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Episode 812: The back road to salvation

Denise Nickerson joined the cast of Dark Shadows in #632 as nine year old Amy Jennings, sister of the doomed Chris (Don Briscoe.) As Amy, Nickerson was central to the show for the next fourteen weeks. In #701 we traveled back in time and Dark Shadows became a costume drama set in 1897. In that year, Nickerson is Nora Collins. Nora was in 10 episodes in the first twelve weeks of 1897, and apart from a two episode stint in #782 and #783 has been unseen and very nearly unmentioned in the ten weeks since. The 1897 segment is packed with so many lively characters that even the best of them disappear for long periods, but the extended neglect of Nora is particularly disappointing. Nickerson was an outstanding young actress, brought out interesting qualities in her scene-mates, and had drawn a significant fan base among the show’s preteen viewers.

Nickerson is back today. In Act One, she walks in on her father Edward trying to strangle her Uncle Quentin. Nora’s scream distracts Edward and saves Quentin. When Nora asks Quentin what got into her father, he tells her that it’s something like a magic spell and will end soon. He refuses to explain further. It is unclear why Nora accepts this refusal. For our part, the audience accepts it because Edward’s attack on Quentin has nothing to do with today’s episode. It’s just left over from yesterday’s cliffhanger.

Don Briscoe is also back, after an absence of twelve episodes. In 1897, he plays Tim Shaw, persecuted schoolteacher turned adventurer. As Chris, Briscoe would do a little W. C. Fields imitation from time to time, occasionally ending a sentence with Fields’ signature inflections. This would raise a smile from other characters in 1969, when such a habit was relatively fashionable. Considering that Fields’ persona was that of a man who belonged in the Gay Nineties, we should have suspected when we first saw the date 1897 that Briscoe would have an opportunity to develop his Fields imitation in greater depth. Indeed, we see him today wearing a hat and coat that might have come from Fields’ closet, accompanied by exactly the sort of woman whom Fields’ characters reliably failed to impress.

I regret to inform you that Tim does not, at any point, address Amanda as “My little chickadee.”

Tim has been in New York, where he made a great deal of money in a very short time by means of something which he keeps in a small box. Returning viewers know that this thing is The Hand of Count Petofi, and that it is the object of a desperate search by many dangerous people, including Quentin. We also know that the Hand is not subject to anyone’s control. If it has made Tim rich, that is because it wanted to do so for purposes of its own, not because Tim had any skill in manipulating it. Tim has used his riches to purchase the companionship of Amanda Harris, a cynical young woman who is impatient with him and appalled at the smallness of the village of Collinsport.

Tim and Amanda are staying at the Collinsport Inn. The Inn was a very important part of the show for its first 40 weeks, when one of the principal storylines was The Revenge of Burke Devlin. Like Tim, Burke was a working class boy from Collinsport who was framed for a homicide of which he was only technically guilty, and who then went to New York City, made a huge amount of money in a very short time, and came back to his home town to even the score with those who set him up to take the blame for a crime for which they were even more responsible than he was. Burke lived at the Inn, and it represented his territory, in opposition to the great house of Collinwood where his adversaries lived. The Revenge of Burke Devlin storyline never really took off, and by #201 Burke himself lost interest in it. Since then, we have gone months at a time without seeing the Inn. We saw a guest room there in #698, but I can’t remember the last time we saw the lobby before today.

Tim orders Amanda to hide the box in her room, then sends her off to Collinwood to make a connection with the cruel and lecherous Rev’d Gregory Trask. Amanda tells Trask that she has been under the power of an evil man and that she wants to change her ways. Trask tells her that he will give her spiritual guidance. He has his back to her when he says that his plan requires that he provide her with “private instruction”; he isn’t looking at her when she rolls her eyes at this. Back in the Inn, Amanda tells Tim that he was right, Trask is despicable.

While Amanda and Tim are taking a stroll by the waterfront, Quentin ransacks Tim’s room looking for the Hand. Quentin hears them on their way back, and leaps out Tim’s window. They’ve gone out of their way to make it clear that Tim’s room is upstairs- we heard Tim on his telephone telling the front desk to send Amanda “up” to him, and we saw him and Amanda getting on the staircase to go to the room. So they are inviting us to wonder how Quentin climbs down the side of the building.

When Tim sees the shambles in his room, he sends Amanda to her room to make sure the box is still there. It is, but he decides that the Inn is not a safe enough place for the Hand. He takes the box to Nora in her bedroom at Collinwood. Regular viewers know that Tim was Nora’s teacher, and Nora considers him her friend. It may seem odd that the person Tim turns to when he needs help with such a sensitive matter is nine years old, but longtime viewers will again remember Burke. He had a way with children; he immediately won the devotion of strange and troubled boy David Collins, and Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, remembered him very fondly from her own childhood. Burke and David trusted each other in delicate situations more than once, and we can see the same thing happening between Tim and Nora.

Nora promises to hide the box somewhere in the house and not to tell anyone about it. Tim leaves, and Nora puts the box in her armoire. Nora is a fairly responsible person, but she is nine, and the box is wrapped like a present. As we fade to the credits, she is opening the box.

This leaves us wondering not only how Nora will react to the sight of the Hand, which is a gruesome thing, but also what effect it will have on Nora’s own appearance. In #784, lawyer/ Satanist Evan Hanley looked at the Hand, and it responded to his gaze by disfiguring his face. A few days later, it disfigured Quentin as well. Evan and Quentin have both regained their good looks, frustratingly without explanation. But it would be intensely unpleasant to see little Nora’s face mangled, even temporarily, so this is quite an effective cliffhanger for viewers who have been watching for several weeks.

This episode not only features the welcome returns of Nickerson, Briscoe, and the Inn’s lobby after their absences; it brings an equally welcome newcomer. Amanda Harris is played by Donna McKechnie, six years before she originated the role of Cassie in A Chorus Line and thereby became a permanent star of Broadway. Reviewing TV episodes on the 56th anniversaries of their original airing, recent news about the cast is often sad. For example, Lara Parker died very shortly before the 56th anniversary of the first broadcast of an episode in which she appeared as wicked witch Angelique. I call the cast members by their surnames, and put courtesy titles in front of the surnames of living people. I could have cried when I had to call her simply “Parker.” But Miss McKechnie is alive and well. Just yesterday, I saw a YouTube video (one of two posted on 23 July) of a panel featuring Miss McKechnie at a Dark Shadows convention on 19 July with Kathryn Leigh Scott, Marie Wallace, Sharon Smyth Lentz, and Matt Hall.

Episode 811: A man’s investment in the future

In #797, the ghost of Rroma maiden Julianka appeared and placed a curse on her fellow grievous ethnic stereotype, Magda Rákóczi. Julianka blamed Magda for her death, and decreed that everyone Magda loved would die. Today, Magda is trying to prevent Julianka’s curse from taking the life of her desperately ill infant niece Lenore, daughter of her late sister Jenny. Magda goes to Lenore’s crib in company with Lenore’s father, Quentin Collins. Magda and Quentin try to conjure up Julianka’s ghost to plead for Lenore’s life, but instead they get the ghost of another Rroma woman- Jenny.

Jenny assumes physical form. She picks up Lenore and sings the lullaby “All the Pretty Little Horses.” We’ve heard Jenny sing this almost every time she has been on the show. It appears to be the only song she knows. For his part, Quentin has a phonograph and only one record, which he plays obsessively over and over. When they lived together, their home must have been a pretty grim place, playlist-wise.

Jenny lifts Lenore’s illness, and says that if Quentin looks into his heart he will know what he must do to ensure that Lenore has a bright future. She vanishes, and Quentin mutters dismissively at the idea that his heart will be a source of useful information.

