Episode commentary – Page 31 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 684: This is a funny house we live in

Dark Shadows has two ongoing storylines at this point. Mysterious drifter Chris Jennings came to town a couple of months ago and turned out to be a werewolf. Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard does not know of Chris’ curse. She has taken a fancy to him and set him up in the caretaker’s cottage on the estate of Collinwood. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman do know that Chris is a werewolf, and they are working to help him. Barnabas has found a place to keep him confined on the nights of the full Moon, and Julia is trying to develop a medical intervention that will keep him in his human form.

Meanwhile, Chris’ nine year old sister Amy has taken up residence in the great house on the estate. She and her twelve year old friend, strange and troubled boy David Collins, are falling under the power of the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins. At first Amy could communicate with Quentin more clearly than David could. This made David envious. In #640, David complained that Amy could hear his voice and he could not, even though “Quentin Collins is my ancestor.” That suggested to the audience that Quentin would turn out also to be Amy and Chris’ ancestor, joining the werewolf story with the Haunting of Collinwood.

Today, Barnabas and Chris have dug up a spot on the ground to which the ghost of a mysterious woman had led Chris. They find a tiny coffin holding the remains of an infant. They discover that the infant was wearing a medallion in the shape of a silver pentagram. The sight of the dead baby shocks Barnabas right away; Chris keeps his composure at first, but seems close to tears a moment later. Quentin stands in the shrubbery and watches Barnabas and Chris.

Barnabas has not seen Quentin and does not know who he is. Others have seen him and described him to Barnabas and Julia. They and those others suspect that he is a malevolent ghost with designs on David and Amy. No one has yet made a connection between Quentin and the werewolf story, however.

Julia and Barnabas have also seen the mysterious woman who led Chris to the baby’s grave. They know that she is a ghost and that she has helped Chris, and they also know that her clothing is of the same vintage as is the clothing which Quentin wears. But they do not know what, if anything, the two ghosts have to do with each other. The audience knows that the female ghost’s name is Beth and that she was with Quentin in the little room in the long deserted west wing of the great house when the children first met him.

Barnabas tells Chris that the pentagram can only be a device to ward off a werewolf, so that there must have been a werewolf in the area when the baby was buried. He also tells Chris that the mysterious woman would not have led him to dig up the grave unless what they found in the coffin would be of help to him.

While Barnabas inspects the pentagram in the drawing room of the great house, David throws darts at a board propped up on a chair nearby. The audience knows that David is under Quentin’s control, so it is obvious to us that the dart playing is an attempt to distract Barnabas and keep him from figuring out the meaning of the pentagram. Lacking our knowledge, Barnabas is merely annoyed with David. Jonathan Frid and David Henesy expertly develop the comedy in Barnabas’ fast-burn reaction to David’s behavior.

Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard interrupts the scene. She notices what Barnabas is doing. He shows her the pentagram, and she recognizes the jeweler’s mark as that of Braithwaite’s silver shop in the village of Collinsport. While Barnabas telephones Braithewaite’s and arranges to take the pentagram there to see if the proprietor can give him any information about it, Carolyn tells David she wants to have a conversation with him about some cryptic remarks he made earlier. David refuses, saying that he has homework to do. Carolyn argues with him briefly, but finally gives up and leaves. Barnabas is still involved in his conversation with Mr Braithwaite when David hides the pentagram behind his dartboard.

Barnabas gets off the phone, and David resumes throwing darts. Barnabas asks him why he isn’t doing the homework he was just telling Carolyn presented such an urgent obligation that he could not talk with her. He launches into a shaggy dog story, the upshot of which is that he has to wait for Amy.

More exasperated than ever, Barnabas turns to the desk and sees that the pentagram is gone. He demands David return it. David denies having it. He says that it may have vanished on its own. After all, unaccountable things happen at Collinwood all the time, as Barnabas is in a position to know. The way he says “You should know that” reminds longtime viewers that David has more than once shown signs of figuring out more about Barnabas’ own connections to the supernatural than have any of his adult relatives. In #316, he pointed out that none of the Collinses really knows anything about Barnabas- “He just showed up one night.” And in #660, he told Amy that “Barnabas knows a lot of things he doesn’t tell anybody.” At moments like these, we wonder just how much information David really has at his disposal. Perhaps he secretly knows everything, and has just decided there’s no point in notifying the authorities.

David invites Barnabas to search him. He lists the contents of his pockets, and turns the right front pocket inside out. He tells him that he has a pack of chewing gum, which he got from Amy. He specifies that he traded her a box of raisins for it. As David Henesy delivers the line and Jonathan Frid shows us Barnabas’ reaction, this detail is laugh-out-loud funny. Barnabas surrenders and apologizes to David, fretting about the pentagram’s absence.

Barnabas takes a sketch of the pentagram to Braithwaite’s. In the first months it was on the air, Dark Shadows took us to New York City twice, to Bangor, Maine several times, and to Phoenix, Arizona once. But now that both stories center on characters all of whom dwell in one or another of the houses at Collinwood, it is as rare to leave the estate and go into the neighboring village as it was then to go on those remote excursions.

Old Mr Braithwaite tells Barnabas that the shop has been in operation since 1781 and has been providing fine silver to the Collins family the whole time. Regular viewers know that Barnabas was alive then, and lived in Collinsport. A curse made him a vampire in the 1790s, and he was under its power until he was freed early in 1968. So he must have been quite familiar with Braithwaite’s in its early years. What is more, in #459 we saw that in the first months of Barnabas’ career as a vampire his father Joshua learned of his curse and commissioned a local craftsman to make silver bullets with which he could put Barnabas out of his misery. That craftsman must have been one of the first Mr Braithwaites.

The incumbent Mr Braithwaite tells Barnabas he will consult his records as soon as the shop closes and telephone him if he finds anything. When the call comes, David answers. Mr Braithwaite tells David that he can’t imagine why he forgot about the pentagram since it was one of the very first he made himself, back in 1897. Quentin appears, takes the phone from David, and hears Mr Braithwaite say he will stop by Collinwood with the ledger shortly.

David protests that Quentin had no right to take the phone from him. Quentin turns to him, gives him a menacing look, and walks toward him. David backs away and and takes a place on the stairs, still objecting loudly to what Quentin did.

Closing Miscellany

The closing credits list the actor who plays Ezra Braithwaite as “Abe Vigodo.” Perhaps in some parallel time-band there was a man of that name who played Tossio in The Good Father and Detective Fosh in Barney Moeller, but this is in fact Abe Vigoda.

