In the late 1960s and early 1970s, most households in the USA had television sets that received only in black and white. So the first requirement of any program’s visual strategy was that it look good on those sets. Prime-time programs with big budgets and long production schedules could sometimes look good in black and white and dazzling in color; the most noteworthy example was the 1966-1968 Batman series. But even most prime-time shows limited themselves to a palette that resembled a plate of processed baby food, with the green of strained peas next to the orange of puréed carrots and the purple of mashed prunes. The use of color on a show like Dark Shadows, which every week had to crank out five episodes on a total budget of $70,000, could rarely rise even to the level of a well-presented infant’s breakfast. Directors Lela Swift and John Sedwick were ambitious visual artists who sometimes managed to use color to advantage, but most of the time the color is a gimmick as worthless as any spear pointed at the viewer of a 3D movie.
Today begins with a reprise of the dream sequence that ended Friday’s episode so effectively. But where that episode survived only on a black and white kinescope, the original videotape of this one has come down to us. As a result, we see the dream in color today. Black and white images are abstract; color images, even when they are composed of only two or three flat colors, make everything literal. So while the dream we saw in Friday’s ending was a terrifying message from a mysterious realm, today’s opening is something that might trouble the sleep of someone who ate a big meal too soon before bedtime.
Strange and troubled boy David wakes up from his nightmare, and well-meaning governess Vicki tries to calm him down. David is frustrated that Vicki won’t take him seriously when he tells her that he learned from the dream that his cousin Barnabas is an undead ghoul and that his friend Sarah is a ghost. We know that he is right, but after the color version of the dream, we can understand why Vicki thinks all he needs is a warm glass of milk.
Meanwhile, Barnabas is at home, being unpleasant to his co-conspirator, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. He snaps at Julia for sitting in his house browsing through medical journals. This is unfair of him- since Julia is concealing her medical degree and pretending to be an historian studying the old families of New England, she can’t very well read medical journals anywhere else.
What is really bothering Barnabas is that his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie isn’t dead yet. The authorities have decided to blame Willie for the many unsolved crimes Barnabas himself committed, primarily because Willie is poor and unpopular, and if he dies of the gunshot wounds the police inflicted on him in #322, they will close all those cases. Yet Willie “clings to life with leech-like persistence.” Barnabas fears that Willie will make a miraculous recovery and set about “writing his memoirs.” Barnabas wants to break into the hospital and kill Willie, but Julia persuades him this would be counterproductive.
Barnabas then starts talking about his inclination to kill David. Julia persuades him that she can hypnotize David so that he will no longer be curious about him. In both parts of the conversation, Barnabas is a pouting child, Julia an authoritative figure, though because of her amorality ultimately a no less childish one. We see again the Bossy Big Sister/ Bratty Little Brother dynamic that has been at the heart of Dark Shadows since the first episode, when we were introduced to matriarch Liz and her brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger.
Back at the great house of Collinwood, Julia asks Liz and Vicki if she might talk alone with David about his fear of Barnabas. She explains that she has had some experience of child psychology. This led my wife, Mrs Acilius, to exclaim that Julia has forgotten her cover story and is presenting herself as what she actually is, a medical doctor dually qualified as a specialist in psychiatry and hematology. Liz remarks that Julia is “a woman of many talents.” This is not the first time Liz seems suspicious of Julia, but she nonetheless agrees to bring David to meet with her alone in the drawing room.
Julia and David sit on the couch, and she takes out the medallion she shows to people while she is hypnotizing them. David recognizes the medallion from his dream. He saw a faceless woman wearing Julia’s wig and coat showing him that medallion. He declares that the dream was warning him against Julia, and runs off, calling to Vicki.
Strange and troubled boy David Collins was, for the first 39 weeks of Dark Shadows, the character most intimately connected to the supernatural back-world of ghosts and uncanny phenomena that would occasionally peek through the main action of the show. That changed in #191, when he chose life with well-meaning governess Vicki over death with his mother, humanoid Phoenix Laura Murdoch Collins. After that, he had little memory of his mother, and none at all of the paranormal experiences he had during her time with him on the great estate of Collinwood.
Not that David lost his connection to the supernatural all at once. When he first met his cousin Barnabas in #212, he cheerfully asked him if he was a ghost, and was disappointed to hear that he wasn’t. In #288, he speculated that his friend, mysterious little girl Sarah, might be a ghost, and he has taken it in his stride every time he has seen Sarah do something only a ghost could do. In #310, he took out his crystal ball, a gift he had received in #48 and hadn’t used since #82, and peered into it to try to find Sarah. He did see her in it, too.
Yet David seems to be resisting the idea that Sarah is a ghost, and indeed to be shying away from the whole concept of the supernatural. When she led him to the secret chamber in the Collins mausoleum in #306, she told him that the empty coffin there once had a body in it, but that the body got up and left. David objected that the dead don’t walk away, and was incredulous when she assured him that sometimes, they do. When David was trapped in the chamber in #315, Sarah materialized there and showed him how to get out. He had called on her to come, and was facing away from the only door when he did so, indicating that he knew she could pass through the walls. Yet when she did, he demanded a naturalistic explanation for her entrance, and when she vanished he asserted that she must be hiding in the chamber somewhere.
Now, David is terrified of Barnabas, much to the puzzlement of the adults he lives with. In the opening scenes, he is staring at the portrait of Barnabas in the foyer of the great house, and we hear Barnabas in voiceover, delivering the lines with which he frightened David in #315. He screams with terror, bringing his aunt Liz. She sees that David is upset, but he hurries away from her, upstairs to his bedroom.
There, we hear his thoughts in another voiceover. He remembers the events of #310, when he discovered that Barnabas and his servant Willie knew about the secret chamber in the mausoleum. In his agitation, he calls out to Sarah. He hasn’t admitted to himself that Sarah is a ghost, but evidently he expects her to materialize out of thin air. Sarah doesn’t come, but Vicki does, asking who he was talking to.