Later, Quentin will have a dream while sleeping in the drawing room at the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Jenny visits and tells him that he must have nothing to do with Lenore and that she must grow up far from Collinwood. So far, dream sequences on Dark Shadows have always represented visits from the supernatural, but this one might be an exception. Jenny did say that the information Quentin needed to help Lenore was already in his heart. He is clearly not the stuff of which good fathers are made, and as Jenny explicitly says in the dream no one has ever been happy at Collinwood. So the advice she gives does seem to be correct. Perhaps this is just Quentin’s own knowledge taking a shape he can recognize.

Quentin goes on dreaming that his brother Edward is choking him. He wakes up to find that Edward is in fact choking him. This might seem like a prophetic dream, but it too might just be a natural expression of Quentin’s own unprocessed knowledge. Edward, because of a magic spell not directly connected with today’s events, is under the mistaken impression that he is a valet formerly in the service of the Earl of Hampshire. Quentin has followed the Collinses’ long-established protocol for dealing with mentally ill family members, and locked Edward up in the room on top of the tower in the great house. He knows this makes Edward miserable, and it is reasonable to suppose that he would expect Edward to express anger about it. Strangulation is Quentin’s own preferred method of expressing anger, especially towards members of his immediate family, so it can’t have been hard for him to see that coming.

Edward’s motivation is not as simple as Quentin’s would be if their positions were reversed. The evil Gregory Trask has been visiting Edward in the tower room, and has told him that Quentin is determined to keep him imprisoned in that room forever. He asks him to kill Quentin. Edward apparently has decided to comply.

Earlier in the episode, Edward had been more punctilious about cooperating with Trask. Trask presented him with a document to sign, promising that by signing it he would secure his freedom. Edward read the document, even after Trask very loudly insisted that it was unnecessary to do so. When Edward saw that it involved making Trask guardian of his son, Edward protested that he had no son. Trask said that this did not matter, but Edward would not be moved. Edward later tells Quentin about this encounter.

The tower room is a re-dress of the set used as the bedroom of strange and troubled boy David Collins in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s. Today it includes the bed from that set, and we see Edward trying to sleep in it. This is a powerful image for longtime viewers. Louis Edmonds plays Edward in this costume drama segment and David’s father Roger in contemporary dress. Edward is the father of Jamison, who like David Collins is played by David Henesy. Not only has the spell robbed Edward of the memory of Jamison and of his role as a father, it has reduced him to curling up in a bed made for a boy rather than a man.

Edward in the child’s bed. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Roger was, for the first year of Dark Shadows, a spectacularly bad father. He openly hated David and exploited David’s miseries to try to manipulate him into doing his own criminal dirty work. He was indifferent to the family’s name and the fate of its businesses, would go to any lengths to hide from the consequences of his actions, had killed someone, and was an alcoholic. Edward shares none of these shortcomings. On the contrary, he goes to the opposite extreme. He is as brave as Roger is cowardly and tenderly loves his children, Jamison and Nora. But he is also stuffy, name-proud, and money-grubbing. The contrast with Roger shows these failings, not simply as negatives, but as the overgrowth of the virtues that separate Edward from Roger. Though Louis Edmonds and Jerry Lacy are such accomplished comic actors that Edward’s scenes with Trask are funny enough to be worthy of a staging of the Jeeves and Wooster stories, Edward’s loss of his identity as father of Jamison and Nora is a genuine tragedy.

Quentin is fond of Jamison, and once he learns that his children exist he seems to wish them well. Nonetheless, he shares most of the other vices of early Roger. As Edward shows us what Roger might have been had he had stronger moral fiber, Quentin is Roger with his vices magnified by black magic. When Jenny tells Quentin that he must not raise Lenore, longtime viewers remember Roger as he was when first we knew him, and remember how grim David’s future seemed at that time. It was only after well-meaning governess Vicki became the chief adult influence in his life that we could have hopes for David. So we cannot doubt that Jenny is right.

This is the last of 21 episodes of Dark Shadows directed by executive producer Dan Curtis. When Curtis first took the helm in #457, he had no experience as a director, and it showed. But he learned very quickly. This one looks great and the scenes play very smoothly. He would later direct the feature films House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows, as well as six episodes of the 1991 prime time revival of Dark Shadows and many other productions.

Episode 810: Not with pity

Charity Trask is in the drawing room of the great house on the estate of Collinwood trying to call the police when her abusive step-uncle, Quentin Collins, comes out of a secret panel and takes the telephone from her. He tells her that there is no longer any point in telling the police about Tessie, the injured woman upstairs. Tessie won’t be telling them anything. She has died. Apparently the sheriff of Collinsport is the same in 1897 as are his counterparts in other periods when Dark Shadows has been set- if you’re already dead, it’s too late for them to take an interest in you.

Charity says that Quentin killed Tessie. Charity knows that Quentin is a werewolf. He locks the door to the room and asks “Are you afraid to be locked in alone with a beast, a murderer, a creature of the supernatural?” This would seem to be rather an odd question, especially since he spent yesterday’s whole episode threatening to kill her.

Charity says that her father, Gregory Trask, will see to it that Quentin is brought to justice. Quentin takes a paper from his pocket and shows it to Charity. It is a confession to the murder of Charity’s mother, signed by her father. Charity claims that it was fabricated by Satan, which is what her father told her when she first saw it, and that Trask repeatedly tried to destroy it. This only convinces Quentin that the confession is true. He says that if either Charity or her father tells the police about him, he will hand over the paper. He adds “Now, Charity, I may hang for murder, but your father will be dancing at the end of a rope, too.”

Dark Shadows is set in the state of Maine, which in our universe abolished capital punishment in 1887. That used to be true in the show’s universe, as well. In #101, broadcast and set in November 1966, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins told his son, strange and troubled boy David, that “They don’t hang people anymore. Not in this state, anyway.” But by the time the show left the 1960s for its first costume drama segment a year later, characters were already afraid of being sentenced to death. The morbid fascination of the gallows is so much of a piece with the show’s exaggerated melodrama that there must be a death penalty, no matter when or where the action is supposed to be taking place.

Quentin tells Charity that there is a chance- a small chance, he concedes- that he will be cured of lycanthropy before the next full Moon, so that she need not feel that she is an accessory to murder if she doesn’t turn him in right away. Miserable, frightened, and confused, she takes this seriously enough that she remains quiet at least through this episode.

We cut to a hiding place where a man known as Aristide is looking at himself in a mirror and primping his hair, moving his fingers through it with an exaggerated daintiness. We pan to broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi , who impatiently asks “Did you send for me so there would be two of us to admire you?” Aristide has some business to discuss relating to plot points not directly involved in this episode, and he and Magda trade menacing insinuations about the danger each faces from the various supernatural forces at work in the area. Magda says that what the ziganophobic Aristide calls her “Gypsy cunning” will protect her, and Aristide says that an amulet he wears around his neck will protect him.

Magda replies “All right, we’ve both got something to protect us. I go now,” and starts to leave. Aristide stops her, and says that she must recover the severed hand of Count Petofi. She says that a man named Tim Shaw stole the hand and ran off with it, and she has no way of knowing where Tim is. Aristide says she must find out and bring it soon, “before time runs out.” She asks “Before time runs out for who? You mean when Petofi comes back!” In fact, Aristide means more than that- his master, 150 year old sorcerer Count Petofi, will die in a matter of days unless he is reunited with the hand that was cut from his right arm a century before, in 1797. If he does recover the hand in time, he will become immortal. Magda fears Petofi and hates him, and would doubtless make any sacrifice to keep the hand away from him if she knew these were the stakes. So Aristide is mortified that he let slip the phrase “before time runs out,” and is anxious to avoid saying anything else.

