodies. For several weeks, Barnabas has had a tendency to lie low and keep quiet, letting the curse fester silently and pull the Collinses and the community around them deeper into its power by imperceptible steps. Sarah disrupts all of his plans, prompting him to act and forcing into the open more and more evidence that spiritual forces of darkness are at work.
But for all the inconvenience she represents to Barnabas, Sarah is no more an opponent of the curse itself than he is a protector of family and friends. On the contrary, she presents a different version of the curse. She confronts the living characters with facts they are desperate to avoid facing. If they continue on the form they have set so far, most of them will react to the evidence of otherworldly dangers by digging ever deeper into denial. If they do that, even Barnabas’ destruction would not really free them from the life-draining evil that engendered him.
Willie Loomis, sorely bedraggled blood thrall of vampire Barnabas Collins, is in the woods looking for strange and troubled boy David Collins. The strains of “London Bridge” play on the soundtrack, announcing the presence of Barnabas’ little sister, the permanently nine year old ghost of Sarah.
Sarah and Willie have a friendly little chat. He tells her that everyone wants to see her, which comes as news to her. He tells her that Barnabas is particularly eager to see her. This is the first time we have seen Sarah hear Barnabas’ name. She excitedly says that she wants to see him, too.
Willie offers to take her to Barnabas, but she says that she has to look for someone else. Willie asks if she is looking for David Collins. This is the first time we have seen Sarah hear that David’s last name is the same as hers. She replies, “Yes, David.”
Sarah explains that she doesn’t quite know where David is. This is surprising- he is trapped in the secret chamber of the Tomb of the Collinses, a chamber she herself showed him in #306 and where in #311 he heard the strains of “London Bridge” after realizing he had gotten locked in.
Willie asks if David is a good friend of hers, and she says they like each other and both know a lot of games. She also says that she tells David her secrets. “Big secrets, little secrets.” She alarms Willie when she adds that she has told him the biggest secret she knows. Willie fears that she means that she told David that Barnabas is a vampire. He presses her with more questions. She refuses to answer and protests that she doesn’t like questions. She tricks him into looking away from her for a few seconds, and when he looks back she is nowhere to be found.
This is basically a repeat of what Sarah said when Maggie was taken away to Windcliff Sanitarium. At the time, she told David, “Sometimes I almost know where she is, but then it all fades away, and I begin to cry again.”
That scene actually meant something — Maggie was quickly spirited away, far outside Sarah’s usual territory. You could imagine Sarah standing near the Old House, listening, trying to tune into some kind of psychic radio signal from far away.
But you can’t just take that scene and copy it into a new episode like this, because she knows exactly where David is. She has to. If we’re really supposed to believe that Sarah can’t find David — in her own crypt, where she left him — then this is all mouth noises and nothing but.
Sarah’s character has never been particularly well-developed, but these days it’s flying to pieces every time she opens her mouth.
Danny Horn, “Episode 314: A Logical Explanation,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 23 January 2014
I don’t entirely disagree with his critique of Sarah’s lines, but I can’t go along with a complaint that her “character has never been particularly well-developed.” She’s a ghost, after all- the whole idea is that her existence is an intermittent thing. She doesn’t relate to time or space as we do. We don’t know what, if anything, her intentions are, and we can never be quite sure what she remembers from one apparition to the next. It’s true that the more we see of her, the more she tends to assimilate to the human characters. That happened during the 14 weeks of the storyline centering on undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, when both Laura herself and her great adversary, the ghost of Josette Collins, began as wispy, diffuse presences and ended with recognizable personalities. Sarah is some way down that road, but they’ve still managed to keep us guessing.
In particular, when Sarah told David “the biggest secret” she knows, she told him that there was a secret chamber in the tomb, how to get into it, and that the coffin there once had a body in it, but that the body “got up and left.” At times she has thwarted Barnabas’ evil plans, suggesting that she knows all about him. But only suggesting it- she didn’t name Barnabas when she told David about the coffin, which would seem to be a bigger secret than any she shared. And when Willie tells her that he represents Barnabas, she responds far more merrily than we would expect if she knew he was the servant of a vampire.
The scene between Sarah and Willie reminds me of a video clip in which Sharon Smyth Lentz reminisces about John Karlen sitting down with her one day in the studio. He wanted to talk to her about her process in developing a character. At nine, she had no idea what he was talking about. Sarah doesn’t have a process either, and she is great on the show as long as they don’t put her in a position where she would need one.
