November 2024 – Page 2 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 625: Dead man’s wedding

The first time we might have expected to see a wedding on Dark Shadows was in #270, when reclusive matriarch Liz was supposed to marry seagoing con man Jason in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. That wedding was called off when Liz, rather than saying “I do,” announced “I killed Paul Stoddard and that man was my accomplice!” It turned out that Liz didn’t actually kill Paul after all. She only stunned him, and he and Jason connived to trick her into thinking she had killed him so that she would give them a lot of money. The two of them buried an empty trunk in the basement of the great house and Jason told Liz that Paul’s corpse was in it. Liz’ refusal to be blackmailed into marrying Jason led to the exhumation of that empty trunk.

The next time there was supposed to be a wedding at Collinwood was in #380, when the show was a costume drama set in the 1790s. Scion Barnabas was supposed to marry the gracious Josette, but wicked witch Angelique cast a spell that caused Josette to elope with Barnabas’ uncle Jeremiah. We did not see their wedding, but we did see Barnabas and Angelique get married in #397. We also saw them on their wedding night, when Barnabas left Angelique in her bedroom and retired to his, without so much as a goodnight handshake between them. As Jason’s attempt to marry Liz ended with the exposure of a vacant coffin, so these marriages led to vacant coffins as well. Barnabas killed Jeremiah in a duel in #384, and Angelique raised him from the dead in #392. It does not appear he ever did go back to his grave. He opened his own coffin in #397 and tried to bury Angelique alive in it.

When Barnabas found out that Angelique was the witch responsible for Jeremiah and Josette’s elopement and all the misery afterward, he tried to kill her, and she retaliated by turning him into a vampire. His coffin was empty every night for a while, but in March 1968, shortly after Dark Shadows left the 1790s and returned to contemporary dress, he became human again. Now Angelique is a vampire, and it is her coffin that is regularly vacant.

Today, another wedding is scheduled for the drawing room of the great house. Well-meaning governess Vicki is supposed to marry an unpleasant man known variously as Peter and Jeff. A mysterious woman with two names of her own, Eve and Danielle, shows up while Peter is smoking on the terrace.

Peter/ Jeff and Eve/ Danielle both lived in the 1790s, and both have come back to life in 1968. Peter/ Jeff is in deep denial about his own status as a revenant, and gets even more obnoxious than he usually is whenever anyone brings it up. Eve/ Danielle remembers him from their previous lives, and is, inexplicably enough, in love with him. She brings him a note that she acquired on a recent trip through time. In Peter’s handwriting, under the salutation “Dear Danielle,” it says that he would rather go to the gallows on the off chance that in some future life he will be with Vicki than go away with Danielle. Somehow, Danielle takes Peter’s willingness to face death in hopes of reunion with Vicki to mean that he should now leave Vicki and go away with her. The logic may escape the viewer, but evidently it convinces Peter/ Jeff. He leaves Collinwood to go dig up his grave. He finds the coffin vacant. It is unclear whether this means he will reunite with Eve/ Danielle, but apparently it convinced him he should not marry Vicki.

Nobody’s home. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Liz’ aborted wedding to Jason marked the end of the blackmail arc, which was itself an extended in-betweener meant to clean up the last non-supernatural stories, introduce the vampire, and give the rest of the cast something to do while Barnabas was settling in. The aborted wedding of Barnabas and Josette marked the end of the part of the 1795 segment in which most of the characters don’t know that there is a tragedy brewing, while Barnabas and Angelique’s wedding told the audience that the preliminaries were over and they were about to explain how Barnabas became a vampire. Vicki and Peter/ Jeff’s attempted wedding today marks another ending. Alexandra Moltke Isles will leave the role of Vicki after the episode coming up on Tuesday. Vicki started moving to the sidelines once undead fire witch Laura went up in smoke in #191, and she has long been a secondary character. But she was the main protagonist for the first 39 weeks of Dark Shadows, and Mrs Isles carried the show very capably during those days. It was disappointing when she moved so far out of the main current of the action, and sad to see her go.

Episode 624: Difficult adjustment

Today, we open with well-meaning governess Vicki in her room in the great house of Collinwood, wearing her wedding dress. Matriarch Liz enters, gives her a peck on the cheek, and tells her what a lovely bride she will be. Everything in their words and actions suggests to first-time viewers that they are mother and daughter; the strong resemblance between Joan Bennett and Alexandra Moltke Isles would tend to corroborate this impression. In a later scene, we hear Vicki call Liz “Mrs Stoddard.” Thus we learn she is one of the household staff.

Meanwhile, Frankenstein’s monsters Adam and Eve share a moment. Eve was created to be Adam’s mate, but she has wanted nothing to do with him. She has gone so far as to tell him to his face that she hates him and will kill him. Today, suave warlock Nicholas has ordered Eve to make nice with Adam, and so she tells him to forget all about her previous remarks. They sit facing each other on the floor in front of the fire, the first time we have seen potential lovers do that on Dark Shadows. They kiss.

Adam and Eve look at each other. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

A jump cut indicates the passage of time, and we see Adam and Eve snuggling on a little sofa and being pleasant to each other. We are free to surmise that they had sex. Perhaps there will be Frankenbabies after all. Adam leaves. In his absence, Eve again says that she cares nothing for him, but only for someone named “Peter.” Since Peter is the man Vicki is supposed to marry today, that sets up a conflict.

Back at Collinwood, Vicki opens a wedding gift she finds disturbing. The card enclosed is simply labeled “Peter” in all caps. In fact, Eve sent it, but Peter is such a tedious character that it is easy to imagine that he has never learned to use lower-case letters or to write more than his first name, so we can understand Vicki’s reaction.

Episode 623: Her name was Gloria Winters!

An eighteenth century homicidal maniac named Danielle Roget was raised from the dead in 1968 to serve a warlock’s evil scheme. Today, she is taking a break. Another witch has sent her back to her original era for a short visit.

