Episode commentary – Page 27 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 706: What it was to be a Collins

Yesterday, we were in the great house on the estate of Collinwood when dying nonagenarian Edith Collins met mysterious newcomer Barnabas Collins. She told Barnabas that she recognized him. Edith had been entrusted with the Collins family’s darkest secret, which was about Barnabas. He is a vampire, entombed in the 1790s to be kept forever away from the living. Now it is 1897, and Edith sees that the family has failed. She must tell the secret to her eldest grandchild, Edward Collins. Edward comes into the room and Edith tries to tell him what has happened. She has difficulty speaking. Edward asks Barnabas to excuse them. He replies “Of course,” and leaves the room. He does stand at the door and listen to their conversation, apparently waiting to see if Edward will come out with a crucifix and a sharpened stake.

Today, we find that Edith was so shocked by the sight of Barnabas that she has lost her sense of her surroundings. Barnabas was kept in a chained coffin in an old family mausoleum, and Edith does manage to say the word “mausoleum” to Edward, but that’s as far as she gets with the secret. Thereafter, she weaves in and out of the moment, reliving several periods of her life, some as far back as the time of her wedding to Edward’s grandfather.

At the word “mausoleum,” Barnabas rushes back to the Old House on the estate, where he has been staying. He tells his unwilling servant, a woman named Magda Rákóczi, that she must fetch her husband Sandor and that she and Sandor must go to the mausoleum at once, take the coffin out of the secret chamber where it is hidden, leave no trace of any kind in the chamber, and carry the coffin to the house. Magda points out one of several facts that make it impossible to comply with these orders, which is that Sandor is in town where Barnabas sent him. Barnabas refuses to acknowledge this or any other insuperable difficulties, and goes back to the great house.

While Barnabas is sitting in the drawing room clenching his fists on the armchair where he is waiting to see what Edward will do when he learns that he is a vampire, a hidden panel opens and a man carries a pistol into the room. The man holds the pistol at Barnabas’ head and demands he tells him who he really is. The man identifies himself as Carl Collins, one of Edward’s brothers. Barnabas yields nothing. The man discharges the pistol, from which emerges a flag labeled “Fib.” He laughs. Barnabas is not amused. The audience may not share Carl’s sense of humor either, but the subsequent scene in which Carl claims to see that Barnabas has a kind face, predicts that the two of them will become close friends, and offers to let him borrow the pistol and play jokes with it himself, is hilarious. Jonathan Frid plays Barnabas’ icy reaction to Carl perfectly, and as Carl John Karlen does not betray the least glimmer of awareness of Barnabas’ affect.

Barnabas does not enjoy Carl’s greeting. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Carl goes to the Old House to call on Magda. The scene there begins with Magda showing her palm to Carl. He wants her to read the Tarot cards; she says the cards will not speak unless she has money in her hand. Like his siblings, Carl is convinced that the secret which Edith keeps and which she has vowed to disclose only to Edward is the key to control of the family fortune. Magda knows better, but she goes through the cards anyway. They tell her that the family’s fortune is even larger than anyone knows, that when Edith’s will is found it will come as a surprise to everyone, that the surprise will lead to murder, and that the person who inherits the money will not keep it. The Queen of Cups turns up in a position that indicates Edith is still in control, but the last card Magda draws leads her to gasp and stand. She reels about the room, and declares that Edith is dead. “The cards are silent.”

Back in the house, Edward lets Barnabas into Edith’s room. He closes his grandmother’s eyes, and tells Barnabas that she did not tell him the secret. He vows to learn the secret even “if it’s the last thing I do!” We cut to Barnabas, looking uncomfortable. No doubt he is thinking of how inconvenient it would be if Edward were to find out the secret and he had to see to it that it was indeed the last thing he ever did.

This is the sixth consecutive installment to which I have given the “Genuinely Good Episode” tag, a record so far. Like the preceding five, it is stuffed with wonderful things. The acting is all very very good. Isabella Hoopes does a marvelous job as the delirious Edith, as Edward Louis Edmonds gives a master class in how to play a stuffy man, and the pairings of Grayson Hall, John Karlen, and Jonathan Frid with each other all unfold brilliantly, full of laughs but never losing their dramatic tension. So many of the episodes fans most enjoy would be drab for people coming to the show for the first time that it is always a memorable occasion when we see one like this, that anyone should be able to recognize as an outstanding half hour of television. It’s true the visual side lets us down a little; even by the standards of 1960s daytime television, the color is murky and there are too many closeups. But Sam Hall’s script and the performances are so good that no fair-minded person will complain very much about those problems.

Fans will take a special interest in Edith’s ramblings. When it first aired, viewers had no way of knowing how much of what she says about the family’s history will be reflected in upcoming episodes. The writers themselves probably didn’t have a much clearer idea about that than we do. But watching the series through for the first time, our default assumption about each of her lines is that it will have some significance as we go, so if we are committed to watching the show we listen closely.

We’ve already learned that Edith is over 90, so the very latest she could have been born is 1807. More likely she was born a bit before that, sometime between 1801 and 1806. She says today that her father-in-law was Daniel Collins. From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was set in the late 1790s, and we saw Daniel. He was about 11 in 1795, so he would have been born in 1784 or thereabouts. So he could have been no more than 23 years old when Edith was born. Presumably his son Gabriel was the same age as his bride, though he might have been significantly younger. Edith does say that she always hated Daniel; perhaps she was a good deal older than Gabriel, and Daniel disapproved of her initially for that reason.

Edith tells us that Gabriel has been dead for 34 years, placing his death date in late 1862 or early 1863. She does not mention his cause of death or say anything about their son who was the father of Edward, Carl, and the others. It is firmly fixed that Edward and Carl’s brother Quentin was born in 1870, so Gabriel’s son must have survived him by several years.*

Edith says several times that the secret has been passed down from generation to generation and that she must tell it to Edward because he is the oldest. That seems to imply that Daniel told his oldest child, whom we presume to have been Gabriel, and that Gabriel told his oldest child, whom we presume to have been the unnamed father of Edith’s four grandchildren. He would then have told Edith before he died, either because Edward was not yet old enough to hear it, or because he was not available at the time.

But that implication is not at all secure. Edith says that Edward must be the keeper of the secret because he is the oldest- she doesn’t say what the connection is between being the oldest and keeping the secret. For all we know, she could have decided on her own to invent that tradition, starting with Edward and continuing with Edward’s oldest child. And when she says that it was passed down from generation to generation, she does not specify how many generations have been involved or which member of each generation did the passing. All we know is that someone of one generation learned it from someone else of a different generation, and that Edith believes it is the family’s responsibility to keep Barnabas from preying upon the living.

In a comment on Danny Horn’s post about episode 705 on Dark Shadows Every Day, someone calling himself “Mike” had a very interesting theory:

I think it’s reasonable to assume that sometime between 1897 and 1967 the secret was lost and not continually passed down. Perhaps in the original timeline Quentin was successful in killing Edith before Edward arrived, or maybe Edward died later in life before he was able to pass it on.

As far as Joshua passing the secret on, maybe he did, or maybe it was the elderly Ben Stokes who started the tradition?

Joshua was Barnabas’ father, and Ben Stokes was a much-put-upon indentured servant who was Barnabas’ devoted friend. They were the two people who knew that Barnabas was a vampire and that he was entombed in the secret chamber of the mausoleum. I replied to “Mike”:

I love that idea. Edith’s desire to tell the oldest son may lead us to assume that it has been handed down to the oldest son generation after generation, and it does lead the “Fab Four”** to assume that it brings with it some kind of power and access to riches. But their assumption is wrong, and ours may also be. Perhaps Joshua never told anyone. Perhaps the first person to tell the secret was Ben Stokes, and the person he told was Edith.

The scene between Barnabas and Magda brought another question to my mind. In #334, Barnabas was able to lock the panel in the mausoleum that leads to the secret room. Why doesn’t he just do that? It has also been made clear that as a vampire he is far stronger than are humans- if he wants to move the coffin from the mausoleum to the Old House, surely he could pick it up himself and do it more quickly and with less risk of detection than could Magda and Sandor. My wife, Mrs Acilius, agrees that we don’t know why Barnabas doesn’t lock the panel, but she says that it is perfectly clear why he can’t move the coffin- that is manual labor, and he is an aristocrat. His servants must do that.

*In a later episode, Quentin will mention that he knew Gabriel, throwing the 1862/3 date into question. But they never get around to any stories that depend on anything that happened in Gabriel’s later years. By the time we get to that one, only obsessive fans will remember his name. Eventually we meet two characters named Gabriel Collins, one in episodes that will air in 1970 and the other in the 1971 film Night of Dark Shadows, but a death date in the 1860s is not relevant to anything we learn about either of them.

**The “Fab Four” are Edith’s grandchildren, Edward, Carl, Quentin, and their sister Judith.

Episode 705: Mrs Collins no longer exists

Three of the residents of the great house of Collinwood in the year 1897 are spinster Judith Collins, her brother, libertine Quentin Collins, and their grandmother, nonagenarian Edith Collins. At the opening of today’s episode, Judith walks in on Quentin strangling Edith in her bed. She tells him to stop it and leave the room. He complies, with a sulk. Edith shakes off her annoyance with Quentin, and she and Judith have a conversation about various matters.