Willie rushes to the great house of Collinwood, where he has an emergency conference with Barnabas’ co-conspirator, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. He tells her that if Barnabas finds out that Sarah has been telling David her secrets, he will kill the boy. Julia frets that such a murder would “ruin everything” she is trying to accomplish by trying to cure Barnabas of vampirism, and commands Willie to lie to his master.
Soon Julia has another emergency meeting. Her old acquaintance, addled quack Dave Woodard, has shown up with a doll Sarah left behind. He tells her that he now believes Sarah is a supernatural being, because the doll is in mint condition even though it is of a type that has not been manufactured in over 150 years. To which I say, so what? They know that Sarah’s clothes are in equally an pristine state even though they are extremely old-fashioned; Sarah’s bonnet was in the house for a while, where Julia and well-meaning governess Vicki examined it and concluded that it must have been handcrafted as a replica of a period piece. So that would seem to be an equally likely explanation for the doll. That makes Woodard’s declaration that the doll is in an old style but a new condition into a thudding anticlimax.
This one is an exercise in nostalgia for people who have been watching Dark Shadows from the beginning.
We remember the days when high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins was the show’s chief villain, a man with so little sense of family loyalty that he openly hated his own son. That son, strange and troubled boy David, repaid his father’s hatred by trying to murder him. Roger has been off-screen for over six weeks; when he comes back today, the first thing he sees is the sheriff’s car in the driveway, and the first thing he hears is that the sheriff has come about David. He stiffens, and in a voice dripping with distaste asks “What about David?” When well-meaning governess Vicki explains that David is not suspected of a crime, but is missing, Roger scolds her for failing to earn her pay by keeping track of the boy. He seems to be far more irked by the money wasted on Vicki’s salary than by David’s disappearance.
When heiress Carolyn and hardworking young fisherman Joe come to report on their fruitless search for David, Roger turns his disdain on them, berating them for letting him get away in the first place. Seeing Joe and Carolyn together brings back memories of the early months of the show, when the two of them were dating and there was a whole storyline about how bored they were with each other. For that matter, we were reminded of the first 40 weeks when Vicki hesitated to tell Roger that she had been on a date with her depressing fiancé Burke Devlin- Burke had been Roger’s sworn enemy until he decided to peace out in #201.
Roger agrees to go with Joe on a search of the countryside. When Vicki and Carolyn are left alone in the drawing room, they have a conversation about how tired they both are. Each of them urges the other to take a nap, and each responds that she can’t sleep. Writer Malcolm Marmorstein was fired off the show a few days ago; he was perfectly capable of taking a conversation like that and making a whole episode out of it. Today’s episode is filler from the point of view of the overall plot, but the ludicrous pointlessness of this conversation is a rarity in the post-Marmorstein era.
Roger and Joe’s search is represented in a couple of shots done in front of a green screen showing outdoor locations. That casts our minds back to the black and white episodes, which occasionally spliced in location inserts. Most of that footage was taken before the series started principal photography, and none of it can be reused now that the show is in color. The last of these inserts came in #275, when Carolyn took a walk on the beach. Now Dark Shadows is shut within the doors of 442 West 54th Street forever, and its only memory of the outside is in these green screen shots.
Roger continues his flagrant display of indifference to David throughout this sequence. When he sees men in blue uniforms searching for David, he makes some acerbic comments about the incompetence of the local police.* When Joe points out a nearby cemetery where odd events have been taking place of late, Roger remarks on its dreariness and on the generally low aesthetic standard of cemeteries in central Maine. When Joe suggests searching there, Roger is appalled, and joins him only with loud reluctance.
After Roger says “down” meaning “up,” which is a feature of Collinsport English we heard in #12, In the cemetery, we get another reminder of the show’s past. The Caretaker, a doddering old fool played hilariously by Daniel F. Keyes, had a significant part in the story of Roger’s ex-wife, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, appearing in #154, #157, #179, and #180, and appeared again in episodes #209 and #211, which dealt with the introduction of vampire Barnabas Collins.
When we find him today, the Caretaker is inspecting the area around the Tomb of the Collinses. Unknown to him, there is a secret chamber hidden inside this tomb. David is trapped in that chamber. The Caretaker opens the door to the visible part of the tomb and asks if anyone is there. He hears David’s voice calling for help from the other side of the wall, and jumps to the conclusion that he is hearing a bunch of ghosts. “There is no help for you!” he cries out. As he hurries away, he shouts, “You must rest!”