Danielle wants to see a man named Peter Bradford, who has also been raised from the dead and whom she has seen several times in 1968. Peter has a collection of intensely annoying habits which serve as a substitute for a personality. Among these is a tendency to fly into a rage whenever anyone calls him by his right name, and to insist that he be called “Jeff Clark” instead. Danielle has traveled back to the 1790s in search of some evidence that will convince him to desist from this tedious practice.

Today we open at the Collinsport gaol. Peter is in a cell, the gaoler and his assistant are reading Peter’s death warrant, and a gallows is under construction outside. Danielle materializes behind the gaolers, and talks with them for a while. They tell her that a woman named “Gloria Winters” was recently hanged for witchcraft. Danielle realizes that they are actually talking about Victoria Winters, who was the chief protagonist of Dark Shadows for about a year. In November 1967, Victoria came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795. She was trapped there until March 1968. Victoria’s utter failure to adapt to her new surroundings led to her condemnation as a witch. At the last second she was whisked from the gallows and returned to her own time. The luckless person whose place she had taken when she arrived from the 1960s appeared at the end of the rope and died in her place.

Danielle asks to see Peter. The gaolers escort her into his cell, lock her in with him, and leave them alone together for several minutes. Peter is unhappy to see Danielle, to whom he was once engaged but whose murderous ways have alienated him. He tells her it saddens him that she is free while he, an innocent person, is about to be executed. Indeed, it was Victoria who killed the man Peter was convicted of murdering, and she did it only to prevent that man killing a child. She tried to tell the court what had happened, but since she was already sentenced to hang and was in love with Peter, her testimony did not persuade the judges.

Danielle offers to break Peter out of gaol. He agrees. She tells him she will go to the great house of Collinwood to enlist much-put-upon indentured servant Ben Stokes in her scheme. Ben, she says, could refuse her nothing.

During the flashback that lasted from November 1967 to March 1968, Ben was ensorcelled by wicked witch Angelique. Now we learn that before Angelique came along, he had been under the influence of Danielle, another beautiful woman with an evil heart and a greatly heightened acting style. Perhaps Ben would do better if he looked for a homely, soft-spoken woman.

We cut to Collinwood, where haughty patriarch Joshua Collins is summoning Ben. They discuss Peter’s upcoming hanging and Victoria’s recent one, and lament the injustice of it all. Joshua calls Ben’s attention to a book Victoria brought with her from the twentieth century. It is a highly inaccurate history of the Collins family up to that time. Joshua says that he believes the book is an evil thing and that getting rid of it is the only hope of ending the cascade of horrors that have befallen the family and everyone they know since Victoria first arrived. Joshua orders Ben to take the book deep into the woods and burn it. He tells him something else- he has read the book thoroughly, and will see to it that posterity accepts all of its false reports as true. Rather than risk the world finding out that his son became a vampire, his wife committed suicide, and his cousin married a bounder, he will see that it is published that the son moved to England, the wife died of natural causes, and the cousin was a spinster all her life. Thus we learn how the events we saw during the 1795 segment were kept out of the historical record.

Ben is barely out the front door when Danielle stops him. He is dismayed to see her. He tells her she wasn’t supposed to come back, and refuses to look at her. She says she has a plan to spare Peter. Ben says that her plans always involve hurting someone, and she says that this time it is different. Ben asks if she intends to poison the gaoler. She tosses her head, laughs at the thought, and assures Ben all she will put in the gaoler’s drink is a “harmless drug.” Ben asks if she is sure the man won’t be hurt, and she assures him she has no grievance against him, only a desire for him to sleep long enough to get Peter to safety. At length, Ben agrees to take two horses to the gaol. There won’t be time for him to burn the book first; Danielle takes it from him for safekeeping.

We cut to the office of the gaol, where Danielle has been reading the book. She tells herself that Victoria must have brought it from the 1960s, and that it might be very valuable to her. The gaoler enters, and Danielle tells him she wants to see him after the hanging. He doesn’t understand why; she clarifies that she is making a pass at him. They are an unlikely couple, and he seems dubious of her interest in him. He tells her Peter is writing a note, probably for her, and sends her back to see him.

The gaoler has the look of a man who believes that if a thing seems too good to be true, it probably is. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Peter tells Danielle he has decided not to escape. He hands her a note which he predicts she will have trouble understanding. Delivered by another actor, this might have sounded like an apology for an unsuccessful effort to express a complicated idea, but Roger Davis has a way of spitting out his lines that makes it sound very much like he is telling Danielle she is stupid. The gaoler and his assistant come to take Peter off to be hanged, not a moment too soon.

In the office, Danielle reads the note and is pleased with it. She closes it in the book. Apparently she expects to be able to use both of those items to get Peter to stop boring everyone with his nonsense about being named “Jeff Clark.” The gaoler stands behind her and watches as she fades away, taking the book with her.

The gaoler is played by Tom Gorman. Gorman was on Dark Shadows at least 14 times, until now always as an uncredited background player. His first part was in November 1966, when each episode began with the words “My name is Victoria Winters.” So it really is remarkable when he proclaims “Her name was Gloria Winters!” Despite that spectacular blooper, he does a nifty job playing the gaoler’s confusion and skepticism about Danielle, and it is too bad this is his final appearance.

Episode 622: A position to help each other

Well-meaning governess Vicki is on the terrace of the great estate of Collinwood. A man known variously as Peter and Jeff keeps clutching at Vicki’s arms so sharply that her biceps pulse, then holds her with one hand and paws her with the other as she stands rigidly still. First time viewers, knowing only that Dark Shadows features stories of monsters and crime, would think that the man had some power over the woman and that they were seeing him abuse that power. They would be right. Unfortunately, the man and woman are not Peter/ Jeff and Vicki, but actors Roger Davis and Alexandra Moltke Isles. Vicki is supposed to be in love with Peter/ Jeff and reluctant to part from him, but the instant she has spoken her last line she turns her face from him and runs away, without the slightest attempt to suggest that she wants to linger.

