Mad scientist Dr Lang is building a Frankenstein’s monster in the laboratory hidden in his house. Once the body is complete, he will drain the personality of recovering vampire Barnabas Collins into it. That is supposed to bring the creature to life and free Barnabas from vampirism forever.
As we open, Lang is preparing to harvest a head for the creature from the body of the man who had dug up the graves to supply the other parts. This man is, at the moment, still alive. His name is Peter, though for reasons of his own he wants to be called Jeff. Peter/ Jeff keeps waking up and complaining about his impending decapitation, to Lang’s surprisingly mild irritation.
Barnabas comes to the lab. He is afraid of a relapse into vampirism, but is having second thoughts about killing Peter/ Jeff. Lang works hard to talk him back into going along with his evil scheme. He asks Barnabas if he loves well-meaning governess Vicki. Barnabas says yes. First time viewers may be surprised that he doesn’t put much enthusiasm in that response; regular viewers, knowing that Barnabas has never shown any sign of being attracted to Vicki, will not. Lang says that if Peter/ Jeff goes free he will marry Vicki and they will live “a life of unending happiness!” Faced with this horrifying prospect, Barnabas agrees to let Lang butcher Peter/ Jeff.
Barnabas leaves the room and sees Vicki letting herself into Lang’s house. He hides from her, then sneaks back to the lab to tell Lang she is there. Lang goes to get rid of her. Barnabas eavesdrops on their conversation. We see the conflict on his face. He goes back to the lab, stands next to the table where the unconscious Peter/ Jeff is restrained, tells himself that Vicki will always love Peter/ Jeff, and studies one of Lang’s scalpels. For a moment it looks as if he will kill Peter/ Jeff himself, but instead he releases the restraints.
Lang comes back, and Barnabas quarrels with him. When Lang says that they can’t let Peter/ Jeff go knowing what he knows about them, Barnabas tells Lang that Julia Hoffman, the other mad scientist in town, has such potent abilities as a hypnotist that she can erase Peter/ Jeff’s memories. Lang refuses to involve Julia, and pulls a gun on Barnabas. After so many long years as an undead abomination, Barnabas sadly tells Lang that an ordinary bullet is no threat to him. Lang declares that, on the contrary, he is now sufficiently human to die of gunshot wounds.
Soap operas usually have multiple more or less independent storylines going simultaneously. Dark Shadows had trouble keeping that up, usually having an A story with all the action and a B story that never got off the ground and eventually dried up altogether. Now, in the spring of 1968, they have several equally dynamic arcs going at once. As a result, today’s episode is a bit of a jumble, as we catch glimpses of several loosely related events.
For the nineteen weeks stretching from #365 to #461, well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself trapped in the 1790s. In that period, she met many people, among them gracious lady Josette and wicked witch Angelique. In the 1960s, one of Vicki’s closest friends is Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. Like Maggie, Josette is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott. When Vicki saw Josette, she realized that Maggie had some kind of metaphysical connection to her. This was a daring move on the part of the show, since it means that vampire Barnabas was onto something in the summer of 1967 when he abducted Maggie and tried to brainwash her so that her personality would vanish and Josette’s would appear in its place.
Angelique has followed Vicki to 1968. She calls herself Cassandra, wears a black wig, and has married sarcastic dandy Roger, thereby securing residence in the great house of Collinwood. Vicki and Barnabas recognize Angelique/ Cassandra, and each knows that she is a deadly threat to everyone in and around the estate. For her part, Vicki is trying to hide her knowledge from Angelique; Barnabas has taken a different tack, and the other day let Angelique into his house where he proceeded to give her all the information she could possibly need to realize her evil intentions towards him. This is not because Barnabas cannot keep a secret. Vicki has tried to enlist him in the battle against Angelique, but he, now in recovery from the vampire curse Angelique placed on him in the 1790s, does not want Vicki to know the truth about him, and so he will not cooperate with her in any way. It’s only his enemies with whom Barnabas compulsively shares damaging intelligence.
Maggie comes to the great house to have a tea party with Vicki today. Angelique/ Cassandra opens the door, and cannot hide her shock at Maggie’s resemblance to Josette. She so blatantly stares at her that she has to admit that she is unnerved because Maggie looks very much like someone she knew a long time ago.
Vicki comes in, and Angelique/ Cassandra asks her, not in her usual mid-Atlantic accent, but in Lara Parker’s sweetly musical Tennessee voice, if she and Maggie are planning to use the drawing room. Vicki at once offers to use a different space, not only as would be correct for a member of the household staff speaking to one of the family, but in a relaxed and friendly way that betrays nothing of her knowledge of Angelique/ Cassandra’s true identity. While returning viewers know that Angelique/ Cassandra remembers Vicki from the 1790s, the Southern accent is so much more natural than her usual way of speaking that it suggests Vicki has managed to get her to let her guard down to some degree.
While Vicki and Maggie settle into the drawing room, Angelique/ Cassandra goes to a portrait of Barnabas that hangs in the foyer of the great house and delivers a speech to it. She tells the portrait that Maggie is the very image of Josette, and will therefore be the first victim of her latest evil plan. She is going to spam people’s dreams with a series of nightmares, and when the last person has had the nightmare Barnabas will be a vampire again. Evidently the dreamers of Collinsport didn’t have anti-virus programs installed in their brains, because Angelique/ Cassandra expects them all to be helpless before this morphean malware.
In the drawing room, Maggie is too preoccupied with Angelique/ Cassandra’s strange reaction to her to hear when Vicki asks her how she takes her tea. When she tells Vicki that Angelique/ Cassandra was shocked by the sight of her, Vicki amazes her by saying that she is sure she did react that way, and giving her the details of the reaction before Maggie reports them. Maggie asks Vicki to explain how she knew and what it means. Vicki explains nothing.
