Month: December 2025

Episode 897: Restore our flesh and bones

The Trouble with David

Yesterday we saw strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy) go to a mysterious cairn in the woods, the ceremonial center of the cult of the Leviathan people, and announce that he was now one of the cult. The cairn then opened, revealing a little gap. David crawled into the gap. The gap was not quite big enough for him, so that the episode ended with an extended sequence of David Henesy wiggling his rear end at the camera while he tried to wedge himself into place.

Today we learn that the carpenters were not the only ones who haven’t caught on that Mr Henesy isn’t nine years old anymore. David has followed the gap to an underground chamber with a steaming cauldron. He takes some vegetation out of the cauldron and recites a cryptic poem, all the while staring portentiously off into space. His manner, words, and actions would be effective as part of a creepy little kid sequence, but the thirteen year old Mr Henesy looks mature enough that we just chalk him up as one more member of the Leviathan cult.

The Trouble with Chris

Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard calls on drifter Chris Jennings in his cottage. They talk about someone named Sabrina who has told Carolyn that while Chris is a nice enough guy, he will, in spite of himself, kill her if she keeps hanging around him. Chris tells Carolyn that this is true and that he is “a monster.” He does not explain. She leaves, and he takes out a pistol. First-time viewers will wonder if Chris has a compulsion to fire his pistol at people. Regular viewers know that he is a werewolf, and that his particular case of lycanthropy is so advanced that he sometimes transforms even when the moon is not full. We can assume that he plans to use the pistol to put himself out of his misery.

Regular viewers also know that Chris was safely confined to a mental hospital until he checked himself out recently. When he returned to the great house of Collinwood, he told his psychiatrist, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, that he just couldn’t stand the conditions at the hospital. Since leaving the hospital means that Chris will resume killing at least one random person a month, this decision just about completely erased any sympathy we might have for him as a character. It also undercuts his motivation in this scene. If Chris really wants to stop killing, he is free to go back to the hospital at any time.

The ghost of Chris’ great-grandmother, Jenny Collins (Marie Wallace,) appears. She tells him not to commit suicide. Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in 1897 from March to November 1969; in those days, we got to know Jenny as “Crazy Jenny,” who played nothing but one mad scene after another. She was sane and well-put-together just once, when she appeared as a ghost in #810 and #811. In this second postmortem appearance, Jenny is extra mad, wearing a disheveled wig that reaches heights few hairpieces have dared. She does not tell Chris to return to the hospital, but to find his great-grandfather, Quentin Collins. She says that she cannot help him, but Quentin can.

This confirms what the show has been hinting, that Quentin is alive. Chris doesn’t know that, nor does he know of his relationship to Quentin. He is left bewildered and helpless by Jenny’s pronouncement. His response would no doubt be more complex if he were up to date, but he has been so ineffective at managing his curse and so irresponsible generally that we can’t imagine he would do anything constructive even if he knew everything we do. The character seems to have reached a dead end.

The Trouble with Barnabas

Upset by her conversation with Chris, Carolyn goes to her distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. She enters his home, the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, and finds the front parlor empty. She hears Barnabas’ voice coming from behind a bookcase, repeating over and over that “There is no margin for error. Punishment is necessary.”

Longtime viewers know, not only that a room is hidden behind this bookcase, but that Carolyn knows about that room. Her friend, David’s well-meaning governess Vicki, was held prisoner there by a crazy man in December 1966, several months before Barnabas joined the show. Carolyn is moving her hands, as if she is looking for the release that makes the bookcase swing open, when Barnabas comes downstairs.

When Carolyn says that she heard his voice, Barnabas explains that he was simply keeping busy by “conducting an experiment in electronics.” The candles around the room will suffice to show that the house doesn’t have electricity, and even if Barnabas weren’t so resolutely technophobic it would still require explanation that the text he set his speakers to reproduce over and over was “There is no margin for error. Punishment is necessary.” Moreover, Carolyn knows Barnabas well, and she can’t have overlooked that he is not his usual self these days. He is distant, calm, and utterly self-possessed, a far cry from the fussy, excitable chap who so often stumbles over his words. He remains formidably well-composed as he reiterates his position that Chris is a dangerously unstable person whom Carolyn should avoid, and that she has a bright future ahead of her. He gently but firmly guides her to the front door, and she is out of the house in record time.