After Vicki escapes from Peter/ Jeff’s repellent attentions, a woman named Eve emerges from the bushes. Peter/ Jeff is angry with her. He grabs her roughly and throws her out of the frame. Peter/ Jeff then stalks off. Eve comes back into the frame. It’s a relief to see her upright and well-put-together- Mr Davis shoved Marie Wallace so hard she had to struggle to right herself as she spun out of view. It looked like she might have slammed her head against the floor.

Marie Wallace using her arm to regain her balance and keep from sustaining a serious injury.

In a comment on Danny Horn’s post about this episode on his blog Dark Shadows Every Day, Marc Masse reports what happened when this scene came up at a panel discussion at a Dark Shadows convention many years later:

This was the episode where Grabby Davis got so overly excited in his scene with Marie Wallace on the terrace that he grabbed her by the arms and threw her completely out of frame. You see her struggling to remain on her feet as she stumbles off to the right. Some 20 years later at a fan convention (it’s in Dark Shadows 25th Anniversary Special from the disc set that has the last episode of the series), Marie Wallace brought this up as Roger Davis was telling the audience of how they (or rather he) would cut up and laugh and have fun while they were making the episode, and of how they would just laugh off their flubs. Wallace then broke in to remind Davis of episode 622 as she recalled, “Hey, Roger? I didn’t laugh when you threw me out of frame in that scene, on camera. Remember that? Several times?” She explained to the audience how all during dress rehearsal he’d never touch her and then when he’d done it on camera he’d come up to her and apologize profusely, but Wallace told him then and there at the convention that she never believed him.
Marc Masse, as “Prisoner of the Night,” in a comment left 8 April 2015 on “Episode 622: Heated Conversations on Somebody Else’s Lawn,” Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day, 8 April 2015.

In a response to another post of Danny’s, Marc added that in the same video you can see actress Donna Wandrey’s appalled reaction to Mr Davis’ statement, and her increasingly visible disdain for him as Miss Wallace makes her case against him.

After Peter/ Jeff is gone, another visitor comes and addresses Eve by name. She is Angelique. Angelique is not a Roger Davis character, she is merely a vampire, so everyone can relax.

Regular viewers have been wondering what would happen when Angelique shared a scene with Eve. Marie Wallace’s style as Eve relies on many of the same techniques Lara Parker uses as Angelique. Both use an elevated style with many catches of breath, changes of volume in mid-sentence, and striking of oratorical poses. Each was capable of making this exaggerated method work, but no one could conceal its profound silliness, and a scene consisting of two characters both using it would be too ridiculous even to make a good joke in a cartoon. What actually happens is that Parker demonstrates the quietest possible version of the style, while Miss Wallace shows a more typically brassy version. Recognizing their approaches as two poles of the same axis, we are not only interested in their encounter, but also in what they show us about the craft of acting.

Angelique persuades Eve to join her in an alliance against warlock Nicholas. This might be an exciting development. Nicholas is the show’s chief villain at the moment, and between them Angelique and Eve just might be able to bring him down. It is also the first alliance we have seen take shape in a long time. Many characters have tried to control other characters, to deceive them, to imprison them, to enslave them, to brain-wash them. But the only group working towards a common end is made up of old world gentleman Barnabas, mad scientist Julia, occult expert Stokes, and servant Willie. That team formed long ago, has not managed to get anywhere lately, and is, at the moment, immobilized by Barnabas’ absence. Yesterday Julia tried to form an alliance with Nicholas against Angelique, but at the last minute his inability to talk with her forthrightly aborted that effort. So it is refreshing to see that the show is still capable of imagining a new alliance.

Danny’s post about this one is one of his very best, a composition in free verse weaving together quotes from the dialogue with retellings of the overarching narrative with meditations on a number of topics that the episode touches on. If you are a Dark Shadows fan and haven’t read Dark Shadows Every Day, this is a fine post to start with. It’s like a song- you may not understand all the lyrics the first time you hear it, but the sound of it will carry you along.

The comments below it include some great stuff too. I’ve already mentioned Marc Masse’s remark about Marie Wallace’s confrontation with Roger Davis. There are also two fanfic ideas about how the show might have resolved the question of who Vicki’s parents were. Someone posting under the name “William” had this plausible one:

My own theory: Victoria the daughter of Jamison Collins and Betty Hanscomb. So she’s Roger and Liz’s half-sister. Liz knows and Roger doesn’t.

Jamison aggressively seduces Betty, on whom Roger had teenage crush. He makes her pregnant and then coldly casts her out. A pregnant Betty shows up at Collinwood and tells Liz and Roger about what happened.

Roger confronts his father in a fit of rage in the Tower Room during one of Collinwood’s famous storms.

Jamison Collins has a heart attack during the confrontation, and Roger leaves him in the room to die. Roger staggers out, and Liz finds her father dead.

Roger has a complete breakdown and is sent to Windcliff, where Dr. Julius Hoffman, uncle of Julia Hoffman, wipes out his memory of that night in the summer of 1946.

Liz, with the help of new guy in town Paul Stoddard, pays off Betty Hanscomb to leave town and arranges for her half-sister to be raised at the foundling home in New York. Grateful to Paul for his help, Liz starts to fall for his charms …

(And this is why Liz is so fond of Victoria, but not like she is with Carolyn. And this is why she refuses to tell Roger anything about why she brought Victoria back).

–“William,” in a comment left 22 August 2016 on “Episode 622: Heated Conversations on Somebody Else’s Lawn,” Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day, 8 April 2015.