Back at Collinwood, Quentin confers with a Mrs Fillmore. Mrs Fillmore has been looking after the twin children Quentin’s wife Jenny bore him after he left her and before he murdered her. This is the first time we have seen Mrs Fillmore. It is also the first confirmation we have had that Quentin has seen Mrs Fillmore. He didn’t know about the twins until #798, when the boy twin was already dead as the result of a curse that a woman named Julianka placed on Magda, who is Jenny’s sister. Now Mrs Fillmore tells Quentin that the girl is suffering the same symptoms the boy showed before he died, and that the doctor is at a loss what to do for her. Quentin says he will look for someone who might be able to help, and they both exit.

Charity is alone in the drawing room, making an earnest effort to get drunk. Magda enters and expresses surprise that the unbendingly prudish Charity has been drinking. Charity replies that she merely ate some chocolates that were filled with brandy. At the sight of an empty snifter, she says that after eating the chocolates she poured herself a small brandy. She then picks up and drinks another, regular-sized brandy. Charity starts talking about how terrible life at Collinwood is. Magda mentions Tim Shaw, who was once Charity’s fiancé and who was framed for her mother’s murder. Charity wonders if Magda can use the Tarot cards to find Tim and bring him back. She asks if Tim will have to tell the truth if he comes back, and Magda assures her that he will. Magda may assume that the truth Charity wants is about the end of her relationship with Tim; she does not know that Charity is desperate to revert to believing that Tim, not her father, murdered her mother.

Magda asks Charity to tell her as much as she can about Tim. Charity says that when Tim was a boy, his closest friend was named Stephen Simmons, and that “He and Stephen Simmons used to always say they would go to San Francisco when they grew up.” Magda asks where Stephen Simmons is now, and Charity says she thinks he lives in Worcester, Massachusetts. She goes to her bedroom to look for a Christmas card Stephen sent her last year, hoping it may have his current address.

Quentin returns and finds Magda. He asks Magda how she knew about his daughter. She asks what he means. When Quentin tells her that the girl is suffering the same symptoms that her brother showed immediately before his death, they rack their brains to come up with a potential defense against Julianka’s curse. Magda remembers Aristide’s amulet. It is capable of warding off vampires and witches- perhaps it will defend against Julianka as well. Magda tells Quentin where Aristide is hiding, and he decides to go to Aristide and rob him of the amulet.

Aristide is asleep when Quentin arrives. He awakens before Quentin can take the amulet, and declares “This pendant protects me from witches, warlocks, and unnatural spirits.” Quentin asks “How does it do against flesh and blood, Aristide?” Aristide draws a curvy piece of wood with no sharp edges and replies “For flesh and blood, I have The Dancing Lady.” The piece of wood is supposed to be a knife. When Aristide first displayed it in #792, he called it “The Dancing Girl.” Perhaps this is a case of Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome, and in a couple of weeks it will be The Dancing Dowager, then The Dancing Crone. At any rate, Quentin replies “Then let her dance, Aristide, let her dance.” Quentin wins the subsequent fistfight. He knocks Aristide senseless, then takes the amulet from him.

Quentin and Magda go to Mrs Fillmore’s house, the first time we have seen this set. Appropriately for a member of the Collins family, the baby sleeps in a cradle shaped like a coffin.

Collins coffin cradle. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin talks with Mrs Fillmore about little “Lenore,” a name we have not heard before today. The only other girl of Lenore’s generation in the Collins family is the daughter of Quentin’s brother Edward, and she is named Nora. Since the name “Lenore” became popular outside Greece because speakers of English and French thought it was an alternative form of “Nora,” that would suggest rather a limited imagination regarding girl’s names on the part of whoever chose them.

But it is appropriate that Quentin and Edward have children with similar names. They are two variations on Dark Shadows’ first archvillain, Roger, whose evil largely expressed itself in his amazingly bad parenting of David. Edward’s attentive and caring interactions with Nora and her brother Jamison show that he is a less villainous Roger, while Quentin’s frequent assaults on his adult family members are among the evidence that he is an even worse version of the same character. Jamison is the only child we have seen Quentin interact with, and he is fond of him. But while we were still in the 1960s, Quentin’s ghost was possessing and killing the children at Collinwood, and in #710, only two weeks into the 1897 flashback, he and his fellow Satanist Evan Hanley used Jamison as a “sacrificial lamb” in a ritual meant to exploit his innocence for their own sinister purposes. Clearly, Quentin is no more to be trusted with the care of a child than was the early Roger.

Quentin asks Mrs Fillmore to leave him and Magda alone with Lenore. They apply the amulet, and it does not seem to work. Magda tries to raise the spirit of Julianka. After some pleadings and whatnot, there is thunder, wind, and other signs of ghostly presence. Magda cries out in hope that Julianka has come with pity. A figure materializes and says “Not with pity, Magda.” But the figure is not Julianka. It is Jenny.

In #804, we saw a photograph of Jenny in Quentin’s room. It was a full length picture in a period-appropriate costume, not just Marie Wallace’s professional headshot, raising a hope that we would see Miss Wallace again before too long. But after a week and a half, those hopes had begun to fade. Perhaps they took the picture months ago and never got around to using it when Jenny was on the show. If they had done that, they wouldn’t be above sticking in a scene of Quentin looking at the picture and discussing it with his distant cousin Barnabas the vampire so that they could get their money’s worth out of it. When Miss Wallace does in fact return, the show sends us out on a high note.

Episode 809: Back from your evening revels

Charity Trask finds Quentin Collins unconscious and disheveled in the woods. She kneels beside him in a show of concern, then notices a woman on the ground near him. The woman’s face is covered with what on a black and white television look like slash marks and her clothing is badly torn. She regains consciousness just long enough to say Quentin’s name. Charity notices that Quentin is holding a scrap of cloth that matches the woman’s dress, and realizes that he is the werewolf who has been terrorizing the area.

Quentin comes to, and Charity tells him they must get help for the injured woman. Quentin’s response is to threaten to kill Charity if she says anything to anyone about what she has seen. He says that he will look after the woman, and repeats his death threats to Charity.

Charity goes home to the great house of Collinwood, where her father, the overbearingly evil Gregory Trask, orders her to marry Quentin by the end of the week. She is horrified and tells him she will not. She cannot explain why. Before Gregory can corner Charity and force her to give him information, twelve year old Jamison Collins enters. Jamison reports seeing the injured woman in the woods, and says that Gregory must go to her at once if she is to survive. Gregory dismisses this as a “tall tale” and says he will not be distracted from punishing Jamison for his long unexplained absence from the house. Charity, on the point of sobbing, urges Trask to take Jamison seriously, and he reluctantly goes to see if there really is a woman in the woods.

We know more than do Charity or Trask. We saw Jamison meet Quentin in the woods next to the woman’s body, and talk to him in an amiable and condescending tone about the possibility of turning this unfortunate incident to their mutual advantage. He also makes it clear that, despite his appearance, he is not simply Jamison. He is a sorcerer named Count Petofi, in possession of Jamison and acting through his body. When Charity asks Jamison/ Petofi if the woman was alone when he found her, he replies that of course she was. Smiling, he asks who she thought he might have seen. Terribly agitated, she soon excuses herself and goes into the foyer. Jamison/ Petofi looks directly into the camera and smiles. David Henesy was the first actor on Dark Shadows to use this technique, back in 1966 when he was playing strange and troubled boy David Collins. He’s been doing it a lot lately, and is still very good at using it to unsettle the audience.