One of Dark Shadows’ signature relationships is that between Bossy Big Sister and Bratty Little Brother. However serious the misconduct Bratty Little Brother commits in his disobedience to Bossy Big Sister, in the end she will cover it up and protect him from its consequences. Nothing at all will happen to Quentin as a result of his attempt on his grandmother’s life; Judith will just continue disapproving of him, as she has always done. Later in the episode, Quentin will remark to his recently arrived and quite mysterious distant cousin Barnabas Collins that Judith “gets carried away by delusions of authority. The fact is, she has no authority whatsoever.” Judith overhears this and objects to it, but Quentin’s presence in the house suffices to prove that her manner is not an expression of authority, but simply childlike role-playing.

Quentin’s motive for his attack on dear old grand-mama was his demand that she tell him the family’s “secret.” Edith has declared that she will pass this secret on only to Edward, who is Judith and Quentin’s eldest sibling. Edward is away, and Edith is terribly afraid she will die before he returns. After Judith shoos Quentin out of Edith’s room, she herself tries to wheedle Edith into telling her the secret. Edith tells Judith she is better off not knowing, but Judith does not seem to be convinced. Quentin has said in so many words that his only desire is to take control of the family’s wealth, and Judith is focused on preventing him from doing that. So we can assume that their frantic eagerness to learn the secret is rooted in the belief that the person who knows it will inherit the estate from Edith.

We see Edward. He is not at Collinwood, or even in the village of Collinsport. If I recall correctly, this is the first time the show has taken us anyplace out of town other than the mental hospital since we visited Phoenix, Arizona in #174, more than two years ago.

Edward is in a train station, impatient and irritable, talking with a young woman whose rigid posture and blank facial expression show that she is exceedingly uncomfortable. Her name is Rachel Drummond, and she is to be the new governess for Edward’s son and daughter. He says that he means for her to use her own judgment in making up their curriculum. Rachel says she will have a clearer idea of what her approach will be once she has met the children and Edward’s wife. Edward freezes, and says that he has no wife. Rachel apologizes for her assumption; he says that she has no need to do that, as he had given her no way of knowing about the situation. In a soft voice, Rachel asks about Mrs Collins’ death; Edward replies that “Mrs Collins no longer exists” and that is all he will be saying about the topic. Rachel asks how she should respond if the children ask about their mother; Edward tells her to say that she is away, nothing more.

Back at Collinwood, a recently arrived visitor named Barnabas Collins comes calling with a gift for Edith. It is a piece of jewelry that he inherited from Naomi Collins, whom he identifies as his great-great-great-grandmother. Judith accompanies him to Edith’s bedroom.

Meanwhile, Edward lets himself and Rachel in the front door. He is carrying their bags and grumbling about the lack of servants. Quentin enters. Edward is shocked that his ne’er-do-well brother has returned to the house from which he was banished a year ago, he hoped forever. He has little to say as Quentin teases him and Rachel, saying that she is too pretty to be either the new governess or Edward’s new wife. He asks if she is Edward’s mistress, angering him and making the already unhappy Rachel quite miserable. She says she is the new governess. Quentin asks if she is married. Edward erupts with “Would it make any difference to you if she were?” In the wake of the painful exchange about Edward’s wife no longer existing, this carries a suggestion that makes Rachel’s position even more difficult. Edward realizes what he has said and falls into a horrified silence.

Edward asks Rachel to excuse him and Quentin while they have a private talk. She has nowhere to go; she has not been shown around the house or told which areas she is free to enter, so all she can do is sit quietly in the foyer. Still, that would appear to be an improvement over the endless cascade of awkward exchanges she has had so far, and so she agrees without protest.

While Edward reads Quentin the Riot Act in the drawing room, Judith shows Barnabas into Edith’s room. The room is darkened so that only the outlines of their figures are visible. Judith opens the curtains to let the moonlight in, and sees Edward’s carriage outside. She hurries down to fetch Edward, leaving Barnabas alone with Edith.

Edith asks his name. When he says that he is called Barnabas Collins, she is startled. She sits up and uneasily asks him to step into the light so she can see his face. She reacts with horror. “You! You are the secret!” she exclaims. “Passed down from one generation to the other! You were never to be let out! We have failed! We have failed!” He approaches her. “Don’t come near me! I know what you are!”

Edith tells Barnabas that he is the secret. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When Dark Shadows premiered, the Collinses of 1966 had three big secrets. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard had summoned a young woman who had never heard of her or of Collinwood, Victoria Winters, to be governess to her nephew David. Vicki was trying to find out who her biological parents were and why she was left at a foundling home as an infant; the show hinted heavily that Liz was her mother, but dropped that without any resolution. Also, Liz hadn’t left the house for 18 years. That turned out to be because she thought she killed her husband and that his body was buried in the basement. After 55 weeks of that story, it turned out she hadn’t killed him at all, and within days they forgot about the whole thing forever. The third secret was about Liz’ brother Roger. A man named Burke Devlin thought Roger had framed him on the manslaughter charge that cost him five years in prison, and vowed to destroy the Collinses in revenge. After 40 weeks, Burke forced Roger to confess that his suspicions were correct, but by that time Burke had decided to let bygones be bygones and that story also vanished with barely a trace.

With that record, all the talk about “the secret” that we hear when we first arrive in 1897 might make longtime viewers apprehensive that there will be another interminable guessing game that peters out with little or no resolution. But the show has changed. This secret is not only revealed to us within a week, it is a forceful and elegant solution to a major problem.

Barnabas is a time traveler from the 1960s. He has come back by means of some mumbo-jumbo to prevent Quentin’s ghost from haunting Collinwood and making life impossible for the Collins family in the year 1969. He is also a vampire. He originally lived in the 1790s, and Naomi was his mother, not his great-great-great-grandmother. A would-be thief accidentally freed him to prey on the living in April 1967; he managed to conceal his true nature from his living relatives, and in March 1968 he was freed from the effects of the vampire curse. When he came to this period, he found himself once more an undead abomination.

Barnabas has no idea why Quentin’s ghost has become such a problem in 1969, no idea how to investigate the question, and no idea what, if anything, he will be able to do to correct matters if he somehow does manage to find the answer. Since events are moving very fast in 1897, everyone there is deeply and intricately involved with everyone else, and Barnabas is a stranger, there is a distinct possibility that he will be sidelined. That happened to Vicki when she left November 1967 and found herself in the year 1795; by the time the show returned to contemporary dress four months later, she had been an ineffectual ninny for so long that she had lost the loyalty of the audience, never to regain it. As a vampire, Barnabas could make his way to the center of the story by killing everyone, but that would tend to create a narrative cul-de-sac. So Dark Shadows is taking an enormous risk with its star by putting him in this situation.

When Edith tells Barnabas that he is the secret, at one stroke she puts him at the center of the story, connects the part of the show set in 1897 with that set in 1795, and raises a whole set of questions about how the events of those two periods led to what we have seen in the parts set in the 1960s. She electrifies the audience with the promise of an entirely new kind of show.

She also answers a minor, but potentially nagging question. From #204 on, we saw that Barnabas’ portrait hangs beside the entrance to the great house, and we are repeatedly told that it has been there as long as anyone can remember. The Collinses know that the man who sat for it was a cousin of their direct ancestor, and believe that he left for England in the 1790s, never to return. Why display the portrait of so distant a relative in so prominent a place for so long?

Edith’s recognition of Barnabas tells us why. She has studied the portrait for as long as she has known the secret, and when he comes into the light she can see at once that he is its subject. The portrait was therefore meant to help the keeper of the secret defend the family against Barnabas. It actually had the opposite effect. In 1967 and again on his arrival at the great house this week, Barnabas appealed to his resemblance to the portrait as evidence that he was a descendant of “the original Barnabas Collins,” and so persuaded the living members of the family to let him make his home in the Old House on the estate.

The opening voiceover today is the same we heard yesterday and the day before. I do not believe they had ever replayed an opening voiceover even once prior to this; I’m sure they had never done so twice. This one just tells you that Barnabas has traveled back in time, and it is now 1897. Repeating it doesn’t hurt anything, but I do wonder what they were thinking. Were they considering changing the nature of the voiceover, making them so simple that they could be reused routinely? Or was there some kind of problem, say a technical difficulty with the equipment or an issue with the actors’ contracts, which kept them from recording fresh ones?