This is something of a reversal. In #1, Vicki met Maggie. Vicki had just arrived in Collinsport, and went to the diner where Maggie was the waitress. While Maggie served Vicki, she told her that Collinwood was haunted and that it was unwise to go there. Vicki did not at that time believe in ghosts and told Maggie so. Now, Vicki is the one serving the tea, and she is the one who knows far more about the supernatural than does Maggie. At least, far more than is in Maggie’s conscious mind- she has amnesia about her experience as Barnabas’ victim.
Vicki and Maggie’s tea party
Maggie is far more upset by Angelique/ Cassandra’s reaction to her than circumstances would appear to warrant. Vicki’s reticence is understandable, given the extreme complexity and improbability of her story, but she has always been so forthcoming with her friends that when Maggie asks why she is being so mysterious it seems quite likely that Vicki will tell her everything. Together, these two facts suggest to regular viewers that Maggie will eventually hear herself compared to Josette, that the comparison will jar loose the memory of what Barnabas did to her, and that she will go to the authorities. As an audience, we hope Barnabas will get away with his crimes, because the show is most fun to watch when he does. Now that Angelique has come to 1968, we have a morally defensible in-universe reason for this hope. Angelique is even more evil than Barnabas is, and without his active participation there is no hope she can be stopped.
Vicki’s reticence brings up another question. In the months before her journey to the past, she saw a great deal of evidence that Barnabas was a vampire. While in the eighteenth century, she saw so much more that upon her return Barnabas was certain she must have figured out his secret, and bit her to keep her quiet. When his vampirism responded to medical treatment, the symptoms of his bite went away. We wonder what Vicki knew at each stage of the story, and what she remembers now.
One possibility is that she has known everything all along. That would put Vicki in an intriguing position if Maggie’s memory does come back. Vicki originally represented the audience’s point of view; if she turns out to have been aware of Barnabas’ crimes from the beginning, she will put us in the uncomfortable position of wondering what it tells us about ourselves that we are consistently on the vampire’s side.
Vicki changes the subject to her boyfriend, a man named Peter. Vicki met Peter in the 1790s, and like Angelique he has followed her into her own time. Also like Angelique, he keeps insisting that he has a different name. He wants to be called Jeff. Unlike Angelique, Peter/ Jeff is amnesiac, is under the control of mad scientist Dr Lang, and brings the show to a screeching halt every time he is on screen. Vicki asks if Peter/ Jeff can rent the spare room in the cottage Maggie shares with her father. Maggie has never met or heard of Peter/ Jeff, and wants more information before she commits to living with him. Vicki doesn’t have anything to tell her, inflaming Maggie’s curiosity to the point where she exclaims “I can’t stand it!”
Peter/ Jeff telephones from Lang’s laboratory, and Vicki gets Maggie to agree to meet him at her house in an hour. Unknown to Vicki, Lang is building a Frankenstein’s monster, and plans to download Barnabas’ personality into the body once it is completed. Peter/ Jeff has dug up graves and fetched body parts for Lang to use, but is tired of that sort of work and is eager to make a fresh start. Unfortunately for him, Barnabas requested that the body look like Peter/ Jeff. So Lang persuades Peter/ Jeff to call Vicki back to say he won’t be available to meet her and Maggie today after all. He then gives Peter/ Jeff a shot to knock him out, straps him to a table, and sets about cutting his head off. Peter/ Jeff comes to and complains about this; Lang, irritated, tells him he can’t very well have expected him to let him live, knowing what he knows.
Maggie has the dream Angelique has sent. It begins with Peter/ Jeff calling on her. Since they went out of their way to tell us Maggie has never seen Peter/ Jeff, this tells first time viewers that this sequence, as is typical of dream sequences on Dark Shadows, comes not from the character’s mind, but is the product of a supernatural agency. In the course of the dream, Maggie hears the sound of Josette’s music box; Barnabas made her listen to this when he was holding her prisoner. This again raises the prospect that Maggie’s memory will return. The rest of the dream is a concerto for fog machine. Technical director Lou Marchand is credited today; presumably he was the soloist. The fog immerses everything so completely that it is anyone’s guess what exactly Miss Scott is doing for most of the sequence.
The more efficient a means of communication is, the sooner it is likely to be choked with unwanted messages, some of them harmful to recipients who engage with them. We describe this tendency by saying that eventually, everything turns into email.
One of the most potent means of communication on Dark Shadows have been dream visitations from supernatural beings. As early as #10, matriarch Liz, who in waking life resolutely denied that any paranormal phenomena could be found on the estate of Collinwood, writhed as she slept in her armchair, muttering about ghosts. Since then, we’ve seen undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins and the spirit of the benevolent Josette send competing dreams to influence strange and troubled boy David; the mysterious Widows have beckoned Liz to a watery grave; the ghost of little Sarah Collins visited David and told him all about her big brother, then-vampire Barnabas; revenant Jeremiah Collins and phantom Nathan Forbes have given important information to well-meaning governess Vicki; and several characters have had vivid dreams of unspecified, but obviously supernatural, provenance.
Today, wicked witch Angelique visits Barnabas in a dream and tells him that she is launching a malware attack on the dreamers of Collinsport. It’s going to be sequential; it will take over each user’s wetware in turn, compelling them to forward it to someone else. With each iteration, the worm will become more complex, until it reaches Barnabas in a dream of his own. When he accesses it, he will revert to vampirism.
On his Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn made a detailed comparison of Angelique’s explanation of the Dream Curse with the introduction to the 1931 film Frankenstein. He’s convinced me that the reference was intentional. Since there is a version of Frankenstein playing out on Dark Shadows right now, they are assuring us that the Dream Curse storyline will intersect with that one.