In his 1977-1978 ABC TV series Fish, Vigoda’s character was married to a woman played by Florence Stanley. Stanley was also a Dark Shadows alum, as a voice actress. She provided sobbing sounds heard in #4, #98, #515, #516, and #666. Vigoda once appeared on the panel at a Dark Shadows convention; his main statement was “I don’t remember much about it.” I can’t find evidence that Stanley ever appeared in such a setting. I would love to imagine that Vigoda and Stanley compared notes about their experiences on Dark Shadows between setups on Fish, but I would be astonished to learn that ever happened.

Vigoda always played old men. The second screen credit on his IMDb page is a 1949 episode of Studio One in which he took the role of “Old Train Passenger.” At that time, he was 28. Vigoda was a marathon runner, a form of exercise that tends to burn out all the fat under the skin of the face. And of course he was a very strong actor, easily able to convince us that he is of a great age. So even though Vigoda was only three years older than Jonathan Frid, and about 175 years younger than Barnabas, it isn’t quite as funny as it might be to hear him call Barnabas one of “you young people.”

Danny Horn devotes his post about this episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day to three points. The first is his exultation that his least favorite writer, Ron Sproat, was credited with his final script yesterday, so that today is the first day of the Sproatless Dark Shadows. The second is that the show is finally joining the werewolf story with the Haunting of Collinwood. The third is a point I have some reservations about. He says that this is the first episode where Quentin “has a feeling,” and therefore declares it to be Quentin’s debut as a real character. “It’s nice to meet you Quentin. Welcome to the show,” he concludes.

It’s true that Quentin shows a wider range of feelings today than he had previously, but I think it is an exaggeration to say that we are only now seeing his feelings. For example, when in #680 Quentin agrees to Amy’s demand that he stop trying to kill Chris, he looks very much like a man humiliated to find that he has to capitulate to a nine year old girl. In the same episode he showed amusement and anger at appropriate points. Those three responses may not sound like much, but David Selby’s face is a magnificent instrument, one he plays it expertly. For him, they are more than enough to make Quentin into a real person.

Chris and Carolyn have a brief scene in the drawing room as they are getting ready to go on a date. Chris defuses a potentially awkward conversation about his previous failures to respond to Carolyn’s hints that she was interested in him by saying “Oh, I didn’t notice that” in the W. C. Fields imitation he had used with Amy in #677. She chuckles delightedly. This is not implausible. Not only can we imagine her being relieved that the topic didn’t ruin their evening, but W. C. Fields was very much in vogue in the late 1960s, so much so that a fashionable young woman might have chuckled when a man briefly imitated him.

David and Carolyn have an exchange that longtime viewers will find less plausible. He asks her if she has ever seen a ghost; she responds by asking if he has. But each of them knows perfectly well that the other has seen ghosts. David spent the first year of the show on intimate terms with the ghost of the gracious Josette, and he and Carolyn both saw and had substantive conversations with the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah. In #344, Carolyn told David that when she was a little girl her best friend was the ghost of a boy named Randy. It’s just trashing character development to retcon all that away.

Barnabas says something that will catch the ears of properly obsessed fans. When he is in the shop, he tells Mr Braithwaite that he will gladly drive back from Collinwood whenever he has any information for him. There have been some suggestions lately that Barnabas has learned to drive and has come into possession of a car, but this is the first definite confirmation of that point.

Episode 683: The children themselves

This one survives only in a black and white kinescope. That format serves the story quite well. Five of the characters sound like they would generate fast-paced, high-pitched action- Barnabas Collins is a recovering vampire, Julia Hoffman is a mad scientist, Chris Jennings is a werewolf, Quentin Collins and his associate Beth are ghosts. But today is all about Barnabas, Julia, and Chris trying to figure out whether Quentin and Beth really are ghosts and wondering if they have something to do with Chris’ nine year old sister Amy and Amy’s twelve year old friend David Collins. They have to spend their time painstakingly chewing over the few wisps of evidence they have managed to collect. That slow story depends entirely on atmosphere and suggestion to connect with the audience, and the visual simplicity and abstraction of black and white images gives it the best chance it could have of working.

Barnabas and Julia go to Chris’ place to ask him if he knows anything about Beth. Julia hypnotizes him to make sure he isn’t blocking any memories of her; he isn’t. They leave, he goes outside alone, and he meets Beth. She points to a spot on the ground, then vanishes. He goes to get Barnabas and tell him about this encounter. They go to the spot she had indicated and find that a shovel has materialized nearby. They dig there, and turn up a child’s coffin. Barnabas is puzzled by this. He hasn’t buried any children in unmarked graves on the grounds lately, and there is nothing distinctive about the coffin itself. So he suggests they open it. The episode ends with the lid of the coffin filling the screen.

The latest exhumation. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This was the last of hundreds of episodes written by Ron Sproat. When Sproat joined the show in the fall of 1966, he sorted through the storylines, discarding some that couldn’t possibly go anywhere and tightening the focus on those that seemed to have potential. He was an able technician who did a great deal to make sure that new viewers could figure out what was happening on the show. He shouldered the heaviest share of the writing burden in the period when the vampire storyline began and Dark Shadows suddenly leapt from the bottom of the ratings to become a kind of hit, and was a workhorse through the months when the show was a costume drama set in the 1790s and emerged as one of the major pop culture phenomena of the 1960s. He was the one who pushed his Yale classmate Jonathan Frid for the role of Barnabas, and he was the first person connected with the show to go to the conventions the show’s fans organized, laying the foundation for a community that brought them together with members of the cast, crew, and production staff.

Vital as his contributions were to the show and its afterlife, the brutal conditions under which Dark Shadows‘ tiny writing staff worked made it impossible to ignore Sproat’s weaknesses. When there were never more than three people involved in creating scripts for a hundred minutes a week of drama, scripts which were often produced verbatim as they came from the writer, there was nowhere to hide. So it is clear to us that Sproat’s imagination was not an especially fertile source of plot development. On his great Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn frequently complained of Sproat’s habit of locking characters up in various forms of captivity so that the story would not progress and he would not run out of flimsies to fill in. Danny called these captivities “Sproatnappings.” Sproat probably should have found a different job several months ago, and certainly should have been part of a larger group of writers.

Still, we will miss him when he’s gone. Alexandra Moltke Isles played well-meaning governess Vicki from #1 to #627; for the first year, she was the main character on Dark Shadows, and she continued to be a core member of the cast until she left. Nowadays, Mrs Isles remembers that a few months after her departure she found herself free at 4 PM and tuned into the show. She couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on. She wasn’t the only one. The staff that will take the show through its next several months- Sam Hall, Gordon Russell, and Violet Welles- would do brilliant work, on average far and away the best the show ever had, but none of them spared a thought for any but the most regular of viewers. For much of 1969, missing one episode will leave you bewildered- missing several months, well, Mrs Isles may as well have been watching a different show altogether.