Episode 704: The sort of person relatives would want to meet

When vampire Barnabas Collins first came to the great house of Collinwood in April 1967, the living members of the Collins family were embattled, isolated, and desperate for friendship. In 1966, one of the major themes of Dark Shadows had been that the Collinses were running out of money and their nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, was using his own fortune to buy up their outstanding debts and alienate the people of the village of Collinsport from the Collinses. Everywhere they turned, they met hostility in one form or another. Their two most devoted employees had been plant manager Bill Malloy and handyman Matthew Morgan; in a fit of rage, Matthew killed Bill, and went on to abduct and try to kill well-meaning governess Victoria Winters. Roger Collins’ estranged wife, Laura Murdoch Collins, showed up; she turned out to be an undead blonde fire witch out to kill their son, strange and troubled boy David. No sooner had Victoria rescued David from Laura than seagoing con man Jason McGuire presented himself and set about blackmailing matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Jason even forced Liz to give the bedroom next to her daughter Carolyn to his rapey sidekick, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis.

So when a man knocked on the door who looked exactly like the portrait of an ancestor who lived in a previous century and introduced himself as a distant cousin from England, a wealthy eccentric with courtly manners who wanted only to spend time on the estate where his forebears lived long ago, Liz and Roger were delighted to host him. Barnabas spent most of 1967 as a comic villain scrambling to maintain the pretense that he was native to the twentieth century, but as far as the adult residents of the great house were concerned his authenticity was established beyond doubt the first moment they saw him.

Now Barnabas has traveled back in time to the year 1897. In this period the Collinses of Collinwood are rich, powerful, and paranoid. Unknown to Barnabas, a woman named Magda Rákóczi, whom he had given a ruby ring as a bribe to secure her help after she learned that he was a vampire and that her husband Sandor was his blood thrall, had preceded him to the great house. Magda did not know why Barnabas had come to Collinwood, but she knew that he had some objective and that he would likely leave as soon as he had accomplished it. When Barnabas told Magda that he would keep giving her jewels as long as she helped him, he therefore gave her an incentive to slow him down as much as possible. She therefore told repressed spinster Judith Collins and Judith’s brother, libertine Quentin Collins, that they should beware of a “creature of darkness” who would be calling on them after sundown and who would claim to be “a friend, or perhaps a relative.”

Neither Judith nor Quentin has any respect for Magda, as much because of her Romani ethnicity as because of her mercenary ways. But when Barnabas introduces himself, Judith is deeply shaken. Quentin mocks her, suggesting that the resemblance between Magda’s prediction and Barnabas’ identification is as likely to be a coincidence as anything else, but as soon as he is alone with Barnabas Quentin pulls a sword, holds it at Barnabas’ throat, tells him he knows he is an impostor, and demands the truth within “five minutes” or he will run him through.

With this act, Quentin shows as little strategic nous as Barnabas had shown when he led Magda to believe that it was in her interest to make sure he stayed around for a while. Quentin does not know that Barnabas is a vampire, so that running him through with a sword would do nothing but give whoever saw it a story that he could not tell without branding himself a lunatic. But he does know that he is the black sheep of the family, and that his brothers and sister are eager to get him out of the way before their grandmother dies and her will goes into probate. If he kills a man in cold blood, they would have an excellent reason to have him committed to an asylum and whatever legacy he receives placed in a conservatorship they would control.

So Quentin’s threat is an empty one. Had Barnabas caved in and made a confession that he was a fraud, only Judith would have known of Quentin’s triumph, and she has made it clear that she is not about to yield a penny of her inheritance to him no matter what he does. At most, Quentin would have given Judith a new esteem for Magda, who herself has no use at all for him. And when Barnabas holds his ground, all Quentin can do is back down, losing face and making himself permanently ridiculous in his eyes.

The particulars of the scene are interesting, as well. Quentin tells Barnabas that he has “five minutes” to explain himself. When we heard that, my wife and I laughed out loud. Are we about to be treated to five minutes of silence while they hold their poses? Surely, we thought, it was a blooper- the scripted line must have been “five seconds.” But no! A moment later, Quentin says that “five minutes can go by rather quickly, when a man is about to die.” Had Barnabas been struck with terror at the sight of the weapon so close to him, he might have started confessing as soon as he saw it, but by the time Quentin doubles down on this “five minutes” it is obvious he has already lost the game.

Quentin tells Barnabas that he has just returned from a visit of about six months in England, during which time he discovered that he had no relatives there named Collins. This gives Barnabas an opportunity to insult Quentin, saying that his reputation may have preceded him and driven his relatives to make sure he did not find out about them. This stuns Quentin satisfactorily, but is not strictly necessary. There had been a great deal of migration from Ireland to England by the 1890s, more than enough that an Irish name as widespread as Collins would have been very familiar there. It is hardly likely that even if he had spent six months doing nothing but tracking down every Collins family in the country Quentin would have been able to have confidence that he had not overlooked some descendant of a Collins who had left Collinsport generations before. After all, they didn’t have ancestry dot com back then! It is clear that he must be lying.

Worst of all from Quentin’s perspective, he is still holding the sword at Barnabas’ throat when Judith comes in. At that sight, she has no choice but to set aside her own doubts about Barnabas. She demands Quentin apologize to Barnabas. Barnabas tells them that he can assure Quentin that he does not want any of the family’s money; in fact, he says, the English Collinses are quite comfortable financially and he plans to make some investments in local businesses while he is in Collinsport. Quentin perks up at this, no doubt seeing Barnabas as a possible mark for his next con game. Longtime viewers will remember that when Barnabas introduced himself to the 1960s iteration of the family, Roger was extremely interested in his apparent wealth and had several ideas about how he might help himself to a share of it.

Judith offers Barnabas a room at the great house. He says he would rather stay at the Old House on the estate. Judith breaks it to him that the current head of the family, dying nonagenarian Edith Collins, has let “Gypsies” live there. She makes it sound like a whole Romani clan has settled in, but in fact it is just Magda and Sandor. Barnabas feigns surprise, but still asks permission to inspect the house. Judith consents, and he sets out, alone

Danny Horn’s post about the episode on his Dark Shadows Every Day focuses on the ways it makes Quentin look like a child. I’d say it makes Judith look equally childish, even though she is clearly senior to Quentin. The two of them model one of Dark Shadows‘ signature pairings, that of Bossy Big Sister and Bratty Little Brother. Even when the big sister is in a position to exercise authority, as in the 1960s Liz was in a position to exercise authority over Roger, she winds up being merely bossy because however flagrantly he disobeys her, in the end she covers up his misdeeds and protects him from the punishment they merit. Longtime viewers suspect Judith will find herself doing the same.

In yesterday’s episode, Quentin entered maidservant Beth’s room and found her getting ready to go out. He asked if it was her day off; she said Judith gave her permission to run personal errands in town. He grabbed at her things and found an envelope with $300 cash. She claimed she saved this out of her salary, an obvious lie. He made leering insinuations about her relationship with his oldest brother Edward; she slapped his face.

Now, Beth is on her way back to Collinwood from her mysterious errand. Barnabas sees her in the woods and addresses her by name. She asks who he is and how he knows her. He introduces himself, and explains that he saw her photograph in an album at Collinwood. In fact, his friend Julia Hoffman saw such a photograph in 1969 and described it to him; Barnabas himself never saw it, but he did see Beth’s ghost. Evidently the photo had already been taken and put into the album, because Beth smiles when Barnabas talks about it. He asks Beth about the children at Collinwood. She mentions two; he asks about a third, and she says there is no third. He asks why he thought there was, and she seems uncomfortable. After she leaves, we hear his thoughts in a voiceover monologue. In 1969, Beth’s ghost led Barnabas’ friend Chris Jennings to an infant’s coffin; he wonders if that child has already died, and looks around, as if he might be standing on its grave.

Barnabas’ next stop is at the waterfront. When he was first a vampire in the late eighteenth century, Barnabas once found himself on the docks by chance and was overcome with thirst for the blood of the streetwalkers who worked there. This time he must have made a conscious decision to find a sex worker to drain of blood. Some wonder why he does not feed on Sandor and Magda, but longtime viewers know the answer to that one. When Barnabas was first on the show, Willie was his blood thrall, and each bite left Willie critically ill throughout the daylight hours. Barnabas needs Sandor and Magda to guard him during the day, so others will have to suffer to provide him with blood.

Barnabas picks up a small object from the pavement. He hears a soprano voice nearby, calling for an unseen “Charlie!” to help her find her lost makeup compact. The owner of the voice comes into view and introduces herself to Barnabas as Sophie Baker.* Barnabas gives her the compact. She thanks him and says it was a gift from a dear man, a Captain Strathmore. She asks Barnabas his name. He says he thinks it is best if he doesn’t give his name. “What an odd thing to say,” she responds. If she made her living the way Barnabas hoped the woman he found would make hers, it wouldn’t be odd at all; Sophie’s reaction is that of someone who has no idea that she is in a place where that trade is practiced. Evidently Sophie comes from a sufficiently comfortable background that prostitution does not impinge on her thoughts even as something other women do.

Barnabas tries to get away, and Sophie asks “Well, what’s the matter with me?” Charlie is hopelessly drunk, leaving Sophie without an escort. Barnabas is plainly alone, and the night is young. The pub is nearby- why don’t they stop in for a drink. Barnabas shows great reluctance, but finally agrees to walk Sophie to the door. She takes out her compact to freshen her face, looks in its mirror, and notices that Barnabas does not cast a reflection. She is stunned by this. Barnabas bares his fangs, and sates his bloodlust.