After David says he wants to work on his stamp collection, Vicki goes downstairs and finds Liz putting her coat on. She says that David is afraid of Barnabas for some reason, and that she is going to Barnabas’ house to ask him to help put the boy’s fears to rest. She says that David is more disturbed than he has been since his mother Laura was around; this is the first direct reference to Laura in months.
There is a knock on the front door. It is Barnabas, saving Liz the trip. Liz and Vicki explain how fearful David is, and Barnabas offers to have a talk with him.
Liz ushers Barnabas into David’s room. Once the door is closed on the two of them, Barnabas questions David aggressively about Sarah and the secret chamber in the mausoleum. He asks him if Sarah told him about her family, twice mentioning her brother. When David says that Sarah hasn’t told him anything about herself, Barnabas accuses him of lying. He sits next to David on his bed. David doesn’t know that Barnabas is a vampire, but if he did he couldn’t look much more uncomfortable than he does when Barnabas assumes this position.
Barnabas sitting with David on his bed.
Barnabas tells David repeatedly that he knows he was in the secret chamber. David denies it, Barnabas again tells him he is lying, and to prove it shows him the knife he left there.
Barnabas confronts David with his knife
A knock comes at the door. It is Vicki. Vicki adores Barnabas, and the smile she wears when she enters the room shows her certainty that a heart-to-heart talk with him will have relieved David’s anxiety.
Smiling Vicki, sure everything will be all right
Vicki sees that David is still frightened, and her smile gives way to a look of confusion. Vicki was originally the audience’s point-of-view character; the audience is now composed chiefly of people who have tuned in wanting to see how they were going to fit a vampire into a daytime soap opera, and so of course she has to be Barnabas’ biggest fan at Collinwood. She and Barnabas leave David’s room together, and Barnabas wishes David “Pleasant dreams…”
We see David tossing in bed. He is talking in his sleep, calling out to Sarah. In yet another voiceover, we hear his dream. It is a bit of conversation from #306, when Sarah told him about the empty coffin.
We then see the beginning of another dream. It takes place amid a composite of decorations from the cemetery set and from the set representing Barnabas’ basement. David at first appears in a corridor like the ones we saw in the basement in #260.
The fog machine is working hard today.
He then encounters a faceless woman whom regular viewers will recognize as Barnabas’ co-conspirator, mad scientist Julia Hoffman.
David sees the faceless woman.
We see that she is wearing Julia’s wig and frock and holding the jeweled medallion she uses to hypnotize people:
Julia’s identifying marks.
David flees from the faceless woman, saying he has to find Sarah. He finds himself behind a grating like the one on the door to the Collins mausoleum:
Entering the tomb
He walks up a few stairs, and sees Sarah.
David finds Sarah
When David tells Sarah that she is hard to find, she denies it, saying that she is easy to find if you know where she is. David does not respond to this characteristically cryptic remark, but complains that she won’t tell him anything about herself. She asks what he wants to know, and says he wants to know who she is and where she comes from. She tells him:
Sarah: That’s easy. I was born the same place you were. I lived in a house on a hill until I was nine years old. Then I got very sick. Everyone came to see me, and they were very sad.
David: Because you were sick?
Sarah: No, because I died. I died, and everyone brought such pretty flowers.
“I died that time. I died, and everyone brought such pretty flowers.”
When David asks why she is around now if she died then, she tells him she doesn’t really know. All she knows is that she is looking for someone. David asks who that might be, and Sarah says she will show him. Suddenly he becomes frightened and does not want to go with her. She insists. She takes his hand and leads him.
Sarah leading David to her secret
The camera follows the children on their journey across the set. At first Sarah takes David down some stairs, leading him from depths to depths:
Sarah leads David down into the depths
The set is now unmistakably Barnabas’ basement, though with more candelabra casting more intricate shadows on the walls than we have seen there:
Vergil and Dante, junior edition
At last Sarah stops and looks straight ahead. They have reached their destination.
David is bewildered by the sight.
They see a coffin. David asks if this coffin is empty, as was the one in the secret chamber. Sarah tells him no. This one has a body in it. The lid starts to open. David points in astonishment, while Sarah looks on serenely.
The lid begins to open.
Barnabas rises from the coffin.
Barnabas rises.
David recognizes Barnabas and is stunned. Sarah has eyes only for her big brother.
David stunned.
Barnabas stands. He turns, and sees Sarah. He is glad to see her.
David watches Sarah’s reunion with Barnabas.
Barnabas notices David. He turns to follow him.
Barnabas blocks David from our view and from Sarah’s.
As Barnabas follows David, Sarah simply watches.
Sarah watching big brother.
Barnabas follows David through another corridor. The shadows on the wall and floor form a design suggesting David is caught in a web. Readers of Gold Key comics’ Dark Shadows series will recognize the bend of Barnabas’ knees and the angle of his cane in this shot as their usual depiction of him:
David caught in Barnabas’ web.
David’s back is to the wall and Barnabas closes in on him.
Cornered.
Barnabas raises the cane he used to block David’s escape in #315 and which regular viewers several times saw him use to beat Willie. We zoom in on the wall, where we see the cane’s shadow rise and fall while we hear David cry out in distress.
Sarah’s fixation on Barnabas and her passivity when Barnabas follows David mark a pivotal moment in her development. She looks and sounds like a friendly little girl, and we have seen her rescue people from danger. She usually seems like a cross between Caspar the Friendly Ghost and the Powerpuff Girls. But she is not that at all. She is a symptom of the same curse that has brought Barnabas forth to prey upon the living, and she is leading David ever deeper into a world where only the dead belong. The show has given us no reason at all to think that she can bring him back to the realm of the living.
Even if Sarah wants to save David, she may still represent a deadly threat to him. We saw this in the Laura story. When Laura tried to lure David into the flames, she told him that he, like her, would rise from the ashes and live again. We had heard her say things like this before, and she may well have believed it to be true. But unknown to her, we saw a séance in which David spoke with the voice of a son Laura had in one of her previous incarnations. She had burned him with her, but while she gained a new life in the flames, he had become one of the unquiet spirits of the dead. Perhaps Sarah, too, is unwittingly leading David to his death.