Angelique’s explanation only takes up the last act of the episode. There is a lot of other good stuff in the earlier parts, most revolving around Jerry Lacy’s character Tony Peterson. Tony was first introduced as a showcase for Mr Lacy’s famous Humphrey Bogart imitation; he has discarded that now. He still wears a brown suit and a tan overcoat, but sounds like Jerry Lacy.
Tony quarrels with heiress Carolyn about her relationship with Barnabas. She tells him that she and Barnabas have no romantic interest in each other, and tells him to go ask Barnabas if he doesn’t believe her. He goes to Barnabas’ house, and gives Jonathan Frid a rare opportunity to play intentional comedy.
Angelique, who, under the name Cassandra, has married sarcastic dandy Roger Collins and is living with him in the great house at Collinwood, steals Tony’s lighter and uses it to cast a spell on him. She needs a helper, and has decided to enslave Tony. Mr Lacy and Lara Parker are such fun together that, decades after the show, a company called Big Finish brought them back as Tony and Cassandra in a series of audio dramas. Called The Tony and Cassandra Mysteries, they were among the most popular of the Dark Shadows-themed plays Big Finish put out. I haven’t heard any of them- I’m too stingy to pay $37.41 to download an audio file- but if the scene the two of them play in the gazebo at Collinwood today is any indication, I’m sure they’re wonderful.
The very beginning of the episode is good too. Carolyn is coming back from a trip and has her hands full of luggage, so she knocks on the front door of the great house rather than look for her key. Angelique/ Cassandra answers. Carolyn has no idea who she is. When Angelique/ Cassandra identifies herself as Roger’s wife, Carolyn is shocked that Roger has remarried. She is even more shocked when Angelique/ Cassandra says that she and Roger had known each other only a day when they were married. Nancy Barrett is a high-energy actress, and a tightly-focused one. Her reactions to Angelique/ Cassandra’s successive announcements are like a laser light show on the theme of stunned disbelief.
Carolyn mentions that David decided to stay on in Boston for a few days. Since David is about ten years old, we might expect some explanation as to his lodging, but none is forthcoming. Some time ago we heard about an “Aunt Catherine” in Boston; I suppose he might be at her house, but hey, if the alternative is Collinwood he wouldn’t be any less safe if he were roughing it around Mass and Cass.
In his laboratory, mad scientist Eric Lang tries to persuade his patient, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins, to let him drain his “life force” into the body of a Frankenstein’s monster he is creating. Barnabas worries that once in the new body, he might be as helpless as a newborn. Lang assures Barnabas that he will not be helpless at all, but “a mature and intelligent man.” Lang also tells Barnabas that he can decide what the creature’s face will look like. Since Lang is building the creature from parts of corpses, this sounds like an offer to kill the person of Barnabas’ choice and sew that person’s face on the front of the creature’s head. One wonders what a phrase like “mature and intelligent man” signifies to either of these two.
In the gazebo on the grounds of the great estate of Collinwood, Barnabas seeks a second opinion from another mad scientist, Julia Hoffman. Having pledged to keep Lang’s secret, he will not describe the particulars of the experiment to Julia. He wants her to tell him whether Lang has a reputation for trustworthiness. Considering the circumstances, a reputation for maniacal sadism might be a better recommendation. Julia is unhappy about the whole situation. She confirms that Lang is a gifted surgeon, but urges Barnabas not to involve himself any more deeply with him.
Barnabas and Julia scurry off and hide when another pair come to the gazebo. They are well-meaning governess Vicki and her sometime boyfriend Peter. Vicki met Peter when she was visiting the late eighteenth century. By the end of her sojourn in the past, Vicki was on the gallows, about to hang for her many crimes. She was returned to 1968 with so little time to spare that there were rope burns on her neck. On the night scheduled for Vicki’s execution, Peter, himself awaiting hanging, vowed that he too would transcend time and would come to her in 1968.
Peter has kept that promise, but now he has amnesia and goes around shouting that his name is Jeff. Lang took Peter/ Jeff out of an institution for the criminally insane and is blackmailing him into digging up fresh corpses. After Barnabas left the lab, we saw Lang and Peter/ Jeff in the graveyard arguing about this situation. Lang tells Peter/ Jeff he was found on the waterfront at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with a rope in his pocket that matched the marks on the necks of two women who had been strangled nearby. The reference to rope reminded my wife, Mrs Acilius, of Vicki’s rope burns; were Peter/ Jeff to tell Vicki that he was found with rope, doubtless it would add to the already abundant evidence she has that Peter and Jeff are one and the same.
Peter/ Jeff’s waterfront murders may remind us of someone else. When he first became a vampire, Barnabas used to go to the docks and bite prostitutes. When he was done sucking their blood, he would strangle them, perhaps to prevent them rising as vampires themselves. Vicki is fascinated with Barnabas and has thrown herself at him several times in the year they have known each other. So if Peter/ Jeff did indeed use the rope he salvaged from his own hanging to commit the murders Lang describes, he’d be just Vicki’s type.
Peter and Vicki have a sweet little conversation, at the end of which they kiss. Barnabas sees this, and goes back to Lang’s lab. He tells him that he has decided to go through with the experiment, and that he wants a face like Peter/ Jeff’s. Lang says he will do better- he will give him Peter/ Jeff’s actual face. The two smile at each other over this explicit promise to murder Peter/ Jeff.
Barnabas’ attitude towards Vicki is ambivalent. His enthusiasm for killing her boyfriend is one of many things you might interpret as a sign of desire for her, but time and again he has made it clear he is not attracted to Vicki physically, and lately he can barely bring himself to listen to her talk for more than a few seconds at a time. Last Wednesday he claimed to be disappointed that she was unwilling to marry him, then rejected every action that makes up a marriage as he kept turning away from her and putting objects in her way when she pressed herself towards him, confided in him, and showed that she could help with his most important project.