Sophie seals her fate. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The compact with a mirror was apparently a new invention when one was advertised in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue in 1908, so it is an anachronism in 1897. But it is a perfect touch. Sophie’s discovery that Barnabas does not cast a reflection turns the scene from a little bit of farce into a tale of horror in a fraction of a second. That the compact allows such an efficient use of time makes it no wonder that they used the same prop in 1967, when Julia glanced in her compact to confirm her hypothesis about Barnabas’ nature in #288.

This time, the compact also goes a long way towards explaining Barnabas’ attitude towards Sophie. It shows that she can afford to buy the latest and most sophisticated trinkets, and that she expects to be seen using them. Barnabas picks the compact up and returns it to Sophie as a gentleman might a lady’s handkerchief. Sophie’s personality may have led her to match the outgoing and uninhibited manner that is a professional requirement for sex workers and that made them easy targets for Barnabas, but when he sees that she is not of their class he becomes reluctant to attack her. Thus we learn that snobbery Barnabas has shown in some of his darker moments is not just an occasional failing, but that his whole career as a vampire is primarily a war on poor people.

Back at Collinwood, Quentin spots Beth taking a tray of food upstairs. He waylays her, uncovers the tray, and demands to know who it is for. She says it is for Edith, and he declares that his grandmother is far too ill to eat so much. When he finally lets her go, Beth goes to Edith’s room and tells Judith about Quentin’s interrogation. They confer about the matter in urgent whispers. Judith tells Beth they will have to be far more discreet now that Quentin is back. She urges her to take care Quentin does not see her when she takes the rest of the food “upstairs.” Evidently there is someone in the house Quentin does not know about, and Judith and Beth are conspiring to keep it that way.

Judith leaves the room, and Quentin slips in. He pretends to be Edward. Edith is not fooled, and expresses her annoyance with him. She says she is not as far gone as he thinks she is, and he assures her that she is. She will die tonight, and will tell him the family secret before she does. He seems to be threatening to kill her himself by the time the episode ends.

Every episode of Dark Shadows begins with a voiceover delivered by a member of the cast. This one reuses yesterday’s opening voiceover. I believe this is the first time they have done this.

*The closing credits give her name as “Sophie Barnes,” but she very clearly says “Baker.”

Episode 703: A creature of darkness

Magda Rákóczi, preposterously broad ethnic stereotype, has discovered that the recently arrived Barnabas Collins is a vampire. Barnabas has bitten and enslaved Magda’s husband Sandor, and tells her that she, too will do his bidding. When she asks what has brought him to this conclusion, he tells her that as long as she is in his employ, he will give her jewels. He hands her a ruby ring, and she agrees.

Longtime viewers know well that Barnabas’ plans regularly backfire. Today, we see one of the reasons why. Barnabas does not tell Magda why he has come to the estate of Collinwood in the year 1897, but he does tell her that the following night he will be calling on the Collins family in the great house in order to win their acceptance of him as a distant cousin from England. For all she knows he might be able to complete his task and go back to where he came from shortly after the Collinses welcome him. That would leave her with no further jewelry. So Magda goes to the great house and tells spinster Judith Collins and her brother, libertine Quentin Collins, that a stranger will visit them after sunset. He will present himself as a “friend, perhaps a relative,” but they must not trust him. He is in fact a “creature of darkness” who means them harm.

Judith and Quentin are one of Dark Shadows‘ signature pairings of Bossy Big Sister/ Bratty Little Brother, and they bicker about whether to be disgusted or amused by what they take to be Magda’s transparently fraudulent warning. When Barnabas shows up, Judith is shaken and Quentin laughs at her for taking Magda seriously. In the last scene, Quentin does pull a sword on Barnabas and threaten to kill him on the spot unless he tells a more acceptable story, so apparently he placed a higher value on Magda’s words than he wanted to let Judith know.

Quentin also has some screen time with maidservant Beth Chavez. In his post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn lamented Terrayne Crawford’s performance as Beth:

Her dialogue is full of lines like “I don’t care” and “It’s none of your business,” and Terry Crawford decides that the best acting choice she could make would be to play it as if Beth sincerely means every word that she says. This is different from what a good actor would do in every respect.

She should be fencing with him, half-flirting and half-angry and half-guilty. Yes, she should be playing three halves right now; that’s the point of the scene. But Terry Crawford gives you what’s on the page, because somebody explained the concept of “subtext” to her once, while she was thinking about something else.

Alas, it is so. Appealing as David Selby’s personality is and lively as his interpretation of Quentin is, Miss Crawford’s literalism means that his efforts are largely wasted, at least in his scenes with her. With Joan Bennett’s Judith or with any of the other members of the cast, we can see that while Quentin’s behavior is inexcusable, his charm is irresistible. But Miss Crawford shows us Beth resisting it with no apparent difficulty, and that leaves him as just another jerk. As I put it in a comment on Danny’s post:

I agree about Terry Crawford. She has to do something very difficult- simultaneously show contempt for Quentin and attraction to him. She manages only the first, meaning that when he keeps at her after she tells him to leave her alone, it isn’t a game, it’s just sexual assault. That makes Quentin a lot harder to like than he needs to be.

This episode ends with one of the all-time great screw-ups. A few times actors have come partly into view during the closing credits, usually just one arm briefly entering the shot. But this time Jonathan Frid comes walking right into the frame, gives a horrified reaction, and scurries off. It is a thing of beauty, enough to make you wonder how there can be people who are not fans of Dark Shadows.

A great moment in the history of television, or THE GREATEST moment in the history of television? You decide. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Every Day.

Episode 702: There are many times. You only have to find them.

We open in the secret chamber in the old Collins family mausoleum, where the woe-begotten Sandor Rákóczi has inadvertently freed vampire Barnabas Collins from his coffin. When dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis freed Barnabas from the same coffin in 1967, Barnabas bit him on the wrist, because ABC-TV’s office of Standards and Practices wouldn’t allow one man to bite another on the neck. But now the ratings are high enough that the network will let Dark Shadows get away with a whole lot more than they would when the show was losing its time slot. So Sandor winds up with two big gashes near his right carotid artery.

Barnabas asks Sandor what year it is. He is shocked to find that it is 1897. The last Barnabas remembered, it was 1969 and he was going into a trance mediated by the casting of I Ching wands. Evidently he had hoped that he would encounter the ghost of Quentin Collins on an astral plane outside time and space and do battle with him for the souls of various characters who live at the great house of Collinwood in the 1960s. But instead he has been transported back to the period when Quentin was alive. In fact, Sandor tells him that this very night Quentin returned to Collinwood after a year away.

A few days before he left on this uncertain and frightening journey into the past, Barnabas reflected that when Quentin was alive, he lay in his coffin. They knew nothing of each other. By that time, Barnabas had been free of the effects of the vampire curse for almost a year. He did travel back in time once before, when he spent episodes #661-665 in the 1790s, and the curse reasserted itself then. So regular viewers should have taken that reflection as a hint that Barnabas might return to Quentin’s time and once more be the vampire he was in his first months on the show.

Barnabas is shocked to find that Sandor and his wife Magda live in the Old House at Collinwood. That was Barnabas’ home when he was alive in the eighteenth century, and he became its master again when he returned in the 1960s. He orders Sandor to get him some clothes; Sandor replies “I won’t get you nothing.” Barnabas tells him that he will do whatever he says. In a very hard voice, he says “You are a Gypsy.” As Sandor, Thayer David indeed wears a stereotypical Romani costume, complete with earrings, a flowing wig, and brownface makeup. It sometimes strikes me as odd that Barnabas’ first meal in 1897 was blackened whitefish. Barnabas follows this ethnic identification with “You know what will happen to you if you do not.” Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published in 1897, made it clear that Sinti and Romani people are experts on vampirism, so I guess Barnabas had some grounds for that statement. At any rate, Sandor does comply.

Magda is on her way to the great house. The mistress of the estate, Sandor and Magda’s patroness Edith Collins, has summoned Magda to visit her as she lies on her deathbed. She wants Magda to read the cards and tell her that her grandson Edward will come home before she dies. As she enters the house, Magda is waylaid by Quentin.

Quentin grabs Magda by the neck. When she protests, he threatens to do it harder. He tells her that when Edith dies, she and Sandor will be thrown off the estate. Magda says she expects that, but Quentin says it needs not be so. If she can persuade Edith to leave all her money to him, he will cut her and Sandor in for 10%. Magda does not agree. Quentin says that he is their only hope, because “I have no prejudices against your kind.” If this is how people with no prejudices against them treat Romani, you can just imagine how the bigots behave.

In fact, you don’t have to imagine for long. After an interlude with Barnabas looking over the interior of the Old House and showing dismay at its poor condition, we return to the great house. Quentin’s older sister Judith comes downstairs and sees Magda. She reacts with unconcealed disgust. Magda excuses herself, and Judith takes Quentin into the drawing room.

