We open with a reprise of the end of yesterday’s episode. Quentin Collins and Amanda Harris are reenacting the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. As in the ancient Greek story, they will live together if they can escape all the perils on the road from the realm of the dead to that of the living. Unlike that story, they are allowed to look at each other along the way, but they are not allowed to touch.
The teaser ends where Wednesday’s episode ended, with Amanda falling through a gap in a footbridge and Quentin crying out in anguish. After the opening title, we are surprised to find ourselves at the same scene. Amanda is not yet lost. Quentin pulls her up from the ravine she fell into. But that involves touch, so the ceiling of the cavern collapses and buries her. Suddenly, Quentin finds himself lying on the ground, in the upper world, with no sign of any way back to the place from which he just came.
Amanda’s demise marks Donna McKechnie’s final appearance on Dark Shadows. Miss McKechnie left to be in the original cast of Stephen Sondheim’s Company, paving the way for her enormous success on Broadway in the 1970s. Much later, Miss McKechnie would reprise the role of Amanda in a couple of Big Finish Productions’ Dark Shadows audio dramas, and nowadays she appears at the Dark Shadows conventions.
Any account of Donna McKechnie’s last day at 433 West 53rd Street would be incomplete without this story from Hamrick and Jamison’s book Barnabas and Company:
In rehearsal, we went through the scene with a few Styrofoam boulders and a little peat moss, no big deal. Nobody told me there was going to be ten times as much dropped during the taping. So, when it was time to tape the scene, I was looking up, and I just got buried. I got peat moss in my eyes and in my mouth and ears and nose… and I was covered in rocks. The way things worked at the studio, at the end of that scene, the lights went out, and the camera and crew and actors all moved on to the next scene, in another part of the studio. So there I was, laying under all those Styrofoam rocks and peat moss, and nobody helped me get out. I had to dig myself out, and that was my last experience on Dark Shadows.
Craig Hamrick and R. J. Jamison, BARNABAS AND COMPANY: THE CAST OF THE TV CLASSIC DARK SHADOWS (2nd edition, 2012) page 245.
They’ve been doing a bit of videotape editing recently, as several awkward cuts have made clear. One might think that the whole Underworld sequence, pre- and post-title, was edited in from tape left over from yesterday’s shoot. But Miss McKechnie’s story proves that is not so. The episodes were done in sequence, so if the last bit of tape they shot yesterday had been the crushing of Amanda there wouldn’t have been any next scene to run off to and Miss McKechnie would have had plenty of help digging herself out from under.
Some Sort of Monster was After Him
Meanwhile, the sheriff is at the home of occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes and his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, have called him in because a monster wrecked Stokes’ bedroom, in the process killing a man named Paul Stoddard.
No law enforcement officer on Dark Shadows has yet solved a case, and Sheriff Davenport seems likely to prove the most useless member of the fraternity yet. At no point does he interrogate Stokes and Julia, or even show much interest in what they were doing while Paul was being killed. He refuses to believe Julia when she says that he should be looking for a monster, even though Collinsport has been overrun with monsters for years now and he has acknowledged that the wreckage at Stokes’ is like nothing he has ever seen. Julia tells him that the monster lives in the room at the top of the stairs in the antique shop operated by Megan and Philip Todd. In response, he flatly states that “They wouldn’t have anything to do with his death.” He finally agrees to get a search warrant for the Todds’ place, but when he presents it to Philip he says that he will execute it “unless of course, you don’t want me to?”
The meatiest part of the episode is a long scene between Megan and Philip. She is exultant that the monster has killed Paul and certain that it will go on to do other, even more wonderful things. He’s scared to death of what the monster will do to them if it is not defeated and of the retribution that will come to them if it is. She sneers at him as a coward. He admits that he is a coward, but insists that they run away and count themselves fortunate if they can escape with their lives.
In her first role on Dark Shadows, as Eve, The Fiancée of Frankenstein, Marie Wallace was called upon to show an unbending, unvarying contempt for Adam, the patchwork man she was supposed to marry. Since that was the only feeling Eve had ever shown for Adam, it wasn’t very interesting. But Megan loved Philip when we first met them. The other day, when she told the monster that she had loved Philip for a long time, we could believe her. So her scorn today does carry some force, and no one knows better how to play scorn and play it to the hilt than does Miss Wallace.
The part of Philip has not been a particularly congenial one for Christopher Bernau up to this point, but he too excels in the scene. He has lots of lines you would expect a man to find it hard to say, calling himself a coward and so on, but he speaks them smoothly and fluently. He shows his hesitancy and anguish not in his delivery of the lines, but in his facial expressions and movements while Megan is speaking. You can see him deciding to put aside all male ego and say something that might get through to Megan, no matter how humiliating it is for him to say it. With lines proclaiming his cowardice, Bernau creates the image of a remarkably brave Philip.
That in turn makes it possible for the episode to end on a suspenseful note. The closing cliffhanger has Sheriff Davenport turning the doorknob to the monster’s room, while Philip is frenziedly trying to come up with a way to talk him out of entering it. When we watched that, my wife, Mrs Acilius, said to the screen “If you don’t tell him what’s in there, it’s murder,” in a tone that suggested she thought Philip actually might tell the sheriff the truth. That such an idea could even form is a testament to Bernau’s outstanding performance in this episode.
For the first 55 weeks of Dark Shadows, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard was under the impression that she had killed her husband Paul and that Paul’s associate Jason McGuire had buried his corpse in the basement of the great house on the estate of Collinwood. She spent nineteen years at home, terrified that if she left the estate someone might find Paul’s grave and hold her to account for his killing. Finally it turned out that she had only stunned Paul. He and Jason had faked his death to trick Liz into giving them a lot of money. Soon, Liz was no longer a recluse and that whole story was forgotten.
Now, Paul has returned. He denies knowing anything about his fake death, claiming that Jason acted alone. Longtime viewers will be skeptical of this claim, and Liz certainly is. But she doesn’t care about it as much as you might expect. She is now part of a secret cult that serves mysterious supernatural forces known as the Leviathan People, who plan to take over the earth, supplanting the human race. Paul has learned that he inadvertently sold Carolyn Collins Stoddard, his daughter with Liz, to the Leviathans, and he has been trying to sound the alarm about them. As a serenely happy devotee of the Leviathan cult, Liz has agreed to keep Paul at Collinwood where she can drug him into immobility.
The power of the Leviathans has taken bodily form in a succession of children who live in an antique shop in the village of Collinsport. The shop’s owners, Megan and Philip Todd, were the first people inducted into the cult by Liz’ distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. The latest manifestation of this being, an apparently thirteen year old boy known as Michael, had been attracting attention that threatened to blow the cult’s cover, so Philip and Megan faked his death. They held a funeral this morning.
Michael is supposed to retire into his room above the antique shop and stay there until he has graduated to his next form. He comes out and tells Megan and Philip that he has decided not to go through with this plan. Philip picks him up and carries him there, putting a new lock on the outside of the door to keep him in until he has gone through another transformation.
Carolyn calls the Todds and extends her mother’s invitation to an evening at Collinwood. They accept.
Unknown to Liz or the Todds, Barnabas has become disaffected from the cult. He visits Paul in his room. He gives Paul clothes and a lot of money and urges him to go far away. Paul doesn’t trust Barnabas, and holds him at gunpoint throughout their entire conversation.
When the Leviathan cult first emerged, its members were siloed off from each other. Barnabas gave Philip and Megan their instructions in dream visitations. When they were awake, they would not recognize him as their leader. They and Liz were not aware of each other’s connection to the cult, though Liz did know that Barnabas was her leader and her nephew David Collins was a fellow cultist. It reminded us of secret operations in the real world, where only people who work with each other directly are allowed to know of their shared allegiance.
Now, all that security is out the window. Liz and the Todds stand around the drawing room at Collinwood having drinks and talking about what Barnabas has and has not told them about the Leviathans and their goals. They do still keep some secrets, however. Liz says that she can’t help but wonder what Carolyn’s role will be in the time to come. Barnabas and the Todds know that she is fated to be the bride of the force currently incarnated as Michael, but they are not allowed to tell Liz this. They look at each other with alarm, and Barnabas gives her some vague and hasty assurances.
