What Acilius Thinks About Dark Shadows
Episode 1084: A living man no bigger than a doll
Julia Hoffman and her friend Barnabas Collins recently returned to 1970 after a cosmic journey that ended with two weeks in 1995. In that far-off future year, they found the great house of Collinwood in ruins and everyone who had lived there either dead, missing, or hopelessly insane. This was the result of a mysterious…
Episode 1083: The grifters
Elizabeth Collins Stoddard called on astrologer Sebastian Shaw in #1073 and commissioned him to do her horoscope for the rest of the year. Contrary to the dire warnings Liz had received from her distant cousin Barnabas Collins and her permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, Sebastian’s horoscope predicted that nothing of the slightest interest would happen at…
Episode 1082: I haven’t been wrong very often when it comes to judgment of people
Barnabas Collins and Julia Hoffman have returned to 1970 from a cosmic journey that took them first to a parallel universe, then to the future year 1995. In the parallel universe, they met a comatose woman named Roxanne Drew. Barnabas was immediately smitten with Roxanne, and was still attracted to her even after she gained…
Episode 1081: Tell me what I said
This script badly needed another trip through the typewriter before it fell into the hands of the cast and production staff. We start in a mysterious room that intermittently materializes in a disused corner of the great house of Collinwood. It is stocked with toys appropriate for small children, and is known to teenagers David…
Episode 1080: It’s going to be uneventful
Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard is in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood, studying a horoscope that astrologer Sebastian Shaw prepared for her. Liz’ daughter Carolyn asks what the horoscope says will happen today. Liz responds that it predicts the day will pass without incident. She adds that the horoscope has made the…
Episode 1079: Just join hands with us and you’ll know everything
The ghost of Daphne Harridge wants to kill Quentin Collins, for no reason the show divulges to us; then she doesn’t, again for no reason we can see. Daphne insists teenager David Collins and Hallie Stokes not look at her, then insists they do look at her. David refuses to join hands with Hallie and…
Episode 1078: The only answer
Quentin Collins and David Collins are under the influence of the unspeaking ghost of Daphne Harridge. Quentin and David each fret about their inability to resist Daphne, to understand their own actions, or to tell each other or anyone else what is going on. Since Daphne is herself a total enigma at this point, the…
Episode 1077: It’s wrong to love the dead and go on looking for them
The ghost of Daphne Harridge, who died in 1841, gives a bunch of lilacs to Quentin Collins, who immediately falls in love with her. Quentin himself died a couple of times before gaining eternal youth in 1897, so he and Daphne have more in common than you might think. Carolyn Stoddard Hawkes is half convinced…
Episode 1076: The addition of the letter O
Grouchy New England teen David Collins and his live-in girlfriend Hallie Stokes go to a playroom for small children that intermittently manifests itself in a space otherwise occupied by a linen closet in the west wing of the great house of Collinwood. Hallie is possessed by the spirit of a girl named Carrie, who died…
Episode 1075: A siege of unrelieved tranquility
We come to the end of the first week of The Re-Haunting of Collinwood, a rehash of a story that they got all the good out of when they did it the first time in December 1968 to March 1969. The story isn’t going anywhere we haven’t been before, but there is some good stuff…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Dark Shadows Commentary 