David is nothing if not obedient. A minute after the Caretaker told him he must rest, he sits down and falls asleep.
The Caretaker runs into Roger and Joe. He asks them if they are alive. As “You must rest!” harked back to his constant refrain in his previous appearances that “The dead must rest!,” so this greeting echoes his first line in his first scene, when he asked Vicki and her instantly forgettable boyfriend Frank if they were alive. Frank responded to that one calmly; with his personality, it was a question he probably got from a lot of people. By contrast, Joe is disbelieving and Roger scoffs.
When they tell the Caretaker they are looking for a boy named David, he replies “Yes, he is here,” then describes the death of a boy named David who is buried in one of the graves. His compulsion to tell us the circumstances of people’s deaths is another trait of his we remember from the Laura days, especially in his oft-repeated phrase “died by fire!”
The Caretaker tells them that he heard the voices of the dead in the tomb. He urges Roger and Joe to stay away from it. Roger tells him he will be happy to oblige, but Joe insists they search there. Roger declares that he is embarrassed by the very idea of going inside such a place, and says that if anyone finds out he did he will blame Joe. Again, Roger can barely restrain his eagerness to give up the search for David.
David is too deeply asleep to hear Roger and Joe in the outer chamber. Since they are there, Roger decides to take a moment and look at the plaques naming the people buried in the tomb. After all, they are his “incestors – incestors! I mean ancestors.” This is one of the most famous bloopers in the entire series. If Louis Edmonds hadn’t stopped, glanced back at Joel Crothers, repeated “incestors,” and corrected himself, I doubt many people would have noticed it. It was a suprisingly unprofessional moment, but who would have it otherwise? To the extent that the episode is a retrospective of Dark Shadows so far, it wouldn’t be complete without an attention-grabbing mess-up. If the camera isn’t going to drift away from the mark and show a crew member eating a sandwich, “incestors” is the least we can expect.
Since the episode is so much a review of the show’s bygone themes, it is understandable that some viewers are disturbed by a line in the first scene. Roger mentions to Vicki that, while he has just returned from a trip to Boston, matriarch Liz is staying on in that city a while longer. The Dark Shadows wiki objects: “Elizabeth has decided to stay in Boston. This is incredible, since she was still afraid to leave Collinwood a few weeks ago, even hesitant to go to the Old House.”
I don’t find it incredible. Liz’ hesitation about going out was last mentioned in #280, and by #298 she was not only quick to accept Burke’s suggestion that she go with him to inspect a property on the other side of town, but she was the one who talked Carolyn into coming along with them. Neither Carolyn nor Burke expressed surprise that Liz was the one who was enthusiastic about getting out of the house. With that, Dark Shadows told us that it had no further use for the “Liz is a recluse” theme. They may be taking us on a stroll down memory lane today, but they aren’t going to take us all the way to that particular dead end.
*In all fairness, the Collinsport police are exceptionally incompetent.
Well-meaning governess Vicki and vampire Barnabas are on the terrace of the great house of Collinwood. Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David, is missing, and she is upset. Vicki is weeping on Barnabas’ shoulder.
Heiress Carolyn and hardworking young fisherman Joe show up in the nick of time to prevent Barnabas biting Vicki and giving her a role in the main storyline. They report on their fruitless search for David. When they mention that David had been looking for mysterious girl Sarah, Barnabas becomes alarmed.
In recent episodes, many characters have been trying to find Sarah, in hopes that she will be able to tell them who abducted Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. In two conversations about Sarah, Vicki has kept quiet about the fact that she saw a girl matching her description in Barnabas’ house. She is sure her friend Barnabas is innocent of any wrongdoing, and does not want anyone to suspect him in connection with what happened to Maggie. But her concern for David drives that thought out of her mind, and she tells Joe and Carolyn what she saw.
Meanwhile, Barnabas goes home and tells his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie that they must find David. Barnabas knows that Sarah is the ghost of his little sister, and he is afraid she may have told David that he is a vampire. When Willie asks what Barnabas will do if he finds David, Barnabas makes it clear that he plans to kill him.
David is about ten years old, and he is the last bearer of the Collins name. Dark Shadows fans sometimes ask what would happen if any of Barnabas’ plans had ever succeeded. I think his fell design for David answers that question- he would annihilate the Collins family and turn their estate into a hellscape cut off from the world of the living. In July of 1970, the show will give us an extended vision of what would happen were another supernatural menace to achieve that result. We will also get a glimpse of an alternate version of Barnabas driving towards the same objective when House of Dark Shadows hits theaters in October of 1970.