There is an unintentionally hilarious moment during the cocktail party scene. Megan is seized by enthusiasm for the Leviathan project, and starts babbling all sorts of portentous phrases about the new world that is taking shape through their efforts. Marie Wallace was one of the most committed exponents of the Dark Shadows house style of acting, which consists largely of delivering your lines so vehemently that you are in constant danger of spraining your back. For her part, while Joan Bennett sometimes played to the balcony as Liz and her other characters, she never really let go of the urbane and relatively understated approach that made her one of the biggest movie stars of the late 1930s. When Liz responds to Megan with the amiable smile and subtly musical voice of a sophisticated society hostess, it all of a sudden strikes regular viewers who have got used to the show’s peculiarities just how incredibly bombastic Miss Wallace was.
Meanwhile, Paul goes through a lot of business with Barnabas and Carolyn in which he is told to wait an hour, no half an hour, no ten minutes, before leaving the house. He steals the keys from Megan’s purse and sneaks off to the antique shop. He has decided he must figure out what exactly is going on there. He lets himself into the room where the Leviathan force is kept when it is not embodied as a child. He hears a heavy breathing. The camera zooms in on his shocked face. With that, the episode closes. Paul’s future would appear to be extremely brief. On the day of Michael’s phony funeral, he seems likely to bring the show’s first fake death firmly into the realm of the actual.
Today marks Michael Maitland’s last appearance as Michael. He did a lot of acting as a child, including major roles on Broadway both before and after his run on Dark Shadows. Playing Michael didn’t give him much chance to show what he could do. His resume suggests that is a shame- he must have had a lot to offer to get all those big parts. And by all accounts, he was a very nice guy.
Michael Maitland died of cancer in 2014, at the age of 57. That means that three of the five child actors who appeared on Dark Shadows during the Leviathan segment have died. Denise Nickerson, who played Amy Jennings, was 62 when she died in 2019; Alyssa Mary Ross Eppich, who under the name Lisa Ross played the Leviathan child in the guise of an eight year old version of Carolyn in #909, was 60 when she died in 2020. David Henesy, who played David Collins, and David Jay, who played the Leviathan child as an eight year boy called Alexander, are still going strong. So too is Sharon Smyth Lentz, who played the ghost of nine year old Sarah Collins in 31 episodes in 1967 and the living Sarah in six episodes in 1967 and early 1968.
Antique dealers Megan and Philip Todd have called Julia Hoffman, MD, to the apartment above their shop in the village of Collinsport. They have been looking after a boy named Michael, and Michael has suddenly been taken very ill. Julia examines Michael and picks up the telephone to call for an ambulance. Before she can finish dialing, Michael has a seizure. She gives the boy a shot, but it does not stabilize him. She pronounces him dead.
Julia has many abilities that far exceed those of any other doctor- she can build Frankenstein’s monsters and bring them to life, cure vampirism, rewrite people’s memories with a wave of her medallion, and, when the occasion calls for it, transcend time and space and treat patients located in bygone centuries. But she has a curious shortcoming regarding death pronouncements. She has pronounced at least a dozen people dead, and almost all of them turned out to be alive and well. The death toll on Dark Shadows is so high that no category of character has as good a chance of survival as those who have been pronounced dead by Julia. So it isn’t much of a surprise when Michael comes downstairs into the shop at the end of the episode, none the worse for his experience.
Philip and Megan are members of a cult devoted to serving a supernatural force of which Michael is an embodiment. They have plotted to fake his death, perhaps to involve the actual death of his body in preparation for his reemergence in another form, to allay the suspicions that Julia and others have started to show. As a further step in this plot, Megan mentions the town of Coleyville, where a woman named Mrs Hutchins lives. She tells Julia that Mrs Hutchins took care of Michael before he came to live with her and Philip, and Julia goes to see her.
Violet Welles, writer of today’s script, likes to take us out of town. All we see of Coleyville is Mrs Hutchins’ living room and the area around her front door, but even so it is good to get away from Collinsport for a little while.
Mrs Hutchins tells Julia that Michael’s family were “the Hacketts.” The name “Hackett” has a history on Dark Shadows. In #223, dashing action hero Burke Devlin met with matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in the study of the great house of Collinwood and tried to talk her out of selling some properties to a man called “Hackett,” never heard of before or since. We also saw the name on screen twice. A few weeks after Burke tried to talk Liz out of the Hackett deal, her daughter Carolyn started dating a motorcycle enthusiast identified in the credits for #252 and #257 as “Buzz Hackett,” though in his other appearances he was listed simply as “Buzz” and his surname was never mentioned in the dialogue. Hackett is hardly a rare name, but it isn’t so common that this is likely to be a coincidence. Maybe Dan Curtis was a fan of comic Buddy Hackett, he was a big deal in those days.
Returning viewers know that everything Mrs Hutchins tells Julia is a lie. Michael did not exist until he took shape in an upstairs room of Megan and Philip’s shop in #913/914. Therefore, we pay close attention to Camila Ashland’s acting. She is a bit larger than life, but that is nothing unusual on Dark Shadows. After Julia exits, Philip enters and pays Mrs Hutchins for her performance; she asks him if there really was a little boy who died, and he sternly reproves her for asking questions. Ashland tones her performance down for Mrs Hutchins’ scene with Philip, suggesting that with Julia she really had been playing the role of an actress at work.
Julia admires Mrs Hutchins’ acting, while we admire Camila Ashland’s.
Philip leaves by the front door, and of course Julia is waiting behind the shrubbery to see him go. She goes to her friend Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes and tells him what she has learned. Stokes later goes to the antique shop to meet the Todds. He tells them he is in a hurry, but they peek out their window a few minutes after he has gone and see him across the street, looking at them. No one on Dark Shadows has much of a flair for OpSec, so this isn’t a great surprise.
The closing credits run over a shot of Mrs Hutchins’ birdcage. The parakeet moves around as they roll. It is a charming shot, almost as good as the motorized puppets under the credits at the end of #904. That was another Violet Welles script, I suppose she was the one who decided to liven up the credits.
Mad scientist Julia Hoffman finds that wicked witch Angelique has married a businessman who has a house on an island off the coast of central Maine. Angelique tells Julia that her husband’s love has freed her to live as a human being, and that for the sake of that love she has renounced her powers. In #882, set in the year 1897, Angelique said that she would soon have to return to the underworld unless she could find a man who would love her. The show has since returned to a contemporary setting, and she met her husband less than a year before, sometime in 1969. Evidently her time wasn’t running as short as she led us to believe it was.
In the 1897 segment, the show was quite clear that Angelique was aligned with Satan and that the underworld she was talking about was a Hell that Dante or Milton or other Christians would have recognized. The deal she described with her master therefore made little sense then. But Dark Shadows has drawn freely on the mythologies of many cultures and has made up stories about supernatural worlds of its own. The borrowings from the Christian tradition are a relatively minor part of the universe they have been patching together, and they have recently given us reason to suspect it is something they are backing away from. So I don’t think we are under any obligation to reconcile Angelique’s account of the lord of the damned with the teachings of any church.
Angelique is afraid that Julia has come to reenlist her in the cosmic battles surrounding the estate of Collinwood. In fact, Julia had no idea she would find Angelique. She went to the island because she had figured out that a painting she was looking for was there. It is a magical portrait of rakish Quentin Collins, obscured by a landscape painted over it. Quentin has amnesia, and Julia apparently thinks that if she shows him the portrait she will be able to jar some memories loose.
Angelique agrees to let Julia take the painting and expose Quentin’s portrait, on condition that the overpainting be exactly reproduced on another canvas and brought back to the house on the island before her husband knows it was gone. Julia suggests they tell him a lie that will give them more flexibility, but Angelique says he is “a very thorough man” and would ask too many follow-up questions if they gave him any information at all.
Before and after her scene with Julia, we see Angelique with her husband. The first scene begins with some very awkward kissing. The awkwardness is partly due to Geoffrey Scott’s total incompetence as an actor; he stands stiffly while Lara Parker simultaneously kisses him and nudges him to his mark, making it look like she is moving a couch. But part of the blame must rest with director Lela Swift, who set up the shot from an angle that puts the emphasis on the straining muscles in Parker’s neck and back. Perhaps Swift overestimated Scott’s abilities.
“Move three inches back and to the right, dummy, you’re supposed to be in the center of the frame!”