He looks young for 150, but he’s grown quite a bit since 1966. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin comes down the staircase, wearing a tidy new suit. Charity is shocked that he did nothing to help the injured woman; he resumes his menacing tone and demands to know whether she kept her side of the bargain. He eventually deduces that she did not tell what she saw, and allows her to go upstairs to her bedroom. Quentin is usually charming, often funny, and occasionally aligned with good against evil, but even before he became a monster he was established as a homicidal maniac. When we first met Quentin, he was a ghost haunting Collinwood in the late 1960s and he kept killing people there. The first week of our trip back in time to 1897, we saw him trying to strangle his grandmother in her bed. And his sister-in-law turned him into a werewolf as revenge after he murdered his wife Jenny. Since we are focused on the horror of Charity’s situation as her father is pressuring her to marry Quentin, of course his bloodthirstiness is the aspect of his personality we see most clearly today.

Trask returns, carrying the injured woman. Quentin asks if she was conscious. Trask says she is not conscious. Quentin specifies that he wants to know if she has been conscious at any point while with Trask. This arouses Trask’s suspicions; Quentin protests that it is information he will need when he telephones the doctor. Trask says that she was not, and carries her upstairs.

Quentin goes to the drawing room. Jamison/ Petofi is there, and has some business to discuss. Quentin is too unsettled by the fact of the possession to talk candidly. Jamison/ Petofi decides to humor him. “I’ll become that beautiful child you so want to see… Can we play a game, Uncle Quentin?” Quentin is stunned by Jamison/ Petofi’s sudden change of tone and bearing. It is indeed impressive to see David Henesy drop his mimicry of Thayer David as Petofi and resume his usual approach to the role of Jamison. We’d forgotten just how deeply he had come to inhabit that imitation.

Jamison/ Petofi declares that they will have a treasure hunt. He gives Quentin a series of clues in the form of cryptic rhymes. Quentin is completely stumped by all of them. Finally Jamison/ Petofi just points at the desk drawer he wants Quentin to open and tells him there is a document in it that he can use against Trask. Quentin opens the drawer and pulls out heap after heap of paper, then declares “There’s no paper here!”

Quentin is not especially brainy; much of his appeal comes from the joy David Selby, Ph.D., took in playing a character who at no point says or does anything to demonstrate intellectual prowess. But we are not supposed to believe that he is stupid, at least not so stupid that it is plausible that “There’s no paper here!” was the scripted line. Maybe it was a blooper for “There’s no paper like that here!” or “There’s no paper here I haven’t seen before!” or something like that.

A document bearing a wax seal and a couple of signatures materializes on top of the papers Quentin has pulled out of the desk. He reads it, and sees that it is a full confession to the murder of Trask’s first wife, signed by Trask and lawyer Evan Hanley. All Jamison/ Petofi has to say is “It can be very useful, can’t it? Especially since it’s true… Aren’t games fun, Uncle Quentin?” and Quentin catches on that the document gives him power he can use against Trask.

Meanwhile, the injured woman has briefly regained consciousness in the upstairs bedroom where Trask and Charity are attending her. She spoke Quentin’s name, and Trask sent Charity to fetch him. Trask confronts Quentin about this. Quentin says that the woman’s name is Tessie, that he talked to her a couple of times when they ran into each other at the Blue Whale tavern, and that he knows nothing more about her. He admits he didn’t call the police after he called the doctor; he claims he simply forgot, in the confusion of the moment. Trask says that he will go and make the call. In an accusing tone, he asks “Most unfortunate, isn’t it, that you were the one who forgot?” He leaves Quentin alone with Tessie.

Tessie regains consciousness, looks at Quentin, and reacts with dismay. He tells her he didn’t mean to do it. She moans and dies. As she flops over, her right breast comes perilously close to springing out of her décolletage. When he realizes she has died, Quentin says “Tessie!” with a note of exasperation, as if she’s always doing inconvenient things like that. Mrs Acilius and I laughed out loud.

Downstairs, we see that Trask did not call the police after all. Charity is doing it from the telephone in the drawing room. Quentin enters through the secret panel behind her. We first saw him use this panel in #685, when it was 1969 and he was a silent but peculiarly corporeal ghost. He let himself into the drawing room and strangled silversmith Ezra Braithwaite, played by Abe Vigoda. A bit of an eldritch moment that the killer of Tessie is also the killer of a character played by the actor who would go on to play Tessio in the 1972 film The Godfather.

In Vigoda’s last scene in that movie, Tessio and Corleone Family consigliere Tom Hagen are at pains to assure each other that Tessio’s impending murder and the events that led up to it were strictly business, and that Tessio and his murderers still have the warmest regards for each other. Quentin’s attempt to deny his guilt to Tessie is of that same sort- he didn’t have any hostility towards her, his nature as a werewolf simply required that he kill the nearest person.

By contrast, Quentin’s interaction with Charity is intensely personal and intensely unpleasant. He takes the telephone out of her hand, something that men often do to women on Dark Shadows when they are trapping them, and moves deep into her personal space as he demands to know why she would want to call the police. She tells him her father ordered her to make the call; he says that Tessie will tell the police nothing now, because she is dead. Charity shouts that he killed Tessie, and that she will tell everything.

Danny Horn devotes much of his post about the episode at his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day to the absurdity of Quentin making a date with Tessie on a night when the Moon was full. In a comment, I pointed out that we have no reason to think he did make a date with her:

I don’t think it’s so hard to explain why Tessie was in the woods at dawn, though it does require a little fanfic.

Charity was in Quentin’s room in 806, inviting him to go for a walk on the beach when he’s busy getting drunk and listening to the same dreary little waltz over and over. To get Tessie into the woods, all we have to do is assume that shortly after that scene Quentin ran out of booze before he was drunk enough to stop caring about the upcoming full moon. Not wanting to deal with the Trasks, he didn’t go to the mansion’s liquor pantry, but staggered down to the Blue Whale.

There, Quentin met Tessie. She was upset with him for missing several dates in the last few days. He can’t very well explain what he’s been doing lately, and his refusal to answer Tessie’s questions angers her. She’s about to give Quentin a piece of her mind when he realizes that it will be dark soon, and rushes from the bar.

Now Tessie is really furious. She follows Quentin to the estate. Once there, she sees him change into the werewolf, and hides in terror for most of the night. Shortly before dawn, she thinks he is gone and leaves her hiding place. The werewolf appears and slashes away at her for a few minutes before changing back into human form and collapsing beside her.

And that’s when Charity finally takes her walk, and finds out.

Comment left 17 November 2020 by “Acilius” on Danny Horn, “Episode 808: Twice Burned,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 18 January 2016

Tessie is played by Deborah Loomis, and is the earliest screen credit on her IMDb page. Her next role listed there was in Hercules in New York, a 1970 film which also featured fellow Dark Shadows day player Erica Fitz Mears, who appeared in #594 and #595 as Leona Eltridge. Neither Miss Loomis nor Mrs Mears stuck with acting after the middle of the 1970s, but the two top billed members of the cast worked steadily for some years after. The first name in the credits was comedian Arnold Stang, who was best known at the time for a series of TV commercials for window screens ending with the tag “Arnold Stang says don’t get stung!” Second billed was Arnold Strong, a bodybuilder from Austria making his acting debut. Under his birth name of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnold Strong would go on to roles in several later films. I know of no evidence he ever auditioned for a part on Dark Shadows.

Episode 808: The mysterious shadow he can cast

Sorceror Count Petofi has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins. He has also cast a spell on broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, compelling her to lead him and his henchman Aristide to the hiding place of vampire Barnabas Collins.