As a beautiful young woman who has made herself available to Barnabas, Vicki seems to represent something that might have been, a life he might have lived had things gone differently. Even though he may not want to live that life now, and certainly does not want to live it with her, he cannot quite let go of her as a symbol of possibility. In his imagination, she is as unfinished and undetermined as is the partially fabricated body Lang is showing him. It is when Vicki displays her fully developed personality that he disengages from her. If, at the end of Lang’s project, Barnabas really is a mature and intelligent man, it will make quite a change.
Recovering vampire Barnabas Collins receives a visitor in his home, Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes agrees to lend Barnabas a twelfth century Sicilian talisman to ward off the power of a witch, and makes it clear he will not rest until he finds out why Barnabas needs it.
This scene is a tour de force for Thayer David as Stokes. I’ve already quoted Danny Horn’s remark in his post about it that David “plays to the balcony. Not this balcony, naturally; I mean the balcony in the theater next door.” David’s style works brilliantly in this context.
The rest of the episode is marred by some bad writing. When wicked witch Angelique, pretending her name is Cassandra, comes to call on Barnabas, he immediately calls her by her right name and tells her everything she could want to know in her campaign to restore his vampirism. This is a pattern of Barnabas’; he withholds information from people who would use it to help him, and blabs without inhibition to his deadliest enemies.
Barnabas takes the talisman to Dr Eric Lang, the mad scientist who has freed him of the symptoms of Angelique’s curse. Lang knows that Barnabas has been a vampire and knows that a curse made him one, but scoffs at the idea of witchcraft and refuses to touch the talisman. Jonathan Frid is a good enough actor that we can wonder if Barnabas has a reason for disclosing all his secrets to Angelique, but Addison Powell plays Lang so ineptly that there is nowhere to hide the fact that his skepticism makes no sense.
Angelique shows up in Lang’s office and casts a spell on him that is about to cause his heart to burst. He staggers to the desk, touches the talisman, and quickly recovers. He will not let her take it from him.
Barnabas comes back and asks Lang if he now believes that he must carry the talisman to protect himself from Angelique. He says he does not want to believe, and again walks off leaving the talisman on his desk.
Barnabas presses Lang for information on the final stage of the treatment that is supposed to end the curse once and for all. Lang takes him to the secret laboratory in his home. There, amid a lot of flashy equipment, is a partially assembled Frankenstein’s monster. Lang says that he will drain the “life-force” from Barnabas’ body and use it to animate the creature once it is completed. Barnabas’ old body will be dead, and Angelique will presumably believe that he no longer exists. But he will live in the new body.
Wicked witch Angelique (Lara Parker,) pretending to be named Cassandra, met sarcastic dandy Roger Collins (Louis Edmonds) one day and married him the next. Roger’s sister, matriarch Liz (Joan Bennett,) confronts Angelique/ Cassandra. Liz tells her that Roger has not been well and urges her to annul their marriage.
In the course of her confrontation with Liz, Angelique/ Cassandra reveals that she is not all-knowing. She thinks that Roger owns the great estate of Collinwood and the family’s business. Liz quickly explains that Roger owns nothing. He lives as a guest in her house and works as an employee of her company. Angelique/ Cassandra takes this in stride, and stands up to Liz’ insistence that the marriage must end. The only sign that Liz’ words are having an effect on anyone at all comes in the very last syllable of the scene. Unfortunately for Liz, it is not Angelique/ Cassandra who is intimidated by her, but Lara Parker who is intimidated by Joan Bennett. Angelique/ Cassandra’s mid-Atlantic accent vanishes and the purest musical note of Parker’s native Tennessee sounds as the word “you” emerges as “yeww.” If there had been another page or two of dialogue, she might have ended with a honeyed smile and a lethal “Bless your heart!”
From #395 to #461, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late 1790s. In that segment, Angelique came to Collinwood as a servant girl and used her magical powers to manipulate scion Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) into marrying her. Barnabas’ parents, Joshua (Louis Edmonds) and Naomi (Joan Bennett) were unhappy about the marriage. Joshua demanded that it be annulled, as Liz today demands Roger and Angelique/ Cassandra’s marriage be annulled. Naomi took a more conciliatory approach. Advocating Joshua’s position and but showing Naomi’s temperament, Liz combines two challenges Angelique has already shown herself able to overcome easily. Returning viewers will therefore have little hope that Liz will be able to stave off the disasters Angelique has in mind for the Collinses.
Angelique/ Cassandra is eager to get to work on the evil plans she has for the people at Collinwood, and so she is trying to stop Roger taking her on a honeymoon. She contrives to injure her ankle. We see permanent houseguest/ medical doctor/ mad scientist Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall) in the bedroom Angelique/ Cassandra will be sharing with Roger, bandaging her ankle. Angelique/ Cassandra asks a series of questions about old world gentleman Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid,) making Julia visibly uncomfortable.
Barnabas is the same man Angelique married in the 1790s. He is here in 1968 because she turned him into a vampire then. He was relieved of the symptoms of vampirism only a couple of weeks ago. He and Julia are becoming fast friends, and on Tuesday he told her all about Angelique. He identified her as the woman in a portrait that has obsessed Roger, and expressed his belief that Roger’s obsession was a sign that Angelique herself was returning to Collinwood. Julia can see how strongly Cassandra resembles the portrait, and knows that Roger’s obsession led directly to his marrying her, so she really ought to have figured out by now that she is Angelique.
Like the scene between Angelique/ Cassandra and Liz, the scene between her and Julia makes an instructive comparison with the parts the same actresses played in the 1790s segment. Angelique was originally lady’s maid to the Countess DuPrés. We saw her helping the Countess put herself together in a bedroom that was a different dressing of the set on which Julia is now attending to her foot. This apparent reversal of roles illuminates the extent to which Angelique’s command of black magic always made her a mightier figure than her nominal mistress. As a mad scientist, Julia is far more formidable than was the countess, but this scene leaves us wondering if she will be able to stand up to Angelique for any longer than could her counterpart.
