In the groundskeeper’s cottage on the estate of Collinwood, Satanists Evan Hanley and Quentin Collins call on the powers of Hell to send a demon to help them fight Quentin’s recently arrived and deeply mysterious distant cousin Barnabas. The call is answered by none other than our old friend Angelique the wicked witch.
Quentin and Evan have no idea who Angelique is, and she does not know them either. Evan introduces himself to her as a lawyer; he seems genuinely surprised that this does not impress her. Evan tells Angelique that he and Quentin summoned her from Hell and can send her back; she agrees that they summoned her, but is not so sure they can send her back. Quentin tells her that the year is 1897, that she is on an estate known as Collinwood, and that he and Evan have an enemy called Barnabas Collins. Angelique is intrigued by the year, familiar with the estate, and thrilled to hear about Barnabas. Evan starts making demands; Angelique causes him to choke and gasp. She is quite friendly to Quentin, and when Quentin suggests she let Evan breathe and speak again, she indulges him.
Evan is played by Humbert Allen Astredo, who in 1968 played suave warlock Nicholas Blair. He plays Evan with exactly the same bearing, tone of voice, and range of facial expressions he had brought to the role of Nicholas. Viewers who remember Nicholas have been bewildered by this. Barnabas knew Nicholas and fought him; when he met Evan the other day, his reaction left open the possibility that he recognized him as the same person. But Evan’s dabbling in the occult, as we saw it yesterday, shows only an infinitesimal fraction of Nicholas’ vast abilities in that field, and his buffoonish response when Angelique appears shows that he is no relation.
It is when Angelique strikes Evan dumb that we learn why Astredo played him in the same way he played Nicholas. Nicholas was introduced as Angelique’s boss, the master of magical powers much greater than hers. Since the main difficulty with fitting Angelique into a story was that she could easily accomplish any goal if she just kept her focus, adding a character who is even more powerful took the show to an absolute dead end. They had to box Nicholas up inside a lot of pointless business, and he quickly became a source of frustration to the audience. Seeing Astredo as another Nicholas reminds us of that frustration, and when Angelique brushes him aside with a flick of her finger our unease evaporates. We are assured that the plot will keep moving this time, and that Astredo will be free to show us what he can do as an actor.
At the end of Friday’s episode, it was Quentin who tried to stop the ceremony when Angelique’s visage began to take shape in the fire, fearing they had gone too far. Today Quentin realizes there is no turning back, but Evan keeps saying he wants to return Angelique whence she came. It’s hard to see what he expected- he was calling on the Devil to send a demon. I suppose he really is disappointed that Angelique is not excited to find herself in the company of a member of the bar.
Quentin goes home to the great house on the estate. He sneaks up behind governess Rachel Drummond while she is dozing on the sofa in the drawing room and puts his hand on her face. That wakes her. When she protests, he asks if he did it unpleasantly. She answers, “No… I mean, yes!… I don’t know.” That summarizes precisely the natural reaction to Quentin. His behavior is abominable in the extreme, but David Selby’s charisma and easy charm come through even in the character’s darkest moments, and the audience can no more want him to stay off-screen than the female characters can want him to leave them alone.
Quentin and Rachel sit together; his hands are on her face again when Barnabas shows up. Quentin gets up and twits Barnabas with his obvious closeness to Rachel, then excuses himself to go to bed.
Barnabas gives Rachel a music box that once belonged to the gracious Josette. This will induce further flashbacks in longtime viewers. Barnabas is a vampire, and as a living man in the 1790s he was in love with Josette. In May and June of 1967, Barnabas lived in contemporary times. He abducted Maggie Evans, who like Rachel in the portion of the show and like Josette in the portion set in the 1790s, is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott. He tried to erase Maggie’s personality, overwrite it with a copy of Josette’s, and to turn her into his vampire bride. The music box played a crucial part in this remake of the 1932 film The Mummy.
When Barnabas urges Rachel to listen to the music box, we pan to the window and see Angelique peeking in. As Angelique’s great power is the main difficulty with fitting her into a plot, so her single-mindedness is the main difficulty with making an audience enjoy watching her. This shot of her does as much to enlist the sympathies of longtime viewers as does the moment when she shuts Evan up. The whole time Barnabas and Rachel are involved with the music box, we are groaning. It was during the imprisonment of Maggie that Dark Shadows first became a hit, and it is a story that the show has been strongly identified with ever since. But we do not need to see it again. Angelique once married Barnabas and is maniacally possessive of him, and she does not want to see it either.
In the 1790s segment, which ran from November 1967 to March 1968, we saw that Angelique was motivated at least as much by her hatred of Josette as by her desire for Barnabas. After she has seen Barnabas getting up to his old tricks with Josette-lookalike Rachel, Angelique visits the portrait of Josette which hangs above the mantel in the parlor of the Old House on the estate. Longtime viewers know that Josette’s ghost inhabits the portrait. In #70, the portrait glowed, her ghost (also played by Miss Scott) emerged from it, then went outside and danced among the pillars. In #102, strange and troubled boy David Collins stood in front of the portrait and had a lively conversation with it. We could hear only his side, but it was clear the portrait was answering him. Today Angelique stands where David stood then. She scowls at the portrait and declares “I am Angelique, and I hate you!” She then goes back to the cottage where Evan and Quentin conjured her up and chokes a cloth doll, causing Rachel to collapse. She mouths words, and Rachel speaks them. Hearing Rachel talk about Josette’s death, Barnabas cries out in anguish.
This was the first episode credited to writer Violet Welles, who worked as a Broadway publicist before and after working on Dark Shadows. Ms Welles had been an uncredited collaborator with Gordon Russell on a great many of his projects, including several episodes of Dark Shadows prior to this one. She was by far the best writer of dialogue on the show. It is no wonder that the “Memorable Quotes” section of the Dark Shadows wiki entry for this episode includes whole scenes; the lines glitter with wit. Now that she is with Dark Shadows as a senior writer under her own name, the show enters its most successful period, both artistically and commercially.
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