This scene is accompanied by some music for a small string ensemble; I don’t believe we have heard the track since the very early days of the show. It feels jarringly old-fashioned. All of Dark Shadows’ orchestral score strikes 21st century viewers as a relic of an earlier era, but it set it apart from other daytime soaps of the 1960s and early 70s, most of which had an organ playing on the soundtrack. Compared to the organ accompaniment, which today’s audiences would find simply intolerable, I suppose even these creaky old violins are relatively modern.
The second scene ends with a more successful kiss. It is accompanied by a woodwind piece that used to be associated strongly with well-meaning governess Vicki and her doomed love for dashing action hero Burke Devlin. Burke was written out of the show in 1967, Vicki in 1968, and this music cropped up occasionally in 1969 during sentimental moments. It is still noticeably more old-fashioned than the rest of the score, albeit more dynamic than the string serenade that went along with the first kiss.
Meanwhile, in the great house at Collinwood, strange and troubled boy David Collins is coming down with a cold. David’s governess, Vicki’s successor Maggie Evans, is trying to get him to take his schoolwork seriously. A boy known as Michael appears in the house and announces that he and David will be playing now. Maggie explains that it is not a good time, and Michael bullies both her and David into giving him his way.
Michael is not really human, but is a manifestation of a supernatural force that has subjugated David and many other people. Seeing Michael push Maggie around, we might remember May and June of 1967, when Maggie was the prisoner of vampire Barnabas Collins. Those episodes were bleak and at moments painful to watch, but they also drew a new audience and made Dark Shadows, for the first time, a hit.
Barnabas attracted a crowd, not simply because he was cruel to Maggie, but because we wondered how others would react to his evil deeds, because his motives were unbelievably zany, and because actor Jonathan Frid took a visible joy in playing him. He became a breakout star, familiar to millions who never saw a single episode of Dark Shadows or knew anything else about it, because he generated stories that allowed the whole cast to shine, followed his crazy ideas to the point where many of them became the realities of the show’s narrative universe, and had quirks that dovetailed perfectly with Frid’s strengths.
Michael has none of these things going for him. When he is nasty to Maggie, he does not produce any suspense as to what others will do. Not only do most characters assume that as a teacher she will be able to handle an obstreperous child by herself, but most of the people to whom she would likely turn for support are among Michael’s subordinates. There are no crazy ideas bursting out of him- he is just a little tyrant, who at no point seems to have any hidden motives or nuances of feeling. And Michael Maitland seems depressed the whole time he is on screen. As a result, Michael is as straightforward and tedious as Barnabas was luridly intriguing.
When Barnabas was holding Maggie prisoner, his blood-thrall Willie felt sorry for her. He occasionally made efforts to help her, none of which did anything but make her situation even worse. John Karlen’s portrayal of the feckless Willie brought him almost as much fan mail as Jonathan Frid received during that period. Today it is David’s turn to play Willie to Michael’s Barnabas, and he does not disappoint. Thirteen year old David Henesy plays David Collins’ conflicted feelings more subtly than Karlen had played Willie’s, and as a result we watch him very closely. Disappointed as we may be in Michael, Mr Henesy’s triumph in these scenes brings the episode to a strong close.
Yesterday, Amanda Harris told the story of a suicide attempt she made in 1897. A supernatural being whom she calls “Mr Best” thwarted this attempt, and told her that he would arrange for her not only to avoid death, but to remain young, for the years that it had been ordained she would live. If in that time she could reconnect with her lost love, rakish Quentin Collins, she and he would never die. Now it is 1970, and Amanda’s time is up. Mr Best is at her door. Amanda has found Quentin, but he has amnesia and is not ready to resume their relationship as Mr Best’s terms require.
Mr Best has changed startlingly since we met him in the flashback that showed us Amanda’s story. Then he was warm and solicitous; today he is truculent and cold. Even his makeup is different. A pale coloring suggests sunken cheeks, making him look corpse-like.
Amanda has reversed her own attitude as well. In 1897, Mr Best lamented her wish for death and pleaded with her to stay alive; now it is Amanda’s turn to beg Mr Best for more time while he shows impatience with her. When she tells him about Quentin’s amnesia, he asks brusquely “Are you making this up?” It merits a laugh that the story of Dark Shadows has become so far-fetched that even Death Incarnate finds it hard to believe. But Mr Best does soften, and gives Amanda seven more days to get Quentin to tell her he loves her.
Quentin’s own perpetual youth is the result of a magical portrait that immunized him from the effects both of aging and of the werewolf curse that was placed on him in 1897. Quentin’s great-grandson Chris Jennings has inherited that curse. Mad scientist Julia Hoffman had learned that artist Charles Delaware Tate was still alive, and hoped he would paint a portrait of Chris that would free him from lycanthropy. Tate told Chris he no longer had the gift, but Chris forced him to paint his picture anyway. The moon rose, Chris transformed, and as the wolf he murdered Tate.
One of Chris’ surviving victims is his ex-fiancée, Sabrina Stuart. Sabrina saw him transform, and as a result was struck dumb for years and went prematurely gray. She can talk now, but she’s still gray. She shows up today at the great house of Collinwood where she calls on heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard. Carolyn tells Sabrina that she doesn’t love Chris and never will, but that she realizes Sabrina loves him. This adds to a growing list of reasons the show has given us to doubt that Chris will be on much longer. His premeditated murder of Tate establishes him as a pure villain. A villain’s function is to create problems for other characters to solve, and Chris has been too passive and too dependent on Julia to be an interesting villain. His relationship with Carolyn gave him a connection to the core cast, but Carolyn’s conversation with Sabrina makes it clear that that is gone now.
Sabrina insists Carolyn go on a road trip with her. She takes her to Tate’s house and leads her into the room where Chris murdered the artist. She tells her that a man was just killed there. Carolyn asks Sabrina if Chris did it. Sabrina looks pained, and says “Not Chris!” This further undermines Chris’ position. As long as Sabrina was mute, we could wonder whether she would blow the whistle on Chris once she regained the power of speech and if so what the consequences of that would be. But now we see that she is still in denial about him, and can set aside any hope that she might generate a story for him.
Carolyn asks Sabrina how she knows about the murder. No answer is forthcoming, and there doesn’t seem to be any way she could know. Evidently Sabrina has now developed some kind of clairvoyance about Chris’ murders. Since she is apparently determined to use that power to limit Chris’ relevance to the story, it is yet another reason to suspect he will be written out soon.
Julia enters the crime scene. She and Carolyn are surprised to see each other. Sabrina announces that Julia knows all about Chris, and gets upset about it. Julia, a psychiatrist by profession, slaps her in the face, the accepted treatment for angry women in 1960s television shows. Sabrina quiets down, and Julia sends her away with Carolyn. Once they are gone, she settles in at Tate’s desk and starts rummaging through his papers.
Julia wants to cure Quentin of his amnesia. She looked through an old Collins family photo album, and found that two pictures of him had gone missing. She is puzzled as to who took them; this is a continuity error, since in #686 and #687 there was a whole thing about ghosts removing photos relevant to Quentin from albums after Julia had looked through them. Be that as it may, Julia discovers in Tate’s papers that he had painted over Quentin’s portrait and that it is now in a big house on an island nearby.
We see a man holding a telephone and reciting lines of dialogue. He puts the phone down, looks at Julia, and recites more lines in the same unmodulated voice. Grayson Hall stays in character with her responses, and plays Julia asking to see the painting, but the man does not do anything that could be called acting. Dark Shadows has featured its share of lousy performances, but I cannot recall a member of the cast simply enunciating words as if he were in a neurologist’s office demonstrating that he had memorized the unrelated syllables given him to reproduce. It is genuinely bizarre.
The man’s name is Geoffrey Scott, and if anyone had told him he was supposed to act he would be playing a character called Sky Rumson. I suppose “Rumson” is a good name for a character who is identified with a house on the beach, since beach houses are what Rumson, New Jersey is known for, though the beach might not be front of mind in early January in central Maine. Sky is a go-go businessman, and his lines to Julia are about what a great hurry he is in.