That was a possible outcome for a feature film, but a continuing series could hardly go down that road. And lately, Barnabas has seemed too harmless to bring it about. Even first-time viewers have already seen him fail to bite someone who was actively pressing her neck towards his fangs. So it doesn’t really seem that David is in all that much danger. Indeed, Barnabas is well on his way to becoming a comic villain. We see the action through his eyes as he scrambles to keep his lies in place, and see him devise one cockamamie scheme after another, all of which fall apart. He is something like Wile E. Coyote operating in extreme slow motion.
Before Barnabas and Willie can leave in search of David, there comes a knock at the front door. It is Joe and the sheriff asking to go through the place looking for David and Sarah. The episode becomes pure comedy from that point on. On his Dark Shadows Daybook, Patrick McCray analyzes it as situation comedy; on Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn analyzes it as farce.
While Joe searches upstairs and the sheriff searches the main floor, Willie keeps jabbering about how awful it would be if they went into the basement, where they might discover Barnabas’ coffin. Barnabas keeps shushing him. Both Barnabas and Willie panic a little more visibly each time the rooster crows, reminding them that Barnabas is running out of time to get back into his coffin.
When Joe and the sheriff do ask Barnabas to unlock the basement door so they can search there, Barnabas is cornered into claiming that he lost the key. They are openly incredulous, and he squirms as he elaborates on his assertion. He gives even lamer excuses when Joe offers to break the door down and then repair it. Finally, Carolyn lets Barnabas off the hook when she comes running with word that a boy meeting David’s description has been seen on the beach. Joe and the sheriff rush out, just in time for Barnabas to find shelter from the sunrise.
Both Danny Horn and Patrick McCray wrote fine blog posts about this episode. I have a few things to add to what they’ve said.
When vampire Barnabas Collins and his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie approach the Tomb of the Collinses, strange and troubled boy David hears them talking about mysterious little girl Sarah. Since Sarah had made him promise to keep her connection to the place secret, he opens the panel to the concealed chamber she had shown him and hides there. To his horror, he hears Barnabas order Willie to open the panel. Still trying to keep Sarah’s secret, he hides in the coffin in the center of the chamber while Willie and Barnabas walk around it. He hears them talk about Barnabas’ relationship with Sarah and Willie’s discomfort with the chamber.
They don’t mention that Barnabas is a vampire, or that he was the one who imprisoned Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl In Town. But they say enough that David should be able to figure out all of Barnabas’ secrets. Once he has heard Barnabas say that he was left to comfort Sarah after their dog was put down, it isn’t much of a leap to conclude that Sarah is his little sister. And once he’s heard Barnabas ask Willie if he is frightened by the “contents” of the chamber, he should know that there is something in there more than can be seen at a first glance.
In episodes #301 and #306, we were reminded of Jason McGuire, whom Barnabas killed and forced Willie to bury in the floor of this chamber. We also saw the chamber itself in #306, so that regular viewers would be sure to think of Jason’s grave. If David should repeat Barnabas’ comment about the chamber’s “contents” at the right time, Jason might yet be exhumed. So Barnabas has created an extreme danger to himself with his big mouth. Since it does not seem that Dark Shadows could continue if either Barnabas or David were to destroy the other, we are in suspense as to how they will get out of this situation.
After Barnabas and Willie leave, David gets out of the coffin and finds he cannot open the panel from the inside. Willie had used a gadget hidden in the stairs to open it, the first time we have seen this device. As David starts to panic, he hears the strains of Sarah’s signature tune, “London Bridge.” He turns away from the panel, looks at the blank walls of the chamber, and starts calling on Sarah.
In his post, Danny Horn asks “Has David just figured out that Sarah’s a ghost?” I think it’s more complicated than that. In #288, David happily considered the possibility that Sarah might be a ghost, and throughout the series he has been on easy terms with several ghosts. So I think he has assumed she was a ghost all along, and was just too tactful to bring it up when he was talking with her.
Back in the great house of Collinwood, well-meaning governess Vicki is on the terrace, worried about David’s disappearance. Barnabas peeks at her through the gate, as he would do if he were not allowed to look at her. Then he just walks up and starts a conversation with her, leaving us to wonder what the whole peeping-Tom act was about.