Judith closes the drawing room doors, complaining that the servants keep listening in. That is one of many indications that there are no background characters in 1897- everyone is playing an angle. Judith offers Quentin $1500 to go away. Quentin says that he is surprised how highly she thinks of him. He could easily spend that much before dawn, even in the village of Collinsport, and come back the next day claiming to know nothing about it. She mentions something about his word of honor, but neither of them can take that seriously enough to merit a complete sentence.

Quentin insists on seeing their nephew, 12 year old Jamison Collins. Judith complains that it is late and Jamison is asleep, but Quentin says he promised to wake Jamison as soon as he arrived, regardless of the time, and “I keep my promises to Jamison.” When Jamison does come in, Quentin is hiding. Jamison protests that he is too old for such games. Quentin jumps out and startles Jamison. Quentin takes this reaction as proof that Jamison isn’t too old at all, and the two of them share a happy laugh. Quentin gives Jamison a model ship with a plate reading “The Jamison Collins.” Jamison is delighted with this truly thoughtful gift. Judith appears, and Jamison clutches Quentin, shouting “I won’t say it! I don’t want Quentin to leave!”

In 1969, Quentin’s ghost has taken possession of strange and troubled boy David Collins, who like Jamison is played by David Henesy. He wants David to turn into Jamison, in which process he will die. It was to save David’s life that Barnabas meditated upon the I Ching and entered the trance. In this scene we learn that Quentin’s deadly attachment to the image of Jamison had its origin in a healthy love for the living Jamison.

This may suggest a parallel to regular viewers. In his first months on the show, Barnabas was hung up on his lost love, the gracious Josette, and embarked on monstrously evil schemes to turn various living women into vampiric replicas of her. We then had a long flashback to the late eighteenth century, in which we saw that Barnabas and Josette once loved each other and were happy, until a cruel fate ruined everything for them. With Quentin and Jamison, we see that it is not only sexual love, but also the filial love of uncle and nephew that can be twisted into something dark and murderous.

It is not just the audience- Barnabas, too, is thinking of Josette. In the Old House, he meets Magda and demands to know where the portrait of Josette that once hung over the fireplace has gone. “Did you pawn it?” he demands, in a contemptuous tone that admits of no response. He asks who sleeps in Josette’s old bedroom upstairs. When Magda says she does, he declares that he “will not have it!” Magda asks who he is to be so imperious about what he will “have,” and Sandor begs her to be respectful towards him. In view of Quentin’s casual violence towards Magda, Judith’s flagrant loathing of her, and Edith’s hobby of keeping her and Sandor around to amuse her by performing the broadest possible stereotypes of the Sinti and Romani, there can be little doubt that Barnabas’ rage is not just at the idea of a stranger occupying the holy place of his idealized beloved, but at the sight of a member of an ethnic group he has been raised to consider inferior occupying it.

Barnabas lays down the law. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin comes calling. Barnabas hides behind the barred window of the cellar door. Quentin badgers Magda for information about her meeting with Edith, and Sandor says that she is ill and will talk to him tomorrow. Quentin can tell something very strange is going on, but ultimately has to leave without further information.

Once Quentin is gone, it is Magda’s turn to press Sandor for answers. She tells Sandor that Barnabas has “the mark of death” on him, and demands to know who he is. She grabs the hand with which Sandor has been holding a kerchief at his neck and sees the bite marks. She gasps, turns to the cellar door, and exclaims “Vampire!”

Barnabas’ portrait was first seen in #204, he was first named in #205, he first appeared in #210, and he first spoke in #211. But it was not until #410 that anyone spoke the word “vampire” on screen. Up to that point, they had used a number of circumlocutions and ambiguous terms, such as “the undead.” For a while, it looked like Barnabas might not turn out to be a vampire exactly, but some other kind of monster who only occasionally sucks blood, as a treat. It’s a relief that people were more direct in 1897.

Episode 701: Welcome home the prodigal

We begin the part of Dark Shadows set in the year 1897 with an episode featuring a glittering script, a strong cast, and a hopeless director. Henry Kaplan’s visual style consisted of little more than one closeup after another. The first real scene in the episode introduces us to Sandor and Magda Rákóczi, a Romani couple who live in the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. They bicker while Sandor throws knives at the wall. Thayer David really is throwing knives, but since we cut between closeups of the targets and of the actors we cannot see anything dynamic in that action. He may as well be whittling.

Magda ridicules Sandor’s pretensions as a knife-thrower and as a patent medicine salesman, and busies herself with a crystal ball. She tells him that when “the old lady” dies, they will have to leave Collinwood. He says he knows all about that. She wants him to steal the Collins family jewels so that they can leave with great riches. He eventually caves in and sets out for the great house on the estate, more to escape her nagging than out of greed.

Regular viewers will remember that we heard Magda’s name in December 1968. The show had introduced two storylines, one about the malevolent ghost of Quentin Collins and the other about werewolf Chris Jennings, and the characters were starting to notice the strange goings-on that Quentin and Chris generated. The adults in the great house had no idea that Quentin was haunting them or that Chris was a werewolf, so they held a séance in #642. Speaking through heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, Magda mentioned “My curse!” and said that “He must not come back!” It was clear in the context of the episode that the “He” who “must not come back” was Quentin. Chris was a participant in the séance, and he broke the circle before Magda could explain what she meant by her “curse.” Séances held in #170 and #281 were cut short by the person whose secret the medium was about to expose; that it is Chris who interrupts this one would suggest to longtime viewers that Magda not only knew Quentin, but that the curse she is about to explain was the one that made Chris a werewolf. Carolyn and her uncle Roger Collins talked a little about Magda in #643, and psychic investigator Janet Findley sensed the ghostly presence of a woman whose name started with an “M” in #648. We haven’t heard about Magda since.

As the living Magda, Grayson Hall manages rather a more natural accent than Nancy Barrett had when channeling her concerns about “my currrrrssssse.” The exaggerated costumes Hall and Thayer David wear make sense when we hear them reminiscing about the old days, when they made their livings as stage Gypsies with a knife-throwing act, Tarot card readings, and a magic elixir. Even the fact that Magda is peering into a crystal ball during this scene is understandable when they make it clear that they are staying in the Old House as guests of the mistress of the great house, an old, dying lady who enjoys their broadly stereotypical antics. But there is no way to reconcile twenty-first century sensibilities to Hall and David’s brownface makeup. Some time later, Hall would claim that one of her grandmothers was Romani. If that was a lie, it is telling that only someone as phenomenally sophisticated as Hall could in the 1970s see that she would need to invent a story to excuse playing such a character.

Objectionable as Sandor and Magda are, their dialogue is so well-written and so well delivered that we want to like them. Moreover, the year 1897 points to another reason fans of Dark Shadows might be happy enough to see Romani or Sinti characters that they will overlook the racist aspects of their portrayal. It was in 1897 that Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published, and it depicted the evil Count as surrounded by “Gypsy” thralls. The character who has brought us on this journey into the past is Barnabas Collins, and upon his arrival he found that he was once more a vampire.

In addition to the strengths of the dialogue, the acting, and the intertext, there is also a weakness in this episode that softens the blow of the brownface. Today the picture is so muddy that it is possible to overlook the makeup. That’s Kaplan’s fault. It would often be the case that one or the other of the cameras wasn’t up to standard, but when the director was a visual artist as capable as Lela Swift or John Sedwick, there would always be at least some shots in a scene using the good camera, and others where the lighting would alleviate some of the consequences of the technical difficulties. But Kaplan doesn’t seem to have cared at all. He had made up his mind to use a particular camera to shoot the Old House parlor with a subdued lighting scheme, and if that camera was not picking up the full range of color, too bad. He’d photograph a lot of sludge and call it a day.

Meanwhile, a man knocks on the door of the great house. He is Quentin, and the person who opens the door is Beth Chavez. We first saw these two as ghosts in #646. Beth spoke some lines during the “Haunting of Collinwood” story, but Quentin’s voice was heard only in his menacing laugh.

We already know Quentin as the evil spirit who drove everyone from the house and is killing strange and troubled boy David Collins in February of 1969. His behavior in this scene is no less abominable than we might there by have come to expect. He pushes past Beth to force his way into the foyer, does not bother to deny that he has come back to persuade his dying grandmother to leave him her money, pretends to have forgotten someone named “Jenny,” makes Beth feel uncomfortable by saying that her association with Jenny makes her position in the house precarious, orders Beth to carry his bags, twists her arm, and leeringly tells her that she would be much happier if she would just submit to his charms. David Selby sells the scene, and we believe that Quentin is a villain who must be stopped. But Mr Selby himself is so charming, and the dialogue in which he makes his unforgivable declarations is so witty, that we don’t want him to go away. He establishes himself at once as The Man You Love to Hate.

In an upstairs bedroom, the aged Edith Collins is looking at Tarot cards. Quentin makes his way to her; she expresses her vigorous disapproval of him. She says that “When Jamison brought me the letter, I said to myself ‘He is the same. Quentin is using the child to get back.'” Quentin replies “But you let me come back.” She says that she did, and admits that he makes her feel young. With that, Edith identifies herself with the audience’s point of view.