Sky shows Julia the painting that covers the portrait of Quentin. He tells her that it isn’t very good. Indeed it is not particularly distinguished, but it is far superior to any of Tate’s other works, some of which they want us to regard as museum pieces. Sky says that he bought the painting for his wife, who has an unaccountable fondness for it. He shows Julia a painting of Mrs Rumson. Julia has seen the painting before, and knows the model very well. It is a portrait of her old frenemy, wicked witch Angelique.
For regular viewers, this ending will be as satisfying and as logical as Geoffrey Scott’s phonetic rendering of his dialogue is disconcerting and inexplicable. Eight weeks ago, the show returned to contemporary dress after a long stay in 1897, beginning a new clutch of stories. Angelique is often absent from the show for extended periods, but she always turns up sooner or later. None of the three major storylines- Chris’ werewolf curse, Amanda’s attempt to rekindle her romance with Quentin, and the menace of the secret cult devoted to supernatural beings known as the Leviathans- is very closely connected to either of the other two, and none of them has any particular sense of urgency. Angelique’s vast powers and maniacal narcissism make it easy for the writers to inject her into every plot and accelerate them all towards a common resolution. In the 1897 segment, they moderated both her might and her mania, so that they can now keep her on indefinitely without overwhelming the show. Angelique is not what Julia expected to find, but she may be just what the doctor ordered.
Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes has parked his car and is walking up to the great house of Collinwood, home to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her daughter Carolyn Collins Stoddard, among others. He sees a man lying on the ground and asks him what is wrong. The man pleads with Stokes to help him get away. Stokes asks him what he wants to get away from; the man responds “I can’t tell you.” Stokes asks who he is; he says his name is Stoddard. Stokes replies “You’re Paul Stoddard, Carolyn’s father.” Paul brightens momentarily at Carolyn’s name, but then draws up tight and asks “They sent you after me, didn’t they?” Stokes assures him that no one sent him, and tells him he will catch his death of cold if he continues lying on the ground.
Paul asks Stokes to take him to the police. Stokes nods to the house and says they can call the police from there. Paul cries out, “No! No, not to Collinwood. Please, Professor Stokes, you’ve got to take me to the police, it’s the only thing you can do for me. If you don’t, I’ll be dead. No, no, no, I am not being hysterical or melodramatic…” At this, Stokes turns to face his car. He gives Paul his arm, and says he will drive him to the police station.
The police station was a frequent set for about a year after its first appearance in August 1966. It hasn’t changed a bit when we see it today. The officer on duty is someone we haven’t seen before, but that doesn’t mean he is a new character. Four actors took turns playing Sheriff George Patterson between September 1966 and January 1969; this man is not named in the dialogue and there are no acting credits on screen today, so for all we can tell he might be a fifth. He is younger and slimmer than were any of the other incarnations of Sheriff Patterson, but maybe he’s been working out.
Stokes introduces Paul to the policeman, and explains that Paul will speak only to the authorities. The policeman sits Paul down, gives him some coffee, and assures him that everything will be all right.
Paul tells the policeman that “It will never be alright until they stop chasing me” and “They have been after me ever since I got here.” The policeman asks “What are these people doing to you?” and Paul replies that “At first, there were just little hints, phone calls, things like that- veiled threats. It was their way of making me know that I was under their control. And I was, too, because when I tried to get away they took me back to Collinwood.”
The policeman responds “I see,” and Paul bursts out with “No, you don’t see! You think I’m mad!” The policeman tries to reassure him that he will listen, and asks him if he can name any of his persecutors. “Yes, I’ll name one, all right! My [ex-]wife, Elizabeth Stoddard.” The policeman says “That’s a little hard to believe,” and Paul responds “It’s impossible to believe, and yet! You tell me why she took me back into Collinwood, after years of open hatred, unless they wanted me there! And you know this town, you know how they gossip. And you know my wife. Why, why would she risk all that gossip, unless they wanted her to do so?” He answers that even so, “It’s still a little hard to believe.”
Paul angrily says “Yes, and because it’s Elizabeth Stoddard who’s involved, you will do nothing!” The policeman responds “I didn’t say that. I intend to talk to Mrs Stoddard and the doctor and whoever else is involved. If you still feel you’re being held captive, well, we’ll have to do something about it.” Paul visibly relaxes.
Earlier in the episode, we saw Liz forcing medicine on Paul. Returning viewers know that Liz has been absorbed into an evil cult that is trying to do something terrible to Paul, and indeed to the whole human race. We saw today that Liz has assigned her housekeeper, Mrs Johnson, to trick Paul into taking the medicine. It quickly becomes clear that Mrs Johnson has no idea that Liz is involved in anything sinister- she simply trusts her employer to do the right thing, and she follows her orders. Liz owns most of the village of Collinsport, and most of its people would react as Mrs Johnson does.
When we saw the last Sheriff Patterson for the last time in #675, he told a prisoner that he was releasing him because Liz’ cousin Barnabas said he was with him when the crime was committed, and Barnabas is “just about the best alibi you can have in this town.” He shook hands with the prisoner and sent him on his way. Since we know that Barnabas is, off and on, a vampire, and that even when he is free from the effects of that curse he spends most of his time covering up murders, that left us with an impression of Collinsport law enforcement as hopelessly in the thrall of the Collinses. That reinforces the image left by Sheriff Patterson’s predecessor, Constable/ Sheriff Jonas Carter, who was last seen in #32, toddling off after taking Liz’ orders to accept an obvious lie as a way of closing a case against a family member. Paul has every reason to suppose that this new policeman will be as submissive to Liz and her family as were his predecessors.
Now that Paul can hope that the policeman will be different from the others, he asks him to lock him away, to put him under guard someplace where no one can get to him until his daughter Carolyn Collins Stoddard can come for him. Stokes agrees to telephone Collinwood and talk to Carolyn, and the policeman escorts Paul to a back room. Paul awakes from a nap, and smiles at the policeman. He tells him he can’t tell him how much better he feels. The policeman tells him someone has come to see him. Paul’s delight at the thought that Carolyn has arrived gives way to cries of terror when he sees Liz at Stokes’ side. She comes at him with a spoonful of the hated medicine while Paul tells Stokes and the policeman that they are traitors and killers.
This one is primarily a showcase for Dennis Patrick as Paul, but all of the acting is excellent. My wife, Mrs Acilius, found it very difficult to watch the episode to the end, saying that they did too good a job- she felt as trapped as Paul. It really is one of those episodes you could show to a person who had never before seen Dark Shadows with a reasonable confidence that they would understand why we like the series so much.
In December 1968, children David Collins and Amy Jennings explored the long-deserted west wing of their home, the great house on the estate of Collinwood. They stirred up the ghost of Quentin Collins, who turned out to be David’s great-great uncle and Amy’s great-grandfather. For the next several weeks, Quentin steadily gained power and wrought ever graver havoc, until by the end of February the great house had become uninhabitable and David was hovering between life and death. At that point, David and Amy’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins did some mumbo-jumbo to try to contact Quentin’s ghost, only to come unstuck in time and find himself in the year 1897, when Quentin was a living being.
For the next eight months, Dark Shadows was primarily a costume drama set in 1897. Occasional glimpses of 1969 showed us that the haunting was continuing. In #839, we saw David lying dead before his father Roger, finally having succumbed to the effects of the haunting. But while Roger was lamenting him, David came back to life. The events in the part of the episode set in 1897 had changed the future, so that the ghost of Quentin found peace and Collinwood returned to its usual condition. But that took effect as of the anniversary of the change. Everyone’s memories of the ten months of Quentin’s haunting and of the eight months of Barnabas’ absence in the past are intact.
Not only is Quentin no longer a ghost, he isn’t even dead. In the altered version of 1897 that we saw, an artist named Charles Delaware Tate painted a portrait of Quentin that had the same magical effects on him that Dorian Gray’s portrait had in Oscar Wilde’s novel. Quentin looks, moves, and sounds exactly like he did when he was 28 years old. He has recently returned to Collinsport, and has amnesia. He was found carrying identity papers in the name of Grant Douglas. He’s open to the possibility that that may not be his right name, but when he finds Dr Julia Hoffman, MD trying to convince him he is the 99 year old Quentin, he is incredulous.
At Collinwood
We open today in Quentin’s old room in the west wing. Julia has persuaded Quentin to sit there and listen to his record player. In the unaltered timeline, he was obsessed with a sickly little waltz, listening to it over and over in 1897 and inflicting it on Collinwood when he was a ghost. Julia plays the record, and it doesn’t mean a thing to him. She becomes frustrated and accuses him of lying when he says that he doesn’t remember that he is Quentin.
