For most of 1969, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the year 1897. In that year, we got to know rakish libertine Quentin Collins, who brought upon himself and his male descendants the curse of the werewolf. For reasons of his own, sorcerer Count Petofi ordered one of his underlings, a repellent little man named Charles Delaware Tate, to paint a portrait of Quentin. As long as the portrait is intact, Quentin is immune from the effects both of the curse and of aging.
Now the show has returned to a contemporary setting. Quentin has come back to the village of Collinsport, still alive, still youthful, still human on nights of the full moon. However, he suffers from total amnesia, and is unwilling to listen to anyone who tells him that he is 99 years old and is enmeshed in a long line of supernatural occurrences.
Mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD, knows all about Quentin, in part because she traveled back in time from September 1969 to September 1897 and befriended him then. Julia has been trying to help Quentin’s great-grandson Chris Jennings to overcome his own lycanthropy, and when a couple of weeks ago she learned that Tate was still alive she hoped he would be able to paint a portrait that would do for Chris what Quentin’s portrait did for him. Tate refused. Chris subsequently went to Tate’s house on a day when the moon was full enough to turn him into the wolf. He locked himself in a room with Tate and ordered him to start painting. If he finished the painting before sunset, perhaps Chris would not become the animal and Tate would escape the murder he is threatening to commit.
When the 1897 segment ended in #884, Petofi appeared to have died. It was unclear what this meant for the spells he had cast. That his portrait has continued to protect Quentin would suggest that at least some of his powers have lived after him. Perhaps Tate, too, will prove to have kept the ability Petofi gave him to work magic by painting portraits.
But this turned out not to have been so. At the end of yesterday’s episode, Tate had completed a picture of Chris, but come nightfall Chris turned into the wolf and slashed him. Today, Quentin comes into Tate’s studio, finding the artist bleeding to death and the beast still in the room. Looking for a weapon, he turns from a heavy bronze statue to a small silver candlestick. The wolf runs away.
Tate calls Quentin by name and pleads with him for help. Tate doesn’t want him to leave, but Quentin points out that he cannot do anything for him himself. Since Tate has no telephone, he will have to go to a neighbor and call a doctor from there.
Quentin was not the only beneficiary of Tate’s magical paintings whom we met in 1897. Tate had painted many pictures of his ideal woman. Unknown to him, these paintings had caused the woman to pop into existence one day in 1895. The woman took the name Amanda Harris and found her way to Collinsport shortly after Tate took up residence there. When he met Amanda, Tate became obsessed with her and kept shouting in her face that she was his property and must come away with him. Amanda also met Quentin, who is not all that great a person but who is a lot easier to take than Tate, and she fell in love with him. The two of them were going to run off together to New York City, but when Quentin could not find his portrait he had to stay in Collinsport. In #884, we saw a brief encounter between Quentin and Amanda in NYC, during which he told them they could not be together until he found the portrait.
Now Amanda, too, has come back to Collinsport. She has been using the name Olivia Corey, and has become a big star on Broadway. Amusingly, she is played by Donna McKechnie, who would a few years later actually become a big star on Broadway. One wonders if Miss McKechnie felt she had to model herself on Amanda/ Olivia when she achieved that success.
Julia and Amanda met because they have both been collecting paintings by Tate in hopes that they will lead them to Quentin. Julia recognized Olivia as Amanda right off when she met her, rather oddly since they never met when they were both in 1897. We see Julia visiting Amanda in her suite at the Collinsport Inn, getting impatient with her continued refusal to admit her identity, when the phone rings. It is Quentin, asking Julia to come to Tate’s. Amanda volunteers to go along with her, which Julia says is a very good idea. Julia pauses to tell Amanda the alias Tate has been using in recent years, Harrison Monroe.
When Julia and Amanda arrive at Tate’s, Julia takes Quentin aside and very ostentatiously whispers in his ear. He replies that he does not understand what she has in mind, but that he will follow her directions anyway.
Julia goes to Tate. She asks him to tell her where Quentin’s portrait is; he says he will do so only if she saves his life. She looks sad, and he says that if she cannot do that, she has nothing to offer him in exchange for what she wants. She then calls Amanda in, and tells her to address “Harrison Monroe” by his first name- Charles. When he hears her voice and sees her face, he calls her Amanda, and says that she has come back to him. Before he can turn his attention back to Julia, he loses consciousness.