Most episodes in the first 66 weeks of Dark Shadows ended with ABC staff announcer Bob Lloyd’s voice in the closing credits telling us that “Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis production.” We hear that announcement during today’s closing credits for the first time since #330. That isn’t because they’ve brought Mr Lloyd back, but because they were using an old tape for the theme music and didn’t realize his voice was on it. You can tell it wasn’t on purpose, since the announcement comes in the middle of the credits, not in its usual place at the end when the Dan Curtis Productions logo appears.

Episode 682: He killed me

Governess Maggie Evans saw the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins yesterday, and she tells housekeeper Mrs Johnson about it today. Mrs Johnson saw Quentin a few days ago; she and Maggie are the only adults in the great house of Collinwood who know that Quentin exists, and not even they know his name. Quentin is gradually taking control of Maggie’s charges, nine year old Amy Jennings and twelve year old David Collins. Yesterday, David led Maggie and his aunt, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, to the room in the long deserted west wing where Maggie saw Quentin. There is a mannequin there wearing a coat like Quentin’s; David says that he and Amy call it “Mr Juggins,” and Liz chooses to believe that Mr Juggins is what Maggie saw.

We see Maggie in bed. She gets up, goes back to the room, and sees Mr Juggins. We dissolve to a shot of Quentin in Mr Juggins’ place. Horrified, Maggie watches Quentin approach with a length of fabric. He chokes her with it. She falls to the floor. She is lying there when we cut to commercial. Maggie was introduced in #1 and has for long stretches been a central character, one of the most recognizable on Dark Shadows. Kathryn Leigh Scott tells a story of going to a wilderness area in Africa when the show was a hit and being greeted with cries of “Maggie Evans!” For the moment, it looks like they have decided to kill her off in the middle of a Tuesday episode.

Of course they haven’t. We come back from the break to hear Maggie telling old world gentleman Barnabas Collins about the dream in which she was strangled. She is surprised that Barnabas believes her story about seeing the man when she was awake, shares her suspicions that David and Amy are connected with the man, and is open to the idea that the dream is “a warning.” Barnabas tells Maggie that he and his inseparable friend, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, saw a woman dressed in clothes of the same period as Quentin’s clothes, that the woman’s presence could not be explained, and that she led them to Amy’s brother’s Chris at a moment when Chris needed medical help to save his life. Barnabas has concluded that the man and the woman are ghosts and that they represent something very dangerous.

Barnabas enlists the aid of occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes agrees to conduct a séance in the drawing room in the hopes of contacting Madame Janet Findley, a psychic researcher whom he brought to the house in #647 to investigate the early signs of Quentin’s haunting. Amy and David tricked Madame Findley into going to Quentin’s stronghold in the west wing in #648, and she did battle with him there in #649. After that confrontation, Madame Findley appeared at the head of the stairs in the foyer and tumbled down them, dead.

This is the tenth séance we have seen on Dark Shadows. They usually come with four roles to be filled. In all séances, someone acted as organizer and leader. In eight of the first nine séances, someone else objected to the idea of a séance, but reluctantly took a place around the table. In seven of the nine, someone went into a trance, becoming a medium. Every time the trance began, someone grew alarmed at its first signs and tried to end the séance before the dead could speak; that drew a stern rebuke from the leader. The medium then spoke, more often than not passing out after struggling to utter a few mysterious words.

The roles of reluctant participant and objector are often combined. Today, Mrs Johnson is the first to combine the role of reluctant participant and medium. This is also the first time the trance does not draw an objection from someone wanting to stop the séance. Mrs Johnson does pull her hands back early on, breaking the circle of contact, and Stokes delivers the requisite stern rebuke. But no one speaks up when she starts to moan. As Madame Findley, she at first produces the usual jumble of words (“The children! Panel! Room!”) She manages to cry out “He killed me! He killed me!” before collapsing face first onto the table in the orthodox manner.

In their post about this episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri compare Mr Juggins with Otto the Automatic Pilot from the 1980 film Airplane! Perhaps inspired by the dissolve from Mr Juggins to Quentin today, they go on to Juggins-ize Otto:

The Scoleris also list all the séances on the show up to this point. They name the leaders and mediums, but not the reluctant participants or the objectors. I have added those:

Dark Shadows Before I Die Séance Tracker

Episode 170/171: Dr. Peter Guthrie conducts; Carolyn, Vicki, Roger and Laura Collins participate; Josette speaks through Vicki in French; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Roger and Laura join reluctantly; Carolyn objects]

Episode 186: Vicki conducts; Sam and David participate; David Radcliffe speaks through David; held in the drawing room at the Old House [Sam is both reluctant joiner and objector]

Episode 280/281: Roger conducts; Liz, Vicki, Burke, Barnabas, Carolyn participate; Josette speaks through Vicki; held in the drawing room at the Old House [Liz, Burke, and Barnabas are reluctant; Barnabas objects]

Episode 365: Roger conducts; Liz, Julia, Vicki, Carolyn and Barnabas participate; Sarah Collins speaks through Vicki after Carolyn pretends Sarah is speaking through her; Vicki is transferred to 1795; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Liz and Barnabas are reluctant; Liz objects]

Episode 449: Countess duPrés conducts; Joshua Collins participates; Bathia Mapes shows up, claiming she was called; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Joshua is reluctant; no trance]

Episode 510/511: Professor Stokes conducts; Julia and Tony Peterson participate; Reverend Trask speaks through Tony Peterson; the basement wall breaks open to reveal his skeleton; held in the basement at the Old House [Tony is reluctant, Julia objects]

Episode 600: Professor Stokes conducts; Barnabas and Julia participate; Phillipe Cordier speaks through Barnabas; held in the drawing room at the Old House [No conspicuously reluctant participant. Julia objects]

Episode 640: David conducts; Amy participates; unsuccessful attempt to contact Quentin Collins; held in Amy’s bedroom at Collinwood [Amy is reluctant; no trance]

Episode 642: Professor Stokes conducts; Liz, Vicki, Carolyn, Chris participate; Magda speaks through Carolyn; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Chris is reluctant and is objector]

Today’s episode: Professor Stokes conducts; Barnabas, Maggie and Mrs. Johnson participate; Janet Findley speaks through Mrs. Johnson; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Mrs Johnson is reluctant; no objector]

This is Maggie’s first séance, and they’ve been spending a lot of time lately showing us that she is unsure of herself. So it would have been expected for her to become frightened and try to stop the séance when Mrs Johnson goes into the trance. Maybe that’s why they left it out- it was too obvious a move. But the pattern is so familiar now that it feels like they’ve forgotten something when they leave the objection out.

