Episode 567: You will help me

A tall, strange man named Adam is taking a stroll outside the great house of Collinwood. On the terrace, he meets well-meaning governess Vicki and Vicki’s fiancé, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Vicki recognizes Adam as the man who recently kidnapped her, and Peter/ Jeff tries to fight him. Adam is much stronger than Peter/ Jeff, so he flings him to the ground, where his head smashes against the pavement. Adam runs off.

Recovering vampire Barnabas and mad scientist Julia happen by. They know what Vicki does not and Peter/ Jeff only suspects, that Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster. They brought him to life after the death of the originator of the experiment, a doctor named Lang. Now Adam is threatening to kill Vicki and every other resident of Collinwood unless Julia and Barnabas make a mate for him. When they hear Vicki and Peter/ Jeff’s story, they go back to Barnabas’ house in case Adam checks up on their progress.

We cut to the laboratory in Barnabas’ basement, and see that Adam is already there. He startles himself when he bumps his head on some equipment. Coupled with the head wound he inflicted on Peter/ Jeff, this amounts to a minor theme in the episode.

Barnabas and Julia enter, and Adam confronts them. He demands to know why the procedure is taking so long. They try to explain that building a human body from dead parts and bringing it to life takes at least four weeks, but he is unimpressed. Finally Julia volunteers that she is under the weather and claims that the procedure is on hold while she recuperates. Adam agrees to wait four weeks before he starts murdering everyone. Barnabas says that it would help if he would stay away; Adam refuses to do so, and says he will pop in occasionally.

We might think it would be to Barnabas and Julia’s advantage for Adam to stay and watch the whole procedure, so that he can see just how difficult and time-consuming it really is. But they have another problem he knows nothing about. There is a vampire on the loose, and he bit Julia the night before. Barnabas has decided to lock Julia up in the house and use her as bait to draw the vampire in. He declares that he will be ready to destroy the vampire when he comes.

After Adam goes, Barnabas sits down and talks about his plans. Julia puts her hand on his shoulder and looks at him sadly. It is as tender a moment as the two of them have shared, and it makes us feel what Julia has missed because Barnabas does not requite her romantic feelings for him. As Christine Scoleri puts it on Dark Shadows Before I Die, “Poor Julia. At long last, Barnabas says he’s going to take her and lock her up in the Old House and she’s unable to appreciate it.”

Meanwhile, Peter/ Jeff has called the police, and they have agreed to send six men to the estate to search for Adam. Peter/ Jeff asks Vicki to wait in the great house while he goes off to check on a hunch. He makes his way to Barnabas’ house. He gets there just in time to see Adam exiting the front door.

Peter/ Jeff finds the door locked, but lets himself in through the window in the parlor that so many uninvited visitors to Barnabas’ have used. He goes to the basement. Lang had forced him to assist with his project, so he recognizes the equipment. He raises the blanket that covers the cadaver Julia is using for materials and reacts with horror. Barnabas enters and confirms that he and Julia are going to “create another one.”