Magda, Jamison/ Petofi, and Aristide. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Jamison/ Petofi and Aristide are ready to drive a stake through Barnabas’ heart. They open his coffin and find that he is away from home today. Magda does not know where his other hiding place is. Jamison/ Petofi becomes intrigued with Barnabas and decides to search through Magda’s home, the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, for papers that might give him information about Barnabas.

He and Aristide find a book published in 1965. Since the dramatic date is currently 1897, this seems to be a matter of some interest. Jamison/ Petofi calls for Magda, who tells him that Barnabas told her that the book had been brought back in time from the 1960s by “a girl named Vicki.” Barnabas’ utterance of the name “Vicki” in #797 was the first reference to well-meaning governess Victoria Winters in the 1897 segment, and this is the second. Vicki was the main character of the show for its first year, and remained in the cast for over a year after that. That the name “Vicki” would be heard only in rare and trivial echoes is not something longtime viewers would likely have predicted before she was written out of the show last year.

Magda goes on to explain that Barnabas himself traveled back in time from 1969. She has a vague idea that he was trying to save a dying child, and hasn’t the faintest clue how he made this remarkable journey. Jamison/ Petofi says that they will get the rest of the story from Barnabas himself. He also says that if he can travel in time, he will be able to live forever, a proposition which would seem to require further explanation.

Jamison/ Petofi is satisfied Magda is telling them everything she knows, but Aristide keeps making threats. The most intriguing refers to something Petofi might do to her: “You’ve heard of his powers. Hasn’t anyone in your tribe ever told you about the mysterious shadow he can cast? The shadow that isn’t your own that follows you?” Writer Sam Hall was probably familiar with a novel called Phantastes by George MacDonald, a bestseller of the nineteenth century that was influential among English fantasy writers of the first half of the twentieth century. It tells of a character named Anodos, who is tormented by a malicious shadow that moves by itself and won’t leave him alone. So perhaps Hall is planning to mine MacDonald’s works for an upcoming story.

Meanwhile, in the great house on the estate, Charity Trask has a dream. She sees Jamison/ Petofi with a portrait of rakish libertine Quentin Collins. The portrait is identical to the one she saw turn into a picture of a werewolf the night before, and she asks Jamison/ Petofi if he saw the same thing. He laughs, then tells her Quentin is a lost soul.

Quentin shows up. Charity’s father, the evil Gregory Trask, has directed her to marry Quentin, and she has set out to comply with this command. Quentin has never shown the slightest interest in her in their time awake together, and he isn’t much friendlier in this dream. He asks her to do something to lighten his mood. “Can’t you be happy? Can’t you be gay? Don’t you want to make me happy?” We’ve never seen her happy; as Gregory’s daughter, it’s hard to see how she could be. She has probably never tried to be gay, either, but it would have to be better than marrying Quentin. She does try to make him happy by imitating Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye, whom she never met or saw or heard, but whose spirit has been possessing her off and on for several days now. She sings Pansy’s theme song and does the highly suggestive dance that goes with it, only to find that Quentin has vanished.

Charity turns and finds Quentin embracing and kissing another girl. They are laughing. Quentin tells Charity that, as she can see, she has succeeded in cheering him up, and therefore she should run along. He and the girl then disappear and Magda enters. Magda tells Charity that she should forget Quentin, because he has a terrible secret. She leaves, and Quentin and the other woman reappear, still laughing at Charity.

Charity decides to ask Magda to explain the dream. Before she reaches the Old House, she finds Quentin and the girl from the dream lying on the ground in the woods. Quentin’s clothing is torn and he is unconscious, but he does not appear to be injured. The girl’s face is covered with what in black and white look like slash marks, but in color are obviously purple makeup. She opens her eyes and gasps Quentin’s name. Whether she was calling for Quentin because he was with her when they were attacked or crying out because he is the one who attacked her would not be clear to first time viewers, though returning viewers know that Quentin is a werewolf and will assume he was the attacker.

Episode 807: An award-winning performance, wouldn’t you say?

From #1 to #274, each episode of Dark Shadows began with a voiceover narration by Alexandra Moltke Isles, usually in character as well-meaning governess Vicki. This identified Vicki with our point of view and suggested that she would sooner or later learn everything we knew.

Jonathan Frid joined the cast as vampire Barnabas Collins in #211, and quickly became the show’s great breakout star. If the upright Vicki found out what we knew about Barnabas, one of them would have to be destroyed. Vicki was the favorite of longtime viewers and Barnabas was attracting new ones, so that was out of the question. Therefore, other members of the cast started taking turns reading the voiceovers, and doing so not as their characters, but in the role of External Narrator.

Today marks the first time Frid himself reads the narration. His training first in Canada, then at Britain’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and later at Yale School of Drama prepared Frid well in the art of dramatic reading, and in later years he would concentrate on that aspect of his craft. Several of his colleagues are his equals in these voiceovers- I would particularly mention Kathryn Leigh Scott, whose conception of The Narrator is always arresting, and Thayer David, who could consistently achieve the most difficult of all effects in voice acting, a perfectly simple reading. So I can’t say I wish Frid had done all of them, but he is always good, and today’s performance is among his most gorgeous.

The action opens on a set known to longtime viewers as the Evans cottage, where from 1966 to 1968 artist Sam Evans and his daughter Maggie served as Dark Shadows‘ principal representatives of the working class of the village of Collinsport. In those days, it was on this set that we saw how the misdeeds of the ancient and esteemed Collins family had consequences that spilled out of the estate of Collinwood and warped the lives of people trying to make a more or less honest living nearby.

Now the dramatic date is 1897, and Sam hasn’t been born yet. But the cottage is already an artist’s studio. It is temporarily occupied by the nationally famous Charles Delaware Tate, who is painting a portrait of rakish libertine Quentin Collins at the behest of evil sorcerer Count Petofi. Charity Trask, a resident of the great house of Collinwood, is visiting Tate in the cottage when she sees the face in the portrait change from that of Quentin. It takes on a great deal of fur and long fangs, and reminds Charity of a wolf.

By the time Tate looks at the painting again, it has resumed its normal appearance. He tells Charity that the transformation must have been in her imagination. She is willing to consider the possibility, but we know better. Quentin is a werewolf, a condition Petofi knows how to cure. Portraits on Dark Shadows have had supernatural qualities at least since #70, including portraits we saw Sam execute on this set in 1966, 1967, and 1968, and the show has borrowed from The Picture of Dorian Gray before. Moreover, Tate’s reaction to Charity is one of barely controlled panic. Nancy Barrett has to ramp up Charity’s own emotional distress to the limit to make it plausible she would not notice Tate’s extreme agitation. Perhaps if Tate were played by a better actor than the ever-disappointing Roger Davis, his response might have been ambiguous enough that Miss Barrett could keep the tone a bit lower, but his unequivocal display of alarm leaves her nowhere to go but over the top.

Mr Davis was under no obligation to play the scene transparently, since Tate later goes to Petofi’s henchman Aristide and lays out in so many words his precise relationship to Petofi’s operations and his knowledge of them. Tate’s career is his reward for selling his soul to Petofi, and he has already experienced great sorrow as a result of that bargain. Tate knows that the portrait changed to reflect the full Moon’s influence on Quentin and that Petofi is currently in possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins. Aristide tells us that Petofi’s own body is in suspended animation while he acts through Jamison. He also says that it was in 1797 that Petofi’s right hand was cut off, and that if he does not reclaim the hand in a few weeks, by the date of the one hundredth anniversary of the amputation, he will die and so will Tate.