The reference to Jamison and a letter reminds regular viewers of #643, when Magda’s ghost caused a letter from Quentin to fall into Roger’s hands. It was addressed to Roger’s father, Jamison, and was written in 1887. It read “Dear Jamison, You must return to Collinwood. I need your help. You must intercede with Oscar. Only you can save me.” They’ve revised the flimsies quite a bit since then; now it is 1897, Jamison is 12, and we don’t hear about anyone named Oscar.

Not about any character named Oscar, anyway. Edith tells Quentin that “Men who live as you do will not age well.” Quentin tells Edith that she ought not to believe in the Tarot, because “This card always has the same picture and people change, even I.” On Dark Shadows, which from its beginning has taken place on sets dominated by portraits, these two lines might make us wonder what it would be like if it were portraits that changed while their subjects remained the same. Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray was published in serial form in 1890 and as a novel in 1891, and it was a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. The dialogue is so witty that the characters must be well-read, making it quite plausible that Quentin’s remark was meant to remind Edith of the book. Especially so, since Wilde was released from prison in 1897, bringing him back to public notice in that year.

Edith tells Quentin that old and sick as she may be, she can still out-think him. She declares that all of her grandchildren will get what they deserve. All, that is, except Edward. Roger mentioned Edward in #697, naming him as his grandfather and Jamison’s father. Edith says that Edward is the eldest, and therefore she must tell him “the secret.” There is a note of horror in her voice as she says this; Quentin misses that note, and reflexively urges her to tell him the secret. She only shakes her head- the secret isn’t a prize to contend for, it is a burden to lament.

Isabella Hoopes plays this scene lying on her side in bed, a challenging position for any performer. Her delivery is a bit stilted at the beginning, but after she makes eye contact with David Selby she warms up and becomes very natural. I wonder if the initial awkwardness had to do with Kaplan. He held a conductor’s baton while directing, and he used to poke actresses with it. I can’t imagine a person in bed wearing a nightgown would have an easy time relaxing if her attention was focused on him. Once she can connect with Mr Selby, though, you can see what an outstanding professional she was.

Quentin goes to the drawing room, and finds Sandor behind the curtains. He threatens to call the police, and Sandor slinks back to the Old House. Magda berates him for his failure to steal the jewels, and he insists there are no jewels in the great house.

Meanwhile, Barnabas is in his coffin, trying to will someone to come and release him. In #210, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis had become obsessed with Barnabas’ portrait in the foyer of the great house, so much so that he could hear Barnabas’ heart beating through it. Barnabas called Willie to come to the secret chamber in the old Collins family mausoleum where his coffin was hidden. In his conscious mind, Willie thought he was going to steal a fortune in jewels. His face distorted with the gleeful expectation of that bonanza, he broke the chains that bound the coffin shut, and Barnabas’ hand darted out, choking him and pulling him down.

In the Old House, an image suddenly appears in the crystal ball. We can see it, the first time they have actually projected an image in such a ball since the first one made its debut in #48.

Picture in picture. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Magda notices the image, and tells Sandor to look. He recognizes the old mausoleum. She says that the jewels must be in “the room,” implying that they already know about the hidden panel and the secret chamber behind it. Sandor says it is absurd to imagine Edith going to and from the mausoleum to retrieve pieces of her jewelry collection. Magda ignores this, and urges him to go there. He reluctantly agrees to go with her.

The two of them are heading for the door when they hear a knock. It is Beth, come to say that Edith wants to see Magda. Edith wants what she always wants- to be told that Edward will return before she dies. Sandor says Magda can’t go, but Beth says she will regret it for the rest of her life if she does not. Magda tells Sandor to go on his way without her, and says that she will bring Edith some ancient Gypsy cards, cards older than the Tarot. When she talks about Romani lore, Magda taunts Beth- “but you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Her sarcastic tone implies that Beth has tried to conceal her own Romani heritage.

Sandor opens the secret panel and looks at the chained coffin. He tells himself the jewels can’t be hidden there, then decides he may as well open it anyway- if he doesn’t, Magda will just send him back. Longtime viewers remembering the frenzy in which Willie opened the coffin in #210 will be struck by the utterly lackadaisical attitude with which Sandor performs the same task. Men’s lust for riches may release the vampire, but so too may their annoyance with the wife when she won’t stop carping on the same old thing.

When Willie opened the coffin, it lay across the frame lengthwise and he was behind it. When he raised the lid it blocked our view of his middle. We could see only his face when he realized what he had done, and could see nothing of Barnabas but his hand. The result was an iconic image.

Farewell, dangerously unstable ruffian- hello, sorely bedraggled blood thrall. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When Sandor opens the coffin, its end is toward us. We see Barnabas at the same time he does. Barnabas’ hand darts up, and also for some reason his foot. The camera zooms in as Barnabas clutches Sandor’s throat. Unfortunately, the shot is so dimly lit that not all viewers will see this. My wife, Mrs Acilius, has eyesight that is in some ways a bit below average, and she missed it completely, even on a modern big-screen television. It’s anyone’s guess how many viewers would have known what was going on when they were watching it on the little TV sets of March 1969, on an ABC affiliate which was more likely than not the station that came in with the poorest picture quality in the area. As a result, the image that marks the relaunch of Barnabas’ career as a vampire is nothing at all. There is so much good stuff in the episode that it easily earns the “Genuinely Good” tag, but Kaplan’s bungling of this final shot is a severe failure.

Grab and kick, and one and two! Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 700: Beyond the door, anything is possible

Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and governess Maggie Evans make their way into a dusty little room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood. Until last week, the ancient and esteemed Collins family lived in the main part of the great house, but now the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins has emerged from the west wing and made life unbearable there. They have taken refuge in Barnabas’ home, the Old House on the same estate. Maggie’s charges, twelve year old David Collins and nine year old Amy Jennings, are possessed by Quentin, and David has gone missing.

Last night Maggie had a dream in which she entered this room, found a hole in the wall, and saw a door on the other side. She passed through that door and found a chamber crowded with Victorian bric-a-brac. She met Quentin there, and he gave her a kiss that looked very pleasant indeed. After she awoke, Maggie decided that she would go to the room to see if there was such a chamber behind the wall, convinced she would find David there. Or maybe that she would get another kiss, who can say.

Barnabas and his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD, told Maggie it was far too dangerous for anyone to go to the great house alone, and insisted Barnabas accompany her on her expedition. This would seem to reduce the likelihood of another smooch from Quentin, but Maggie acquiesced.

Before we see Maggie and Barnabas, we are treated to a closeup of the tailor’s dummy to whom David referred in #681 as “Mr Juggins.” The camera pulls back, and we see that Mr Juggins is standing in front of a stone bust and next to a globe. The effect is quite stately. Unfortunately, this is Mr Juggins’ final appearance on the show. I think he had a lot of potential.

Barnabas and Maggie finds that there is indeed an opening where she had dreamed one would be and a door behind it. Barnabas pries the rest of the paneling off the false wall, and they enter the chamber beyond. Maggie confirms that it matches her dream perfectly.

They are marveling at this discovery, one made possible only by the intervention of whatever supernatural agency sent Maggie’s dream, when the doorknob starts turning. Occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes enters.

Maggie and Barnabas look wonderingly at Stokes, and ask how he knew about the chamber. Regular viewers will be at least as surprised to see him as they are. Stokes tells them he was searching a nearby corridor and could hear the noise Barnabas made when he ripped the paneling out. That deflates the moment a little, but does leave us with a sense that there is more to Stokes than we know.

Stokes joins Barnabas and Maggie in searching the chamber, and quickly finds Amy hiding behind a curtain. Amy passes out, and the men urge Maggie to take her to the Old House. Alone with Barnabas, Stokes finds a set of I Ching wands and a couple of books in a desk. He says that it tells him a great deal about Quentin that he had these things. He also says that they will never find David by searching the house- the only way to rescue him is by studying the I Ching.

Maggie has taken Amy back to the Old House. There, Amy suddenly exclaims “Stokes is wrong!” Evidently whatever spirit is possessing Amy is streaming audio from Quentin’s chamber. Maggie asks what she means, and Amy avers that David is in the great house, but that he will soon be entirely subsumed by the spirit of his grandfather Jamison. Maggie rushes out to get him.

We cut back to the great house. Maggie enters the foyer, and David comes to the head of the stairs. She calls to him; he answers and calls her by name, but is struggling. The door at the head of the stairs opens, indicating that Quentin is there. Maggie confronts him and demands David do the same. David struggles further. He is in Maggie’s arms when the door closes, indicating Quentin has left. Maggie exclaims “We won! We won!” But there is no victory. David collapses. Maggie takes him back to the Old House, where Julia examines him and concludes that he will be dead within hours unless the possession is broken.

This situation is familiar to longtime viewers. Dark Shadows version 1.0 ran from June 1966 to March 1967. Its main theme was David’s difficult relationship with Maggie’s predecessor as his governess, Vicki Winters. It reached its end in #191, when David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, tried to kill him. At the last moment, David ran from Laura into Vicki’s arms. With that, he had chosen life over death, and the story of Vicki and David had nowhere to go.