Well-meaning governess Vicki (Alexandra Moltke Isles) had traveled back in time and was at Collinwood through the 1790s segment. She recognizes Angelique, knows well how dangerous she is, and is desperate to stop her. She tries to tell Liz about the situation, but Liz has a very limited tolerance for information about the supernatural. Vicki later meets Julia at the gazebo on the grounds of the estate and shares her information with her. Julia knows as much as anyone about the strange goings-on, and what Vicki tells her confirms what she already has reason to suspect. However, Julia pretends to have trouble believing Vicki.
This pretense enables Julia to probe the limits of Vicki’s own knowledge. Barnabas and Julia do not want Vicki to know any of Barnabas’ secrets. Julia incredulously asks Vicki if she thinks the Barnabas Collins of 1968 is the same person she knew in the eighteenth century. Vicki turns away from Julia, looks troubled, and says that she does not believe this. Vicki has encountered plenty of evidence to that effect, not least when Barnabas bit her and sucked her blood, and the audience wonders what she knows. We see Julia studying her, trying to find the answer to the same question. In the first year of Dark Shadows, Vicki represented the audience’s point of view, the resolutely normal outsider getting to know the Collinwood crazies. In this moment, we see Vicki through Julia’s eyes. We identify, not with any sane person from the world of sunlight and natural laws, but with a mad scientist who has cast her lot with a vampire.
Vicki thinking about Barnabas, with a facial expression straight out of MAD magazine. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Angelique/ Cassandra and Roger chat in their bedroom. He seems utterly delighted to be married to her, until she slips something into his drink. Suddenly he starts having doubts. Nothing we have seen leads us to expect she would want him to feel this way. The scene leaves us scratching our heads.
We end with Angelique/ Cassandra alone in the foyer of the great house, looking at the portrait of Barnabas that hangs there and vowing to restore the curse that had made him a vampire. We know that she is Angelique and that such is her goal, so her speech doesn’t set up any new story points.
It does give us some world-building information. Angelique says that the only way she knew that Barnabas was walking among the living in the 1960s was that Vicki had traveled back in time to the 1790s and told her. That explodes a theory some fans like that Angelique herself called Vicki back in time. When Vicki left the 1960s in #365, it was quite clear that the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah was sending her on the journey. Sarah has been fading steadily from our awareness, not least because child actress Sharon Smyth aged out of the part, and so it is not surprising that people expect a retcon to attribute the time travel story to a different force. But not only does Angelique rule herself out with this line, Sarah’s name comes up in the conversation between Julia and Vicki, reminding regular viewers of the original explanation.
More importantly, it confirms that once one person has made a wrong-way journey through time, a gate opens through which other unexpected things may come. To some extent we saw this when Barnabas himself was released from his coffin and Sarah’s ghost began showing up around the estate. The cosmological point will become extremely important for the rest of Dark Shadows, as one time-travel story keeps leading to another. Dark Shadows is often described as the story of the house, and so I can’t resist an inelegant metaphor from the building trades. It’s as if Vicki wrecked the plumbing of the universe when she went through the pipes backwards and then abruptly forward. Time will never flow the right way again.
Dark Shadows‘ first supernatural menace was undead blonde witch Laura Murdoch Collins, estranged wife of sarcastic dandy Roger. Laura was on the show from December 1966 to March of 1967. During that time, Laura tried to rebuild her relationship with her son by Roger, strange and troubled boy David. David’s well-meaning governess Vicki at first encouraged her charge to go to his mother, but eventually figured out that Laura posed a deadly threat to him. Vicki formed a coalition of characters to help her fight Laura, and eventually rescued David from his mother’s clutches at the last minute.
Now, Roger has come home to the great house of Collinwood after an unexplained absence that had Vicki, his sister Liz, and his distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas, terribly worried. Roger happily announces that he has taken a new wife, and presents her to the family.
As it turns out, Roger has a definite type. His new bride is also an undead blonde witch, though at the moment she is wearing a black wig that doubles as a physical representation of the concept “1968.” Her name is Angelique, although she pretends it is Cassandra.
Some critics say that the film 2001: A Space Odyssey would more aptly have been titled 1968: A Bad Year for Hats. As you can see, however, headwear in general was passing through a time of trial in that period. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Vicki and Barnabas recognize Angelique immediately. Vicki came unstuck in time in #365, finding herself in the year 1795, and didn’t make it back to the 1960s until #461. During her nineteen weeks in the late 1790s, Vicki got to know the people who lived at Collinwood in those days, among them Barnabas and Angelique. She saw many horrible things happen to them, and only after being blamed for those catastrophes herself would she realize that they were the consequences of spells cast by Angelique. Due to Angelique’s curse, Barnabas would be a vampire from 1796 until the week after Vicki came back to 1968. Vicki has decided to believe that Barnabas is not the same person she knew in that period, but rather that he is the descendant of that Barnabas Collins. He does not want her to know that he ever was a vampire, and she has resolved not to know that either, even though he used to bite her on the neck and suck her blood.
The battle against Laura was a fairly exciting story, at least in its latter stages. Angelique is a far more dynamic adversary than Laura, and Dark Shadows is much faster-paced and better written than it was then, so a reprise of the structure of that conflict in this new setting would likely be very exciting indeed.
To wage such a battle, Vicki and Barnabas can have no secrets from each other. Many who have been with Dark Shadows from the beginning have been hoping that its original protagonist will eventually become aware of the principal storylines, and this is one of the obvious ways to do it. Vicki can learn that Barnabas was a vampire, can find out that he was the one responsible for all the terrible crimes committed against the women and men and cows of Collinsport in 1967, and can still align herself with him, because she needs his support against Angelique, a more urgent threat. By the time they have vanquished her, not only will the idea of handing Barnabas over to the authorities have lost its salience, but Vicki will doubtless be facing another urgent threat requiring Barnabas’ assistance.