Jamison/ Petofi is in the prison cell in the basement of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Barnabas has traveled back in time from the 1960s with some vaguely good intentions and is hanging around 1897 causing one disaster after another. Now, he is doing battle with Petofi and has locked him, in the form of Jamison, in the cell. Barnabas’ reluctant sidekick, broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, guards Jamison/ Petofi during the day. Early in the episode, Jamison/ Petofi calls Magda and pleads with her to release him. He tells her that he is “just a little boy” and that she is a “rather heartless creature.” She says she wishes he were a little boy again, but that she isn’t stupid and he won’t fool her. Indeed, the phrase “rather heartless creature” and Jamison/ Petofi’s manner in delivering it sound so much like Thayer David as Petofi that they hardly count as an attempt to deceive Magda.

Later, Jamison/ Petofi casts a spell to summon Aristide, then calls to Magda again. When Magda arrives, Jamison/ Petofi gives himself a better script than the one from which he had acted in his previous scene with her. He pretends not to remember how he got into the cell and to be shocked that Magda knows he is there. Perhaps the utter transparency of his earlier pleadings was an attempt to get Magda to underestimate his abilities as a trickster.

In #803, we saw that when Petofi took possession of him Jamison’s right hand disappeared from his wrist, matching Petofi’s own mutilated condition. When Jamison/ Petofi feigns the amnesia that might come upon recovery from possession, we might therefore expect Magda to demand that he remove his gloves to prove that he is himself again. But he plays the part of Jamison so convincingly that we are not really surprised he does fool Magda. She goes into the cell, embraces Jamison/ Petofi, and he kisses her on the cheek. It is this kiss that spreads his magical power, and she realizes too late that she has been had.

Aristide arrives a moment later, and Jamison/ Petofi calls his portrayal of an innocent boy “an award-winning performance.” Indeed, if there had been daytime Emmys in 1969, David Henesy might have won one for his portrayal of Thayer David playing Petofi playing Jamison.

Aristide wants to kill Magda; Jamison/ Petofi forbids this. Under his power, she announces that she is responsible for all the evil that has happened in 1897. She was responsible for releasing Barnabas and therefore for all the murders and other harm he has done; she made Quentin a werewolf, and is to blame for his killings in his lupine form and for the curse his descendants will inherit; she stole Petofi’s severed hand and is at fault for the deaths of Rroma maiden Julianka and of her own husband Sandor that resulted from the hand’s presence. She even takes the blame for Quentin’s murder of her sister Jenny, the act for which the werewolf curse was meant as vengeance. Magda says she must be punished. Jamison/ Petofi tells her that he is not interested in punishing her. He has another use in mind for Magda She will lead him and Aristide to Barnabas’ coffin today, and they will destroy him.

Longtime viewers will perk up twice when Aristide says that Petofi lost his hand in 1797 and that he has exactly one hundred years to recover it. From December 1966 to March 1967, Dark Shadows’ first supernatural menace was undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, who at intervals of exactly one hundred years incinerated herself and a young son of hers, who was always named David, in an unholy ceremony that renewed her existence, but not that of the Davids. Since the usual laws of nature don’t apply, the show needs some other causal mechanism to create suspense, and anniversaries will do as well as anything else. Another iteration of Laura was on earlier in the 1897 segment. It was fun to see her again, but they could shoehorn her into that year only by retconning away the one hundred year pattern in her immolations. It’s reassuring in a way to see that Petofi is bringing centenaries back.

The date 1797 is also significant. It was in 1796 that Barnabas died and became a vampire. We flashed back to that period for the show’s first costume drama segment in November 1967 to March 1968, and Barnabas went back to 1796 for a week in January 1969. So we may go back again some day, and if Petofi was alive and in his prime in 1797, we might run into him there.

Barnabas and Petofi are not the only characters from the 1790s who might be on the minds of attentive longtime viewers. Barnabas’ little sister Sarah died in 1796, and as a ghost was an extremely important part of the show from June to November 1967. We’ve been getting reminders of Sarah for the last several days. In #792 wicked witch Angelique produced a toy soldier of Barnabas’ that Sarah gave to strange and troubled boy David in #331. In #805, Charity found Sarah’s recorder, a prop that often served as Sarah’s calling card in 1967, and talked about learning to play it. And today, we see a portrait standing on the floor of the Evans cottage, a set which Sarah visited in #260, depicting a girl wearing a bonnet very much like the one Sarah wore as a ghost in 1967 and a pink dress just like the one she wore when we saw her as a living being in the flashback to the 1790s.

I wonder if, when they were making up the flimsies for this part of the show, they had thought of reintroducing Sarah. That would have required a recasting of the part- Sharon Smyth was noticeably older when we saw Sarah die in January 1968 than she was when Sarah was a ghost in June 1967, and by now we would wonder what she has been eating in the afterlife that has made her get so much taller. Besides, Miss Smyth* had stopped acting by this point.

The process of planning the stories was in two stages, a rough sketching of themes six months in advance, and a capsule of each episode written thirteen weeks ahead of time. There was a lot of flexibility when it came to putting those plans into effect. Some stories that were supposed to end within thirteen weeks were extended over years, while others that were expected to be a big deal petered out before they got going. In an interview preserved by Danny Horn at his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day, writer Violet Welles said that many of the moments on the show that made the least sense were those written when the plans hadn’t worked out: “toward the end of the cycle, you’d have characters who were really not a lot of interest who had to play scenes with other characters who really didn’t have a lot of interest, dealing with things that basically didn’t concern them. Those were hard to write.”

This episode was taped on 25 July 1969; thirteen weeks before that was 21 May. Six months before was 25 January. By 25 January, Denise Nickerson had been on the show for two months as Amy Jennings. Nickerson was actually born on 1 April 1957, but they several times say that Amy is nine years old. When the show goes to 1897, Nickerson plays Nora Collins, who is also nine. On 19 May, Nickerson taped #761, the last episode she would appear in until #782. She is currently in the middle of a second long absence from 1897, unseen between #783 and #812. Her characters were so important in the months leading up to the 1897 segment and she played them so well that we wonder what they were thinking leaving her in the background so long.

Maybe they were thinking of bringing her back as Sarah. Nickerson didn’t look all that much like Sharon Smyth, and was a far more accomplished young actress than was Miss Smyth, but she did have brown hair, and the show prioritized hair color above all else in recasting parts. For example, two actresses followed Mrs Isles in the role of Vicki, neither of whom had much in common with her either in acting style or in looks, but who both had black hair. So perhaps there was a time when they intended to travel between 1897 and the 1790s and to meet Sarah, played by Denise Nickerson. If Nickerson were still alive, perhaps someone would ask her if she posed for the portrait that is standing on the floor of the Evans cottage today.

*She’s been using her married name for decades now, but when talking about her as a child it’s pretty weird to refer to her as “Mrs Lentz.” Since I use surnames for people associated with the making of the show and attach courtesy titles to surnames of living people, I have to call her “Miss Smyth.”

Episode 806: You’re not thinking of the foolish things

Charity Trask walks into the drawing room of the great house on the estate of Collinwood and finds a paper on the desk. It is a full confession to the murder of her mother, the late Minerva Trask, signed by her father Gregory and by Collins family attorney Evan Hanley. It also bears a red seal.

Trask enters and Charity tells him what she has read. He rants and raves for a while, claiming that she must be under the Devil’s power if she believes the confession. He forces her onto her knees and orders her to pray, then tries to destroy the paper.

Charity prays. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Later, Gregory Trask is alone in the drawing room. It goes dark, a violent storm suddenly breaks out, the windows blow open, and the flames surge much higher in the fireplace than we have ever seen them. Trask cries out for Minerva to leave him alone. When he calls himself an innocent man, the storm rages more fiercely than ever.