Carolyn does not know that Chris is the werewolf, but at least she knows that there is a werewolf. She does not know that the Leviathan cult exists, and so it is understandable that she does not suspect that Barnabas is acting as its leader. But as the story unfolds, others will no doubt catch on that something is up, and so many people have spent so much time with Barnabas that it is difficult to see how they can all fail to notice the drastic change in his personality and to connect it with the strange goings-on. Putting him in this position makes it likely that the writers will have a harder time managing the story’s pace than they would if his involvement were more subtle.

Once Carolyn has exited, Barnabas opens the bookcase and reveals Philip Todd, antique shop owner. He rewinds a reel-to-reel tape and replays “There is no margin for error. Punishment is necessary.” Philip and his wife Megan are members of the cult, entrusted with the care of many of its most sacred items. Yesterday Barnabas found out that one of these, a book, had gone missing. He summoned Philip to the cairn, and it seemed he might be about to kill Philip. But now, he sends Philip off to administer the punishment to someone else, presumably Megan.

The Trouble with Megan

Megan (Marie Wallace) has been in an extremely overwrought state ever since she found that the book was gone. Today’s episode ends with a long scene in which she is alone in the shop, feeling that someone is coming to kill her, reacting sharply to every noise.

Danny Horn devotes most of his post about the episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day to reasons why this scene does not work, among them the fact that a depiction of a person descending into madness requires that the person start off as something other than over-the-top loony. Megan has been so frenzied for the last few days that Miss Wallace has nowhere to go when she hears the ominous noises. Moreover, her first two characters on Dark Shadows, fiancée of Frankenstein Eve and Crazy Jenny, were both intense, overbearing characters who were so inflexible that they had little opportunity to respond to anything their scene partners might do. Longtime viewers therefore expect to see Miss Wallace screaming and carrying on by herself, so nothing she does here will unsettle us. They lampshade this iconography problem by showing us Crazy Jenny’s ghost today, but that doesn’t help at all.

Many fans compare this scene to episode #361. Most of #361 is devoted to a one-woman drama in which Julia is tormented by sights and sounds in her bedroom, suggesting that her mind is collapsing. I don’t think that episode is a success, but because Julia had always been in control of herself up to that point we can see what is supposed to be at stake in it. That’s more than we can say for Megan’s fearful turn.

In John and Christine Scoleri’s post about the episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, Christine points out the prominence of the taxidermied animals in the background, and speculates that the scene is an homage to The Night of the Living Dead. I wouldn’t have guessed that director Lela Swift or writer Violet Welles would have studied that film, but Christine provides screenshots from it and from the episode, and the parallels are so striking that I can’t see how she could be wrong.

Closing Miscellany

I think the tape recorder is the same one we saw in the summer of 1968, when it was part of the Frankenstein story. It also appears to be the one that parapsychologist Peter Guthrie brought to Collinwood early in 1967.

Her haunting of Chris marks Jenny’s final appearance. Miss Wallace reprised the role decades later in a couple of the Big Finish audio dramas.

During Megan’s big scene, the camera swings a bit to the left and we can see beyond the edge of the antique shop set. We get a good look at a tree that stands near the cairn in the woods. Making matters worse, when they turn the camera away from the tree they go too far right, showing a stage light on the other side.

The antique shop and the cairn. Screenshot by Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day.

As the opening credits begin to roll, the camera is pointed a bit too far to the right and a stagehand is visible, adding dry ice to the steaming cauldron in the underground chamber.

Closing credits blooper. Screenshot by Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day.

Episode 896: Those who have been hidden shall show themselves

David and the Book

Strange and troubled boy David Collins has stolen an old book from an antique shop. He didn’t want the book, but had damaged it slightly and was terrified that he would be punished if this was discovered and his father had to pay for the rare volume.

David’s friend and fellow resident of the great house of Collinwood, Amy Jennings, catches him with the book in the drawing room. He tells her he is going to burn it in order to conceal his crime. She points out that this will make a bad situation much worse. As a creature of Soap Opera Land, David can have no higher calling than to make bad situations worse, so this does not deter him.