Closing Miscellany
When Liz leads Barnabas into David’s room, she tells David that “Unc- Cousin Barnabas” wants to have a man-to-man talk with him. In later years, Jonathan Frid would refer to his character as “Uncle Barnabas” when he talked with interviewers about how the Collinses responded to him. I wonder if Joan Bennett’s blooper is a sign that he was already calling him that at this time.
There is a slight puzzle in Sarah telling David she was “born in the same place” he was. We’d heard in the early episodes that Laura and Roger never spent a night together in Collinwood as man and wife- the day of their wedding, they went to their new home in Augusta, Maine, and David was born a few months later. Perhaps Sarah’s remark is a retcon, and we are now to think of David as having been born at Collinwood. Or perhaps Sarah really was born where Augusta would stand- we know that her birth year was 1786, and that was the year the settlement that would become Augusta saw the establishment of its first public whipping post. Maybe her parents wanted to go there to celebrate the occasion.
When Sarah tells David she lived on the hill until she was nine, she interrupts herself and shouts “Ten!” This is an odd little blooper. Just a few days ago, David told Barnabas that Sarah was ten, and Barnabas jumped down his throat asking if she wasn’t “almost ten?” Now Sharon Smyth has been on the show long enough to have celebrated a birthday, and they aren’t done with Sarah yet. So they are retconning Sarah as having made it to ten.
The Collinsport police have solved the case of the abduction of Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. The investigation has been stalled for months, because Maggie is suffering from amnesia covering the entire period of her captivity. So the authorities spread a rumor that Maggie’s memory was returning, camped out on her lawn, shot the first guy who strayed onto the property, and declared him to be the culprit.
Though this method would appear to be impeccably scientific, strange and troubled boy David Collins is unconvinced. The wounded man is the luckless Willie Loomis, servant of David’s cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. David is sure that Willie wouldn’t hurt anyone, and has developed an intense aversion to Barnabas.
David’s aunt, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, is discussing this situation with his well-meaning governess Vicki. Liz mentions that Willie originally came to the estate of Collinwood as a friend of seagoing con man Jason McGuire. She says that she is prepared to believe any bad thing about any friend of Jason’s.
This is the third day in a row we have heard Jason’s name mentioned. That marks quite a departure from recent months of the show. In #275, Barnabas killed Jason, and in #276 he forced Willie to help him bury the body. He was forgotten, apparently forever, shortly thereafter.
It is not clear at all where the show is heading. A few weeks ago, David learned that the secret chamber where Jason is buried exists, that Barnabas and Willie know about it, and that there is something hidden in it that makes Willie uncomfortable. Barnabas knows that David has been in the chamber, and is thinking of killing him. So perhaps the next storyline will involve Barnabas trying to do away with David lest Jason’s death be discovered.
Bolstering that expectation is the fact that Willie has survived the shooting. When he was first shot, day before yesterday, the police said he had five bullets in his back and that only a miracle could keep him alive. Yesterday, we heard that he was in a coma and that the preliminary medical report on his case gave him virtually no chance of living. Today, his doctor, addled quack Dave Woodard, tells his medical colleague Julia Hoffman that the odds are a hundred to one against Willie seeing another day. Experienced soap opera viewers will know that when a man has been declared dead so many times, he will be with the series for years to come. Willie does feel bad about what happened to Jason, so if David manages to lead the authorities to the secret chamber, that might bring matters to a head.
The scene between Woodard and Julia marks an interesting first. Julia is, among other things, a psychiatrist, and Maggie was her patient for a time. Woodard believes that she is at Collinwood in order to find out who abducted Maggie. He is surprised she plans to stay on now that Willie has been named. She claims that she is trying to keep her cover story intact, that she is an historian studying the old families of New England. This doesn’t make much sense to him, but he doesn’t expect it to- he thinks he knows her real motive. He thinks she is in love with Barnabas. Julia smiles, and doesn’t deny it.
Returning viewers know that Julia’s actual motives are infinitely less wholesome. She is a mad scientist, and Barnabas is a vampire. She is conducting an experimental treatment which, if successful, will relieve him of that condition. For the sake of that experiment, she has become Barnabas’ accomplice. She induced Maggie’s amnesia, she has lied to everyone she has met, including the sheriff, and she is happy that Willie is likely to die and take the blame for Barnabas’ crimes. Woodard’s idea that she is in love with Barnabas delights her because it helps conceal her true role. It also starts us wondering if it is the beginning of a story in which the two of them avoid awkward questions by pretending to be a couple, then perhaps really do fall in love.
Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, has amnesia and can’t remember who abducted her in episode #235 and held her prisoner until #260. So the police started a rumor that her memory was returning, camped out in her yard, shot the first guy who strayed into it, and declared him to be the guilty party.
The man with five bullets in his back is Willie Loomis, servant to Old World gentleman Barnabas Collins. Sheriff Patterson tells Maggie, her father Sam, and her boyfriend Joe that he will be going to visit Barnabas and break the news to him about Willie. Maggie expresses sympathy for “poor Barnabas,” who will no doubt be heartbroken to hear ill-tidings about Willie. Sam is sorry to hear the sheriff will have to blight the dear fellow’s night, but the sheriff says Barnabas must be told. Willie lives in Barnabas’ house and, so far as anyone knows, has no access to any other building. So if he held Maggie prisoner for five weeks, you’d think the sheriff would have more to do on a visit to Barnabas’ place than simply deliver a message.
As it happens, Barnabas is the one responsible for Maggie’s plight. Willie was trying to get to Maggie to warn her that Barnabas had heard that her memory was coming back and was on his way to kill her. When the sheriff gets to Barnabas’ house, he finds him with his co-conspirator, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Julia explains that she just came to the house to borrow a book. It’s four o’clock in the morning, by the way, but the sheriff takes that in stride and tells them what happened to Willie. He apologizes for disturbing them and says he can come back later if they would like. Barnabas says he wishes he could talk to Maggie, and the sheriff offers to take him and Julia to the Evans cottage. They accept this offer, and the sheriff goes outside to wait for them. Barnabas has long since cleaned up the evidence left over from Maggie’s weeks in his dungeon, so he doesn’t have to spend the time the sheriff so thoughtfully provides in tidying up. He and Julia can devote all of it to further conspiring.