Maggie and Vicki were close friends, and so we can suppose she heard all about how David escaped from Laura. She knows what we know, and so she must feel the same shock we do when the scenario does not reach the same happy ending.

As David’s embrace of Vicki marked the end of Dark Shadows 1.0, his embrace of Maggie today marks the end of Dark Shadows 5.0.* This iteration of the show has focused on two intertwined stories. They concern werewolf Chris Jennings and the ghost of Quentin. Chris’ lycanthropy has been getting steadily more aggressive, and now he cannot revert to his human form at all. Quentin’s power has been growing in tandem with the expansion of Chris’ curse, so that there is nothing left for him to achieve. Both of these stories have, therefore, reached their conclusion. Moreover, the great house has been the constant element at the center of the show. Now that it is closed to the surviving characters, they cannot pick up a new plot and continue the series. It seems that this is to be the final episode of Dark Shadows.

In November 1967, it seemed that Dark Shadows had foreclosed every possible avenue of story development. The characters gathered for a séance, something we had seen them do three times before. Those previous séances had been dramatic high points, but this one had an outcome unlike anything we had seen. Vicki vanished from the circle. A woman unknown to the company took her place and identified herself as Phyllis Wick, governess at Collinwood in the year 1795. She and Vicki had traded places. Vicki took us with her, and for the next four months Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late eighteenth century. The result was a triumph that turned the show into a full-fledged hit, one of the major pop culture phenomena of the 1960s.

By now, we’ve seen ten séances, and they’ve gotten sloppy with them. In #600, a séance to contact someone named Philippe Cordier takes less time and trouble than it would have in 1969 to place a station-to-station telephone call. In #682, four characters held a séance in which no one objected when the medium went into the trance, breaking from a ritual form they had observed very strictly up to that point. In #698, we even heard about a séance held off-screen. So it is unlikely they will use a séance to get us from the conclusion of Dark Shadows 5.0 to the beginning of whatever it is that will compose Dark Shadows 6.0.

Barnabas and Stokes take Quentin’s I Ching wands and books to the basement the Old House, where Julia joins them. Stokes explains the I Ching more or less accurately, then Barnabas decides he will use the wands in an attempt to communicate with Quentin. Stokes warns him that the effects of the method are extremely unpredictable, and Julia keeps trying to stop the proceedings. Among them, the three represent the roles of convener, medium, and objector that we have seen in one séance after another.

But Quentin does not speak through any of the participants. Instead, Barnabas’ spirit leaves his body and walks towards a door. He opens it, and finds a coffin on the other side. It seems he is about to become a vampire again, as he was for the 172 years ending in March 1968. He is able to speak while this is going on; Julia knows what he means when he mentions a coffin and a mausoleum. Stokes is not a party to their criminal conspiracies, and so is puzzled. He asks Julia if she knows what Barnabas is talking about, and it is obvious that she is lying when she says she does not. Barnabas heads off towards the chained coffin, and an entirely new show.

Barnabas returns to the darkness from which he came. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

*Version 2.0, running from March 1967 to November 1967, introduced Barnabas as a vampire. Barnabas occasionally preyed upon the living, but spent most of his time trying to fit in to the twentieth century. He was so successful in that project that matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard gave him the Old House on the estate of Collinwood to live in, and the viewing public started tuning in in large numbers.

Version 3.0, running from November 1967 to March 1968, was the 1790s segment. It was the inverse of version 2.0. Vicki’s attempt to navigate an alien time failed as spectacularly as Barnabas had succeeded, getting her condemned to death by the other characters and losing the loyalty of the audience.

Version 4.0 was a Monster Mash full of creatures familiar from Universal Pictures horror films of the 1930s; it ran from March to November 1968, and its main theme turned out to be the growing friendship between Barnabas and Julia.

Episode 699: If only I could put these images into some kind of a sequence

In the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, nine year old Amy Jennings pops into her governess’ bedroom in the morning. The governess, Maggie Evans, hasn’t been to bed yet. Maggie’s other charge, twelve year old David Collins, disappeared into the haunted corridors of the great house on the estate some time ago, and cannot be found. The evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins has been possessing David and Amy off and on for many weeks, and has now grown so powerful that no one dares go into the great house alone. Maggie is too worried to go to bed.

Maggie questions Amy about David and Quentin. Amy tries to deny knowing anything about Quentin, but Maggie keeps up the pressure until Amy admits she is afraid that if she talks, Quentin will do something to her big brother Chris Jennings. Permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman overhears this admission, and demands to know what Quentin has to do with Chris.

Julia knows something neither Maggie nor Amy does. Chris is a werewolf. As Quentin’s power over the children and the great house has grown, so has Chris’ lycanthropy spread over more of the month. For the past several years, Chris took his wolf form only for the two or three nights the moon was fullest, never for more than four nights, and never during any other lunar phase. Now he has started changing even when the moon is new. What is more, Julia and her friend, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, just came from the chamber where they coop Chris up when he is the werewolf. They found that he has not changed back even though the sun has been up for two hours. They have no way of knowing when or if Chris will ever be human again.

Amy won’t tell Julia or Maggie anything more about Quentin or about Quentin’s fellow ghost, Beth. Amy has communicated with Beth, knows her name, and she and David first saw Beth with Quentin. She knows also that Beth weeps when she thinks of Chris suffering. For their part, Julia and Barnabas saw Beth when she led them to save Chris when Quentin had tried to kill him. Chris told them that Beth had appeared to him, and when he took Barnabas to the spot where that happened he and Barnabas found a shovel and excavated the unmarked grave of an infant wearing a pendant meant to ward off werewolves. Julia saw a photograph of Beth in an old Collins family album, dated 1897, the same year Quentin disappeared. If they could combine Amy’s knowledge about Beth with what they have learned from these three experiences, Barnabas and Julia might get somewhere.

Julia and Amy leave, and Maggie goes to bed. As she lies under the covers, we see visual effects that might have been impressive on daytime television in 1969, but that we all got pretty sick of seeing people use on video calls in 2020. The picture wiggles in the middle and a transparent sticker of Quentin’s face sweeps around the screen.

Quentin sticker. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Maggie has a dream. Dream sequences on Dark Shadows are usually messages sent to the dreamer by some supernatural force; the sticker of Quentin’s face suggests at first that he is the sender of this message. Maggie goes to a room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house. She was in the room in #680, and saw Quentin there. When she took matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and David to the room in #681, there was a tailor’s dummy wearing Quentin’s frock coat, with a face and mutton chops painted on it. Liz was glad to believe that the dummy was what Maggie saw, and David nattered on about how he and Amy called the dummy “Mr Juggins.” In her dream, Maggie recognizes Mr Juggins, then sees an opening in the wall.

Mr Juggins startles Maggie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

She goes through it, and finds a hidden chamber. Quentin is there. Quentin tried to strangle Maggie in #691, and earlier this week he dressed her up in a lovely outfit and did her hair in an elaborate up-do, so there’s really no telling what is going to happen when the two of them are alone together. This time, he kisses her passionately, and from the way she relaxes in his arms it is clear he is doing a great job.

Awake, Maggie tells Julia about her dream. This will bring back memories for longtime viewers. When we first saw Julia in #265, she was Maggie’s psychiatrist, and was asking her about, among other things, her dreams. The same viewers will have been marveling at the fact that Maggie is staying in the room of the Old House once occupied by the gracious Josette and now dominated by Josette’s portrait. In May and June of 1967, Barnabas was a vampire. He held Maggie prisoner in Josette’s room as part of his scheme to erase her personality and replace it with Josette’s. Julia hypnotized Maggie into forgetting that whole ordeal, and the show has recently been assuring us that they will not revisit the question of whether her memory will return. Putting her back in the room is their most heavy-handed way yet of telling us to stop wondering about that.

Maggie’s discussion with Julia also raises the question of who sent the dream. Had she responded to it by slipping out to the west wing without telling anyone where she was going, we could believe that Quentin was luring her to him by showing her what a good kisser he is. But this conference makes it clear that Maggie is not only consciously determined to do battle against Quentin, but that she is enlisting the support of the allies likeliest to make headway against him. Beth has done a great deal to warn people against Quentin, so she might have sent the dream. Since Maggie is in Josette’s room and the closing credits will run over a shot centered on Josette’s portrait, it is also possible that Josette’s ghost has returned to the business of sending dream warnings.

The image under the closing credits. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Once Maggie figures out where Quentin’s chamber is, she decides that David must be there. She resolves to go to the chamber and find David. Julia tells her it is too dangerous for the two of them to go to Quentin’s stronghold alone, and insists they wait until Barnabas can join them. Julia goes to fetch Barnabas. When she brings him back to the Old House, Maggie says that now she can’t find Amy. Julia decides to look for Amy while Maggie and Barnabas go to the great house.

It might seem odd that Julia thinks it is OK for Maggie to go to the great house accompanied only by Barnabas when it would have been too dangerous had she herself been Maggie’s only companion. But Julia knows that Barnabas is not an ordinary man. He has been free of the effects of the vampire curse for almost a year, but his history made it possible for him to travel back in time in #661. It seems that he retains enough connection with the supernatural to make him a more formidable adversary for Quentin than is even so adroit a mad scientist as Julia.