The music does ring a bell for someone else in the house. The sound of it reaches David and wakes him. Alarmed, he makes his way to Quentin’s room. By the time he gets there, Quentin is hiding behind a curtain. Julia tells David she went in to look for a painting, and that she thoughtlessly started the record player. He accuses her of hiding Quentin. While she is denying it, he sees Quentin’s shoes sticking out from under the curtain.
Quentin’s shoes, as seen by David.
In 1963, philosopher Edmund Gettier published a little paper about the traditional definition of knowledge as “justified true belief.” He gave several examples of justified true beliefs that most people would not regard as knowledge. His examples were kind of far-fetched, but it is easy to come up with more plausible instances. For example, I first read Gettier’s paper when I was in college, and at the same time I was reading Anthony Trollope’s novel The Eustace Diamonds. The main point of that novel is that everyone believes that Lizzie Greystock has stolen some diamonds from her late husband’s estate. She has in fact done so, and they have good reason for believing that she did so, but those reasons are so mixed up with misunderstandings of Lizzie’s motives and other circumstances that we wouldn’t say any of them really knows anything about her. My epistemology professor was excited when I told her about the novel, since the example she gave to our class to show that Gettier’s contrivances were not the only cases illustrating his point was something overly elaborate about believing that you have recognized someone whom you have partially seen while he is hiding most of himself behind a curtain.
David’s claim that Julia is hiding Quentin is another Gettier case. He believes it, the sight of Quentin’s shoes in Quentin’s room provides compelling justification for believing it, and it is true. Yet the Quentin whom Julia is hiding does not have any of the characteristics that give David’s belief the significance that he draws from it. His presence is not a sign that the haunting has resumed and that David is back in mortal danger. He is not a ghost at all and is not a threat to David or anyone else in the house. So while David has a justified true belief that Julia is hiding Quentin, that belief is so deeply entangled with a severe misunderstanding of the situation that we wouldn’t count it as knowledge.
Once David is gone, Quentin emerges and demands answers from Julia. She tells him something about Quentin’s ghost; he already finds her insistence that he is 99 years old to be so preposterous that the additional detail that he used to be dead prompts a merry laugh. By the time he is at the front door ready to leave, he is stern and telling Julia that he expects a “full explanation” tomorrow. Lotsa luck on that- ghosts, time travel, magical portraits, and a universe where the present is a stew made up of the consequences of several mutually incompatible pasts? And those are just the elements you can’t avoid in the executive summary of the situation. A “full explanation” involves werewolves, vampires, a humanoid Phoenix bent on incinerating her children, demons conjured from the depths of Hell, a sorcerer who still misses his pet unicorn, and about a thousand other fantastical topics.
David eavesdrops on Quentin and Julia’s parting conversation. When he was a ghost, we never heard Quentin speak- he communicated telepathically with David and Amy, and they could apparently hear his voice on a particular telephone, but he never stood around and talked with anyone like this. So the mere fact of the conversation undermines David’s belief that the man he is looking at is Quentin’s ghost. When David hears Julia call Quentin “Mr Douglas,” he can see that whoever this person may be, he is not exactly Quentin, not as he knew him. He does recognize the name “Mr Douglas” as that of a man his cousin Carolyn Stoddard met at the antique shop in the village where she works and whom she visited in the hospital when he first had amnesia, so his attitude towards him changes.
In the Antique Store
Unknown to Julia or Carolyn, David has been assimilated to a cult that serves unseen supernatural beings known as the Leviathans. Carolyn’s mother, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, has also been absorbed into the cult, as has Barnabas. Megan and Philip Todd, the owners of the antique store, are members too, and they are fostering a mysterious creature who currently appears to be an eight year old boy and answers to the name Alexander. Liz takes David and Amy to the antique store, where they interrupt an uncomfortable conversation between Alexander and Julia.
Liz suggests to Julia that they should leave Amy and David in the store to play with Alexander. Julia doesn’t think this is such a hot idea, but Liz insists.
We then have the first scene on Dark Shadows populated by three child actors. It was a breakthrough when the ten year old David played with the ghost of nine year old Sarah Collins in the spring and summer of 1967; their scenes, the first interaction between children on Dark Shadows, advanced it towards becoming a kids’ show. David had up to that point been the only child on the show. He was first a homicidal monster who threatened the adults, then a figure threatened by his mother Laura and in need of rescue. When we saw him with Sarah, the two of them built a relationship that was of importance in itself and that had consequences which grew to dominate the story, leading directly to the show’s first time travel segment in November 1967. In David and Sarah, the fans running home from elementary school to watch the show could see characters their own age driving the action.
The current phase has been very heavy in adult interest. This first three-scene among children might be expected to take us back to territory Sarah and David did so much to open, but it does nothing of the kind. The three children do not really interact with each other at all. David is under the control of the Leviathans, Alexander is a manifestation of their power, and Amy is at a loss to figure out what’s going on. The forces motivating the action are not on screen, any more than they would be if the boys’ parts were played by marionettes.
David, Amy, and Alexander
Amy finds that Alexander has a photograph of Carolyn as she was when she was eight. She realizes that he stole it from a photo album at Collinwood. She declares that she will take it back to the house. Alexander forbids her to do so, and David takes his side. Amy is puzzled by David’s attitude. David threatens to sic Quentin on her. That shakes her up, but she says that Quentin is gone. David says he isn’t, and he and Alexander force her to play hide and seek. Once she is out of the room, David tells Alexander to keep her away for a couple of minutes. He telephones “Grant Douglas” and asks him to come to the shop to pick up a book he left there.
Amy comes back just in time to see and recognize Quentin. She runs upstairs and goes into the room which belongs to Alexander. She hears a heavy breathing there and sees something that terrifies her. Returning viewers know that what she saw was some inhuman thing that is of the Leviathans.
For his part, David is quite calm with “Grant.” Though we saw at the beginning that his connection to the Leviathans has not removed his fear of Quentin, he has reached the conclusion that he doesn’t need to be afraid of “Grant Douglas.” Maybe he thinks that someone using the names of two such prominentCanadians can’t be all bad. He gives Quentin the book and assures him Amy will be all right.
Quentin accepts David’s assurance, but we cannot. Amy is absent from the cast for long periods, and is usually unmentioned during those intervals. The same was true of Nora Collins, the character Denise Nickerson played in the 1897 segment. The show seems to be deliberately telling us not to get used to having this fine young actress in the cast. And the Leviathans haven’t done anything truly horrible yet- they are due to murder a character we really like. So it is quite possible we will tune in tomorrow and find that Amy is dead. Again, the contrast with the David and Sarah story is telling. David Henesy was a core member of the cast from the first week of the show, and the ghost of Sarah was a key part of the show for months. Dark Shadows was as much their show as it was that of any of the adults on screen. Keeping both Amy and Denise Nickerson at the margins, they make it clear that the kids are going to be taking a back seat.
David Henesy and Denise Nickerson were both highly capable performers, but eight year old David Jay just stands on his mark and shouts his lines. That need not have been a problem. Alexander has only been in human form for a week or two, so we don’t expect subtlety from him, and to the extent that he sounds like a real child he is supposed to be a vicious little bully trying to figure out what he can get away with. Such children often do put on acts and sound awkward, so Mr Jay’s professional ineptitude dovetails with the requirements of his part. That’s similar to the way Sharon Smyth’s limitations fit with the part of Sarah. We were supposed to be unsure whether Sarah knew that she was a ghost, whether she knew what year it was, and what if anything she remembered from one appearance to the next. Since Miss Smyth* was, as she says now, “clueless” about the craft of acting, she did a great job keeping us guessing. Later we saw Sarah as a living being, and Miss Smyth’s performance was less satisfactory. We know that Alexander is likely to transform into a shape that is not compatible with David Jay soon, so his shortcomings aren’t a particular concern. But again, the fact that Alexander comes with an expiration date keeps us from regarding him as one of the main characters.
