Quentin Collins is strapped to a table under a descending pendulum which supposedly has a razor sharp blade. His captor, a strange man named Aristede, tells wicked witch Angelique that Quentin will die in minutes unless she gives him the severed hand of Count Petofi, which has magical properties. Aristede is under the impression that Quentin and Angelique are engaged, and he has set the blade to strike Quentin’s body at a point causing the maximum wedding night-related inconvenience.
Meanwhile, Quentin’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins has the hand and is hoping it will cure Quentin of a curse under which he is laboring. Rroma maiden Julianka claims that she knows how to use the hand to relieve lycanthropy. Her great-grandmother cured Count Petofi himself of that condition, and took the hand from him as payment for doing so. She is the only living person who knows the procedure, and no one else will know it until her daughter is born.
Barnabas and Angelique have a scene which ends with a decision to go to Aristede together. Barnabas tries to use his vampire powers to hypnotize Aristede; if he had been thinking logically, he could just have taken his bat form and flown around the meeting place, since Quentin can’t be very far from it if Aristede is going to be able to take the hand and stop the pendulum in the few minutes remaining. Instead, he lets Aristede lead him far in the wrong direction. When it seems to be too late, Aristede taunts Barnabas by telling him where to find Quentin’s body. To his consternation, Barnabas then vanishes and the squeaking of a bat rings out. Barnabas rescues Quentin at the last possible second, of course.
In #767, Quentin’s nephew Jamison dreamed that Quentin told him three things would happen that would spell his doom. The first was the discovery of a silver bullet on the great estate of Collinwood. That happened in that very episode. The last would be when the one person Quentin truly loved turned against him. We know that Jamison is the only person Quentin loves, so we know what to look for there. But the second has been a mystery up until now. Quentin said that the only person who could help him would be murdered. It has not been clear until now that there is one and only one person who can relieve Quentin of his curse. Now that Julianka has been identified as that person, viewers who remember back that far will not be surprised that at the end of the episode she is lying in the woods, a mysterious mark on her forehead, unable to move.
Diana Davila plays Julianka with her eyes always wide open. She does not blink, and when she looks from side to side she turns her whole head. The rest of her body is rigid, too, and she maintains a heightened tone throughout. This is quite effective for Julianka as written; she is supposed to seem distant and unapproachable. Miss Davila bobbles over a few too many of her lines for the performance to reach its full potential, but you can see what she was going for, and it was terrific.
Dark Shadows Commentary 