The storm ends as quickly as it began, and a man appears in the doorway. He asks who Trask was talking to, and Trask denies that he was talking to anyone. Trask mentions the storm, and the man says there hasn’t been a bit of wind all day. Trask turns and sees that the window is closed and there is no sign of a storm outside.

The man identifies himself as Charles Delaware Tate. Trask recognizes the name as that of a nationally famous painter. Tate explains that the late Edith Collins commissioned him to paint a portrait of her grandson, Quentin Collins, but that Quentin has refused to sit for him. He asks Trask for a photograph of Quentin. Trask remembers that there is such a photograph in a drawer in the desk. When he opens the drawer, the confession falls out, undestroyed.

Returning viewers know that Tate is associated with a 150 year old sorcerer known as Count Petofi. We also know that Petofi is currently residing in the body of twelve year old Jamison Collins and is casting spells to expose the secrets of various people connected with Collinwood. Jamison’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins the vampire is doing battle with Petofi, and has locked Jamison/ Petofi in the prison cell in the basement of the Old House on the estate. That has done little to curb his power; from the cell, he was able to project himself into a dream of Evan’s, cast a spell on him, and compel him to draw up the paper Trask keeps trying to destroy. Jamison/ Petofi does seem anxious to get out of the cell, however. He offers to cure Quentin of lycanthropy if he lets him out. When broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi talks Quentin out of accepting the offer, Jamison/ Petofi growls a threat at her.

We do not know why Petofi wants Tate to paint a portrait of Quentin, but we get a clue at the end of the episode. Tate has rented a house which longtime viewers will recognize as the Evans cottage. For the first two years of the show, the Evans cottage was a frequent set. It was home to artist Sam Evans and his daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. In December 1966 and January 1967, an unseen force compelled Sam to paint portraits of undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Those portraits had supernatural powers. They were not alone. Portraits have been a prominent part of the show’s set decoration from the very beginning, and have been a gateway between the world of the living and the world of the dead since #70. We may well assume, then, that Tate’s portrait of Quentin will also have uncanny powers.

Charity is visiting Tate in the cottage and looking at the portrait. He has only been working for a day or two, and he says it will take him about two weeks to finish. Yet the figure is almost finished now. As Charity studies it, Quentin’s face turns into that of the werewolf. In May and June of 1968, they did a story partly based on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and in #701, the very first episode in which he could speak, Quentin compared pictures and people, saying that one changes while the other stays the same. So we are prepared to see Quentin’s curse transferred from his body to his portrait.

Episode 805: The shocking condition of your face

The 150 year old evil sorcerer Count Petofi has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins. Jamison/ Petofi has been casting spells to make the various residents of the estate of Collinwood reveal their true selves. Jamison’s distant cousin, Barnabas the vampire, has locked Jamison/ Petofi in the prison cell in the basement of the Old House on the estate. When Barnabas says that he will let Jamison out once Petofi has vacated his body, Jamison/ Petofi replies “If that is what you intend to do, Mr Collins, I’m afraid that you are stupid and incompetent.” There is no need to cast a spell on Barnabas- Maker of Stupid and Incompetent Plans is his true self, and we love him for it.

The great house on the estate is currently under the legal authority of the evil Rev’d Gregory Trask, husband of Judith Collins, who is a patient in a mental hospital. Jamison/ Petofi’s spell has caused Trask’s daughter Charity to be intermittently possessed by the spirit of Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye. Trask is horror-stricken by the makeup, clothes, and hairstyle Charity wears when Pansy is in charge of her, and her East London accent, insouciant attitude towards him, and tendency to sing and dance escalate this horror further. Nancy Barrett and Jerry Lacy are both talented comic actors, and their scenes as Charity/ Pansy and Trask are hilarious.

Trask is appalled to see Charity/ Pansy. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Collins family lawyer Evan Hanley is at home. Barnabas appears in Evan’s drawing room and asks for some information which Evan denies having. Evan tells Barnabas he has renounced his former interest in black magic and Satanism. Barnabas is skeptical, and Evan replies that his latest forays resulted in a gruesome disfigurement of his face. This disfigurement was later relieved, how we (frustratingly) do not know. But he wants nothing more to do with the occult, since he values the ability to look at himself in the mirror. Barnabas reminds Evan that he cannot see himself in a mirror, implying that he will use his vampire powers against him if he does not cooperate.

Trask comes to Evan’s house. He asks him to draw up papers that will complete his plan to seize control of all the Collins family’s assets. He mentions in passing that Jamison thinks he is Petofi. Evan knows enough about Petofi to be terrified. He tells Trask that neither of them has a chance in a battle with Petofi, and refuses to draw up the papers. Trask responds contemptuously.

Alone in the cell, Jamison/ Petofi decides to have some fun with Evan. We see Evan dozing in his armchair. He has a dream in which Jamison appears. Jamison kisses him; it is by his kisses that Petofi spreads the “true self” spell. Later, Evan goes to the great house at Collinwood and presents Trask with a paper to sign. Trask signs it eagerly, assuming it is the document he asked Evan to bring him. Instead, Evan has prepared a full confession to the murder of Trask’s first wife Minerva. The two of them plotted this murder together, and Trask is horrified when he sees his signature on it. He throws the paper in the fire; after he leaves the room, it rematerializes on the desk, complete with signatures.

During Trask’s confrontation with Charity/ Pansy Faye, the picture suddenly changes from color to sepia tone. After about a half a minute, it changes back. Evidently there was a fault in the videotape master at this point, and an excerpt from the kinescope was used to patch it. The color comes back right after Trask slaps Charity/ Pansy, causing Pansy to release Charity for a bit. It creates the eerie feeling that Trask somehow fixed our TV set by slapping her.

Dark Shadows continually comments on itself as it goes along. In the early days, all the episodes were scripted by Art Wallace. Wallace’s favorite method of composition was a sort of diptych, in which two sets of characters faced similar situations and responded to them differently, highlighting the contrast between their personalities. Petofi’s “true self” spell is of course another way of creating similar contrasts between characters played by the same actor.

As the show came to focus on time travel stories, they could cast actors as characters who represent alternative versions of parts they played in other periods, again putting characters played by the same actors in contrast with one another. And as Wallace would juxtapose similar situations within a single episode, the multiple times periods allowed them to take themes that had been developed in one way in a story set in one year and develop them differently in a story set in another. So Jamison/ Petofi’s contagious curse is a reworking of the “Dream Curse,” which dragged on from April to July 1968. The Dream Curse involved a lot of repetition and very little variety of tone. Jamison/ Petofi’s spells all get right to the point, and are sometimes scary, sometimes bizarre, and often quite funny. So the second time is definitely the charm here.

At one point Charity holds a recorder and tells her father she wants to learn how to play it. The first time we saw this prop was in #260. That episode was set in 1967, and Barnabas was holding Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, prisoner in the cell where Jamison/ Petofi is today. The ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah befriended Maggie, and materialized in the cell playing “London Bridge” on that recorder. Over the next several months, the recorder came to be a symbol of Sarah, one that she occasionally left behind as a sign that she had been in a place. Longtime fans will likely remember that, and see it as an indication that what is happening to Charity is going to have permanent consequences, as Sarah’s haunting had permanent consequences.

Episode 804: He is a gem, isn’t he

The evil Count Petofi, a 150 year old sorcerer, has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins and is wreaking havoc in the great house of Collinwood. Due to Petofi’s spells, Jamison’s father Edward thinks he is a valet recently separated from the service of the Earl of Hampshire. Edward’s brother Quentin tries to explain to him what is actually going on, but Edward merely concludes that he is Quentin’s valet now. When Quentin follows the Collinses’ long-established protocol for dealing with mentally ill family members and locks Edward in the tower room, Edward bangs on the door and protests that he won’t be able to do his job if he is locked up. “And I will do it!” he vows.