The Store Room
While the kids were alone in the antique shop, Liz took Julia to a store room in the west wing of Collinwood to show her some photographs she had been asking about. While there, they come upon a painting. Liz says that she bought it about a year before at a charity auction, and that when her brother Roger saw how lousy it was he said he hoped that it was a worthy cause. She took it directly to the store room. It is signed “Harrison Monroe” and dated 1968. We will learn tomorrow that it depicts a place called Indian Hill. Julia recognizes the painting as extremely similar to an equally undistinguished landscape she bought a few weeks ago.
Detail from “A View of Indian Hill,” Harrison Monroe, 1968.
That painting was the work of Charles Delaware Tate, executed about 20 years previously. That Tate had been alive and working as recently as that gave Julia the hope that he might still be around and able to help a friend of hers who has problems. Yesterday, an expert called on to remove the landscape and reveal the portrait underneath it said that Tate died in 1959. But this painting is apparently the product of the same hand. Julia hopes that “Harrison Monroe” is a pseudonym of Tate’s.
It has been clear to the audience ever since Julia found the first painting that Tate would be back. That can’t be welcome news to many people. Like all characters played by Roger Davis, Tate is a loathsome man who shouts his lines and assaults his scene partners. So this pseudonym, as strongly redolent of oldVirginia as “Grant Douglas” is of twentieth century Canada, will bring a sinking feeling to much of the audience. Our reprieve that began when we left Tate in the nineteenth century five weeks ago cannot last much longer.
*Her name is Mrs Lentz nowadays, but that’s an odd title to give a nine year old. So I refer to her as Miss Smyth.
For eight months in 1969, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the year 1897. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman traveled back in time from the 1960s to keep us company in that year. It was nice to have them around, but we didn’t really need them. Rakish Quentin Collins was the star then, and now that the show has returned to 1969 we are unsurprised that he has turned up, alive, well, and 28 years old.
Quentin has amnesia, which Julia is determined to cure. He spends all day today listing the things he doesn’t know about himself, such as his name, which of his hands is dominant, and why Julia and Broadway star Olivia Corey are fighting each other to see which one will keep him in the style to which he might like to become accustomed. He’s such a good-looking guy that this latter really can’t be all that mysterious to him, but maybe he’s just being tactful when he claims not to understand that part.
Quentin and Olivia go to her hotel room, which she has decorated with framed copies of her professional headshot and a bit of folded stage dressing that could be used to suggest windows. Apparently that’s just how actresses make themselves feel at home.
Quentin asks Olivia why she is interested in him. She tells him that they met a long time ago, but that she can’t tell him any more than that. This angers him; he knows nothing at all about his past, so it strikes him she is being cruel by withholding the information she has.
Regular viewers know that Olivia and Quentin were lovers in 1897, when she was known as Amanda Harris. Both of them owe their youth to magical paintings done by an artist named Charles Delaware Tate. Julia knows all about this, and has come into possession of a landscape Tate painted in the 1940s. Amanda/ Olivia came to Collinsport in hopes of getting the painting from her. The other day Amanda/ Olivia managed to have it x-rayed, and found that there was a portrait on the canvas underneath it. The x-ray could not show whose portrait it was. Later today, Julia will have the same examination made. When she gets the results, Julia arranges to have the landscape removed. It turns out that the underpainting is a portrait of Amanda Harris herself.
The expert who exposes the underpainting also brings bad news. He tells Julia’s sidekick Chris Jennings that Tate died about ten years before. Julia knows that Quentin’s portrait not only keeps him alive and youthful, but also prevents him turning into a werewolf. Since Chris is Quentin’s great-grandson and has inherited the werewolf curse, he and Julia were hoping that Tate was still alive and still empowered to paint magical portraits.
Closing Miscellany
Nowadays, Donna McKechnie says that, while she had been on Broadway as a singer and dancer before appearing on Dark Shadows, she was only a beginner in acting. It’s true that she is noticeably uncomfortable delivering her lines, but her scene partners- David Selby, Grayson Hall, and Don Briscoe- all give her such good support that she gets through it quite smoothly. Besides, she is so charming that the audience is willing to forgive her anything.
Danny Horn’s post about this episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day is one of his occasional tours de force, a spoof of the postmodernist literary terminology that he learned in graduate school. I learned the same terminology when I was in graduate school, and I think his spoof of it is hilarious. But in the course of it, he has some really good insights. For example:
Chris: Olivia Corey… I don’t get it! Why is she so interested in him?
Julia: She must either know — or suspect! — that he is really Quentin Collins.
It’s telling that she puts the dramatic stress on the phrase “or suspect!” rather than the knowledge itself. To Dr. Hoffman, it’s the existence of suspicion! that is itself suspicious. Anybody can know something. It’s the act of suspecting! that reveals a new range of discursive positions.
Danny Horn, “Episode 910: Epistemology of the Portrait,” posted 8 August 2016 on Dark Shadows Every Day
Which is a great point! When the characters know facts about each other, those facts don’t move the story an inch unless they are clues that they can use to build on the suspicions they have about them or tools they can use to manipulate them into doing what they want. So Julia knows that Quentin lived in a particular room in the long-deserted west wing of Collinwood and that he obsessively listened to a particular sickly little waltz on his record player. Those facts are nothing in themselves, but when she takes him to the room and plays the waltz on the record player at the end of today’s episode, we have hope that Quentin might become himself again soon.
Towards the end of the 1897 segment, Judith Collins Trask and Tim Shaw bricked the evil Gregory Trask up in Quentin’s room. In #884, we heard her telephone Tim and instruct him to remove the bricks. When Julia takes Quentin into the room today, there is no trace of bricks. Evidently Tim did a good job clearing them out.
By the time Julia became best friends with Barnabas in 1968, she was in the habit of addressing him as “Barnabas, Barnabas.” In the 1897 segment, she addressed Quentin as “Quentin, Quentin.” Now she and Barnabas are on the outs, and Quentin isn’t answering to his name no matter how often you repeat it. So she addresses her henchman Chris as “Chris, Chris.” Don Briscoe was a likable actor and Chris has his points, but the character has some weaknesses that tightly circumscribe his future on the show. I suppose the point is that Julia has a higher opinion of Chris’ potential than the other characters do, but she so frequently represents the audience’s state of knowledge that it is a bit odd she thinks he belongs in a category with those breakout stars.
I believe this episode also marks the first time Julia addresses matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard as “Liz.” She has been living in Liz’ house since the summer of 1967, so I guess it’s time she stop calling her “Mrs Stoddard.”
Heiress Carolyn Stoddard is working for her friends, Megan and Philip Todd, in their antique shop. She goes upstairs to tell Megan that Philip has telephoned. Carolyn hears heavy breathing coming from the room where a baby the Todds are taking care of sleeps. Megan comes out of the room and in a most imperious tone demands to know what Carolyn is doing there. She tells her Philip called, and asks about the breathing sounds. Megan sweetens up and says “It’s the radiator!” She says she’ll have to call the plumber about it. Carolyn is unconvinced.
Downstairs in the shop, Carolyn and Megan notice someone looking in the window. The shop is open for business and there is merchandise displayed in the window, but for some reason it unnerves them that they have attracted the notice of a potential customer. All we can see of the man is his clean-shaven upper lip. When Carolyn approaches the window, he runs away. The only sneaky man we have met so far in the current phase of the show is Carolyn’s long-absent and recently returned father Paul. Since Paul wears a mustache, the upper lip is enough to show us that this is a new character, at least new to the ongoing stories.
Carolyn and her mother Liz live in the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Also among the residents of the great house are Liz’ brother Roger Collins and Roger’s son, strange and troubled boy David. We cut to David’s bedroom, where a book opens by itself. We have seen books do this before on Dark Shadows, but I believe this is the first time I couldn’t see a cord being pulled. They really have come a long way with practical effects.
David reads aloud from the book, something about a child being cloaked in radiant garments. He is interrupted by his Aunt Liz. She asks him to notice that she knocked on the door, and tells him that she is learning to respect his privacy. She says she heard him reading aloud, and asks what it was. He says it was a school book. She starts talking about how terribly cold it is in his room. He brings up her ex-husband, Paul. Liz hadn’t known David was aware of Paul’s return, and gets very uncomfortable. She says he needs friends his own age, and hurries out of the room. Once she is gone, he goes through the room and gathers a lot of cash. Evidently David raised the subject of Paul to get the room to himself.