Episode 681: Mr Juggins

The evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins has been taking control of strange and troubled boy David Collins. David tricks his governess, Maggie Evans, into going into a room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood. Quentin appears to Maggie there, frightening her.

Maggie goes to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and tells her she saw an unfamiliar man lurking in the west wing. When she says that she suspects David is in cahoots with the man, Liz becomes deeply skeptical. Her disbelief reminds longtime viewers of #27, when Maggie’s predecessor, the well-meaning Vicki Winters, discovered evidence indicating that David was behind an attempt to murder his father, Liz’ brother Roger. Desperate to escape the implication, Liz briefly went so far as to suggest that Vicki herself might be the culprit. That idea was absurd on its face, and Liz treated Vicki as a member of the family, so she dropped it almost as soon as she had put it into words. But Maggie doesn’t have anything definite to back up her suspicions of David, and Liz is no more attached to her than she might be to any other member of the household staff. She remains leery of Maggie throughout the episode.

Quentin appears to David in his room. David talks to Quentin; he praises him for a fine plan, and Quentin smiles and nods in reply. He asks him how he came up with the name “Mr Juggins” and Quentin does not react. When Liz’ daughter Carolyn and local man Chris Jennings enter, Quentin vanishes.

After Carolyn and Chris exit, David sings a song about “Mr Juggins.” Quentin reappears, quite happy. I don’t blame Quentin, the song makes me happy too. It’s sung to the tune of “Yankee Doodle”:

Mr Juggins met Miss Evans on a darkened ni-i-ight,

The poor girl fainted dead away, he gave her such a fri-i-ight.

Mr Juggins keep it up,

Mr Juggins keep it up,

Mr Juggins keep it up,

Until Aunt Liz beleeeeves me!

This is the first time we’ve heard David sing, and it is delightful. David Henesy was in the national touring company of Oliver! in 1964 and 1965, and he does a first-class job with this little ditty. The song also marks the first time David utters the name “Liz”- he has always called her “Aunt Elizabeth.”

Furthermore, the Dark Shadows Almanac, as cited on the Dark Shadows Wiki, reports that the technician responsible for holding up the boom microphones was named Max Jughans. Considering that the shadows of the boom mics appeared on screen in most episodes, the mics themselves in many, and the entire boom mic assembly on occasion, the director’s voice must have come from the control room during many a dress rehearsal calling “Mr Jughans, keep it up!” Certainly David Henesy comes very close to laughing when he first gets to the line “Mr Juggins, keep it up!”

Maggie and Liz talk to David in his room. David offers to take them to the room where Maggie saw Quentin so that he can prove a story he has been telling; Liz replies “You don’t need to prove anything.” This line shows how completely she has disregarded what Maggie has told her. David insists, and they go.

In the room, Maggie gasps. She thinks she is seeing Quentin again. In fact, it is a dummy wearing a coat like his and with a face painted to look more or less like his. David says that he calls the dummy “Mr Juggins.” Liz turns to Maggie and triumphantly asks “Could this be the man you saw?” It’s lucky for Maggie she didn’t get the job when Vicki did, or she would still be in jail for the attempt on Roger’s life.

I’m not saying Mr Juggins is the best guest star *Dark Shadows* ever had, only that he was one of the best. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 680: Chicken Little was right

Strange and troubled boy David Collins and nine year old Amy Jennings are falling under the sway of the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins. Quentin has been gaining strength gradually; at first he was confined to a small chamber hidden behind a wall in a storage room in the long deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood, and was dependent on Amy and David to do his bidding elsewhere. Now he can move around the estate and do things for himself. He is still able to control only one of the children at a time, though, and when Amy found out that Quentin had poisoned her brother Chris she made up her mind to fight him.

Today, David goes to the west wing to tell Quentin that Amy will cooperate with him if he promises to leave Chris alone. When David puts this to Quentin, he nods in agreement. If Quentin is still weak enough that he must give in to Amy on this point, he is still weak enough to be stopped before he does any great harm. That builds suspense- the show has invested so much time in building up the threat Quentin poses that it would feel like a cheat if he were defeated now, but we can look forward to seeing him survive a series of close calls between now and the time when his storyline approaches its climax.

David was not the only one who went from the main part of the house to the west wing. Governess Maggie saw him go there, in direct defiance of her orders that he stay in his room. Maggie followed David down the corridor and saw him go into the storage room. By the time she entered that room, David had gone into Quentin’s secret chamber and closed the panel behind him, leaving Maggie baffled as to where he could be. She went back to the main part of the house to wait for David.

In David’s room, Maggie sits in the armchair by the wall. She is still there when David comes back. This recreates a pair of scenes in #667, when David sat in the chair and was still there when Amy entered. That was supposed to be a power move, and it worked, more or less. David asserted his role as Quentin’s spokesman, and Amy acquiesced.

But Maggie can’t pull it off. She doesn’t give in to David when he denies everything, tells her her eyesight must be failing, claims that she doesn’t have the right to punish him, and yells at her that he will “get even.” But her visible nervousness encourages him to try each of these tactics. It’s only when she reminds him that he had his flashlight with him when he went into the west wing and says she will look for it in the storage room that she shuts him down, and then only for a moment.

David protests his innocence to Maggie, but he tells us that the sky is falling.

Maggie goes back to the west wing, where she sees Quentin. David looks directly into the camera and recites the epigram “I do not love thee, Dr Fell.” In the first months of the show, David was the only character who made eye contact with the audience. He stopped doing that late in 1966, when he stopped being a menace, and several other characters have been called on to do it since. It’s good to see him revisit the technique, and he is quite effective at it today.

Closing Miscellany

As my screen name may have led you to suspect, I make my living as a Latin teacher. So I would be remiss if I did not mention that “I do not love thee, Dr Fell” is a translation of a piece often used on the first day of introductory Latin classes, Martial’s Epigram 32:

Non amo te, Sabidi, nec dicere possum quare.

Hoc tantum possum dicere: non amo te.

When poet Tom Brown translated the epigram in 1680, he changed the name “Sabidius” to “Dr Fell” in memory of the dean of the Oxford college which he had briefly attended. A literal translation should enable you to figure out the meaning of each of the Latin words: “I do not love you, Sabidius, and I cannot say why. I can say only this: I do not love you.”