That has a lot of potential. Liz doesn’t seem ever to have loved Paul, she did marry him shortly after her father’s death, and Roger’s attitude towards Vicki in the first months of the show was a strange mixture of extreme hostility and obvious attraction. “William’s” story would account for all of those things. But it doesn’t hold a pale blue candle to this theory posted by Pedro Cabezuelo:

Everybody, we’re missing the obvious! Vicki IS Betty Hanscombe!!!!! Somehow she managed to time travel AGAIN and ended up in Collinsport circa the 1940s and adopted the Betty Hanscombe identity, working her way as a servant at Collinwood. She had an affair with Paul Stoddard, gave birth to herself (at which point the adult Vicki ceased to exist) and THAT’S what caused all the irreperable harm to the time stream/parallel time/anything else you want to blame on Vicki.
Pedro Cabezuelo, in a comment left 10 April 2015 on “Episode 622: Heated Conversations on Somebody Else’s Lawn, Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day, 8 April 2015.

I have my own fanfic idea about Vicki’s origin. I’ve shared it here before, and will again. But Pedro’s is so good I want it to be the last word today.

Episode 621: The only known cure

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman and bedraggled servant Willie Loomis have been in the woods, looking for old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. Barnabas has become the victim of vampire Angelique, and loss of blood has brought him very low. Julia and Willie fear that if they do not find Barnabas before nightfall, he will die. Barnabas was a vampire himself until March; they fear he will revert to that condition if they cannot save his life.

Despairing of the search, they return to Barnabas’ house. Julia remarks that “I actually found myself feeling that we’d come home and find him here.” Willie lives there, Julia doesn’t, but as Barnabas’ inseparable friend and partner in all his adventures she may as well. Julia and Willie decide that the only way to save Barnabas is to drive a stake through Angelique’s heart. She tells Willie that she believes the suave Nicholas Blair to be keeping Angelique’s coffin in his house. She sends Willie to fetch a stake and mallet, and she ventures forth to visit Nicholas.

Julia and Nicholas had a very dramatic confrontation in his living room in #619. Today, she tells him she has come to provide medical attention to Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Adam and Barnabas have a Corsican brothers connection, so Julia knows that Barnabas’ injuries will have reduced Adam to a dire state. Nicholas is keeping Adam at his house because he has plans for him, and if those plans fail it “will bring down the Master’s wrath.” Facing that prospect, Nicholas has little choice but to allow Julia to attend to Adam. She gives him some shots, which do provide him with considerable relief. But she says this is only temporary. She proclaims that “the only known cure” for Adam and Barnabas’ joint condition is Angelique’s destruction.

Early in the scene, Julia says that she and Nicholas must work together to help Adam and Barnabas. Nicholas tells her that he has no healing powers. At that, we may think he is about to talk forthrightly about himself as a warlock. But when she asks where Angelique’s coffin is, Niccholas starts playing dumb again. This frustrates Julia, as it might frustrate the audience. Danny Horn’s whole post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day is about how much it frustrates him. Julia leaves the stake behind when she goes, and Nicholas takes it downstairs to Angelique’s coffin with the intention of destroying her.

Meanwhile, Julia’s ministrations have done enough to revive Adam and Barnabas that the latter is able to cry out in the woods. Willie finds him and takes him home. Julia comes back, sees them, and sends Willie to call for an ambulance to take Barnabas to Windcliff, a sanitarium of which she is the nominal head and which is located about a hundred miles away. Barnabas objects to that, but Julia insists.

There is a spectacular goof in this one. We see Barnabas lying on the “grass” in the “woods.” For several seconds we can see the edges of the little green rug Jonathan Frid is on, and a studio light on the floor next to it.

Episode 620: The middle of the journey

They gave a number to each episode of Dark Shadows reflecting its place in broadcast order. They skipped the numbers for the days the show wasn’t on, so that episode #620 was actually the 613th episode. Fascinating, I know. Even more interesting, there were a total of 1225 episodes, making this one the exact middle of the series.

When Dark Shadows started in June 1966, its undisputed star was Joan Bennett as matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Describing Dark Shadows’ overall narrative structure, Bennett said “We ramble around.” At its beginning, the show was heavily atmospheric and slow paced, with stories very much aimed at an adult audience who remembered Bennett’s heyday in the 1930s and her father’s in the early twentieth century. As it developed, supernatural elements that had at the outset lurked in the background came to the fore and attracted a much younger audience. By this time, Dark Shadows is a slam-bang kid’s show with a cliffhanger at every commercial break and a cast including witches, vampires, mad scientists, and Frankenstein’s monsters. So it is appropriate that the episode at its chronological center is in a way the most unrepresentative of them all. Dark Shadows tended to go to great lengths to avoid anything that would get the audience thinking about Christianity. Yet this outing is all about the saving power of the cross.

Old world gentleman Barnabas is hiding in the long deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood. Well-meaning governess Vicki took him there after finding him lying on the ground in the woods, grievously injured. Vicki does not know that Barnabas is the victim of a vampire, and so she does not know why he is anxious that she bring him a cross. When he sees that she has brought one, he mutters “The cross… I need it so.” He clutches it to him and tells her “I need no one but you, and nothing but this.” At the middle of the episode, he is going on about this again, saying “No one frightens me… All I need is the cross. The cross!”

When the vampire’s helper Adam comes to steal the cross from him, Barnabas exclaims “The cross! The cross, it will save us both!” Adam takes the cross back to the vampire. He offers it to her. She recoils from it and tells him to destroy it. She runs away, and he looks at it in wonder, not knowing what it is. We are left to ask if he will find out what gives the cross its power, and if learning about it will indeed bring salvation both to him and Barnabas.

Over the next few weeks, much will change on Dark Shadows. There will be major changes in the cast, several storylines will be resolved, new storylines will start, and the pacing will become more deliberate. As that goes on, the show will curve back around to something at once more reminiscent of its early days and more suggestive of what is to come than is this utterly zany period. Not that it will stop being weird- the weirdness will just be developed in greater depth over longer periods. I would say that this bizarre detour into Christian piety marks the most remote point it ever reached in its rambling away from its original concept.

Episode 619: Advantages of being the master

Well-meaning governess Vicki has found a grievously injured Barnabas Collins in the woods. Barnabas insists Vicki not take him to a doctor or anyone else, but hide him somewhere no one will find him. She thinks of a secret door to the long-abandoned west wing of the great house of Collinwood, and uses that to take him to a hiding place there.