Only Julia knows that Barnabas was the one who abducted Maggie in May, and only she knows that he has been planning to kill her ever since. But the sheriff and the Evanses drift into their own odd little conspiracy to shelter Barnabas from accountability.
Barnabas tells Maggie that he can’t help but “feel partly responsible” for what happened to her. She and Sam fall over themselves assuring him that he has nothing to feel bad about, that it was wonderful of him to try to rehabilitate Willie and that everyone was very impressed with how far he seemed to have got with that project.
Barnabas goes home. Julia accompanies him. She assures him that Willie will probably die, and urges him to relax, because he is “completely in the clear.” He bids her goodnight, by which I mean he grabs her throat and threatens to kill her if she is wrong. Once he is alone in the house, he thinks of the various people who might be able to bring his secrets to light. He settles on his ten year old cousin David, and resolves that “something must be done to keep him from exposing me, and it must be done soon!”
There is a touch of social satire in the deference everyone pays Barnabas. In #26, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins wanted a particular service from Sheriff Patterson’s predecessor, the hapless Constable Jonas Carter. He told Carter that “My family is responsible for over half the jobs in this town,” and made a dark reference to an upcoming election. In #32, Carter went along with the Collins family’s cover-up of a case involving David, and in #272 and #273 Sheriff Patterson himself showed a mind-bending amount of solicitude to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard when she called to report that she had murdered her husband and that his body was buried in her basement.
Among the jobs for which the town has the Collinses to thank was an important one of Sam’s. In #222, Barnabas commissioned Sam to paint his portrait. When he offered to pay $1000, Sam and Maggie’s electrified reactions showed that this was more money than they had seen in a long time. They have good reason to think as highly of Barnabas as they possibly can.
Not only is Barnabas a member of the Collins family of Collinsport, but he is, again unknown to any of his protectors but Julia, a vampire. As such, he is a symbol both of extreme selfishness and of the dead past holding back people who want to make a new future. Dark Shadows does not often explore political themes in depth, to put it mildly. But today it does give us a glimpse of the way working people can find themselves defending the position and privileges of their very deadliest enemies.
Closing Miscellany
Barnabas looks at a “portrait” of his little sister Sarah, who died in 1796. We’ve seen this “portrait” many times, but usually it was at something of a distance from the camera, often at an oblique angle, and rarely shown for more than a brief moment. The typical TV set in 1967 would have allowed the viewer to believe it was a painting. But this time it fills the screen and is stationary for several seconds. Even though this episode only survives in an especially low-quality kinescope, it is impossible to overlook the fact that it is a photograph of Sharon Smyth, the child actress who plays Sarah’s ghost, taken at least 30 years before Joseph Nicéphore Niépce built his first camera.
Sarah Collins, d. 1796
This episode has an unusually large cast. In addition to the six regular actors, three of Sheriff Patterson’s deputies appear. None of them is credited, but the Dark Shadows wiki names them as Ed Crowley, Ted Beniades, and Dennis Johnson.
Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, suffered from a mysterious illness beginning in episode #227; she was missing and feared dead beginning in #235; her father Sam found her on the beach in a state of complete mental and physical collapse in #260; she was confined to a sanitarium run by mad scientist Julia Hoffman until the permanently nine year old ghost of Sarah Collins helped her escape in #294; and in #295, Julia hypnotized her and induced a profound amnesia covering all of these events.
The author of Maggie’s woes is vampire Barnabas Collins, currently resident in the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. Julia has come to Collinwood disguised as an historian studying the old families of New England. Her true goal is to cure Barnabas of vampirism. In the course of that project, she has time and again shown an extraordinary callousness towards Maggie. She keeps trying to dissuade Barnabas from killing Maggie, but whenever it looks like he might do it anyway she exclaims that he will ruin all her work.
Today, Barnabas has heard that Maggie’s amnesia is lifting, and he has resolved to go through with the murder. He opens the door of his house to depart for his fell mission, only to see Julia standing before him.
Julia tells Barnabas he will ensure his own destruction if he kills Maggie. Barnabas says that he won’t be caught, and Julia laughingly agrees that he could easily get away with the crime. But she claims to have left a letter with a friend that will be opened and sent to the authorities in case either she or Maggie dies. Barnabas acquiesces in Julia’s insistence that he let Maggie live unless her memory does come back. Yesterday, she thought that she had persuaded Barnabas and was so impressed with herself that his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie could barely get through to her that he was setting out to kill Maggie. When Barnabas tells her that she has again gained “the upper hand” at the end of this scene, she flashes another look of self-satisfaction.
Julia leaves the Old House for the great house on the same estate, where she is the guest of the living members of the Collins family. There, Willie is waiting for her on the terrace. She tells him of her success at deceiving Barnabas, relishing the details and exulting when she tells him that Barnabas was frightened when she told him about the letter.
Willie is unconvinced that Barnabas really believed Julia, and in a lengthy interior monologue debates with himself about what he can and will do. He grows more and more miserable as he contemplates the prospect that he will continue to serve Barnabas while he kills everyone around him.
Barnabas has his own long interior monologues. He ruminates on Julia’s story about the letter and is sure that she would not expose him and give up her project simply because he had murdered Maggie. He does think that she might have taken some sort of precaution to protect her own life, but remembers that Julia said nothing about a letter on the previous occasions when he threatened to kill her. He concludes that she was lying, and sets out to complete his task. Before he can leave the house, “London Bridge” plays on the soundtrack, indicating that Sarah is present. In life, Sarah was Barnabas’ beloved baby sister, and he is desperate to see her again. He transforms instantly from a remorseless murder machine to a lonely man pleading for his dear little one to come to him.