In a conversation with housekeeper Mrs Johnson, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard says that “David is twelve years old.” This is the first time in a while David’s age has been specified explicitly.

Liz orders Mrs Johnson to take David’s dinner to him on a tray and sit in his room while he eats. Longtime viewers may remember that when Mrs Johnson started working in the house in #77 and #79, David was afraid she would be his “jailer”; in #189, she actually did sit in his room and function as his jailer for a little while. She is reluctant to do that again today, because she has caught on that David and Amy are involved with something uncanny and she is afraid of them.

Danny Horn devotes his post about this episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day to a tour of the props and decor of David’s room. It’s a lot of fun. One of his commenters, “Jayson O’Neill,” links to a 2014 post on the Dark Shadows News blogspot page focusing on David’s posters; another, “John E. Comelately,” points out that famed rock and roll band The Turtles released a track in 1967 called “Chicken Little Was Right.” I made a comment myself finding fault with the acting and blaming director Dan Curtis for it; I don’t agree with that anymore, but you’re welcome to read it if you want.

Episode 679: Your make-believe people

The spirit of the late Quentin Collins is taking possession of children Amy Jennings and David Collins, and they now realize that Quentin’s plans for them are evil. David despairs of resisting Quentin; Amy tries to tell matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard what is going on, but Quentin appears to Amy and stops her before she can say anything useful. I have some miscellaneous observations to make:

Quentin scares Amy and stops her telling Liz what is happening. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In a comment on Danny Horn’s post about this episode at Dark Shadows Every Day, I pointed out that it is unnecessary to call the story a “metaphor for child abuse” or “allegorical child abuse.” When adults terrorize kids into harming their loved ones, that simply is child abuse. Quentin is abusing David and Amy by means that don’t seem to exist in our world, but it is very definitely abuse and it can be expected to have the same consequences that would follow if he were using more realistic methods.

2. When Quentin interrupts Amy’s attempt to tell Liz what has been going on, the show is repeating a structure it used just a few days ago, in #675. Amy’s big brother Chris was about to confess to the sheriff that he was a werewolf when a telephone call from recovering vampire Barnabas Collins gave Chris an alibi and ended the sheriff’s interest in anything he might say. In each case a confession comes right to the point of terminating one of the two major ongoing storylines and is interrupted before it can do so.

3. Liz catches David twisting Amy’s arm, covering her mouth, and yelling at her. After Liz scolds David and sends him to his room, she tells governess Maggie Evans to discipline David by any means necessary. Several times in the last couple of weeks, the show has gone out of its way to demonstrate that Maggie is a hopelessly lax disciplinarian, no obstacle at all to Quentin’s designs on Amy and David. Now we see that even the other characters have started to catch on to this fact.

4. There are a couple of sequences of coming and going from David’s room. These feature a good deal of camera movement from the inside to the hallway outside. The show has been giving us a lot more of this kind of thing lately, laboring to suggest spaces connecting one room to another. There used to be scenes set in the village of Collinsport, and characters who lived there. Maggie lived in town then, and her house was a frequent set. But now she lives in the great house on the estate of Collinwood, and the only regular character who does not live somewhere on the estate is Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, whom we have not seen since #660. If all the action is going to shrink to Collinwood, and most of it to the great house, it makes sense they would develop a strategy to make that house seem like a bigger place.

5. The show has a fondness for a particular shade of bright green at this point. You will notice it in the clothes that both Amy and Liz are wearing in the screenshot above. It also shows up towards the end of the episode. Maggie follows David into the long-deserted west wing of the great house; he is sneaking off to visit Quentin in his stronghold, a dusty little room there. The sequence again places an emphasis on the corridors. We have seen the west wing corridors several times. As before, they are draped with elaborate cobwebs but chock-full of objets d’art. There is a new one on display today, a lamp in that same bright green. It is in the center of the shot while David makes his way to the room. That helps to make the space seem bigger, as we measure David’s progress not by he slowness of his steps but by his steadily changing relationship to the lamp. The corridor is dark enough that only a brightly colored object could serve this function, but it is in focus for so long that we are left with a feeling that it must have some significance of its own.

6. When David is lying to Liz to keep her from making sense of what little Amy was able to tell her, he claims to have an imaginary friend named “Lars,” a giant who lives in “the house by the sea.” Collinsport is a coastal village, so there are lots of houses by the sea there, and for much of 1968 suave warlock Nicholas Blair lived in what was always called “a house by the sea.” But only one place has been called “the house by the sea,” a Collins family property that has been vacant since the 1870s. Well-meaning governess Victoria Winters and her fiancé Burke Devlin were interested in buying that house in September and October of 1967, but for legal reasons the sale turned out to be impossible. The business about The House by the Sea seemed very much like it was going to lead to a ghost story that would bring into view another branch of the Collins family and involve Burke and Vicki being possessed by evil spirits. Perhaps that was the intention when it was first dreamed up in the flimsies six months before, but it never went anywhere and was forgotten completely the minute it ended. This is the first reference to the house since #335. If that were at one time the plan, bringing up “The House by the Sea” today might be a way for the writers and producers to remark to each other on the fact that they are now making a story like the one they dropped back then.

Episode 678: This time, I saved him

At the estate of Collinwood, two ghosts are at odds over the fate of a werewolf. Caught in the crossfire are a mad scientist, a recovering vampire, and a couple of kids.

The ghosts are the evil Quentin Collins and a weepy woman so far known only as Beth. The werewolf is Chris Jennings, who is staying in the caretaker’s cottage on the estate. The mad scientist is Julia Hoffman, MD, a permanent guest in the great house. The recovering vampire is Julia’s inseparable friend Barnabas Collins, master of the Old House. The kids are Chris’ nine year old sister Amy and strange and troubled boy David Collins, who live in the great house.

Yesterday, Quentin went to the cottage and put strychnine in Chris’ whiskey. Beth appeared to Julia and led her and Barnabas to the cottage in time to save Chris; today, they figure out that Beth is a ghost.

Quentin has been exercising power over David and Amy, at first with Beth’s cooperation. Beth appears to Amy in a dream visitation. While she guides Amy to images of Chris and David and to the realizations that Quentin means to kill Chris and that David has tried vainly to stop him, we hear Beth speak for the first time. She says everything twice, giving her dialogue a lyrical quality that could be quite lovely. Unfortunately, Terrayne Crawford’s limitations as an actress keep that loveliness from coming through.