Nothing we see today suggests that such a development is on the horizon. The episode began with Vicki, Barnabas, and Liz worrying about Roger. A couple of weeks ago, Vicki brought a portrait home from an antique store and it had bizarre effects on Roger. The other day, he took the portrait and disappeared.
We can tell that today is not going to be a win for the female characters when Barnabas reacts to Liz’ expression of concern by dismissing her from his presence and she leaves, even though he is in her house. Vicki can tell Barnabas knows more about the situation than she does, and each time he condescends to mete out a little information in response to one of her questions he ends by turning his back to her and explicitly refusing to share anything more.
When Liz first leaves him alone with Vicki, Barnabas sourly remarks “I try to remember… that I must not reproach you for the reasons you’ve given not to marry me.” As Danny Horn shows in a series of screenshots in his post on Dark Shadows Every Day, their body language does not at any point support the idea that Barnabas wants to be with Vicki and she does not want to be with him. Quite the contrary; he withdraws from her, turns from her, and puts physical objects as barriers before her, while she looks at him, follows him, and leans towards him.
This has been Barnabas and Vicki’s dynamic for a long time. By #285, she went so far as to invite herself to a sleepover at his house. Barnabas was a vampire then; he entered the bedroom while she slept and bared his fangs, but couldn’t bring himself to bite her. Time and again, Vicki would all but draw a circle on her neck with the words “Mr Vampire, Bite Here!,” and Barnabas would tremblingly open his mouth, then recoil at the last moment. In #462, he finally sampled her bloodstream. By the end of #466, Barnabas’ vampirism had gone into remission, and that little storyline had evaporated. Now Vicki is vague and confused about what happened between her and Barnabas, and he is afraid he will relapse and bite her again.
Vicki is trapped between two blank walls. On one side Barnabas is excluding her from his life and therefore from active participation in the A story. On the other, she keeps having scenes with her old boyfriend from the 1790s, an unpleasant man named Peter who keeps demanding, for no apparent reason, that she call him Jeff. That habit of his was dead on arrival as a story point, and now that Angelique will be trying our patience by insisting her name is Cassandra, it will become impossibly tedious to have a second character doing the same pointless schtick. As long as she is in this position, Vicki’s prospects for contributing interesting material to Dark Shadows belong to a very low order of probability.
Sarcastic dandy Roger, possessed by the spirit of wicked witch Angelique, visits mad scientist Dr Lang. The village of Collinsport was once a whaling center, and Lang is mindful enough of that long-ago history that he collects harpoons. Roger appears to be fascinated by Lang’s collection. He holds one of the finer pieces, admires it, fondles it, and tries to kill Lang with it. At the last moment, the murder is prevented by recovering vampire Barnabas and Julia, who is a scientist as mad as Lang but infinitely more interesting. As is typical of supernatural beings on Dark Shadows, Angelique projects her power through a portrait of herself; the portrait also has some adventures today.
There is a lot of great stuff in this one, as other bloggers have well explained. The 1960s were the heyday of Freudianism in the USA, and in the first year of the show the influence of that school of thought could often be traced in the scripts of Art Wallace and Francis Swann. Patrick McCray documents in his post on The Dark Shadows Daybook that this was an episode where writer Gordon Russell allowed himself to cut loose and have fun with the sillier side of the Freudian approach.
On his Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn focuses on the scene where Barnabas and Julia decide to go and stop Roger. He points out that it is the first conversation they have had about something other than themselves, the first time Barnabas shares with Julia the secret of how he became a vampire, the first time they take heroic action, and the first time they are recognizably friends. It is that friendship that will drive the action of the show from now on.
In their meticulously detailed summary of the action of the episode on their Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri capture the effect on the audience of the steady accumulation of one absurdity upon another as the episode goes on. Reading their unfailingly matter-of-fact description of the ever-mounting lunacies we witness in this half-hour is almost as exhilarating as it was watching them in the first place.
Barnabas calls Julia’s attention to the closing cliffhanger. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
The opening teaser is a reprise of the last scene of Friday’s episode. Dr Eric Lang is trying to convince his patient, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins, to participate in an experiment he wants to start. He addresses him as “Barnabas Barnabas.”
It had been a quirk of Barnabas’ previous physician, Julia Hoffman, to repeat Barnabas’ first name, and as Julia, Grayson Hall manages to put a fresh inflection on “Barnabas, Barnabas” every time she says it. But as Lang, Addison Powell simply says “Barnabas Barnabas” without a pause, as if he were saying a compound name like “Jean-Claude” or “Jim Bob.” He even calls him “Mr Barnabas” at his exit, as if he thinks his full name was “Barnabas Collins Barnabas.” This is by no means the worst thing about Powell’s performance, but it is such an obvious contrast with Hall that it is as if the makers of Dark Shadows are sticking a thumb in our eye and taunting us with his inferiority to her.
As if that weren’t bad enough, Powell has competition for the title of worst actor in this episode. Craig Slocum washes up in the role of ex-con Harry Johnson. Well-meaning governess Vicki is the first to see Harry; she immediately screams in horror and starts to sob, the correct reaction to the sight of Slocum in any role.
