What Acilius Thinks About Dark Shadows
Episode 1014: Violence in love
Wicked witch Angelique has returned from the dead, murdered her twin sister Alexis, and assumed Alexis’ identity. Angelique’s widower Quentin had already welcomed Alexis as a more or less permanent guest at the great house of Collinwood. Quentin’s new wife, the former Maggie Evans, has left him. Angelique wants Quentin back, but has decided that…
Episode 1013: Your reflection is getting smaller
Since late March, Dark Shadows has been set in a universe parallel to the one we saw in the preceding 196 weeks. One of the most important characters in that original continuity was Angelique, a wicked witch who has been wreaking havoc on the estate of Collinwood at irregular intervals over the last 175 years.…
The Back Room at the Blue Whale
Katherine Gonzalez very graciously hosted me on her fine podcast, The Back Room at the Blue Whale. It was a lot of fun! I’m on the first hour.
Episode 1012: Does he look to you like a man under a curse?
Vampire Barnabas Collins has escaped from the continuity in which Dark Shadows took place until late March 1970 and found himself in an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” This universe is largely populated by people who remind Barnabas of their counterparts in his own world, but their personalities and relationships…
Episode 1011: In death he dictates
Mad scientist Cyrus Longworth has developed a potion that changes his appearance so drastically that even those closest to him cannot recognize him when he is under its influence. In this disguise, he calls himself “John Yaeger” and indulges his sadistic impulses. He has just committed his first murder, killing a man who had learned…
Episode 1010: At the scene of the murder
Mad scientist Cyrus Longworth has devised a potion that alters his appearance so that even the people who know him best, including his fiancée Sabrina Stuart and his attorney Larry Chase, cannot recognize him. When he is thus disguised he calls himself “John Yaeger” and indulges his sadistic impulses. One of his favorite hobbies is…
Episode 1009: Remember the dead
The Graves of All Those Who Once Lived Here The name “Barnabas Collins” has been coming up in the oddest circumstances around the estate of Collinwood. The only person of that name known to drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins, the master of the great house, was an ancestor of his who lived a long dull life…
Episode 1008: One obvious person
From the time he joined the cast of characters in April 1967, vampire Barnabas Collins has been the most famous thing about Dark Shadows. We haven’t seen him in over a month. He passed through a cosmic rift in #980, leaving his native universe behind and arriving in another “time-band” populated largely by counterparts of…
Episode 1007: Accumulating guilts
Chemist Horace Gladstone has been selling a strange and powerful synthesis of his own invention to Cyrus Longworth, an independent medical researcher. Cyrus refuses to tell Gladstone what he is using the synthesis for. Gladstone has now figured it out for himself. Cyrus has concocted a potion which he drinks to change his appearance, disguising…
Episode 1006: The meaning of adventure
The show has been spending a lot of time lately trying to interest us in the ghost of Dameon Edwards, a man who doesn’t seem to have had much going for him even when he was alive. They went through the motions of a murder mystery concerning Dameon’s death. The episode that introduced him also…
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