Barnabas and Julia know that Chris is a werewolf and have persuaded him to accept their help. They question Chris and are satisfied that he did not poison himself. When he mentions that David visited him the previous morning, Barnabas decides to go interrogate David. Longtime viewers know that David has extensive experience with ghosts, a fact of which Barnabas has at times been most uncomfortably aware. Once Barnabas has learned that Beth is a ghost, it will strike us as reasonable that he will be interested in David’s connection with the matter.

Amy goes to the cottage and sees Julia tending to Chris. They tell her he just had an upset stomach and will be fine. She does not believe them, and says she had a dream that convinced her Chris was in mortal danger. This intrigues Julia, who presses for more details about the dream. Amy clams up, but now Julia and Barnabas, the show’s two chief protagonists, have figured out that David and Amy have something to do with ghosts, and that those ghosts in turn have to do with Chris. The Haunting of Collinwood story hasn’t made any real progress for several weeks, but that can now change.

Back in the great house, Barnabas questions David about his visit to Chris. He doesn’t get any more information out of him than Julia had got out of Amy. There is a bit of intentional humor when Barnabas tells David he thought it would be pleasant to share breakfast with him and Amy. David says it isn’t so pleasant at breakfast- housekeeper Mrs Johnson is in a bad mood in the mornings. Barnabas suggests they ignore her, and David replies that it is not easy to do that. David Henesy delivers this line with perfect comic timing.

Barnabas realizes David knows more than he is telling. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Amy shows up and responds favorably to Barnabas’ self-invitation to their breakfast. After Barnabas leaves the room, Amy confronts David about Quentin’s attempt to kill Chris. David has despaired of opposing Quentin, and is terrified when Amy tells him she will go tell matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard everything that has been going on. He is convinced Quentin will kill them if she does this. He is pleading with her to come back when the episode ends.

Episode 677: To contain your violence

Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman have figured out that mysterious drifter Chris Jennings is a werewolf. Last night, Barnabas took Chris to the room hidden behind the secret panel in the old Collins family mausoleum and locked him up there. That had the desired effect- Chris transformed, but couldn’t get out and didn’t kill anyone.

This morning, Barnabas walks with Chris as he returns home to the caretaker’s cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. They find Julia already there. Barnabas had neglected to tell Chris that Julia also knows his secret, so he is puzzled to find her in his house. When she explains that she knows he is the werewolf, she also says that she advised Barnabas against helping him. She seems to be in quite a snippy mood.

Chris says that Julia was right; Barnabas replies “Right or wrong, I have made my decision and I intend to follow it through!” That’s a perfectly characteristic remark for Barnabas, who often shows great tenacity but never shows any signs of a functional conscience. Julia warms up and tells Chris that she will come back the following morning and begin a series of tests meant to discover a medical intervention to deal with his condition. Later, Chris will call Barnabas “a good man.” When Barnabas says that some would dissent from this view, Chris says that those who do are “wrong, very wrong.” Chris hasn’t been watching Dark Shadows!

While werewolf Chris was cooped up in the mausoleum, strange and troubled boy David Collins was at home in the great house of Collinwood. David is friends with Chris’ nine year old sister Amy, and both children are coming under the sway of the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins. Last night, Quentin showed David a bottle of strychnine and ordered him to poison Chris with it. David refused that order. A moment after Barnabas and Julia leave the cottage, David knocks on the door.

David asks who it was he saw “sneaking out” of the cottage. Chris tells him that he may have seen Julia and Barnabas, but that they probably weren’t “sneaking”- they had simply stopped by to visit him. When David is surprised that they came so early in the morning, Chris points out that he dropped in only a few minutes later. David declares that he always gets up early, and is surprised Chris doesn’t know that. Chris does not seem to believe that it is reasonable for David to expect him to know what time he gets up.

David tells Chris he likes what he has done with the interior of the cottage. Chris says he hasn’t changed a thing- it is just as he found it. This will interest longtime viewers. The last person to stay in the cottage was David’s mother, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, who occupied it early in 1967. David often visited her there in those days. We remember those scenes when he takes a seat in front of the fireplace, where he and Laura used to sit.

Chris tells David he was up all night and has to get some sleep. He offers him a soda “to give you some energy for your hike through the woods.” Once they have collected their sodas, Chris tells David “Well, I tell ya, I like a carbonated grape soda myself. It reminds me of the vineyards in the south of France.” He delivers this line in the voice of W. C. Fields. This is the first unmistakable occurrence of Briscoe’s W. C. Fields imitation; it is a seed from which much will grow. In August, another character of Briscoe’s will make an appearance wearing Fields’ signature costume, top hat and all.

David’s comment about the figures he saw “sneaking” from the cottage shows that he is worried about Chris, and he keeps talking and asking questions until Chris all but pushes him out. His concern is quite understandable in the light of the command Quentin gave him the night before.

After David leaves the cottage, the camera stays in the front room by itself and focuses on the door for such a long time we begin to wonder whether anyone else is coming. Maybe they just want us to see what a nice door the set department has put together. Finally it does open, but we do not see anyone enter. The stopper rises from a decanter of brandy on the table, apparently by itself. The strychnine bottle Quentin showed David comes into view; it tips over, and its contents are emptied into the decanter.

When the day is done, we are at the great house. Julia and Barnabas have had a conversation about a book she is reading, The Lycanthrope of Angers. Coupled with Chris’ joking reference to the south of France, this mention of a city in northwestern France suggests that there is something French about being a werewolf. Barnabas used to be a vampire; that condition came upon him because of his involvement with some French people. Perhaps the makers of the show were planning to turn to the same country to explain the origin of Chris’ troubles. It might not be so far-fetched. The show is set in Maine, after all, home to a great many Franco-Americans.

Alone in the cottage, Chris decides to celebrate the end of the Moon’s “cycle of fullness” by taking a drink of whiskey before bed. He sickens. At first he thinks he is transforming into the werewolf. He collapses, but does not go into the convulsions typical of strychnine poisoning.

Julia is in bed in her room in the great house. She is awakened by the sound of sobbing. A tall, very thin blonde woman in a long white dress appears. She beckons Julia and leaves the room. Julia pauses to put on a robe.

Barnabas is downstairs; he sees the woman. He initially mistakes her for heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, the only blonde woman in the house, but by the time the woman in white has reached the bottom of the stairs and gone out the front door he knows it is not her.