Unknown to Barnabas, Julia, or Willie, the story that Maggie’s amnesia is lifting is false. Her friends have spread it to bait a trap. They hope that her abductor will hear it, panic, come to the Evans cottage, attract the attention of the many police officers hiding on the lawn, and then… it gets kind of fuzzy what they hope will happen at that point, but it is supposed to end the threat to Maggie.
Maggie’s boyfriend Joe shows up today with an antique doll. He says that before he came within twenty feet of the front door he was surrounded by police. Sam happily says that they would have shot Joe if he hadn’t come out of the house to vouch for him. Having told Maggie that the police are so trigger-happy that they will shoot anyone approaching the front door, Sam urges her to go to sleep. Apparently that is the sort of news that is supposed to bring sweet dreams.
We see two policemen on the lawn. They see a figure approaching the house. He is creeping in the darkness, not going towards the front door as Joe had done, nor is he carrying an antique doll. So they wait to see where he’s heading.
The figure retreats from the windows, complying with that command. Evidently the reason they wanted him to stop was that they weren’t sure they could hit a moving target, because as soon as he does they open fire. A policeman comes into Maggie’s room and tells her she doesn’t have to worry any more, because they shot the man in the back at least five times.
So now we know what the plan was. Wait until someone wanders onto the Evans property, shoot him, and declare him to be the man who abducted Maggie. Case closed!
The episode leaves us in suspense as to who the police shot. Barnabas is presumably still at home pining for Sarah. The figure at the window didn’t look like Julia, and the policeman who enters refers to the victim as “he.” Joe and Sam are in the room with Maggie, and the police probably would have noticed if they’d shot one of their own men. So the only character who appears in the episode and is not accounted for is Willie. He wanted to warn Maggie, but thought he would be unable to do so. Perhaps he overcame Barnabas’ power and tried to go to her, or perhaps we will learn tomorrow that the man who has been shot is some other luckless schlub.
Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is not allowed to leave home. The yard outside her door is full of policemen. They are hoping that a rumor that her amnesia is breaking and she will soon remember who abducted her and held her prisoner will draw that person out of hiding. If he approaches the house, they will… it isn’t clear what they will do, exactly. Whatever they do, Maggie hopes that it will end the danger so that she can get back to her normal life.
Maggie and her father Sam talk about the situation. This conversation doesn’t advance the plot or give the audience new information, but it is somewhat interesting to people who have been watching the show from the beginning. For the first 40 weeks of the show, Sam was an alcoholic and Maggie’s attempts to keep him out of trouble were a substantial part of the story. Adult Child of an Alcoholic (ACoA, in the lingo of the twelve step movement) mannerisms such as advertising that she is happy by starting utterances with a laugh and stressing whatever syllables have a rising pitch are still a major part of Maggie’s characterization.
Father and daughter
But Sam isn’t an alcoholic anymore. Not only doesn’t his drinking cause him problems, but we’ve seen him function as a social drinker. He keeps a bottle of whiskey in the living room of the Evans cottage and occasionally takes a drink or two; he often goes to The Blue Whale tavern and enjoys happy hour there. But he declines drinks when they are offered at inconvenient times, doesn’t get drunk, doesn’t have trouble with his work, and Maggie doesn’t have any complaints. The other day, the show referred back to Sam’s drinking days. He and the sheriff went to The Blue Whale, where Sam started the rumor about Maggie’s memory. Sam pretended to be drunk and the sheriff pretended to hush him while he declared that Maggie would be leading the police to her captor any day now. But he was stone sober the whole time, even though he had had a drink at home before leaving for the tavern.
The show dropped the theme of Sam’s alcoholism when it gave up on the storyline of “The Revenge of Burke Devlin.” Sam had started drinking because of the events behind that storyline and his drunkenness made it unpredictable what role he would play in it. Since that ended in #201, the writers don’t seem to see a point in presenting Sam as an alcoholic, even as one in recovery. But I think that is a mistake. The actors and directors remember that Sam has that history, and it adds depth to both David Ford’s portrayal of Sam and Kathryn Leigh Scott’s of Maggie. You wouldn’t have to spend any more screen time presenting Sam as a recovering alcoholic than they spend now presenting him as a social drinker. All he’d have to do is reply to a remark about booze by saying that he never touches the stuff anymore, and you’ve made the point.
Viewers who have been with the show from the beginning will look at Sam and Maggie’s heart-to-heart talk and remember the scenes from the first 40 weeks where Maggie wound up playing the parent in the parent-child relationship. Seeing him really function as a father here will not only reassure us that they are free of that now, but will also explain why Maggie kept falling into all of the patterns of behavior that enabled Sam when he was a drunk. Today, he’s the Daddy she knew before alcohol got the better of him, the one she was always sure was still in there someplace.
Sam leaves the room, and Maggie gets a visitor. After Sam had assured Maggie that the house was so well-guarded no one could get in, we saw a shot of the permanently nine year old ghost of Sarah Collins outdoors, peering over a picket fence.
Looking for a friend
Maggie falls asleep, and wakes to find Sarah in the room with her. Maggie repeatedly asks Sarah how she got in, and Sarah keeps declining to answer. Maggie keeps trying to get her father into the room, and Sarah keeps telling her that if a third person comes in, she will have to go away. Sarah finds that Maggie is not in possession of the doll she gave her, and tells her that she will have to get it back as soon as possible and keep it with her at all times. Maggie asks more than one question about that as well, and Sarah again tells her that she can’t explain. Sarah gets to be quite exasperated that she has to keep reviewing the ghost rules with Maggie.
Sarah can not believe Maggie still doesn’t get it.
Several characters have entertained the possibility that Sarah might be a ghost, among them Maggie and Sam. They keep snapping back from really believing that she is. In the early months of the show, characters had speculated that there might be ghosts on and around the great estate of Collinwood, but they couldn’t let go of the idea that they lived in a world that basically made sense according to the usual natural laws. So no matter what they saw, they kept retreating from the full implications of the supernatural events that came to be a more and more obvious part of their experiences. Sarah’s impatience with Maggie today is reflected in the impatience many viewers of the show express when characters who have had encounter after encounter with the paranormal won’t stop droning on about how there must be a perfectly logical explanation.
