Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman have figured out that mysterious drifter Chris Jennings is a werewolf. Last night, Barnabas took Chris to the room hidden behind the secret panel in the old Collins family mausoleum and locked him up there. That had the desired effect- Chris transformed, but couldn’t get out and didn’t kill anyone.
This morning, Barnabas walks with Chris as he returns home to the caretaker’s cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. They find Julia already there. Barnabas had neglected to tell Chris that Julia also knows his secret, so he is puzzled to find her in his house. When she explains that she knows he is the werewolf, she also says that she advised Barnabas against helping him. She seems to be in quite a snippy mood.
Chris says that Julia was right; Barnabas replies “Right or wrong, I have made my decision and I intend to follow it through!” That’s a perfectly characteristic remark for Barnabas, who often shows great tenacity but never shows any signs of a functional conscience. Julia warms up and tells Chris that she will come back the following morning and begin a series of tests meant to discover a medical intervention to deal with his condition. Later, Chris will call Barnabas “a good man.” When Barnabas says that some would dissent from this view, Chris says that those who do are “wrong, very wrong.” Chris hasn’t been watching Dark Shadows!
While werewolf Chris was cooped up in the mausoleum, strange and troubled boy David Collins was at home in the great house of Collinwood. David is friends with Chris’ nine year old sister Amy, and both children are coming under the sway of the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins. Last night, Quentin showed David a bottle of strychnine and ordered him to poison Chris with it. David refused that order. A moment after Barnabas and Julia leave the cottage, David knocks on the door.
David asks who it was he saw “sneaking out” of the cottage. Chris tells him that he may have seen Julia and Barnabas, but that they probably weren’t “sneaking”- they had simply stopped by to visit him. When David is surprised that they came so early in the morning, Chris points out that he dropped in only a few minutes later. David declares that he always gets up early, and is surprised Chris doesn’t know that. Chris does not seem to believe that it is reasonable for David to expect him to know what time he gets up.
David tells Chris he likes what he has done with the interior of the cottage. Chris says he hasn’t changed a thing- it is just as he found it. This will interest longtime viewers. The last person to stay in the cottage was David’s mother, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, who occupied it early in 1967. David often visited her there in those days. We remember those scenes when he takes a seat in front of the fireplace, where he and Laura used to sit.
Chris tells David he was up all night and has to get some sleep. He offers him a soda “to give you some energy for your hike through the woods.” Once they have collected their sodas, Chris tells David “Well, I tell ya, I like a carbonated grape soda myself. It reminds me of the vineyards in the south of France.” He delivers this line in the voice of W. C. Fields. This is the first unmistakable occurrence of Briscoe’s W. C. Fields imitation; it is a seed from which much will grow. In August, another character of Briscoe’s will make an appearance wearing Fields’ signature costume, top hat and all.
David’s comment about the figures he saw “sneaking” from the cottage shows that he is worried about Chris, and he keeps talking and asking questions until Chris all but pushes him out. His concern is quite understandable in the light of the command Quentin gave him the night before.
After David leaves the cottage, the camera stays in the front room by itself and focuses on the door for such a long time we begin to wonder whether anyone else is coming. Maybe they just want us to see what a nice door the set department has put together. Finally it does open, but we do not see anyone enter. The stopper rises from a decanter of brandy on the table, apparently by itself. The strychnine bottle Quentin showed David comes into view; it tips over, and its contents are emptied into the decanter.
When the day is done, we are at the great house. Julia and Barnabas have had a conversation about a book she is reading, The Lycanthrope of Angers. Coupled with Chris’ joking reference to the south of France, this mention of a city in northwestern France suggests that there is something French about being a werewolf. Barnabas used to be a vampire; that condition came upon him because of his involvement with some French people. Perhaps the makers of the show were planning to turn to the same country to explain the origin of Chris’ troubles. It might not be so far-fetched. The show is set in Maine, after all, home to a great many Franco-Americans.
Alone in the cottage, Chris decides to celebrate the end of the Moon’s “cycle of fullness” by taking a drink of whiskey before bed. He sickens. At first he thinks he is transforming into the werewolf. He collapses, but does not go into the convulsions typical of strychnine poisoning.
Julia is in bed in her room in the great house. She is awakened by the sound of sobbing. A tall, very thin blonde woman in a long white dress appears. She beckons Julia and leaves the room. Julia pauses to put on a robe.
Barnabas is downstairs; he sees the woman. He initially mistakes her for heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, the only blonde woman in the house, but by the time the woman in white has reached the bottom of the stairs and gone out the front door he knows it is not her.
Given their shared hair color, it is unsurprising Barnabas mistakes the woman in white for Carolyn. But there is a bit of an Easter egg here for sufficiently obsessive fans. As the Dark Shadows wiki notes, actress Terry Crawford appeared in a 1969 commercial for the “Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows Board Game” with her hair styled so that she would look like Nancy Barrett as Carolyn.
Julia arrives downstairs and asks if Barnabas saw the woman. The two of them go out the front door and spot her in the distance, on the path to Chris’ cottage. We cut to the cottage, and see the woman enter. Barnabas and Julia enter a moment later, at which point she is gone. They find Chris unconscious, and Julia says he is dying.
Returning viewers recognize the woman in the white dress as Quentin’s associate Beth. We do not know why Quentin wants Chris to be poisoned, or why Beth wants Julia and Barnabas to find him while he is still alive. Perhaps they are working at cross-purposes, and Beth is trying to keep Quentin from killing Chris. Or perhaps they are working together, and their shared plan was to injure Chris but to get Julia, who is after all a doctor, to him in time to prevent the worst.
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