David does have one friend his own age, Amy Jennings. Amy lives in the great house, down the hall. We just saw Amy in #893 and #896, but she tends to be unmentioned in between appearances. Amy is a favorite of mine, and when they don’t use her name for long stretches I worry they are about to drop her from the show. It would have reassured me if Liz had named Amy as someone David ought to spend more time with.
Joan Bennett tends to do a lot of acting with her eyes when she plays a two-scene with David Henesy, and this is a good example. When Liz is pointing out her own good manners in knocking, it is her eyes that convey her mild amusement at the situation; when she is offering to help David with his schoolwork, her eyes follow him so closely that we notice all of the little movements he makes as he tries to get out of a tutoring session; when she talks about the coldness in the room, she looks from side to side, searching for the open window with increasing consternation; when he asks about Paul, her eyes bulge in their sockets, showing deep alarm. When she tells him he needs friends his own age, she raises her eyebrows, making it sound like a threat. Bennett had been so famous for so long that many of her scene partners would not react to what she was actually doing, but to what they expected her to do, forcing her to add Joan Bennett-isms to her performances. With Mr Henesy, she was free to work simply, and the result was consistently very effective.
Downstairs, Liz answers the telephone. To her disgust, Paul is calling. He tells her that if she doesn’t meet with him for a talk, she is in danger of losing Carolyn. She agrees to go to his hotel. Carolyn enters in time to catch the end of the conversation. Liz doesn’t want to talk about Paul with her any more than she did with David, and she exits.
Carolyn and David have a scene in the drawing room. She tells him he should go to bed; he says he wants to read the newspaper. He asks her if she hasn’t noticed that he has grown. Since the thirteen year old David Henesy was about the same height as Nancy Barrett, this question is worth a chuckle. David gets excited when he sees that Brewster’s Department Store in the village of Collinsport is going to be open nights until Christmas. He tears the Brewster’s ad out of the paper while Carolyn reminds him he can’t leave the house tonight. He says that of course he can’t, it’s late.
In his post about the episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn asked if David’s reaction to the Brewster’s ad is the only reference to Christmas in the whole series. His commenters responded that Christmas is also mentioned in #92, #123, #257, #810 (twice,) #887, and #1050. It’s hilarious to read through the thread and see the citations mount up. I sympathize with Danny, though- I tagged my posts about the first couple of episodes on that list with “Christmas,” because I, too, was sure that the holiday was only named once or twice in Dark Shadows.
Carolyn exits, and David sneaks out the front door. As he does, a man in a belted overcoat walks into the house. We see him only from the midsection down. He straightens the portrait of the Collinses’ distant cousin Barnabas that hangs in the foyer of the great house. This suggests that whoever he is, he has some connection with Barnabas. Carolyn comes back, and the man hides behind the curtains in the drawing room. This has been a favored hiding place for the last several months, suggesting that the man knows the house. Carolyn leaves, and the man goes out. If all he wanted to do was straighten that portrait, he could count his journey a success. Otherwise, it’s hard to see what the point of it was.
At the hotel, Paul struggles to explain his concerns to Liz. He is hampered by his own ignorance- he does not know exactly who is after him or what they want to do, but he knows they have some kind of sinister plan for Carolyn. Paul admits that Liz has no reason to believe anything he says, after his total failure as a husband, but he keeps urging her to take Carolyn and go far away, not telling anyone that they are going. She is exasperated with what she takes to be yet another of his scams, and tells him that “I’ll never figure out this latest plot of yours.” Indeed, the story is taking shape slowly enough that some viewers will have been saying the same thing.
Bennett and Dennis Patrick had many scenes together from March to July 1967, when he played seagoing con man Jason McGuire. Liz’ relationship with Jason was one-dimensional, consisting of nothing but a series of blackmail threats from him followed by capitulations from her. As her ex-husband, Paul offers far more for Liz to react against, and this scene is far richer and more satisfying than was anything we saw in the dreary Liz/ Jason story.
Liz goes out of the Collinsport Inn and sees David entering the antique shop across the street. The Inn has been part of the show from episode #1, but this is the first time we see a set representing its outside. Cutting between that set and the set representing the exterior of the antique shop, they make an attempt to create a sense of Collinsport as a place. When the show was in black and white, they would occasionally insert video they had taken at various locations in upstate New York and southern New England to achieve that effect, but they haven’t left 433 West 53rd Street since they went to color in August 1967. This quick cut between minimally decorated parts of the studio doesn’t work as well as that footage did, but it is a valiant effort in its own way.
Liz goes into the antique shop and insists Megan let her search the place for David. Since Liz essentially owns the town, Megan can’t say no. We conclude with Liz outside the door of the room upstairs from which Carolyn heard the breathing when we began. We hear the breathing again. David is inside the room, telling some unseen presence that it will like what he bought for it at Brewster’s. Perhaps he found it in the Unseen Presences section of the store. It’s in Collinsport, after all. David stops talking when he hears Liz’ voice; the breathing cuts out at the same time.
We open with the sight of a man (Dennis Patrick) sitting nervously on a chair placed in the middle of a pentagram marked on a rug. At each point of the pentagram there is a candle. The man is Paul Stoddard.
Regular viewers will remember #752, in which Quentin Collins was told to sit on a chair in the middle of a similar pentagram. Quentin’s friend, amateur warlock Evan Hanley, told him that by doing this he could keep from turning into a werewolf. Paul isn’t afraid of turning into a werewolf, and he doesn’t have a friend like Evan. His worry is vague, but urgent- he knows that someone is after him, that if that someone catches up to him they will do something horrible, and that whoever it is keeps sending him messages that it is time for him to pay his debt. But he has no idea who that is, what they will do, or what the debt they are talking about. Sitting in the pentagram was a suggestion that came from a sailor who cruised him in a gay bar met him in a local tavern.
Paul’s pursuers are a cult associated with mysterious beings known as “the Leviathan people.” It has been made clear to us that both Paul and his daughter, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, are, unknown to themselves, part of its orbit. In #888, Paul and Carolyn ran into each other at a cairn that is the cult’s ceremonial center and looked at it. Carolyn had been on its site many times, and could not understand why she had not seen it before. In #894/895, the cult’s acting leader, Carolyn’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins, took antique shop owner Philip Todd to the cairn. Philip told Barnabas he had walked past the site a few days before and that the cairn was not there then; Barnabas explained that only those connected with the Leviathan cult can see it. Barnabas has also been highly solicitous of Carolyn’s well-being since he became part of the cult, and he keeps telling her that he knows she has an extraordinary future ahead of her. So we know that the cult has plans for her, and Paul’s distress suggests that they have less attractive plans for him.
Paul sees the doorknob turning. He is terrified. Instead of the enemy Paul expects, Carolyn enters. He yells at her to leave. She stays. When he is unable to explain what he is afraid of, but that the pentagram on the floor will protect him, she notices that it is the same as the symbol she has been wearing on a chain around her neck. Barnabas gave it to her some days ago and urged her to wear it always. The audience knows, but she does not, that he intends it to protect her from the local werewolf. When she sees the similarity, the show invites us to wonder what the Leviathans have to do with werewolves. Carolyn tells Paul that if the symbol will protect him from his enemies in the form of chalk or gaffer tape on the floor, it will also protect him when it is composed of a silver pendant. He puts the pendant on and declares that he feels much better. He can no longer hear the voices that have been telling him his payment is due immediately. He embraces Carolyn and tells her he trusts only her.
When Carolyn mentioned Barnabas to Paul, he responded “Who is Barnabas?” Carolyn seems surprised he does not know, since she saw him near Barnabas’ house. Indeed, we saw him enter Barnabas’ house and wander through it the night he first returned to Collinwood, after an absence of twenty years. But he doesn’t remember anything about that.
Not that Carolyn’s own long acquaintance with Barnabas is all that enlightening to her just now. Ever since the Leviathans adopted him as one of their own, he has not been himself at all. We see him in his front parlor with mad scientist Julia Hoffman, who has for a year and a half been his inseparable best friend. She is trying to interest him in some information she has gathered about another storyline, and he makes it clear he could not be less interested in it or in her. She demands to know what he is interested in, and he refuses to answer. Carolyn enters, and suddenly Barnabas is all ears. Julia, frustrated, snaps that now she can see what he does care about.