For the first year of Dark Shadows, the west wing was strongly associated with Vicki. In #14, she alone saw the locked door separating the bedrooms from the west wing open and close, apparently by itself. That was the first unequivocal evidence of supernatural activity on the show. In #84, Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David, led her into the west wing, the first time we had seen its interior. He then trapped her in a room there, hoping she would die. She would languish in that room until David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, rescued her in #87. When Vicki was engaged to Roger’s nemesis Burke Devlin in #338, matriarch Liz offered to restore the west wing and let Vicki and Burke live there. After Burke died in a plane crash in #345, Vicki vowed to go on with the project of restoring the west wing. In #347, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, exploited Vicki’s interest in the west wing to get her to stare into a crystal supposedly taken from a chandelier there until she is in a state of deep hypnosis.

More recently, Frankenstein’s monster Adam stayed in the west wing for many weeks as the guest of heiress Carolyn. Vicki’s connection with the wing was renewed when Adam abducted her and hid her there for a few days starting in #553. Today, Vicki hides Barnabas in Adam’s old room, re-establishing the west wing as her space. Thus we loop back to a theme that goes back to the third week of the show.

Later in the episode, Barnabas wakes up and is distressed to find that it is almost sunset. He pleads with Vicki to bring him a cross as quickly as possible. The audience knows, but Vicki does not, that Barnabas is the victim of vampire Angelique. Vicki’s ignorance of this point reminds us that she has been excluded from the show’s A-plots ever since #211, when Barnabas was introduced, himself in those days a vampire. Her calm departure to go fetch a cross reminds us that she knows this part of the house well. Every room in it is stuffed with bric-a-brac, undoubtedly she will have seen something nearby that is in the shape of a cross.

Meanwhile, Julia is in a hospital room, visiting local man Joe Haskell. Julia has become Barnabas’ inseparable friend, and Joe is Angelique’s other victim. She does not know that Angelique is the vampire, though she had surmised as much in #608. She questions Joe. At first he denies everything, but after she discloses that she was for a time the victim of yet another vampire he tells her that she must know why he can’t tell her who has been sucking his blood. She asks if the suave Nicholas Blair is hiding the vampire. Joe closes his eyes and scoffs at the idea. This reaction does nothing to curtail Julia’s suspicions of Nicholas.

Julia goes to Nicholas’ house. He genially escorts her into his living room. There, he takes a seat while she stalks about the room and tells him what she knows about him. Barnabas has a self-defeating habit of showing his cards to his adversaries, and longtime viewers may at first be afraid Julia has picked it up from him. Since Nicholas is a warlock who not only controls Angelique but has a wide range of magical powers that he uses to promote Satan’s interests on Earth, he is not an opponent with whom one can afford to make mistakes. Angelique herself was once a witch who, in #378, was able to turn a man into a cat at a moment’s notice. Nicholas’ command of the black arts goes far beyond Angelique’s. He was able to strip Angelique of her powers, raise her from the dead at least twice, and turn her into a vampire. Julia is simply a mad scientist, and she does not have any equipment with her. There’s no telling what Nicholas might do to Julia if their interview displeases him.

On his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn lists three reasons why we know Julia will survive this confrontation without being turned into a toadstool:

Really, the thing that everybody wants to know is: why can’t the Stormtroopers shoot straight in Star Wars? It turns out there are three simple answers. #1. Stormtroopers shooting laser bolts are more interesting to look at than Stormtroopers who stand around complaining. #2. Shooting Luke Skywalker in the head halfway through the first movie is going to leave a rather obvious gap in the trilogy. #3. ‘Strong Guy Kills Weak Guy’ is not headline news.
Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day, “Episode 619: The Gunslinger,” posted 4 April 2015

This is all very true- of course Nicholas and Julia will not leave each other alone indefinitely, of course the show cannot spare her, of course she will overcome her disadvantages and come away from their showdown with the upper hand. But it misses the point. Suspense comes when we know what must happen, but cannot see any way it might happen. What makes the scene work is the moment when Julia tells Nicholas that Barnabas is missing. That is news to him, and as Danny says elsewhere in his post, it is “the first sign of a crack that’s going to bring his entire operation crashing down,” as his shocked reaction suggests it might be.

Julia realizes she has won her showdown with Nicholas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The scene is one of the best in the series, though it is marred by a miscalculated ending. In the early part, we see Julia making an effort to keep her cool while Nicholas sits watching her smugly. She succeeds in keeping her brave face on until she senses that she has Nicholas off guard, at which point she moves in for the kill and tells him about Barnabas. She is then firmly in command. He composes himself and dismisses her.

That’s when it goes wrong. When Julia is heading out the door, Nicholas recovers his smugness and tells her that he must admit that he admires her for coming to see him. She looks alarmed and asks why. He replies, in a half-whisper, “You know.” She hastens out. I can see that this ending may have seemed like a good idea. We clearly saw in the beginning how hard it was for Julia to keep her fear in check and how easy it was for Nicholas to bask in the superiority his powers give him over a mere mortal. Though Julia has emerged as the winner in this engagement, she still has grounds for immense fear, and he for boundless self-confidence. But it is so broadly drawn as to be confusing. Has Nicholas already found a way to turn Julia’s success against her? Has she realized too late that she has made a mistake we aren’t aware of?

We learn shortly after that neither of these things has happened. Angelique comes upstairs. She sees Nicholas being very still. She makes several attempts to engage him in conversation. He finally approaches her and strikes her across the face. He then orders her to undo what she has done to Barnabas before it ruins his plans.