Sarah keeps repeating herself and Maggie keeps missing the point. Maggie tells Sarah that she will like Sam, who likes little girls. That again is a poignant line to those who are thinking about the happy life Maggie had with her father before he started drinking and that has only recently resumed, though it is lost on newer viewers. We also know that Sarah already likes Sam- she visited him in this house in #260 and told him where to find Maggie.
But in the world of Dark Shadows, ghosts cannot appear to more than one person at a time. For example, in #141 strange and troubled boy David Collins took his mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, to the Old House on the grounds of Collinwood, hoping that the ghost of Josette Collins would appear to her. He left her alone in the house, explaining that Josette appears only to one person at a time. Josette did communicate with Laura after David left, though Laura concealed that fact from her son.
We’ve seen only two exceptions to the rule that ghosts appear to one person at a time. The first case was in #165, when Josette manifested herself in a room with David and Laura. The second time was in #294, when Sarah herself helped Maggie escape from the mental hospital where mad scientist Julia Hoffman was keeping her for evil reasons. Both Maggie and her nurse could see Sarah that time.
But those were special occasions. It was such a strain for Josette to present herself to two people that she could shimmer into view only when David was asleep, and a few words from Laura were enough to shoo her away before he could wake up, though he did feel her presence afterward. And Sarah’s appearance to Maggie and the nurse lasted for only a few seconds. Viewers reminded of Sarah’s earlier appearance to Sam will remember that she vanished before he finished a sketch of her that she very much wanted him to give her, so however great a power she might represent, we know that it is not entirely under her control. She can do what she is supposed to do and tell people what they are supposed to know, but she cannot simply do as she wishes, and when she has completed an assigned task or entered an uncongenial situation she will disappear.
Eventually Maggie insists on opening the door and calling to Sam. Of course Sarah has vanished when he enters, of course the men guarding the house didn’t see her, and of course Sam and Maggie fret that if Sarah could come and go unobserved so could the person they are trying to catch. Those bits bring on our frustration with characters who don’t get that they are living in a universe pervaded with supernatural beings. If they were proceeding from the premise that Sarah was a ghost and considering the possibility that Maggie’s captor may also have been some kind of uncanny being, that would indicate that the action is about to start moving a lot faster. As it is, it’s just filler.
Meanwhile, Julia has left her hospital and come to Collinwood, where she is in league with Maggie’s captor, vampire Barnabas Collins. Barnabas has heard the rumor that Maggie is recovering from her amnesia. Julia induced that amnesia to keep Maggie from exposing him and inconveniencing her.
In Friday’s episode, Julia tried to talk Barnabas out of killing Maggie. He had calmly and suavely told her that he had no choice but to yield to her arguments, and she had been satisfied that she had persuaded him. Today, he tells his sorely bedraggled blood-thrall Willie Loomis that he will set out for the Evans cottage as soon as the clouds cover the moon and give him a deep enough cover of darkness.
Willie sneaks over to the terrace at the great house of Collinwood, where he informs Julia of Barnabas’ intentions. Julia cannot believe that her powers of persuasion failed to win Barnabas away from his plan to kill Maggie. Willie has to repeat himself time and again, until he grows as exasperated with Julia as Sarah was with Maggie.
This is the first time we have seen Julia in denial. It’s understandable that she would overestimate her ability to bend Barnabas to her will- not only has she had a great deal of success so far at dominating their relationship, but she is usually able to manipulate people to a fantastic degree. When she induced Maggie’s current amnesia, she took her in a matter of minutes from a state in which she remembered everything that had happened to her to one in which an impenetrable mental block covered exactly the period in which Barnabas abused her. Someone who can do that might well have difficulty grasping the fact that she has not turned someone to her way of thinking.
Barnabas stares out the window of his house in the direction of the Evans cottage and thinks murderous thoughts about Maggie. My wife and I often laugh about the comment Danny Horn made on this scene in his post about this episode on his blog Dark Shadows Every Day:
Meanwhile, the dogs are howling, and Barnabas is standing at the window, staring out into the night.
“Goodbye, Maggie Evans,” he thinks. “I might have loved you. I might have spared you. Now… you must die.”
Man, what a diva. He even has backup singers.
Danny Horn, “Episode 321: What We Talk About When We Talk About Ghosts,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 3 February 2014
When the show dwells on the dog-noise, Mrs Acilius and I often turn to each other, say “the backup singers!,” and laugh. When we watched this episode yesterday, we laughed louder than usual because our beagle joined in with them, right on cue. He often looks up when the howling starts, the backup singers are the stars of the show as far as he is concerned, but it is unusual for him to sing along. They must be in particularly good voice in this one.
We open with the most spectacular dream sequence Dark Shadows has yet attempted. Strange and troubled boy David Collins is tossing and turning in bed. We cut to his dream, where he sees his distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, approaching. Barnabas gets closer and closer, grows enormous, and opens his mouth, exposing the fangs of a vampire. David screams and wakes up.
As it happens, Barnabas really is a vampire. He has heard a rumor that Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is recovering from amnesia. Since that amnesia was induced by his associate, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, in order to keep her from remembering that Barnabas is an undead ghoul who abducted her and held her prisoner, he is on the point of a panic attack.
Jonathan Frid turns in a bravura performance as Barnabas today. He plays Barnabas’ mounting anxiety compellingly when we see him in his house alone with his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie, waiting for Julia. When she does come, he rages at her and demands she go to Maggie at once to reinforce her memory loss. When Julia admits that she is no longer Maggie’s doctor, Barnabas’ rage mounts and he threatens to kill her. She keeps talking, and eventually he composes himself and suavely tells her that he won’t kill anyone tonight. She smiles, and goes off to her laboratory to resume meddling in God’s realm. Willie knows Barnabas better than Julia does and has none of her self-assurance; he doesn’t for a moment believe that Barnabas has relented. When he gets Barnabas to confirm that he is indeed going to kill Maggie, Frid moves from the cool suavity he had achieved just before Julia’s exit back to the near-panic he had displayed before she entered. The whole trip from panic to rage to suavity and back to panic is remarkably well executed.
Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is sick of being cooped up at home all the time. But the person or persons unknown who abducted her and held her prisoner is still at large, and has bothered another girl. She herself cannot help in the investigation, since she has amnesia covering the entire period of her captivity. So when addled quack Dr Woodard says he has a plan that might catch the villain, she jumps at it.
Woodard put forward his last plan when Maggie had escaped from her captor. That plan was to tell everyone Maggie was dead and hide her in a mental hospital, in the hope that the abductor would think that he had got away with his crime and would therefore… become a nice guy? It was never very clear how that was supposed to solve the problem.
This plan has the same shortcoming that one had. Maggie’s father, artist Sam Evans, is supposed to start a rumor that her memory is returning and that everyone will soon know who abducted her. That is supposed to prompt the guy to come after Maggie again. When he does, they will… find him outside the house and charge him with trespassing? Let him kill Maggie and charge him with murder? Woodard isn’t good at the end-game.
Maggie persuades Sam and the sheriff to go along with Woodard’s half-baked scheme. Sam and the sheriff go to Collinsport’s only night spot, The Blue Whale Tavern. Sam, who for the first 40 weeks of Dark Shadows was an alcoholic, pretends to be drunk. He throws out one broad hint after another that Maggie’s memory is returning, and the sheriff pretends to hush him.
The important plot point in this scene is that Willie Loomis is in the tavern. Willie is the servant of old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. Unknown to the people of Collinsport, Barnabas is a vampire, and it was he who abducted Maggie. Willie hustles off to report the news to Barnabas.
But what really matters in the scene are the thirteen lines delivered by Bob the Bartender. This is Bob’s 42nd appearance, but only the sixth time he has spoken audibly. It is by far his meatiest part, but alas, it is the last time we will hear him speak. Actor Bob O’Connell will play other bartenders in later stories, and one of them will have a substantial speaking part in an episode, but Bob will be mute from now on.
This episode marks another landmark in Bob’s development. During his drunk act, Sam says “Bob-a-roonie, give me a double mar-toonee… on the rocks!” Picking up on that, many Dark Shadows fans have decided that Bob’s last name is “Rooney.” The Dark Shadows wiki lists him that way, and one of Big Finish Productions’ Dark Shadows audio dramas incorporates that name.
*The first five were #3, #156, #186, #269, and #270.
In the outer room of the Tomb of the Collinses, Sam Evans and Dr Dave Woodard recap the story so far. In the hidden chamber on the other side of the wall, vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman eavesdrop on their conversation. When they hear how close Evans and Woodard have come to discovering their terrible secrets, Julia squirms and Barnabas looks shocked.
Busted.
When Dr Woodard mentions that Julia had used the word “supernatural” in a conversation with him, Barnabas nearly blows their cover. He grabs Julia by the throat and she lets out a yelp. Sam hears this, Woodard does not. Woodard suspects that there are ghosts at work in the area, but he cannot believe that Sam’s hearing is better than his, so he dismisses the idea.* He notices the plaque marking the burial site of Sarah Collins, 1786-1796, and says out loud that the little girl named Sarah whom everyone has been looking for lately is the ghost of that Sarah.
Evans and Woodard leave the tomb, and Barnabas resumes raging at Julia. He opens his old coffin and pushes her head into it, asking if she wants to spend eternity confined there. She talks him down with warnings of what would happen were he to kill strange and troubled boy David Collins.
Woodard goes to the great house of Collinwood, where he questions David. Woodard is much more forthcoming with what he knows than he has been in any previous conversation. David listens closely, trying to find out what he knows. But Woodard’s questions are all about David’s friend, Sarah. David doesn’t know that answers to many of Woodard’s questions, and Sarah has sworn him to secrecy about much of what he does know. So the only new piece of information Woodard learns from David is that Julia was lying to him the other day when she said that she hadn’t given much thought to Sarah. David tells him that she asks him about her all the time.
Julia comes in and tries to stop Woodard questioning David. He ignores her and asks another question, then warns him to stay away from the Tomb of the Collinses. When he tells David that whatever secret Sarah told him about the tomb is also known to someone else, and that that other person is very dangerous, David is horrified. When he was trapped in the hidden chamber last week, Barnabas and his servant Willie entered. David hid from them in Barnabas’ old coffin and eavesdropped on a conversation in which Barnabas dropped a huge number of clues about his secrets. Since Woodard started his questioning of David with a reference to the unknown person who has been terrorizing the area since April, David now has reason to believe that Barnabas is that person.
David leaves the room, and Woodard asks Julia what she was trying to prevent him from finding out. She refuses to answer any of his questions. She hears the sound of dogs howling, and knows that it means Barnabas is getting ready to kill someone. Knowing that she has very little time to try to prevent David’s murder, she cannot focus on Woodard’s questions. For once, she can’t think of any lies that will hold him off. Her reason for being in town, so far as Woodard is concerned, is that she is a doctor treating Sam Evans’ daughter Maggie, Barnabas’ former victim. When she won’t answer his questions, he takes her off Maggie’s case.
Julia goes to Barnabas’ house. She finds him on his way out the door, on a mission to kill David. She opposes him, and he declares that nothing can stop him. At that, the wind blows the doors open. It extinguishes some of the candles in the room. The strains of “London Bridge” begin playing, and Barnabas and Julia realize that Sarah, who in reality is the permanently nine year old ghost of Barnabas’ little sister, is in the room. Barnabas cannot leave. Julia says with satisfaction that nothing can stop him- “except one little girl.”
The whole episode is very strong from beginning to end. Julia is usually so much in charge that the only suspense is what she will choose to do, but throughout this one she is scrambling to bring Barnabas under control. When her final attempt fails, Sarah’s intervention comes as a thrilling surprise.
