Willie Loomis has come back to the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, where he once lived as the sorely bedraggled blood thrall of vampire Barnabas Collins. Willie intends to stay only for a short time, answering an invitation from Barnabas and mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Willie is engaged to marry a woman named Roxanne, and Roxanne expects to leave with him in the morning. But he finds out that Barnabas and Julia, along with the kindly Maggie Evans and some other people, are locked in battle with a vast and incomprehensible evil. So Willie announces that he cannot leave. He will stay and help Barnabas and Julia fight.
At the beginning and end, a shape-shifting monster sees something that terrifies him. Pondering this, Barnabas remembers that the two things which frighten the monster are ghosts and werewolves. Since Collinwood is the world capital of both ghosts and werewolves, that raises the question of why the monster wants to be there. The disturbance can’t be a werewolf- the first time it occurs, it prevents the monster from attacking Willie and Maggie, and if it were a werewolf it would just have gone on to attack them itself. The second time, Julia comes face to face with it. It casts a glowing light on her, and she asks what it is. One might assume she would recognize a werewolf, who in any case don’t glow. The show does a good job making us wonder just what the phenomenon is and making us hope we will find out tomorrow.
When Barnabas first enslaved Willie in 1967, he was extremely cruel and Willie was miserable beyond imagining. When Willie came back in 1968 after a stay in Windcliff, the mental hospital Julia controls, Barnabas’ vampirism was in remission and Willie took rather an insouciant attitude towards him. In those days, Barnabas put up with Willie’s insubordinate attitude with relatively mild displays of annoyance. Barnabas finally brought Willie to heel in #560, when he convinced Willie that his disobedience was putting Maggie in danger and Willie responded with agony. Torturing Willie in that way made Barnabas smile for the first time in ages. He was glad to return at last to his happy place.
Now, Barnabas is a vampire again, but Willie is full of friendship and goodwill towards him. He talks warmly to Julia about how Barnabas helped him in the past. In turn, Barnabas is genuinely concerned for Willie’s well-being, telling him that the current situation is too dangerous for him and that he should go live his own life. This new coziness leads to some intentionally funny moments. At one point, Willie walks in on Barnabas saying out loud that he doesn’t understand what’s going on. He tells the vampire “You’re talking to yourself, Barnabas. That’s a bad sign!” As if that’s the part he needs to worry about!
Willie has a conversation with Maggie that verges on the poetic. When he tells her “I never knew how awful it was to be alone until I wasn’t,” we find ourselves wanting him to go directly to Roxanne and run as far as he can as fast as he can.
There is a big mirror on the wall at the foot of the stairs in Barnabas’ house. At one point he walks in front of it and casts a reflection. Sometimes they have been very emphatic that vampires don’t cast reflections. Most famously, Julia confirmed that Barnabas was a vampire in #288, when she contrived to open her compact and point the mirror at him. The same prop was used in #704, when it exposed Barnabas’ secret to the luckless Sophie Baker, prompting him to murder her. On the other hand, when wicked witch Angelique became a vampire for a while in 1968, there were some shots that were obviously deliberate in their composition that prominently featured her reflection in mirrors, making the point that she was an exception to this rule. The mirror doesn’t have to be on the wall, but if it is we will inevitably see Jonathan Frid reflected in it, suggesting that they put it there on purpose to show that he is now another exception to the rule.
Willie was off the show for a year, from #696 (broadcast 24 February 1969) to #956 (broadcast 23 February 1970.) His absence during that period was not explained. Today he mentions to Julia that he has been working at another hospital, as he once worked for her at Windcliff. Indeed, she had offered him a job there in #537. Since Julia did not know about this other hospital job, he must have taken it sometime after leaving his position at Windcliff and without a reference from her. Before Barnabas enslaved him, Willie was a dangerously unstable ruffian, wanted by the police, so they are likely the first employers he has had who would have provided a usable reference. So he probably left Collinwood for the job at Windcliff not much later than March 1969 and held a job in some third place before getting back into hospital work more recently.
In the first year of the show, only David Henesy, as strange and troubled boy David Collins, looked directly into the camera; in the last year, that move has been the signature of Denise Nickerson as David’s young friend Amy Jennings. Today, just about every member of the cast does it. I believe it is the first time Jonathan Frid has done so, though there have been times when his examination of the teleprompter has moved him perilously close to an unintentional soliloquy.
Barnabas tells Julia that their enemies will never find his coffin “where it is now.” The first time we heard that was in 1967, and back then it made us wonder why, if he has an impregnable hiding place for his coffin, he usually just leaves it in the middle of his basement where no one coming downstairs could avoid seeing it. Barnabas spent most of 1969 as a time traveler visiting 1897. His vampirism was exposed in that year, and he was hunted. He assured his allies that no one could find his coffin where it was hidden then; they found it immediately. So longtime viewers aren’t so sure that Barnabas will escape detection during the day.
As Julia, Grayson Hall has a new hairdo today. It is a bit longer than it has been, and is swept up in front.
Dark Shadows Commentary 