This is the second time Nicholas has slapped a woman in the face. The first time was in #610, when he struck Frankenstein’s monster Eve. Humbert Allen Astredo and Marie Wallace executed that business well, as he and Lara Parker execute it well today. For that matter, Grayson Hall and Lara Parker had done a good job when Julia slapped Angelique in the face in #535. Watching them, you can admire trained professionals practicing a specialized aspect of their craft. But since Nicholas has such vast powers, he is persuasive as a villain only when we are left guessing about just what he is up to. When we see him is reduced to hitting a woman, he shrinks from avatar of Satan to cheap pimp.

After Julia leaves Nicholas’ house, she lingers in the woods outside, watching his front door. She sees Nicholas leave the house, then sees Angelique and realizes that she is the vampire.

Julia is the most intelligent character on the show, and while we watch her in the woods her face suggests that she is thinking clever thoughts. Unfortunately, we hear her interior monologue in a recorded voiceover, and her lines are remarkably obtuse. On the heels of her overdone fear on the way out of Nicholas’ house, it does as much to undercut Julia’s image as a smart person who can win a duel with the Devil as Nicholas’ physical abuse of Angelique undercuts his image as a demonic sorcerer.

Episode 618: Long goodbye

Well-meaning governess Vicki Winters came to the great house of Collinwood in #1, called to take charge of the education of strange and troubled boy David Collins. Vicki’s attempt to befriend David was the only theme that consistently generated interesting scenes in the first several months of Dark Shadows, largely because Alexandra Moltke Isles and David Henesy were able to overcome weak writing by subordinating their dialogue to a story they were telling with body language, facial expressions, and tones of voice. Often as not, they used their lines as devices to switch meaningful silences off and on.

Another arc that occasionally brought some life to Dark Shadows in those early days was the conflict between David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, and the family’s sworn nemesis, Burke Devlin. Vicki and Burke came to town on the same train, and a romance would bud between them. But Vicki is, after all, modeled on Jane Eyre, and it is not for nothing that her charge’s father has a name that sounds rather like “Rochester.”

Several times in the early days, it seemed that something might take shape between Vicki and Roger. They bantered suggestively in #4, went on a date in #78, and when they found themselves alone in an abandoned house in #96 Roger joked about carrying her over the threshold. In the original series bible, Shadows on the Wall, writer Art Wallace gave it as the first option that when Vicki’s mysterious origins were revealed, we would learn that she was the daughter of Roger’s brother-in-law, the estranged husband of his sister Liz. Wallace allowed that it might be more story-productive to have her be Liz’ daughter, and from the time Mrs Isles was cast, her strong resemblance to Joan Bennett pointed the show in that direction. The advantage of making Vicki the daughter of the unseen Paul Stoddard would be that she and Roger could marry. Of course, it is a soap opera, so if she were Liz’ unacknowledged daughter, that fact would come out when she and Roger were about to marry.

Nothing did come of Vicki and Roger’s flirtations. The relationship between Vicki and David and that between Roger and Burke were subsumed in the first of the show’s major supernatural storylines, the tale of David’s mother, Laura the immortal Phoenix. In the course of that storyline, the question of Vicki’s parentage was, for the last time, unceremoniously dropped. By the time Laura vanished in a cloud of smoke in #191, there was nothing left unresolved in Dark Shadows 1.0, and it was time to bring on the vampire.

Vicki never really found her footing thereafter. For a while vampire Barnabas Collins kept saying to his sorely bedraggled blood thrall, Willie Loomis, that he planned to make Vicki his next victim, but he didn’t get around to biting her, not even when she invited herself to spend the night sleeping at his house in #286.

Vicki traveled back in time in #365, taking us with her to the year 1795 and turning Dark Shadows into a costume drama.Vicki’s displacement in time raised the hopes of longtime viewers that she would do what Barnabas had done in the previous several months and scramble to pretend that she was native to the alien period of history in which she had suddenly materialized. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the show turned her into an intolerable moron, yammering at the actors about the roles they had played in the first 73 weeks of the show. By the time the people of Collinsport finally sent her to the gallows in #460, much of the audience was on their side.

After Vicki and Dark Shadows came back to contemporary dress in March 1968, Barnabas finally did bite her, but her time as his victim only lasted a few days. He was cured of vampirism in #466. Shortly after, Vicki found herself in a romance with an angry little man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Peter/ Jeff is exceedingly unpleasant to watch, and Vicki shares more and more of her scenes with him. Fortunately, Peter/ Jeff does not appear today, but Vicki spends most of her time talking about him, reminding us of the dead end where she has ended up.

Yesterday, Roger saw Peter/ Jeff locked in a passionate kiss with another woman while Vicki was in the next room. He yielded to Peter/ Jeff’s demand that he not tell Vicki about this, then had a nightmare in which Vicki turns into a skeleton during her wedding to Peter/ Jeff.

Today, Roger tells Vicki about the dream and declares it to be a sign that she must not marry Peter/ Jeff. She is puzzled. Roger habitually scoffs at dreams and the supernatural, so she cannot understand why he would take this nightmare so seriously. She asks if he has other reasons for opposing her marriage. He flashes a pained expression, indicating his regret that he did not tell her what he saw Peter/ Jeff doing and his sense that he is honor-bound not to tell her now. He says no, the dream is all there is. Vicki does not accept this. She says “Well, I think there has to be. And I don’t think it’s anything to do with the way you feel about me, so that only leaves Jeff. Why do you feel hostilities toward him?”

Anyone who remembers the early Jane/ Rochester hints and is still shipping Vicki/ Roger (there are some even now) will be disappointed by the utter blandness of Vicki’s “I don’t think it’s anything to do with the way you feel about me.” I sympathize- Vicki and Roger would be a lot of fun to watch as an unhappily married couple, certainly more fun than anything involving Peter/ Jeff.

Meanwhile, Barnabas has himself become the victim of a vampire, his ex-wife Angelique. She has dragged him off to some spot in the woods and told him she will turn him back into a vampire in a few days. She leaves him alone at dawn, but he is too weak from loss of blood to go far. He wonders who can help him; he decides that he cannot call on any of the friends who have been helping him in his ongoing battles, since Angelique would think of them as soon as she arises. Vicki comes to mind as someone Angelique would not associate with him. There is some verbiage about his tender regard for Vicki suggesting he would not involve her in anything so dangerous, but of course the real point is that Vicki is not part of Barnabas’ story. Just as the scenes with Roger loop back to the failure of the Jane/ Rochester romance to take wing, so Barnabas’ decision to turn to Vicki loops back to her exclusion from the vampire story.