At least there is a silver lining to Harry. He is the son of housekeeper Mrs Johnson, played by the estimable Clarice Blackburn. From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late eighteenth century, and Blackburn played repressed spinster Abigail Collins. Abigail was a triumph, an irresistible comic villain who was the highlight of every episode she was in. Mrs Johnson’s scenes today are the first we’ve seen of Blackburn since the show returned to contemporary dress, and she is razor-sharp. She is intriguingly sheepish when she asks matriarch Liz if her son Harry can stay with her for a little while, and alarmingly quick to assure Liz that Harry won’t make trouble. When she hears Vicki scream, Mrs Johnson comes hurrying in, is unsurprised to see that Harry is the source of Vicki’s panic, and cuts Harry off before he can offer a defense. She takes Harry into the drawing room while Liz calms Vicki upstairs, and tells him that he is one false move away from going back to prison forever.
Blackburn is so much fun as the unillusioned mother that it is a terrible shame Slocum never manages to read a line or move a muscle in a way that a living person might in the given situation. She gets laughs in spite of him, but with a competent actor in his part the scene where Harry faces his mother would be some of the best intentional comedy in the whole series.
There is one other thing about Harry that makes me smile. On the blog of the Terror at Collinwood podcast, Danielle Gelehrter posted an article some time ago about some concept artwork Eric Marshall did for a hypothetical Dark Shadows animated show in the style of early 1970s TV cartoons such as Scooby Doo or Filmation’s adaptations of Star Trek or My Favorite Martian or Gilligan’s Island. The show Marshall imagines features Harry. Personally, I would have chosen motorcycle enthusiast Buzz, who dated heiress Carolyn for a couple of hilarious weeks in 1967, since his outlandish appearance makes him so much more obvious a choice for animation, but at least Harry’s presence suggests that had such a show been made Clarice Blackburn might have been in the cast and had the chance to do some comedic voice acting.
Eric Marshall’s proposed cast for an animated Dark Shadows that might have been made in the 1970- everyone but Harry. Posted at Terror at Collinwood. Eric Marshall reminds us that Mrs Johnson’s first name is supposed to be “Sarah.” Posted at Terror at Collinwood.
There is some nice stuff in the drawing room between Barnabas and his sometime victim/ fiancée Vicki. Vicki has figured out that the spirit of wicked witch Angelique is once more at work in the great house of Collinwood and that it will take a great effort to stop Angelique from finishing the destruction of the Collins family that she began in the 1790s. If Vicki ever knew that Barnabas was a vampire, she has forgotten it, and Barnabas cannot confess it to her now. He certainly cannot tell Vicki that it was Angelique who made him one. So he listens to her report, but cannot accept her help in the battle against Angelique.
Quite the contrary. Barnabas looks at the spot on Vicki’s neck where he used to take his meals and feels the old hunger coming on. He says he must go to see Lang. Vicki protests that he should stay and let her tend him while they wait for Lang to come to them, but Barnabas insists.
Barnabas goes to Lang’s house. Lang tells Barnabas that if he participates in his experiment, he will not only be entirely free of the vampire curse, but that he might also have the physical appearance of Peter Bradford, alias Jeff Clark, an unpleasant young man who is more or less Vicki’s new boyfriend. This intrigues Barnabas, but Lang will not explain what he means. Since we know that Lang is a mad scientist who is forcing Peter/ Jeff to steal parts from newly interred bodies, we can assume that he will eventually be constructing a Frankenstein’s monster. Presumably he means that the finished product will look like Peter/ Jeff, and Barnabas will somehow live inside it. Since the creature is being built from parts, to look like Peter/Jeff it would have to be finished with salvage from Peter/ Jeff’s corpse. How Peter/ Jeff will be converted from his present state of living and obnoxious to dead and recyclable is what awaits explanation.
Much to her surprise, well-meaning governess Vicki Winters came unstuck in time in #365 and found herself in the year 1795. She spent the first few weeks of her sojourn in the past telling all the characters she met about the other roles that their actors played in the first 73 weeks of Dark Shadows, thereby puzzling them and irritating the audience. After a few months, the people of Collinsport had decided to try Vicki on a capital charge of witchcraft. There were no laws against witchcraft in Massachusetts or anywhere else in the English speaking world in the 1790s, but Vicki had got on so many people’s nerves by that point that they were willing to overlook that technicality and sentence her to hang. She was whisked back to 1968 in #461, with so little time to spare before she died on the gallows that she came back with rope burns on her neck.
Throughout the first year of Dark Shadows, the writers used Vicki more than any other character to move the action. Unfortunately, they sometimes moved it by having her do things that served the plot, but that the character had no reason to do. That gave rise to “Dumb Vicki,” and Dumb Vicki was very much on display throughout the whole segment set in 1795-1796.
Now, emigrés from the late eighteenth century are starting to join Vicki in her time. We open today as the clock chimes midnight. Vicki, wearing her nightgown, is coming down the grand staircase in the foyer of the great house of Collinwood, roused by the sound of an unexpected voice in the drawing room. It is the voice of haughty overlord Joshua Collins, master of Collinwood in 1795. Vicki enters the room to find sarcastic dandy Roger Collins carrying on a lively, albeit one-sided, conversation with a portrait. Roger is convinced that he is Joshua, and deals with Vicki in just the lofty way Joshua dealt with her during the costume drama segment. He even brings up Vicki’s frequent confusion with names, something Roger could not possibly have known about. This, therefore, is no mere delusion of Roger’s- Joshua’s ghost really is taking possession of him, manipulated by a force with its own malign intentions.
It is no secret from the audience what that force is. Roger has become obsessed with a portrait depicting wicked witch Angelique, who in the 1795 segment wrought terrible harm to the Collins family. Angelique was responsible, in one way or another, for the deaths of both of Joshua’s siblings, both of his children, his wife, and many other people. Too late, Vicki learned that Angelique was the witch for whose crimes she was being condemned to hang. As we have seen other supernatural beings do on Dark Shadows before, Angelique is using her portrait as a means of projecting her powers into the world of the living.
