By order of the court, warlock Judah Zachery was decapitated in 1692. His body was buried in a large underground chamber in a graveyard, and his head was put on public display to deter his followers. The head disappeared. It cropped up again in 1803, when it was associated with a series of horrendous murders.
Now it is 1840. Wealthy dilettante Desmond Collins found the head in some kind of shop in Macau and brought it back to his home, a mansion known as Rose Cottage that lies near the estate of Collinwood. Desmond regained his senses too late to stop the head resuming its lethal career.
The head recently enslaved Cockney showgirl/ psychic Leticia Faye and mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Julia and Leticia set up a laboratory in the underground chamber, reattached the head to the body, and brought Judah back to life with electricity harvested from lightning.
Seagoing con man Gerard Stiles had seen Leticia with the jewel-encrusted gold mask that is part of Judah’s equipment. He followed her to the underground chamber, hoping to steal it. When he arrived there, Julia and Leticia were out, but Judah was just getting up. He approached Gerard with his hands out, as if to strangle him. Gerard bumped into a bottle of ether and started a fire. Amid the flames, he escaped from Judah. As Gerard scampered out into the graveyard, Judah remained in the burning chamber, pressing the mask to his face.
In the drawing room at the great house of Collinwood, Julia is getting a stern lecture from her best friend, vampire Barnabas Collins, about how she oughtn’t help Judah. She keeps protesting that she must help him, then cries out that Judah is burning. Suddenly Judah’s power over her breaks, and she is her old self again.
Barnabas insists that Julia take him to the underground chamber so that they can make sure Judah is dead. They find him under a pile of rubble. Julia checks his wrist for a pulse. He doesn’t have one. He didn’t when first she found him, so that wouldn’t seem to prove very much, but she and Barnabas decide it’s good enough. They leave the chamber, sure that Judah won’t be killing anyone else.
In his room at Rose Cottage, Gerard drifts off to sleep. He has a dream in which he is back in the underground chamber and a voice is ordering him to find “it.” He is puzzled, but as soon as he wakes up he knows exactly what he is supposed to do. He returns to the chamber, digs Judah out from under the pile of rubble, and removes the mask from his face. Judah blinks. What the point was of any of that, I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Barnabas and Julia are back in the drawing room at Collinwood, congratulating themselves on their great success. A man enters. He is overbearing undertaker Lamar Trask. He says that he just got engaged. In a very pleasant tone, Barnabas asks whom he will be marrying. Lamar is surprised at the question, as are returning viewers. Barnabas knows well that Roxanne Drew has been the object of Lamar’s suit for some time and that her father is very much in favor of the match. When Lamar identifies Roxanne as his fiancée, Barnabas is speechless. Lamar asks if congratulations are not in order, and Julia extends them.
Barnabas had shared a mutual attraction with Roxanne. As a vampire, he knew that he could not be alone with her without biting her, and he does not want to do that. When his one-time wife, wicked witch Angelique, showed up, she made him send Roxanne a letter saying that they couldn’t see each other again. It’s 1840, so Roxanne is probably going to marry someone. Much as Barnabas hates Lamar, he really should have braced himself for the likelihood that Roxanne would end up with him.
The scene in which Lamar proposes to Roxanne is the one high point in this otherwise wasted half hour. She talks about her desire to become “one of those new professional women,” and as Donna Wandrey delivers her lines we can see that she has given serious thought to that. Lamar stiffly declares that the only place for a woman is beside the man who loves her.
Lamar is the fourth villain named Trask whom Jerry Lacy has played, and the others excelled at snuffing out women’s dreams. So we recoil when he makes his sexist remark, but Roxanne does not. She smiles and says that if her father had not pushed them together, things might have been different between them. Miss Wandrey makes us believe that, while she does want an independent life, Roxanne is also a product of her time, and that she more or less believes in what she was raised to believe. Moreover, Mr Lacy does manage to make us believe that for all his obnoxiousness, Lamar loves Roxanne. So we can understand Roxanne’s motivations.