In the autumn of 1967, Barnabas was a vampire and Julia had failed in an attempt to make him human again. He bit Carolyn and made her his blood thrall. He also decided that he would kill Julia to prevent her exposing him. Julia soon learned that Carolyn was both a wily operator and a most devoted servant. Julia had already realized that she was in so deep with Barnabas that she would be unlikely ever to make a life with anyone else, and so she conceived an unrequited love for him. In her dealings with Carolyn in those days, terror mingled with jealousy. Her bitter remark when she sees that Barnabas, who has been so dismissive of her, is now so concerned with Carolyn, reminds longtime viewers of that jealousy. Combined with the story of a daughter reunited with her long-absent and none too respectable father, this faint suggestion of a love triangle is enough to remind us that we are watching a daytime soap.
For her part, Carolyn was freed of her subservience to Barnabas as soon as he was freed of the effects of the vampire curse in March 1968. For some time, Nancy Barrett went out of her way to play Carolyn in a way that left us wondering if Carolyn remembered her time in his power. The scripts didn’t give her a lot of support in that endeavor, but the closeness she feels towards him combines with Julia’s jealousy to bring it back to our minds.
Carolyn has come to ask Julia to help Paul. Julia is back in the great house of Collinwood getting her medical bag to take to Paul’s hotel room when Paul himself bursts in. He demands to see Carolyn. Julia tells him that she left a little while ago to go to his hotel, and is probably there now. The telephone rings. Julia answers it, and tells Paul it is for him. This doesn’t strike her as odd, even though he hasn’t set foot there in twenty years, not since the night he left his wife Liz thinking she had killed him. Julia hands the phone to Paul. He expects to hear Carolyn, but instead hears the same voice that has been taunting him, saying that his bill is due now. He hangs up, and it starts ringing again. He forbids Julia to answer it, and runs out. We cut to his hotel room, and see that this time it is Carolyn trying to reach her father. Later, Carolyn will come home and Julia will tell her that Paul doesn’t seem to want help, however much he may need it.
Paul goes back to his room, and hears the phone there ringing. Terrified, he runs out, returning to the bar where he’d picked up trade met a new friend the night before. He sees another stranger sitting at a table, looking him over and beckoning him by rolling back one finger. The stranger is Barnabas.
Paul reluctantly goes to the table, and Barnabas introduces himself. Paul says he doesn’t know Barnabas, but Barnabas makes it clear he knows all about Paul. He asks him to think back to the night he left Collinwood in 1949. We dissolve to a flashback.
Paul is at the bar, and another strange man strikes up a conversation with him. The man encourages him to assume that he has the power to grant any wish Paul might make in return for a price they would agree on. Paul says that in that case, he will ask for twenty years of boundless prosperity. At the end of those twenty years, Paul will give up anything he has, even his “most precious possession.” They shake hands on this deal. Paul laughs, and says he has won the game. He said that he would surrender anything he has, present tense- not anything he might gain in the course of his successful future, but anything he has as of 4 December 1949. On that date, Paul assures the man, he has nothing anyone could possibly want. The man laughs, and wants to drink to congratulate Paul on his cleverness.
Back in the present, Barnabas is laughing as heartily as the other man did twenty years before. He finds it preposterous that Paul could have forgotten such an important encounter. Paul can’t see anything important in it- it was just a silly little game, and its only consequence was that a strange man bought him a drink. Barnabas says that on the contrary, the bargain he struck was quite real. The Leviathans kept their side of it by giving him the success he has had over the last twenty years. Now that the twenty years are up, the time has come for them to claim the most precious possession he had the night he fled Collinwood.
Paul says that he supposes Barnabas is talking about his soul. He laughs heartily at that, and tells Barnabas that he is welcome to it. He is telling Paul that that is not what he meant as Carolyn enters. Paul is still laughing, and is delighted to see his daughter. She says she is relieved that the two of them found each other, and he tells her everything will be all right now. Barnabas says that Carolyn is her father’s most precious possession.
The scenes of Paul rushing around in a steadily mounting panic he is unable to explain are highly reminiscent of The Twilight Zone. The last line is a twist worthy of that classic series, especially as delivered by Jonathan Frid. His icy performance as Barnabas in these early episodes of the Leviathan arc not only recalls the malign representatives of alien powers on that show, but is superb in itself. He stumbles a little over his words in Barnabas’ scene with Julia, but is perfectly composed otherwise, and the effect is quite frightening.
I remarked on the gay subtext of the barroom scenes in the comment thread on Danny Horn’s post about the episode at his great Dark Shadows Every Day:
So far, this has been the gayest storyline the show has taken on yet.
In 899, the sailor offers to buy Paul a drink, and Paul shouts “I buy my own drinks!” This isn’t subtext- any man getting that reaction in a bar will know that the other fellow has interpreted his offer as including more than the drink. Paul apologizes and becomes friendly, indicating that he is willing to abandon that interpretation and set aside the hostility that accompanied it.
In this episode, we’re back in the same bar. Barnabas beckons Paul to his table with his index finger. I invite any man who doesn’t think we are intended to read this as a reference to a sexual come-on to try that move on a homophobic tough guy in a bar.
Paul’s face shows his inner struggle as he tries to resist Barnabas’ advances, but he can’t. Barnabas coaxes him into reminiscing about yet another night in the same bar, when a casual encounter with yet another guy led to something that seemed at the time like a little harmless tomfoolery, but that has now grown into a threat to his relationship with his family, his standing in the community, his physical well-being, and everything else.
Comment by “Acilius,” left 12 December 2020 on Danny Horn, “Episode 900: The Long Con,” posted on Dark Shadows Every Day, 18 July 2016.
In response to someone who said some kind words about that comment, I made a remark that I no longer think is very good:
Thanks! It’s a bit of a puzzle- so far as I know, none of the writers on the show at this time was gay, so I’m not sure why they decided to go so deep into these themes just then.
Comment by “Acilius,” left 11 April 2021 on Danny Horn, “Episode 900: The Long Con,” posted on Dark Shadows Every Day, 18 July 2016.
What I think now, and probably would have thought then if I had stopped and considered it for a minute before I hit “Post Comment,” is that the writing staff’s sexuality has nothing to do with it. They were worldly, sophisticated people with long experience in the theatrical profession in New York City. They all probably had many gay friends, and when they are called upon to write a story about people being drawn into a secret underworld and learning uncomfortable truths about themselves in the process their minds will naturally turn to themes having to do with closeted homosexuality. Granted, that doesn’t fully account for Christopher Bernau’s decision to play Philip as a much queenier version of Paul Lynde, but it is hardly a “puzzle” that the writers would draw on motifs suggestive of the closet when that’s the story they have to work with.
The man who met Paul in the bar in 1949 is unnamed in today’s dialogue, but will later be referred to as Mr Strak. Strak is played by John Harkins, who appeared in #174 as Lieutenant Costa of the Arizona State Police and in #878, 879, 880, 881, and 883 as Garth Blackwood, formerly the keeper of England’s Dartmoor Prison, and by that time a creature raised from Hell to wreak vengeance on an escaped prisoner and anyone else who caught his attention.
Strak’s name may remind longtime viewers of another minor character whom we saw in episodes #1 and #2, Wilbur Strake, private eye. We saw Strake in this same bar, where he gave reports about Carolyn and other members of the Collins family to his employer, Burke Devlin. Like Strak, Strake was a rather smug, sardonic sort. Add to this the rarity of the names “Strak” and “Strake” and the fact that they sound so much alike, and it seems obvious that there is an intentional reference of some kind. Paul’s presence in this storyline is the result of the writers reaching back to the show’s early days to find a loose end they could attach to this storyline to incorporate it into the Collins family saga, so they probably were looking through the scripts from the first week. Still, I can’t imagine they thought many people would remember Wilbur Strake by this point. Likely the reference is an inside joke, but who was on the inside and what the point of the joke was, I can’t begin to guess.
I wasn’t writing detailed posts with background information when I covered the first weeks of the show, so I will mention here Strake was played by Joseph Julian, who later became a regular on Somerset, a soap that aired on NBC opposite Dark Shadows for the last year of its run. The cast of Somerset included several Dark Shadows alums, including Dennis Patrick, Joel Crothers, and Christopher Pennock in major roles, and, as day players, Dolph Sweet and Humbert Allen Astredo.
Dark Shadows Commentary 