Roger/ Joshua’s remark about the name trouble reminds us of Dumb Vicki, but that is not the version of the character we see today. Instead, we have a visit from Smart Vicki. When Roger keeps insisting that he is Joshua Collins, Vicki picks up a telephone and shows it to him, declaring that it is something that did not exist in Joshua’s time. Roger looks at the receiver in silence for a moment, then groggily asks “Is it for me?”
Vicki says that she will take the portrait back to the antique store where she bought it so that it can be sold to Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes. This is a bit jarring for returning viewers- in #464, Stokes offered Vicki $200 for the painting, and Roger countered with a bid of $50o. Evidently Roger didn’t actually pay Vicki the money, because he doesn’t say that it is his when he urges her to leave it in the house.
Vicki and Roger leave the drawing room. Roger slips back in, takes the painting, and marches out of the house with it. While he does so, a nice little bit of music featuring the harp plays on the soundtrack. I don’t know that it is new, but I didn’t recognize it.
Part Two. Peter/ Jeff
Angelique not only killed Joshua’s son Barnabas, but cursed him to rise at night as a vampire. Barnabas returned to the great estate of Collinwood in 1967. He has been passing himself off to the living Collinses as their distant cousin from England. When Barnabas found that Vicki had visited his native period of history, he bit her in an attempt to keep her from revealing his secret.
Vicki and Barnabas were on their way to spend eternity together when she crashed her car to avoid hitting a pedestrian. In the hospital, the physician on duty when Vicki and Barnabas were brought in, Dr Eric Lang, turned out to be exactly the right sort of mad scientist. He has apparently cured Barnabas of vampirism. It is unclear whether Vicki remembers that Barnabas bit her and sucked her blood, and quite clear that she doesn’t think of him as a monster.
In the 1790s, Vicki met and somehow fell in love with an unpleasant man named Peter. Peter has returned to the present with her; in fact, he was the pedestrian Vicki had to crash her car to avoid hitting. They have seen each other several times since, and for no worthwhile reason Peter keeps insisting he is named Jeff. Peter/ Jeff shows up at Collinwood today. Vicki ushers him into what she alone calls “the living room,” and everyone else calls “the drawing room.” Peter/ Jeff asks Vicki if she loves Barnabas and plans to marry him. She tells him she does not. She says that she doesn’t want to hurt Barnabas’ feelings, but that she will have to break the news to him as soon as possible.
Part Three. Barnabas, Barnabas
Barnabas is still in the hospital. We see him in his room, in the daylight, looking at himself in the mirror. He can’t resist touching his reflection. It is a genuinely beautiful little moment, and an eloquent image. In the contrast between the solidity and familiarity of Barnabas’ standard right profile shot and the fragile little image slightly distorted in the mirror, we see a point of decision. The ghoul has not been destroyed, but a new and very vulnerable human life now co-exists with him in the same body. Wallace McBride says that “On Dark Shadows, your reflection always tells the truth“; this reflection tells a deep enough truth to keep the show going for years.
Vicki visits Barnabas in his hospital room to tell him that she cannot marry him. She thinks that she and Peter might be meant for each other. She also tells Barnabas that there are signs Angelique is making her influence felt at Collinwood again.
Vicki knows that her news about Peter will hurt Barnabas, but she understands that if they are to fight against Angelique, there can be no secrets between them. Barnabas understands this as well. Therefore, he decides to surrender immediately. Right after his scene with Vicki, we see him telling Lang he has decided to revert to vampirism.
That reaction is absurd, but it goes to the heart of the character as we came to understand him in the part of Dark Shadows set in the years 1795 and 1796. He did not believe that gracious lady Josette could love him, so he had a casual fling with her maid, Angelique. He did not believe Angelique cared very deeply about him, so he cast her aside once it became clear Josette was willing to marry him. He did not believe Josette could forgive him for having come to her from a dalliance with Angelique, so he did not tell Josette when Angelique vowed vengeance on them both. At each point, Barnabas’ underestimation of his own lovableness led to disaster. If only Barnabas could have read Jonathan Frid’s fan mail, he and Josette would have had a happy, quiet life and died in obscurity in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Part Four. Vicki
For her part, Vicki spent the first 38 weeks of Dark Shadows growing close to strange and troubled boy David Collins, who tried to kill her more than once, tried to kill his father Roger and frame her for it, who talks to ghosts, and whose mother is an undead fire witch. In the same time, she fell in love with a man named Burke, who spent years in prison for a killing in which Roger had a part but for which he was also very much responsible. While in the 1790s she fell in love with Peter, who committed many crimes and would doubtless have become a killer had Vicki not killed his man before he got to him. So Barnabas’ weird nature and career of homicide hardly guarantee that Vicki will spurn him.
I often wonder what might have been had the show decided to initiate Vicki into Barnabas’ secret. Alexandra Moltke Isles and David Henesy triumphed over some stunningly bad writing to make the story of Vicki’s bonding with David the one consistently interesting thread of the first year of Dark Shadows. Now that there are good writers and other stories that are working, I can only suppose she and Jonathan Frid would have given us something for the ages if they had been allowed to show Vicki coming to accept the true Barnabas.
There are several ways they could have done that. Maybe she gradually learns the horrible truth, can’t go to the authorities right away because she needs Barnabas as an ally against a more immediate threat, and by the time that threat passes decides he’s a good risk. Or maybe she becomes a vampire herself and finds out about his past in the process of being cured.
Or, most daring of all, maybe it turns out Vicki knew that Barnabas was a vampire all along. Sure, she was upset when she thought he’d killed her friend Maggie- why do you think she invited herself to spend the night at his house during that period? She had the guilts because she had failed to save Maggie and wanted him to bite her as punishment. Sure, there were some sleepless nights when it looked like he might be planning to kill David in order to silence him- why do you think she kept making herself available to Barnabas in that period as well, if she wasn’t offering herself as a tool he could use to keep the boy quiet without hurting him?
Acilius on Dark Shadows 