What Acilius Thinks About Dark Shadows
Episode 1049: Evening brings another secret
In the first months of Dark Shadows, characters several times shared meals in the kitchen in the great house on the estate of Collinwood. In that intimate setting, they would often exchange information that made it possible for them to advance the story. As time went on, the show developed more ways to get knowledge…
Episode 1048: There are a lot of closets, baby!
The police are looking into the murder of Angelique Stokes Collins. Angelique has risen from the grave and is available to assist with the investigation, though Inspector Hamilton, like most of the other people in the village of Collinsport and on the estate of Collinwood, thinks she is her identical twin sister Alexis. Hamilton is…
Episode 1047: Extraordinary enemies
Evil wizard Tim Stokes combined medicine with black magic to connect his late daughter Angelique with a woman named Roxanne. The connection drains most of the “life force” from Roxanne into Angelique. This rendered Roxanne comatose and allowed Angelique to move among the living so long as Roxanne neither dies nor gets even a tiny…
Episode 1046: Such a fearful unreality
Writer Gordon Russell takes bits of old episodes and mixes them as if he were rotating a kaleidoscope. There is a plot involved also, but the screen iconography is the main thing. The show has been operating on the principle of the kaleidoscope for some time. They’ve traveled back in time repeatedly. Now they have…
Episode 1045: Have you a medical degree?
We open in the room atop the tower of the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Wicked witch Angelique, enemy of the mysterious Barnabas Collins, confronts Will Loomis, Barnabas’ henchman. She demands Will tell her Barnabas’ secret. Returning viewers know that Barnabas is a vampire, and Will is his blood thrall. When Will tells…
Episode 1044: A girl I’d like to meet
The whole idea of the supernatural is that what appears to be weak is able to overcome what appears to be strong. So, as far as we can tell the dead are infinitely weaker than the living, yet it is two dead characters, vampire Barnabas Collins and wicked witch Angelique Stokes Collins, who dominate all…
Episode 1043: The temperament to kill
In 1967, vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman settled in on the estate of Collinwood, Barnabas as the master of the Old House on the grounds and Julia as a permanent guest in the great house. Now they have both crossed over to an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel…
Episode 1042: Used as a voodoo doll, to cast spells
Vampire Barnabas Collins has crossed over from the universe where Dark Shadows took place for its first 196 weeks and established himself as a character on another soap opera with the same title, made by the same people and broadcast in the same time slot. His best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, has joined him…
Episode 1041: Called away on business
Foul-tempered sourpuss Quentin Collins has been charged with murder. He has a visitor in jail. He believes her to be Alexis Stokes, identical twin sister of his late wife Angelique. In fact, she is Angelique herself, come back to life and bent on revenge. Angelique urges Quentin to escape from jail and set about proving…
Episode 1040: Probably wondering
From its first episode, one of the principal sets on Dark Shadows has been the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. So every violent death on the show has been pregnant with the possibility of a scene in which the characters gather on that set and a detective says that he supposes they…
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