Amy overhears Maggie’s conversations, and she goes to the west wing. She uses a crowbar to open the panel that leads to Quentin’s chamber. She goes in and calls for David. David is not there, but Quentin is. Amy tries to tell Quentin that she had come to warn him that Maggie and Barnabas were on their way; as her attempt to lie to Maggie had crumbled when Maggie kept questioning her, so her attempt to deceive Quentin collapses as he keeps staring at her. Amy’s face goes blank, and we realize that Quentin is transmitting commands into her mind.

Barnabas and Maggie do go to the room and they do find the opening in the panel. Barnabas looks through it, and sees a door on the other side. The opening is a small one, close to the floor. The children have been crawling through it, and evidently Maggie did the same in her dream. But Barnabas does not intend to get his suit dirty. He picks up the crowbar, and says he will rip out all the panels and walk through the door.

Barnabas is not going to crawl through that thing. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 698: The kind of scene you should be avoiding

Barnabas Collins, old world gentleman extraordinaire, and Julia Hoffman, MD, are helping mysterious drifter Chris Jennings cover up the fact that he is a werewolf, responsible for a great many violent deaths. Lately Chris has started transforming into his lupine shape even on nights when the moon is not full, and this morning they find that he has not changed back even after dawn.

As if that did not present enough difficulty to Julia and Barnabas, one of Chris’ surviving victims is in town. She is his onetime fiancée, Sabrina Stuart. Two years ago, Sabrina saw Chris as the werewolf. She hasn’t told anyone about him, because she hasn’t been able to speak since. Her hair turned white, her skin turned pale, and she has been nearly catatonic.

Others have encountered the werewolf, and none has had this reaction. It’s true that Chris’ cousin Joe had to be taken to a mental hospital after he saw the transformation, but Joe had just been through a very long train of supernaturally induced traumas that had shattered his sensibilities and taken away everything he cared about. Seeing Chris change was just the last step in that process. Sabrina, as we see in a flashback segment today, was fine until she encountered Chris as the werewolf, and she didn’t even see the transformation itself. Yet here she is two years later, unspeaking, immobilized, and wearing the same makeup that Eli Wallach wore as Mr Freeze in the 1960s Batman TV show.

In a comment on Danny Horn’s post about this episode at Dark Shadows Every Day, “Cole” speculates that the show might have meant to tell us that the real reason Sabrina’s condition is less to do with what happened that on night in Chris’ apartment than with her brother and sole caretaker, Ned, played by Roger Davis:

I am once more getting through the Ned/Sabrina scenes thanks to this blog and the comments here; and although I still have to frequently avert my eyes from the screen to hold back the nausea, I keep concentrating on the dialogue while speculating further on JRM’s theory.

It does seem that we– and Julia– might be meant to feel especially concerned by Ned’s refusal to even consider allowing Sabrina to stay at Windcliff. He even says (or, rather, since it is Roger Davis, he SCREAMS), ”I won’t be separated from her!”

I don’t think his character is meant to be overly suspicious of Julia and Barnabas so the vehemence behind his already rather alarming declaration becomes more baffling unless the viewer concludes he has … extremely unnatural feelings of possessiveness towards sad, PTSD-afflicted Sabrina.

It is almost half as frustrating as it is disturbing because, with any other actors, we would surely know for certain how to interpret these scenes.

We would perhaps recognize that when Sabrina stares pleadingly at Julia once Ned leaves the room, that her muteness is caused as much by her horror at being an ongoing victim of her brother’s unspeakable abuse as by having once witnessed Chris’s transformation into a werewolf. We wouldn’t wonder, instead if the actress, Lisa Richards, is actually pleading with Hall to help her endure Davis’s deliberate act of molesting and assaulting her through out these scenes.

If it wasn’t Roger Davis in this role, we would know who Ned is really meant to be since there is no way any of the other regular male cast members would willingly subject their costars to type of abuse Davis is inflicting on Richards.

If it were … say, Jerry Lacy who was currently playing “Ned Stuart” in a manner even remotely similar to Roger Davis’s ‘interpretation’ of the role, we would recognize at once that the character of Ned is obviously scripted to be an incestuous rapist (and I am sure Lacy would still keep his hands professionally and respectfully away from Lisa Richards’s/”Sabrina’s” breasts, instead using actual acting techniques to portray his character’s warped nature). But with Davis ..

It really could be, as Mary commented below, that he is trying to get the poor actress to break character. And how could we expect other than that he would use his usual disgusting and violent Drumph-like/”‘you can grab them by the pussy” sense of Curtis-granted entitlement to assault her as “Ned,” regardless of the intent of the writer and director.

Either way, what a horrifically mistaken choice in casting.

Lisa Richards: fifty years later, I am thinking of you and hoping you weren’t forced to endure PTSD after filming these scenes with Davis.

Comment left 29 August 2021 by “Cole” on “Episode 698: Sister Act,” Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn, 8 August 2015

When I mentally recast the many parts Roger Davis played on Dark Shadows, I divide them between two men who were background players in the show’s first months. I imagine Fredric Forrest playing the two characters with aliases, Peter Bradford (a.k.a. Jeff Clark) and Charles Delaware Tate (a.k.a. Harrison Monroe.) Forrest excelled both as a quietly intense man under pressure and as a sweet, goofy, overgrown kid. In the hands of an actor who, unlike Mr Davis, could project those qualities, those two unloved characters might both have become fan favorites. His other two parts, Ned Stuart and Dirk Wilkins, would have been perfect for Harvey Keitel, who is unsurpassed as a man who is agitated by a deep anger that he himself barely understands and that he certainly cannot explain to anyone else. Not that it’s any secret why Ned is angry at Chris, but when he takes a break from pawing at Sabrina’s face and breasts he handles her so roughly that he is obviously angry with her, and that is something he isn’t going to be giving any thought.

Mr Davis’ behavior wasn’t much better in episodes directed by Lela Swift and others, but it is little surprise director Henry Kaplan didn’t rein him in. Kaplan directed with a conductor’s baton, and actresses complain that he would jab them with it. When the person in charge has that light a regard for women’s personal space, it’s no wonder a creep like Mr Davis felt free to rub himself all over Ms Richards.

Episode 697: He was so cold and evil, he touched me.

Chris Jennings is a werewolf, a fact which old world gentleman Barnabas Collins is helping him conceal. Two years ago, Chris’ fiancée Sabrina Stuart chanced to see him transform; she hasn’t been able to speak since. Her hair turned white, and she is in a nearly catatonic state. Sabrina’s brother, a very loud man named Ned, has brought her to the village of Collinsport and keeps demanding that Chris visit them and explain what happened.

There is a full moon tonight, so Barnabas has sealed Chris up in the secret chamber hidden in the old Collins family mausoleum. He tells Chris that he will try to persuade the Stuarts to leave town and forget about him. Chris tells him that is impossible; Barnabas seems to believe he can pull it off.

In the Stuarts’ suite at the Collinsport Inn, Barnabas tells Ned that he is harming Sabrina by taking her along on his mission to confront Chris and that he ought to take her home and move on with his life. Preposterous as this is, Ned makes it seem credible. To be more precise, it is actor Roger Davis who makes it seem credible. He rubs himself all over Lisa Blake Richards’ scalp, face, and chest while she is required to remain motionless. To the extent that we accept them as their characters, we are forced to think of Ned as a caretaker who abuses his disabled sister sexually; to the extent that we recognize Mr Davis’ behavior as typical of his previous performances on Dark Shadows, we wonder how bad things were for women in show business in the late 1960s that Miss Richards didn’t contact the union and bring him up on charges. It isn’t every performer who can make an audience sympathize with an ex-vampire’s attempt to keep a woman in a comatose state lest she endanger his werewolf buddy, but you can always trust Mr Davis to enlist the viewers’ support for any plot development that will get him off the screen.

I wonder how much of that look is Barnabas reacting to Ned’s story and how much is Jonathan Frid wondering if he should stop tape and call Equity. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There are also some indications that the show is firming up some of its world-building. For the first time, we hear the name “Edward Collins” as the grandfather of the senior generation now resident at the great house of Collinwood. We hear that Edward was the father of Jamison Collins and the brother of Quentin Collins. Quentin was first mentioned months ago as Jamison’s uncle, but on Friday Barnabas had a line identifying him as his brother, suggesting some behind-the-scenes wavering about this point. Quentin’s ghost is the chief villain in the current A story, and we heard several weeks ago that he wants to turn strange and troubled boy David Collins into a replica of Jamison, so these relationships are important to the action.

Longtime viewers will have fond memories when stuffy Roger Collins sees a book open by itself on the table in the drawing room of the great house. The same book opened itself on the same table in #52, one of the first unmistakable signs that ghosts were at work. No one but the audience was around to see that, but when it happened again in #182, Roger was there. It jolted him out of his refusal to face the facts about the supernatural menace operating at that time.