Charity Trask, disastrously uptight step-daughter of Quentin and Edward’s sister Judith, falls under Petofi’s influence and is possessed by the spirit of Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye. Pansy was on the show briefly in June. The childlike Carl Collins, brother to Judith, Edward, and Quentin, was engaged to marry Pansy before she was killed by vampire Dirk Wilkins. Pansy and Charity never met; when Carl asked Charity if she had seen Pansy, the scene was staged to make it seem absurd that the two women could exist in the same universe. Now, they exist in the same body.

Ta Ra Boom De Ayyyy… Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

If Petofi has caused startling changes in Jamison, Edward, and Charity, the change in Quentin is perhaps the most jarring of all. He has been a ghost, a homicidal maniac, a Satanist, a zombie, and a werewolf, but always and everywhere a source of total chaos, who destroys all recognized order and is perfectly at home in the midst of sheer madness. Today, Quentin keeps making earnest attempts to restore everyone to their right minds and reestablish the proper and respectable relations within the household.

First time viewers will immediately catch on that the preteen David Henesy is not the actor who would usually play a 150 year old Hungarian nobleman, and when Nancy Barrett suddenly takes on an East London accent and enters wearing a garish costume and doing a dance with lot of hip shaking and pelvic thrusts, they will know that Charity is turning into someone else. The dialogue in the scenes involving Edward explains what is happening to him. They may not know that Quentin is not supposed to be the defender of the status quo. That information is supplied in two scenes. Charity/ Pansy receives a psychic message from the world beyond telling her that Quentin was involved in the murder of Carl, and she announces this information. Also, Quentin calls for help, and the helper who materializes is his distant cousin, Barnabas Collins the vampire.

At the end of the episode, Barnabas lays hold of Jamison/ Petofi and drags him into the secret passage leading from the drawing room to the west wing. It is usually bad news when a vampire abducts a child and shoves him into a dark space, but David Henesy brings such joy to the role of Jamison/ Petofi that we can hardly doubt that what comes next will be equally fun to watch.

Meanwhile, a painter named Charles Delaware Tate has presented himself. Tate’s first appearance will cause a sinking sensation in longtime viewers; he is played by Roger Davis, a terrible actor who delivers much of his dialogue by shouting while clenching the sphincter muscles in his buttocks, and who routinely assaults the women and children in the cast while on camera. We may have hoped we had seen the last of Mr Davis when his most recent character, Dirk, was destroyed shortly after murdering Pansy. But evidently Pansy’s return in the form of another actress has come at the price of Mr Davis’ return in the guise of another character.

For much of 1968, Mr Davis played a man known variously as Peter Bradford and Jeff Clark. His approach to characterization consisted of shouting “My name is Jeff Clark!” When this technique was played out, he took to shouting “My name is Peter Bradford!” He doesn’t shout today, mercifully. But he does say the name “Charles Delaware Tate” quite a few times.

Today’s story about Tate is potentially interesting. Jamison/ Petofi finds him when he answers the front door. Tate asks to see Jamison Collins; Jamison/ Petofi confirms that despite his appearance, he is indeed the person Tate has come to see. Tate accepts this with a blandness that suggests that he knows he is dealing with a magical personage.

Jamison/ Petofi gives Tate a photograph of Quentin and says that he wants a portrait of him. When Quentin comes to the drawing room and finds Tate sketching, he asks who he is. Again, Quentin adopts a stern tone which suits someone defending the sanctity of private property against an unknown intruder. Tate introduces himself and shows him a handwritten letter which Quentin instantly accepts as the product of his grandmother Edith. He tells Tate that Edith has been dead for some time and that he is not interested in a portrait of himself. Tate says that he has already accepted the commission and the money that Edith sent with it, and so he will rent lodgings in the village of Collinsport and finish the job regardless. Quentin does what viewers have hoped everyone who shared a scene with one of Mr Davis’ characters would do, and throws him out.

The forged letter is a fascinating touch for returning viewers. Petofi made himself welcome as a guest at Collinwood by showing Edward forged papers creating the impression that he shared Edward’s friendship with the Earl of Hampshire. That he has also created papers that Quentin immediately accepts as coming from Edith, who died long before Petofi had any reason to come to Collinwood, suggests that his powers of forgery are very extensive indeed.

Tate not only seems to know that Petofi has magical powers; he also shows an acquaintance with Petofi’s henchman Aristide.* When Tate mentions Aristide, he calls him “Aristeedy,” a sort of pet name with a diminutive suffix. This is probably just a blooper on the part of Mr Davis, but since Petofi is continually telling Aristide how lovely he is and how he is more attractive when he doesn’t speak, it does remind us of the gay subtext that runs through their scenes together. We might suspect that Petofi and Aristide’s sexuality is in one way or another one of the reasons they are connected to Tate.

The script opens all of these questions about Tate. Had he been played by an actor who was capable of depicting depth and highlighting ambiguity, it could have been a lot of fun to speculate about just what their answers might be. In #137, future movie star Frederic Forrest was a featured extra on the dance floor at The Blue Whale tavern; it’s easy to suppose he would have taken a speaking part. So when the show puts Mr Davis in front of us, I like to make the time a little more tolerable by imagining what Forrest might have brought to the role of Tate.

*His name is spelled “Aristede” in the closing credits, but it was “Aristide” in the original scripts.

Episode 803: As soon as you’re finished with the mumbo-jumbo

The spirit of evil sorcerer Count Petofi has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins, much to everyone’s consternation. David Henesy spends most of the episode mimicking Thayer David’s Petofi, with hilarious results.

Jamison/ Petofi sipping a glass of “mineral water… for the digestion.” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We see Jamison’s favorite uncle, Quentin the Satanist, trying to cast a spell to break Petofi’s possession of Jamison. As he always does when he is calling on the dark powers of the unseen realms, Quentin gets very fervent. We pan to Jamison/ Petofi, standing next to Quentin in a state of utter boredom, asking if Quentin will bring him a glass of mineral water once he’s “finished with all the mumbo-jumbo.”

Twice, Jamison/ Petofi pretends he is not possessed, but is his usual preteen self. He does this in order to trick people into letting him kiss them, which is how Petofi’s power spreads to them. This gives Mr Henesy the challenge of showing how Thayer David would play Petofi playing Jamison. That’s the sort of thing an actor needs a director’s help to pull off. Unfortunately, the woeful Henry Kaplan was at the helm today, so we discover that Petofi’s imitation of Jamison sounds exactly like the original, who is in turn uncannily like Jamison’s grandson David Collins and his great-great-grandfather Daniel Collins, who are also played by Mr Henesy.

Those whom Jamison/ Petofi kisses reveal their “true selves.” So maidservant Beth reveals that she was under the power of Jamison’s distant cousin, vampire Barnabas Collins. When Jamison’s father Edward passes this word along to Quentin, Quentin tells him is going to confront Barnabas. Edward has been hunting Barnabas, and by saying this Quentin implies that he knows where Barnabas is and that he has been helping to hide him. For some reason, Edward only smiles in response to this revelation.

Petofi wears a prosthesis in place of his right hand; Edward finds that Jamison’s right hand has also been replaced with a prosthesis. After this horrifying discovery, Jamison/ Petofi kisses Edward. Quentin returns shortly after, and finds that Edward does not recognize him or know the name of the house. Edward identifies himself as a newcomer to the area, and says that he would be glad of any work the family might hire him to do. Evidently his “true self” is a guy who needs a job. Since he has not inherited any assets or accumulated enough to live on, I don’t suppose we can disagree with whatever force it was that declared this to be Edward’s reality.