Vicki is so concerned for David that she starts crying. Barnabas tells her to put her head on his shoulder, which she does. He seems to be trying to restrain himself, but she has such a long, pretty neck, and it’s right there, and he’s so very thirsty…
As Barnabas lunges in to bite her, my concern and sympathy is challenged as I ponder her almost athletic lack of awareness. Of course, I’ll inevitably side with the person getting her throat ripped out… but it won’t stop me from wondering why she’s practically painting a landing strip on her neck. Vicki? You have a generation of young people idolizing you.
Today, the discussion isn’t even a metaphor. No, she’s not asking for it. No one is. So, what is the message that we’re supposed to take away from a dangerous conversation like this? For a person constantly asking questions about everything — and never understanding what she hears — Vicki is the picture of unawareness. Evil is evil. An attack is an attack. And awareness is power. Ironic that her would-be attacker, Barnabas, is frequently even more unaware than is she. However, if anyone on a soap paid attention at all, the stories would last ten minutes. But that’s the point. The more the characters lack focus, the more we learn its value. David is the most aware character on the show, and in this episode, he learns the most he ever will in one night. Pity it’s from inside a coffin.
That part of the discussion is too much metaphor to ignore.
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: August 22,” The Collinsport Historical Society, 22 August 2018.
Again, I think it’s a more complicated. I think we have to analyze Vicki’s behavior at three levels of intentionality. First, there’s the in-universe level, the sort of analysis of her motives another character in the same story might give if they had the same information we do. If that character saw Vicki’s depressing fiancé Burke angrily telling her she was crazy for saying that she had seen and heard things that we have also seen and heard, refusing to give her even the most basic information about himself and airily dismissing her questions as a morbid preoccupation with “the past,” and telling other people that her imagination will “run wild” unless he monitors and controls her, they might very well think that Vicki is tired of Burke’s abusive ways. To that character, there would be nothing “athletic” about Vicki’s failure to suspect Barnabas- it is perfectly natural for her to want to think the best of a man who has always been pleasant and respectful to her, unlike the blatant villain she is supposed to marry.
The second level of intentionality is of Vicki’s usual function in the narrative. Up to this point, every storyline has come to its climax when Vicki found out what was going on. She is still the audience’s main point of view character, and as such she naturally tends towards the center of the action. All of the action lately has been in the vampire story, so we expect her to involve herself deeply in it. In the first weeks, when it was possible that Barnabas, as the second in a parade of supernatural nemeses, would be destroyed and make way for a third as undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins had made way for him, we expected Vicki to be the one who drive the stake into his heart. Now that it is clear he is on the show for the long haul, we are expecting Vicki to become his victim, and presumably to become a vampire herself. As the protagonist, she is actively working to get more deeply involved with Barnabas. She hasn’t yet resorted to “painting a landing strip on her neck,” but she did invite herself to spend the night at Barnabas’ house in #285 and #286, and it wasn’t her fault she left in the morning still having all her blood.
Vicki the unappreciated fiancée wants only a friend who will respect her; Vicki the protagonist wants to be part of the main story. The tension between the incompatible goals of these two aspects of Vicki is expressed in the third level of intentionality, which Alexandra Moltke Isles expresses in the choices that make up her performance. Mrs Isles takes every opportunity to show that Vicki is more strongly drawn to Barnabas than to anyone else, most definitely including Burke. That attraction brings the character back to life. After a few days when she was trying to submit to Burke’s abuse and ignore “the past,” Barnabas asks her to intercede with Burke on his behalf and she comes roaring back, an assertive character who will not give an inch even when Burke makes some good points.
It is the sight of this strong Vicki that introduces a conflict into the audience’s feelings. On the one hand, we don’t want to lose her, and if she does not become a vampire, it’s hard to see a future for her on the show. On the other, it would be a terrible betrayal for Barnabas to repay her trust in him by doing such a thing to her. All the more so because we’ve spent so much time seeing Vicki become close to David, and if she follows the pattern set in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, vampire Vicki will be a threat to all children.
Our sadness at that betrayal would be a deep emotion of exactly the kind soap operas are supposed to create. That so shocking a crime would lead to a more meaningful and more suspenseful story and a richer part for our favorite character would guarantee that we would surprise ourselves by forgiving Barnabas for it and cheering when he and Vicki become a couple. So, I think a savvy audience watching Dark Shadows up to this point would have to expect to see just that story play out.
Dark Shadows Commentary 