Julia pronounces Tate dead. Julia is in some ways the ablest doctor who ever lived- she has built Frankenstein’s monsters, cured vampirism, etc. But her death pronouncements are so often inaccurate that longtime viewers will expect Tate to spring up and contradict her. Only the fact that the opening voiceover said in so many words that Tate “has no future” allows us to believe that we really won’t be seeing him again.
Overwhelmed by emotion, Amanda bolts out Tate’s door and wanders into the woods. The werewolf comes at her; for some reason that is apparently none of the audience’s business, he decides not to attack her.
Back in Amanda’s suite, Quentin tells Julia that he reached for the small silver candlestick rather than the heavy piece of metal when confronted with the wolf. Julia declares that this proves his identity. Somewhere in his mind, beneath the amnesia, he knows that werewolves are averse to silver. He can’t disagree.
Later, Amanda returns to the suite and gives a soliloquy. Julia emerges from the bedroom where she has been eavesdropping. Amanda briefly protests at the invasion of her privacy, then admits her identity. She tells Julia a story about the last time she and Quentin saw each other in the nineteenth century.
When Amanda gets to the meat of her story, we zoom in on her face for an extreme closeup. An iris wipe starts from her left eyelid, growing into a stage set representing a bridge in New York City. She and Quentin have a conversation that covers the same ground as the one we saw in #884, and he leaves her alone on the bridge.
A man we have not seen before enters and tells Amanda that she ought not to jump from the bridge. He says that she is very beautiful, and that other men will love her. He says that “If I were… different… I’d love you myself.” The words of this kindly confirmed bachelor mean nothing to Amanda, who throws herself off the bridge.
The wipe does not fill the entire screen; the edges of the main image are covered with flickering little blue squares, and we can make out an image of Amanda’s suite on the right-hand side of the screen. This effect becomes distracting while the confirmed bachelor is talking to Amanda, when they are adjusting the camera for the shot that will follow the end of the insert. Not only does the image of the suite wobble jerkily, but it continues as we cut from the two shot to a closeup on the man, taking our attention away from his face at a crucial moment.
Amanda tells Julia that after she jumped off the bridge, she found herself in a hotel lobby. The confirmed bachelor, whom she calls “Mr Best,” met her there and explained that he wants her to live out the long life that she was originally destined to have. He says that she will have all of those years, and will remain young throughout them. If she can find Quentin again before she reaches the time she was meant to die, the two of them will go on living forever. If not, he will return for her at the appointed time. Julia leaves, determined to cure Quentin of his amnesia and return him to Amanda. A moment later, a knock comes at the door. It is Mr Best, telling Amanda her time is up.
A few days ago, Julia brought Amanda one of Tate’s portraits of her. She made no effort to buy it, saying it was of no interest to her. The story of Mr Best explains this indifference. Amanda believes that her supernatural youth is due to his intervention, not to the portrait. She does not know why Quentin has remained young, and has no reason to connect her situation with Tate’s works.
Mr Best is played by Emory Bass, who was at this time playing James Wilson in the original Broadway production of 1776. That cast, to be reunited in the 1972 film version of the musical, also featured Dark Shadows alums David Ford (Sam Evans #2, Andre DuPrés) as John Hancock, Daniel F. Keyes (Cemetery Caretaker) as Josiah Bartlett, Peter Lombard (Oberon) as a stage manager and understudy for the parts of Thomas Jefferson and Stephen Hopkins, and Virginia Vestoff (whom we will see several months from now as Samantha Collins) in the major role of Abigail Adams. With all that overlap, I tend to think of the whole cast of 1776 as having been available for parts on Dark Shadows, and vice versa. Whenever I get unhappy with a cast member, I wonder who from 1776 could have done a better job. Bass was great in 1776, and his arrestingly deliberate phrasing is perfectly suited to an angel of death, especially one like Mr Best who has far more discretion and a more idiosyncratic personality than do the angels described in the orthodox theological statements of the great monotheistic traditions.
Dark Shadows Commentary 