The performances of both Jonathan Frid and Grayson Hall stand out today. Hall is as powerful a presence playing a character who controls nothing as she usually is playing a character who controls everything. And few could match Frid’s ability to appall us with Barnabas’ plan to kill a ten year old and seconds later to elicit tears by calling out to his beloved little sister.
When Dark Shadows began, one of the most important relationships was that between matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. Liz and Roger each had a terrible secret to hide. In the work of hiding, they embodied opposite extremes. Liz was motivated to conceal her secret by a fear that she would damage the reputation of the Collins family and the fortunes of its members. Her morbidly intense concern for the family’s position both made her a prisoner in her home and gave her a certain air of nobility. Roger’s motives for hiding his secret were wholly selfish, and he was a symbol of lack of family feeling. So much so that he squandered his entire inheritance, jumped at a chance to sell the ancestral seat to his sworn enemy, and openly hated his own son.
Since Roger was living in Liz’ house as her guest and working in her business as an employee, it fell to her to rein in her impossibly irresponsible younger brother. But the very quality that led her to try to exercise authority over him undercut her efforts to do so. Liz’ devotion to the Collins family compelled her to try to keep Roger on the strait and narrow path, but that same devotion prevented her from taking any action against him so harsh that it might actually deter him from misconduct. Further, her own secret compromised her moral authority and kept her from engaging with anyone outside the family. So she wound up less as a commanding matriarch than as a bossy big sister.
Liz and Roger both let go of their secrets, Roger in #201, Liz in #270. Roger is still far from heroic, but he no longer gives Liz the nightmares he once did. Liz is still mindful of the family’s good name, but there is nothing keeping her from following through on whatever orders she might give. So Liz and Roger’s Bossy Big Sister/ Bratty Little Brother dynamic is no longer a productive story element.
Now, the show is reintroducing the same dynamic with another pair of characters. Mad scientist Julia Hoffman is conducting an experiment which she hopes will turn vampire Barnabas Collins into a real boy. When Barnabas threatens to murder her, she becomes impatient and tells him to stop being ridiculous. When he threatens to murder other people, she threatens to discontinue the experiment unless he starts behaving. He usually responds to Julia’s orders by pouting, sulking, and giving in to her.
In the opening scene, Julia was in Barnabas’ house. He told her that he was likely to kill Roger’s ten year old son David because he thinks David might know that he is a vampire. Julia demanded that he leave David alone, prompting him to walk out of his own house. She then followed him to the old cemetery north of town, where Barnabas heard her footsteps in the distance and she hid behind a tree.
This woman holds a medical doctorate and is qualified in two unrelated specialties.
Barnabas enters the Tomb of the Collinses. Julia confronts him there, insisting he tell her what secret about the place he is keeping from her. He demands that she leave and threatens to kill her if she does not. He tells her that he ought to stash her corpse nearby, “along with”- then interrupts himself. Regular viewers know that Barnabas killed seagoing con man Jason McGuire in #275 and buried him in the secret chamber inside the tomb in #276. Jason has barely been mentioned since, not once in any scene featuring Julia. When she asks Barnabas what he is talking about, he says “Never mind.”
Julia presses Barnabas with “You’ve shared all your other secrets with me. You have no choice but to share this one with me too.” The logic of this statement eludes me, but all Barnabas can do when Julia has made it is to walk backward away from her, staggering into a corner and pouting at her.
Barnabas, stunned by the force of Julia’s reasoning.
Meanwhile, Sam and Dave are walking through the cemetery.
No, not that Sam and Dave. Local artist Sam Evans and addled quack Dr Dave Woodard have noticed that a series of odd occurrences have taken place in the vicinity of the tomb lately and have come to the cemetery to investigate. They run into the old caretaker, who delays them with his usual warnings about the unquiet spirits of the dead.
Alas, the final appearance of Daniel F. Keyes as the Caretaker.
Back in the tomb, Barnabas is telling Julia everything she wants to know. He lets her into the secret chamber and explains that he was imprisoned there in a coffin for many years, freed only when the luckless Willie Loomis accidentally released him to prey upon the living. Julia listens, showing pity as Barnabas recounts his woes.
Barnabas finds David’s pocket knife, proving that the boy was in the chamber and convincing Barnabas that he must kill him. He takes the knife close to Julia in a gesture that might be threatening, were its blade intact. The broken blade negates the threat and emphasizes Barnabas’ powerlessness before Julia. Since 1967 was the heyday of Freudianism in the USA, it is likely that many in the original audience would have seen it not only as a useless tool, but also as a phallic symbol. As such, not only its brokenness, but also the fact that it was made to be carried by a little boy, would make the point that Barnabas brings no sexual potency to his relationship with Julia. Her own behavior towards him may be childlike, but in her eyes he is a smaller child than she is.
Julia protests, claiming that someone else might have left the knife there. Barnabas dismisses her assertions, but does not regain control of the situation. As they prepare to leave the chamber, he kneels and she stands over him, watching him open the panel.
On his knees before her.
They hear Sam and Dave approach. (Still not the cool ones.) They scurry back into the secret chamber, as David had done when he heard Barnabas and Willie approaching the tomb in #310. They listen to the men discuss the facts that have brought them to the tomb, and grow steadily more alarmed as they realize how close they are to discovering Barnabas’ terrible secret.
This is the first episode not to include any actors who were signed to the show at the time production began. The character of Sam Evans was at that time played by a loud man called Mark Allen; Allen’s last episode was #22, taped on 12 July 1966, and David Ford’s first was #35, taped on 29 July. The Caretaker was introduced in #154, Barnabas in #210,* Dave Woodard in #219,** and Julia in #265.
*As the hand of stand-in Alfred Dillay- Jonathan Frid wouldn’t appear until #211. Though the portrait he sat for was on screen in #204, and was identified as that of Barnabas Collins in #205.
**Played by Richard Woods. Robert Gerringer took over the part in #231.
Dark Shadows Commentary 