Barnabas is staggering through the woods, calling Vicki’s name. She is far away in the great house, but has a telepathic sensation that he is on the move. She goes into a mild trance and leaves the house. Evidently the connection they established during the brief period when he was sucking her blood has not vanished entirely. In the woods, Barnabas falls to the ground, and a moment later Vicki finds him there. He is happy to see her, but says she has come “too late.” Barnabas seems to fade out of consciousness. Vicki leans down to cradle his head in her hands, and exclaims “It can’t be! It can’t be!”

Too late for Vicki. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The audience wouldn’t have known it in 1968, but it was most definitely too late for Vicki. Mrs Isles had already decided to leave the show; her last episode would be recorded on 12 November 1968, less than a week after this one aired. In one of the MPI interviews, she said that this was because she was going to have a baby. “I was getting pregnanter and pregnanter,” she said, and “no one was making any moves” to write Vicki out of the show. Considering that Rosemary’s Baby was a big hit at the time, she was worried “that my pregnancy might be a convenient element to the plot,” so she took steps. Eventually the part would be recast, first with Betsy Durkin, then with Carolyn Groves. Vicki barely had any reason to be on the show even when Mrs Isles was playing her, and those other actresses didn’t get any more opportunities to contribute. Her departure was the true end of the character.

Episode 617: Few people in this world

The opening voiceover is very much to the point:

An autumn dusk has settled over Collinwood, bringing with it not the fear of night but a renewed hope of happiness for a young woman long acquainted with the terrors that have plagued these premises. But as the deepening dark surrenders to the night, a new threat, evil in its creation and awesome in its consequence, will reveal its final purpose, the destruction of Victoria Winters.

We then cut to a scene of Vicki with the evil creation that is destined to destroy her, her fiancé Peter. In place of a personality, Peter has a compulsion to insist that no one use his right name. Instead, he wants to be called “Jeff.” He also has a habit of pawing his scene partners and occasionally jerking them around violently. This loathsome man continually fondles Vicki in their scenes together, each time prompting Alexandra Moltke Isles first to stiffen, then to force an awkward smile when she remembers that her character is supposed to like the creep. It is painful to watch, and the more scenes Vicki has with Peter/ Jeff the sooner we hope she will leave the show.

A woman named Eve has seen Peter/ Jeff and recognized him from their previous acquaintance. She finds Peter/ Jeff alone on the terrace outside the great house of Collinwood and confronts him. He looks as uncomfortable alone with her as Vicki does alone with him. It is satisfying to see Peter/ Jeff get a taste of his own medicine, all the more so for regular viewers who know that Eve is a homicidal maniac and hope she will do him in before he blights any more episodes.

Eve has been kissing Peter/ Jeff passionately for several seconds when sarcastic dandy Roger Collins speaks up and says that he has not been introduced to her. She runs off, and Peter/ Jeff demands that Roger not tell Vicki what he has seen. Roger will not agree to that, but once the two of them are alone with Vicki in the drawing room he backs down and lets Peter/ Jeff off the hook. When Peter/ Jeff realizes Roger will keep his secret he breaks into a gleeful smile. Evil has triumphed once more.

Roger consigns Vicki to her fate, while her destroyer chortles with glee. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In the early days of Dark Shadows, Roger was rather a dangerous villain. One of his crimes was perjury in a case that sent another man, one Burke Devlin, to prison for a homicide in which they were both implicated. In #201, Roger admitted to that perjury in front of Burke in this very room. That admission came after a long story arc involving the return of Roger’s estranged wife Laura to Collinwood. The Laura story absorbed all the dramatic significance of the conflict between Roger and Burke, leaving Burke nothing to do in response to Roger’s admission but to peace out. To viewers who remember that Vicki was once an interesting character and still have hopes that she will shake free of Peter/ Jeff’s baleful presence, Roger’s concession to Peter/ Jeff is an even bigger disappointment than was the too-late resolution of the Roger vs Burke story.

At the end, Roger has a dream in which it is revealed to him that if Vicki marries Peter/ Jeff, she will die. We suspect that he has missed his last chance to prevent this happening.

Episode 616: When a woman has a man in her power

In June 1967, vampire Barnabas Collins locked his victim Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, in the prison cell in the basement of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. The ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah appeared to Maggie several times while she was in the cell. Sarah told Maggie that no one could know she had been to the cell, and particularly warned her not to tell her “big brother” she had seen her. With some reluctance, Sarah eventually gave Maggie a clue that led her to a hidden passage. Sarah’s father had sworn her to secrecy about the passage, and that not even her big brother knew about it. Maggie finally puzzled out the clue, enabling her to escape just moments before Barnabas came to the cell with the intention of killing her. When Barnabas chased Maggie through the hidden passage in #260, the wondering expression on his face confirmed that he had never had any idea the passage was there.

From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the years 1795 and 1796, the period when Barnabas and Sarah were living beings and the Old House was their home. We saw how cruelly their father, haughty overlord Joshua, treated his indentured servant Ben, and we saw that Joshua had the great house of Collinwood built with a prison cell in its basement. Joshua confined Ben to that cell in #401. With that, we could be sure that Maggie’s cell was already in the basement of the Old House when Barnabas and Sarah lived there, and could surmise that Joshua really did forbid the living Sarah to share with Barnabas or anyone else what she had found about the hidden passage.