While Amy offers to take the book to the nearest grownup and to claim that she was the one who stole it, David opens it to a page depicting a group of intertwined snakes, a symbol the show refers to simply as “the Naga.” He is transfixed by the symbol. His whole manner changes. His posture becomes more rigid, his voice grave and authoritative. He tells Amy he no longer wants to burn the book. Instead, he will read it. Since the book is written in a script neither of them has seen before, Amy tells David he cannot read it, but he assures her he can. She asks him to read it to her, and he says that it is forbidden for her to hear any of it. She says that she doesn’t like the game David is playing and would rather turn to another; he says it is no game. She leaves him alone with the book.

The book was not in fact part of the antique shop’s merchandise, though it was on a display table there. The owners of the shop, Megan and Philip Todd, have been inducted into a mysterious cult led by David’s distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, and the book is one of that cult’s most sacred objects. The Todds flew into a panic when they realized the book was missing, and Barnabas told Philip that he faced a severe penalty for losing it. Those reactions make it hard to understand why Philip and Megan left the book on the table in the first place.

Longtime viewers know that many of the major plot-lines on Dark Shadows start with David. So we may suspect that the supernatural forces behind the cult, unknown to Barnabas or the Todds, caused the book to be left on the table and led David to take it so that he could become part of the story. Indeed, once he is alone with the book David intones a statement from it: “And then those who have been hidden so long shall rise and show themselves, and the others will know their time is ended and the time of the people of the Leviathan will begin.” Later, he goes to the mysterious cairn in the woods that is the center of the Leviathan cult’s ceremonial activity, and announces that he is one of them now. The stones at the bottom of the cairn part, revealing a small opening. David crawls into it. The words are solemn, the music melodramatic, the action of the boy stuffing himself into the little hole preposterous. It is the perfect Dark Shadows sequence.

David Henesy was nine years old when the show started, and was thirteen by this time. It would seem no one told the carpenters he had grown in the interval. That gap is such a tight fit for him that he has to wiggle his rear end at the camera for quite a while as he tries to wedge himself into it. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We Actresses are Vain

As David is leaving to go to the cairn, he has to refuse a request from permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman. Julia wants him to go to the Old House on the estate and give a note to Barnabas. She keeps telling him that it is urgent, but he tells her he is already on his way to do something urgent.

Julia does not know about the Leviathan cult, much less about Barnabas’ connection with it. All she knows is that Barnabas has been her best friend for a year and a half, and when last they had a chance to spend time together they were concerned with the rakish Quentin Collins, whose whereabouts they do not know. Now it is 4:45 PM, and Julia is expecting a Mr Corey to come to the house at 5:00 and look at a painting she bought from the Todds a little while ago. She thinks this Mr Corey might be Quentin, and is keen for Barnabas to meet him.

When David cannot help her, Julia decides to take the note to the Old House herself. The show is usually fairly vague and inconsistent about the geography of Collinwood, but several times they have said that it takes about fifteen minutes to walk between the great house and the Old House. They stick with this today. Julia leaves at 4:45, and returns as the clock is striking 5:15. Barnabas was not at home, so she just turned right around.

Julia hears voices in the drawing room. They are heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard and another woman. Julia gathers that Mr Corey is actually Ms Olivia Corey. When she enters the room, she sees that Olivia is a dead ringer for Amanda Harris, a woman who lived in 1897. Julia became aware of Amanda in September, when she and Barnabas were traveling in time and met each other in that year. Julia did not meet Amanda, but evidently must have seen at least one of the many portraits of her that magical artist/ dreary goon Charles Delaware Tate painted. She mentions these portraits to Olivia, who claims that Amanda was her grandmother. Amanda was in love with Quentin, and Julia takes an excited breath when she asks Olivia who her grandfather was. Olivia gives his name as Langley. Quentin may well have used an alias, so that doesn’t rule out the possibility that Olivia may be his granddaughter, though Dark Shadows fans looking back in these later days will think of another member of the Collins family when they hear that name.

