Vampire Angelique has bitten her onetime husband, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, and brought him under her power. Barnabas asks if she plans to make him a vampire again, restoring the curse she placed on him when she was alive and they were married, 172 years before. Angelique is herself subordinate to suave warlock Nicholas Blair, and does not know what Nicholas’ plans are. All she can say in response is “Possibly.”
Barnabas keeps bringing up mad scientist Julia Hoffman and occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes, who are waiting for him in his house. When Barnabas says that they will be suspicious if he does not return soon, Angelique replies “Let them be suspicious. It doesn’t matter to me.” When Barnabas asks what he can tell Julia and Stokes, Angelique replies “Tell them anything. Tell them the truth.” At that, a smile spreads across her face. We’ve already heard Julia ask Stokes what they will do if Barnabas is in trouble, and Stokes’ reply that there is nothing they can do. When Angelique suggests Barnabas tell Julia and Stokes the truth, her smile suggests that she has come to the same conclusion.
Angelique is usually so frantic in her manner and so monomaniacally focused on her goal that she does not seem to have any unspoken thoughts at all. But today she is tranquil, utterly satisfied with what she has done to Barnabas. “Tell them the truth” and the smile afterward are a turning point for the character. She has what she wants, and now something else is going on inside her head, something we would not have expected and can’t quite figure out.
It doesn’t last. A moment later, she is insisting that Barnabas must find a way to keep Julia and Stokes’ suspicions under control. But for a few seconds, a vista opened before us, and we caught a glimpse of an entirely new direction the show might take, both with Angelique’s character and with the relationship of a vampire to a victim. It even seemed possible that the alternately frenzied and glum secret-keeping that gives Dark Shadows its rhythm might give way to something entirely new. When that vista disappears, we find ourselves going back over some old familiar ground, but the sense of possibility does not quite leave us.
Angelique bites Barnabas twice today. Lara Parker was much shorter than Jonathan Frid, and the first time she bites him she has to get to his neck from a standing start with only a couple of seconds before the shot fades out to the opening titles. Her straining to get to her tiptoes was so obvious it made me and Mrs Acilius laugh out loud. But the second time, she comes at him from several feet away, and she takes the opportunity to make a sweeping turn and end with a balletic rise to en pointe, I believe using the rolling motion known as relevé. Frid helps Parker somewhat by bowing his head while Barnabas pleads with Angelique not to bite him. That one looks great.
Dark Shadows Commentary 