The show never explained how Sarah found out about the passage. We might imagine her hiding and watching Joshua or someone else do maintenance on the cell. But the fact that Joshua kept the existence of the escape hatch from Barnabas suggests he wanted the option of locking his son in the cell. Why not his daughter as well? Perhaps Sarah found the passage while confined in the cell herself. Or perhaps some other, older ghost appeared to her while she was there and told her about it. That the clue she gives Maggie is in the form of a rhyme (“One, two, away they flew…”) would suggest this latter possibility. Sarah may have memorized the rhyme as she memorized the lyrics to “London Bridge” and may have solved the riddle as Maggie solves it.

Shortly after Dark Shadows came back to a contemporary setting in March 1968, Barnabas was cured of vampirism. That cure was stabilized in May, when he donated some of his “life force” to the creation of Frankenstein’s monster Adam in an experiment completed by his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Barnabas and Julia locked Adam up in the basement prison cell for the first weeks of his life. Vampires and mad scientists are metaphors for selfishness, so it is hardly surprising that they are horribly bad parents. But if Joshua was in the habit of locking his children in that same cell, the moments when Barnabas takes fatherly pride in the imprisoned Adam take on a special pathos. It really does seem like a normal situation to him.

Adam escaped from the cell in #500, demolishing the doorway in the process. Today we see that it has been rebuilt. Perhaps to Barnabas, a house just isn’t a home unless it has a prison cell in the basement.

Now, Barnabas has himself become the blood thrall of a vampire, his ex-wife Angelique. Discovering the bite marks, Julia decides to address the situation by locking Barnabas and his servant Willie in the cell. Barnabas won’t be able to get out to heed Angelique’s summons, and Willie hangs a cross over the door to keep her from materializing inside it.

Left to right: Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid); Willie Loomis (John Karlen); Julia Hoffman (Lady Elaine Fairchilde.) Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We cut to Maggie’s house. Maggie’s memory of her ordeal as Barnabas’ victim has been wiped from her mind a couple of times. She receives a visitor, the suave Nicholas Blair. Unknown to Maggie, Nicholas is a warlock and Angelique’s master. He has a crush on Maggie which has distracted him from his managerial responsibilities, which to be frank he had not been handling very diligently in the first place. Maggie gives Nicholas several pieces of news that he really ought to have been aware of for some time. She tells him that her ex-fiancé, Joe Haskell, is still alive; that she visited Joe twice while he was at the Old House recovering from some injuries; that Joe is now in the hospital under police guard; and that Joe tried to kill Barnabas and keeps vowing that he will try again, since he believes Barnabas is trying to kill him. Nicholas is flummoxed by all of this, and meekly goes along when Maggie insists on visiting the Old House to pay a call on dear, sweet Barnabas.

The scene in Maggie’s house has an odd feature. We’ve just had a closeup of Willie hanging a cross above the door in the cell to keep Angelique away. In the early days of the vampire storyline, it was not at all clear that the cross would deter vampires in the world of Dark Shadows, since Barnabas was often seen strolling comfortably through a cemetery where half the grave markers were cross-shaped. It was not until #450, during the 1790s flashback, that we saw Barnabas recoil from a cross. In #523, we learned that the cross also immobilizes Nicholas. Yet Maggie is today wearing a dress the front of which is dominated by a red cross, and it doesn’t bother Nicholas a bit. The show is drifting into a spot where it may have to stop and spend time explaining its theurgy. Does the cross only work against a demonic creature if it is specifically aimed at that creature? Or if the person setting it up knows about the creature? Or is there some other qualification? It’s getting confusing.

At the Old House, Julia tells Maggie and Nicholas that they cannot see Barnabas, because he is resting. Maggie keeps insisting, and Julia shifts her ground, claiming that Barnabas went out, she knows not where. When Julia says this, Maggie is incredulous, but Nicholas brightens. Evidently he wants to believe that Barnabas has gone off to respond to Angelique’s call, and accepts Julia’s statement happily. Maggie apologizes for demanding to see Barnabas, and she and Nicholas leave.

Meanwhile, Barnabas is scheming to get out of the cell. While Willie is complying with his request to pour a glass of water, Barnabas bashes him on the head with an empty bottle. He then goes to the hatch for the secret panel, remembers that “Maggie found it a long time ago!” and figures out how to open it. Since we saw Willie open the hatch and show Adam Barnabas’ jewel box in #494, you would think Barnabas already knew how it worked. At that time, it also seemed that the passage behind the hatch had been sealed up, so that it no longer led to the beach. Apparently we aren’t supposed to remember that. Barnabas crawls out and closes the hatch behind him before Julia comes back.

As Barnabas, Jonathan Frid usually moves in the stateliest possible manner. When he escapes from the cell today, the camera lingers on him crawling, driving home the contrast with his typical gait. That is quite different from what we saw in #260, when he followed Maggie into the hatch- then, we saw him move toward the opening, but cut away before he had to take an ungainly position. Today, the makers of the show want us to hold the image of a crawling Barnabas in our minds.

Crawling suggests Barnabas’ weakness under Angelique’s power, certainly, but in this setting it suggests more. This is the house where he was born, and what he is crawling into is a lightless passage that it looks like he will have to squeeze through to emerge outside. He has regressed not only to infancy, but all the way back to birth. If Joshua did indeed confine him to this cell in his childhood, Barnabas would likely have experienced that same regression in those days as well.

The sign of the cross reminds us of one who said that we must be born again to receive a life in which our hopes will be fulfilled more abundantly than we can ask or imagine; Barnabas labored for 172 years under a curse that compelled him to die at every dawn and revive at every sunset, but perhaps even before that he was the prisoner of a cycle of abuse that forced him to experience the trauma of birth over and again, each time finding himself in the same narrow space, a stranger to all hope. Indeed, when Barnabas first became a vampire in the 1790s, he put his coffin in this basement, near the cell, and he persisted in putting it there even after it became obvious that it was very likely to be discovered. That persistence made no logical sense in terms of Barnabas’ need for operational security, but if he saw his vampirism as a continuation of his childhood experience of confinement in the basement cell, it would make all the sense in the world. That is his place, that is where he belongs, that is his reality.