Given their shared hair color, it is unsurprising Barnabas mistakes the woman in white for Carolyn. But there is a bit of an Easter egg here for sufficiently obsessive fans. As the Dark Shadows wiki notes, actress Terry Crawford appeared in a 1969 commercial for the “Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows Board Game” with her hair styled so that she would look like Nancy Barrett as Carolyn.

Julia arrives downstairs and asks if Barnabas saw the woman. The two of them go out the front door and spot her in the distance, on the path to Chris’ cottage. We cut to the cottage, and see the woman enter. Barnabas and Julia enter a moment later, at which point she is gone. They find Chris unconscious, and Julia says he is dying.

Returning viewers recognize the woman in the white dress as Quentin’s associate Beth. We do not know why Quentin wants Chris to be poisoned, or why Beth wants Julia and Barnabas to find him while he is still alive. Perhaps they are working at cross-purposes, and Beth is trying to keep Quentin from killing Chris. Or perhaps they are working together, and their shared plan was to injure Chris but to get Julia, who is after all a doctor, to him in time to prevent the worst.

Episode 676: Scared of the funniest things

Chris Jennings turns into a werewolf when the moon is full, which it is about half the time in the universe of Dark Shadows. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins has learned of Chris’ plight and decided to help him. As they make their way through an old cemetery to the hidden chamber where Barnabas will lock Chris up so that he doesn’t hurt anyone tonight, Barnabas asks Chris to confirm that he doesn’t remember anything he does in his lupine form. Chris does, saying that waking up and not knowing what he did the night before “is the most agonizing part of the whole thing.” You might think that he would find it even more agonizing to know that he has been killing one or two random human beings a month for the last seven years, but different things bother different people.

Chris asks how Barnabas knew that he didn’t remember what he did as the werewolf. Barnabas replies “Well, it’s obvious you’ve forgotten that you attacked me in this graveyard the night before last.” Chris says that “It’s a wonder you’re still alive.” To which Barnabas replies “No, it’s a wonder YOU’RE still alive!” For a moment we wonder how long this will go on, but Barnabas explains that werewolves can be killed by silver weapons. The head of the cane he carries is silver, and he struck him with it.

Barnabas shows Chris to the hidden room in the back of the old Collins family mausoleum. Barnabas himself was kept in a chained coffin in this room for over 170 years, when he was a vampire. He tells Chris that the room was originally constructed to hide ammunition from the British during the Revolution, which we have heard before. The coffin is still there; he tells him it is empty, and denies knowing anything about it. He says that the walls of the tomb are solid granite a foot thick; this is the first we’ve heard this detail. When Chris asks if anyone else knows about the room, Barnabas concedes that “A few” do. He assures him that none of them will be around tonight. Regular viewers will start making up a list of all the characters currently on the show who know about the room; Barnabas’s friend Julia Hoffman and his servant Willie Loomis know about it, as does strange and troubled boy David Collins. Barnabas can tell Julia and Willie to stay clear, and David has no reason to come to the cemetery tonight.

Barnabas explains that he will not show Chris the mechanism that unlocks the door from the inside, but promises to come back to release him after dawn. Chris urges Barnabas to leave at once; Barnabas insists on sticking around and asking more questions, saying that the moon isn’t up yet. Chris tells him that he first transformed shortly after he graduated from architecture school. “Oh, I was going to be an architect to be reckoned with, bold, imaginative, revolutionary. I thought nothing could stand in my way. Then something did.”

After Chris delivers a monologue about what a soulful and remorseful serial killer he is, Barnabas finally does close the secret panel. He sticks around until he hears the sounds of the werewolf snarling in the hidden room.

Chris’ nine year old sister Amy is staying at the great house of Collinwood. David finds her standing outside the front door, staring at the moon. She tells him that the moon scares her sometimes. His response is “Well, then don’t look at it,” which does seem logical. But she tells him that she can’t help it. David complains about how odd she is. We will hear more of this grumbling; it makes them seem like an old married couple, and is hilarious.

Amy and David are coming under the influence of the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins. Quentin keeps trying to get them to set various members of the Collins family up for lethal traps; they haven’t succeeded yet in killing anyone, but housekeeper Mrs Johnson has caught on that there is something peculiar going on with the two of them, and she is frightened.

Mrs Johnson enters the drawing room to do some straightening up and finds the children playing a game with a deck of stage magician’s oversized cards. She and they stare silently at each other for a minute or two, and she protests. They say they were just watching her work, and she orders them to go to bed. They object that it isn’t bedtime yet. Of course it isn’t, Mrs Johnson doesn’t work around the clock. They get even more intensely on her nerves by bringing up a recent incident when she saw Quentin’s ghost, and in her exasperation she chases them out of the room.

Amy and David irritate Mrs Johnson. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There isn’t anything about Quentin in the episode prior to that scene, so I cannot imagine what viewers would make of it. It’s late in the day, a domestic is tired, and a couple of kids are trying to annoy her. That is a relatable situation, but it doesn’t match with the heavy, melodramatic Dark Shadows music and the terrified affect with which Clarice Blackburn plays Mrs Johnson. I suppose that by January 1969, Dark Shadows was so widely known as a supernatural thriller that most people tuning in for the first time would assume that something paranormal was going on, but if they turned the television on after the opening titles and didn’t realize what show they were watching, they could only have concluded that they were witnessing an utterly ludicrous case of exaggerated seriousness. After David and Amy are out of Mrs Johnson’s sight, we see them go upstairs laughing, but that proves only that they are trying to upset her, not that they are connected to a malign power greater than themselves.

Barnabas enters and sees that Mrs Johnson is upset. She begins to tell him why, but interrupts herself to declare that he won’t believe her. He assures her that he will, and keeps asking her to go on. After she has told him everything she and the audience both know, he asks her to start over. The scene cuts out, suggesting that Barnabas is taking pains to get as much information from Mrs Johnson as he possibly can.

The children go to the little room in the long-deserted west wing of the house where they first met Quentin. Quentin is there when they arrive. This is the first time we have seen Quentin waiting for them; previously, they have had to summon him. Quentin does not speak; David can sense that he wants Amy to go back to the main part of the house so that they can talk privately.

Alone with Quentin, David asks where “the bottle” is. Quentin opens a rolltop desk, and David sees a bottle. He is shocked to find that the bottle is labeled “strychnine.” He declares that he won’t hurt Chris, and he runs out of the room.

Downstairs, Amy is in the drawing room, where she presses a few keys of the piano. We heard her play “London Bridge” in #656, but this doesn’t seem to be a part of any song. She is just idly pecking at the keyboard. When David comes, Amy complains about how long he was gone. He is distant, refusing to maintain eye contact or to answer any of her questions. He says they won’t be playing tonight.