Olivia is a famous New York actress. Julia tells her that she has seen her on stage and has seen her photograph in the newspapers, but that she never noticed her resemblance to Amanda. Olivia asks where Julia heard about Amanda; she says that she must have read about her somewhere in connection with one of the portraits. She also tells Olivia that she isn’t likely to want the painting, since it is not a portrait. Olivia says that she wants any painting of Tate’s she can get. Julia tells her there is no portrait of Quentin Collins in the house; Olivia pauses for a fraction of a second, then blandly asks if she is supposed to know who that is.

Some of Tate’s paintings had supernatural effects. When Tate painted pictures of his ideal woman, Amanda came into being as their embodiment, like Galatea emerging from Pygmalion’s statue. And when he painted Quentin’s portrait, Quentin was freed of the effects of the werewolf curse. Like a Halloween version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, the portrait turned into a wolf on the nights of the full moon, while Quentin remained human.

As long as the portraits of Amanda and Quentin are intact, they themselves will remain alive and well and youthful. So Julia’s hope that Quentin might still be traveling the world and using false names 72 years after the period when she and Barnabas knew him is not ill-founded, and her surmise that Olivia might be, not Amanda’s granddaughter, but Amanda herself, is also plausible.

Episode 894/ 895: The time of the Leviathan people

Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins has become the leader of a mysterious cult. Antique shop owners Megan and Philip Todd are members of the cult, and they have a magical baby who materialized after Barnabas gave them a sacred box. Inside the box was a book that is also of tremendous importance to the cult. Philip and Megan left the book on a table in their shop, so that it appeared to be for sale. Yesterday strange and troubled boy David Collins stole the book. In its absence, the baby has developed a high fever. When Megan and Philip found that the book was gone, they flew into a panic and declared that they would have to kill the person who took it.

Many stories on Dark Shadows start with David, so it could be that the uncanny and sinister forces behind the cult want him to have the book. If so, Barnabas doesn’t know any more about it than do Philip and Megan. He finds out today that the book is missing, and takes Philip to a cairn in the woods. He tells him he will have to be punished for losing it.

When Philip first saw the cairn, he remarked that he had been that way before, but never noticed it. Barnabas explains that only people connected with the Leviathan cult can see it. This casts the minds of returning viewers to heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, Barnabas’ distant cousin. In #888, Carolyn saw the cairn and ran into a prowler there. The prowler refused to identify himself to her; the closing credits told us he was Paul Stoddard, Carolyn’s long missing father. We had seen him from behind the day before, when he saw the cairn materialize, then simply walked off. His blasé response told us that he expected to see what he saw, which can only mean he was connected with the cult. Carolyn doesn’t know anything about the Leviathans, but what Barnabas says to Philip today confirms that she is nonetheless associated with them in some sense. Indeed, Barnabas has been very solicitous of Carolyn’s well-being ever since he joined up with the Leviathans and keeps telling her that she has an extraordinary future.

Philip and Barnabas at the cairn. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There is also some business going on between Paul and Carolyn. On the surface it would seem to be a typical soap opera story, in which the daughter is trying to reintroduce her errant father into the family circle and has to keep secrets from her mother and young cousin to pull it off. Given what we know about Paul’s awareness of the Leviathans and their interest in Carolyn, we can see that it is in fact part of the supernatural A story.

There are no closing credits today, only the logo of Dan Curtis Productions. The Dark Shadows wiki says that this one was directed by Henry Kaplan. I am certain this is false. Kaplan was very clumsy with the camera, resorting to closeup after closeup and then to ever-more extreme closeups until you have scenes played by one actor’s left ear opposite another’s right nostril. Today, there is a scene between Carolyn, David, and Barnabas in the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood, a scene in which Carolyn presses David with questions about the book, that is so expertly choreographed that only Lela Swift could have blocked it. My wife, Mrs Acilius, marveled at the dance that Nancy Barrett, David Henesy, and Jonathan Frid execute so flawlessly.

This episode is double numbered to make up for a planned pre-emption, when the ABC television network showed football at 4 PM on the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day. Every Friday’s episode was supposed to have a number that ended with a five or zero, so that all you had to do was divide by five and you would get the number of weeks the show had been on. That didn’t work this time, because there was also an unplanned pre-emption when the network’s nes division took the 4 PM slot to cover the return of the Apollo 12 mission. They are producing episodes well ahead of their airdates at this point, in a couple of cases over five weeks ahead, so it will be a long while before they can get back in sync.