We cut back upstairs, where Quentin is picking up the bottle of strychnine. Mrs Johnson saw Quentin in Chris’ cottage, so we know that he can go there. If David won’t poison Chris, perhaps Quentin will do it himself.

Episode 675: The best alibi you can have in this town

In #128, wisecracking waitress Maggie Evans opened a conversation in the diner at the Collinsport Inn with that old familiar ice-breaker, “Whaddaya hear from the morgue?” The show took us all the way to Phoenix, Arizona for a trip to that city’s morgue in #174, but it is only today we see the inside of Collinsport’s own morgue for the first time. Sheriff George Patterson brings heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard in to identify a body found on her property. Carolyn is shocked to find that it is her friend, Donna Friedlander.

Last night, Carolyn and Donna were in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood with permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman and old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, who lives in the Old House on the same estate. Also in the room was Chris Jennings, a mysterious drifter who caught Carolyn’s fancy and who now lives in the caretaker’s cottage on the estate as her guest. Barnabas invited everyone to dinner at his house. The ladies delightedly accepted, but Chris begged off, saying he would have to leave immediately to keep an important business engagement in Bangor, Maine. Donna said that she was going home to Bangor and that she was ready to leave, and asked Chris for a ride. When he tried to squirm his way out of taking her, Barnabas looked on with smug self-satisfaction.

This morning in the morgue, Carolyn tells Sheriff Patterson that the last time she saw Donna, she was leaving with Chris. But she recoils from the implication. She cannot believe that Chris had anything to do with Donna’s death.

Carolyn does not know what Barnabas has figured out. Chris is a werewolf. When Barnabas told Julia that he had come to that conclusion, she was unconvinced. Barnabas’ dinner invitation was a ploy intended to elicit just the panicked reaction Chris did have. Barnabas’ look of triumph at Chris’ frantic attempts to ensure that he is alone on this night of the full Moon reflects his belief that he has been proved right.

Barnabas went to the cottage some time after the Moon rose, intending to use his silver-headed cane to take control of Chris in his werewolf form. But he delayed too long, and by the time he got there the cottage was vacant and Donna’s mangled corpse lay in the woods nearby.

We cut to the cottage, where we see a disheveled and bloodstained Chris come home. He has just had time to change his shirt and set some furniture right side up when Carolyn drops in. She has come to warn Chris that Sheriff Patterson is coming. The sheriff is right behind her. Carolyn leaves the two of them alone. Chris refuses to allow a search of the premises; when he spots Donna’s purse on his table, he throws a newspaper over it. The sheriff somehow fails to notice this, but takes Chris to his office for questioning.

In the drawing room, Barnabas and Julia are fretting over Donna’s death. Barnabas asks “Could we have stopped it?” He decides that they could not have, and that whatever sequence of events led to the killing must have been “Donna’s fault.” It is always fun to watch the scenes where Barnabas faces the horrific results his actions have on other people, strikes a noble pose while briefly considering the possibility that he may be partially responsible for them, and then agrees with Julia that it is pointless for him to blame himself. Julia and Barnabas’ self-exculpatory attitudes are so transparently absurd that you have to admire Grayson Hall and Jonathan Frid for keeping straight faces while delivering their dialogue.

Meanwhile, Carolyn has called the Collins family lawyer, Richard Garner. Garner agrees to help Chris. We saw Garner and his son Frank a number of times in the first months of 1967, but he hasn’t been on screen since #246. He has only been mentioned a handful of times since then, most recently in #577. This is the last time his name will come up.

Back in the drawing room, Barnabas tells Julia that he can see “So many possibilities” for dealing with Chris’ problem. Frid’s delivery of this line made my wife, Mrs Acilius, shudder. She could hear the evil in his voice as he shows us Barnabas playing God.

Chris is in an interrogation room, telling Sheriff Patterson a series of mutually contradictory lies about what he did last night. The sheriff says he’s going to leave him alone for a few minutes so that he can come up with a more plausible story. You might think this was a sarcastic remark, but in this context it seems it might actually be sincere. Sheriff Patterson’s failure to notice Donna’s purse on Chris’ table is of a piece with the complete nonfeasance he has shown all along, and Vince O’Brien delivers the line so warmly it doesn’t sound like a joke. Moreover, Sheriff Patterson’s predecessor as Collinsport’s chief representative of law enforcement, Constable/ Sheriff Jonas Carter, capitulated to the Collins family’s directions to cover up a crime in his final appearance on the show, back in #32. Longtime viewers may suspect that Sheriff Patterson is as averse to the tough parts of his job as was Constable/ Sheriff Carter.

While Chris is alone in the interrogation room, he decides to tell Sheriff Patterson the truth when he comes back. He does in fact open his mouth and get the first few words of a confession out when the sheriff cuts him short. He says that Barnabas Collins called the office to tell him Chris was with him last night, and that Barnabas is “about the best alibi you can have in this town.” He shakes Chris’ hand and sends him on his way. Law enforcement characters on Dark Shadows are symbols of helplessness, and after that moment Sheriff Patterson has reached the zenith of that quality, achieving a measure of futility that cannot be surpassed. We never see him again.

Sheriff Patterson completes his quest. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Chris goes home and finds Barnabas waiting for him. Chris expresses his gratitude for the alibi Barnabas gave him, but keeps trying to get him to leave before the Moon rises. Barnabas tells him that when he leaves, Chris will leave with him. Barnabas closes the episode by telling him that he knows that he is not only Chris Jennings, but that “You are also the werewolf.”

This episode marks the final appearance not only of Sheriff Patterson, but also of Vince O’Brien. O’Brien joined the show in #148 as the second actor to play Lieutenant Dan Riley of the Maine State Police. O’Brien’s stolid manner suited the role of that ineffective investigator, but he was much less fun to watch than was the man who originated the part, the charming John Connell.

O’Brien took over as the second Sheriff Patterson in #328. He was again a step down from his predecessor; the first Sheriff Patterson was Dana Elcar, an extraordinary performer who always found a way to give the audience hope that his character was only playing dumb. Other actors filled in for O’Brien a couple of times, Angus Cairns in #341 and #342 and Alfred Sandor in #615, leading some fans to refer to “the Patterson brothers” (whose parents named all of their sons George) and others to speculate that for a time Collinsport allowed any man to be sheriff who was willing to change his name to “George Patterson.” Like O’Brien, Cairns and Sandor were accomplished professionals, but none could match Elcar’s gift for overcoming bad writing and keeping our attention focused on the sheriff.