Tag: acting

Episode 771: When the music begins

Vampire Barnabas Collins is about to leave his house with his thrall, maidservant Beth Chavez, to look for Dirk Wilkins, a dimwitted servant whom he inadvertently turned into a vampire and let go. They are stopped when Barnabas’ distant cousin, inveterate prankster Carl Collins, comes in and insists on telling him about his recent trip to “Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Queen of the Boardwalk cities!”

Carl offers Barnabas some saltwater taffy, only to find that the tin is empty. He frets that “she” must have eaten it all on the trip back- “You know how women eat when they are nervous.” This leads to Carl’s second order of business, introducing Barnabas to Miss Pansy Faye. Carl met Pansy on the train, and he intends to marry her.

Carl opens the door, then stands before Barnabas and Beth and announces in his most booming voice “Presenting! Direct from her triumphs before Her Imperial Majesty, Queen Victoria of England, that world-famous mentalist and most beguiling songstress, Miss Pansy Faye!” Pansy enters, singing and dancing. In a vaguely Cockney accent, she intones:

I’m gonna dance for you! Gonna dance your cares away.
I’ll do the Hoochie Koo, and the Ta Ra Boom De Ay!
I’ll sing a happy song, as we dance the whole night long!
When the music begins, I’ll give you some spins,
I’ll even invent a step or two!
So, on with the show! You’ll love it, I know!
Oh, I’m going to dance for you!

Pansy’s dance is not particularly elaborate; it is performed almost entirely below the waist, and ends with her bending over and thrusting her rear end upward. That is followed by a cut to Barnabas wearing a look of stupefaction that all the black magic and demonic intrusions he has witnessed over the centuries have not elicited. He turns to Beth, who is visibly struggling to keep a straight face.

Against the backing track of Dark Shadows super-solemn music, this scene is hilarious. Longtime viewers will savor it even more than others. Carl is played by John Karlen, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s plays the luckless Willie Loomis, Barnabas’ first blood thrall. When Barnabas first enslaved Willie in the spring and summer of 1967, the show was at its bleakest. Barnabas was able to fool his distant relatives in the great house into regarding him as a living being and letting him occupy the Old House, but that was only because they had been isolated and embattled for so many months before. When we saw Barnabas and Willie on this set in those days, Barnabas was as grim as death itself, beating Willie with his heavy cane whenever he dared do more than whimper. That Karlen is now here as the man who is introducing a character as exuberantly and preposterously alive as Pansy and that Barnabas’ current thrall is suppressing a laugh takes the despair of that period and packs it with joy.

The despair reasserts itself at the close of the episode. Pansy will go out into the woods, Dirk will take her as his first victim, and Barnabas will come home to discover her body propped up in a chair in the parlor. But the comedy in between is so strong that we can be confident that this will not be the last word. Carl tries to persuade his sister, spinster Judith, to accept his marriage to Pansy. He tells her that he is a new man thanks to Pansy’s influence; he has actually managed to go 48 hours without playing a practical joke. Judith is impressed by this new record, but still will not believe that Pansy is fit to become a Collins. She controls all the family’s wealth, and threatens to cut Carl off without a penny if he goes through with the marriage. He reacts with a series of facial expressions that the Three Stooges would have admired.

While Barnabas and Carl are out, Pansy stays in the Old House with Beth. Beth offers her a cup of coffee; Pansy says she would prefer sherry. Beth goes to look for sherry, and Pansy is caught off-guard that Beth doesn’t live there. When Beth says that she is based at the big house on the property, Pansy asks how big it is. Beth says that it is very big indeed; Pansy says that Carl had told her it was like a palace, and Beth confirms that it is indeed on that scale. Pansy is surprised that Carl was telling her the truth. She takes the drink at a single gulp. With Carl, Pansy was acting a part, and she was a terrible actress indeed. Alone with Beth, she drops the act. The Cockney accent is still not too well-developed, but Kay Frye is much more convincing as a hard-boiled working class woman than Pansy is in any of her roles.

Carl persuades Judith to sit still in Barnabas’ parlor while Pansy does her mentalist act, trying to locate Dirk. Pansy actually goes into a trance and announces that Dirk is dead and his murderer is in the room. When she comes to, Pansy is as surprised as anyone at what happened. Judith is demanding an apology, and Pansy is shocked when Barnabas tells her that she accused someone in the room of murder. A moment later, she is alone, wondering what came over her and lamenting that she “mucked that one up.”

The Old House is a dangerous place to be a fake practitioner of supernatural arts. In #400, set in the 1790s, fanatical but inept witchfinder the Rev’d Mr Trask performed an exorcism of the Old House, and was visibly delighted when that exorcism seemed to work. That time it was the intervention of wicked witch Angelique that gave Trask his apparent success, but now it seems that Pansy is simply getting it right for the first time.

That Dirk leaves Pansy in a chair in Barnabas’ front parlor is also something that will bring back memories for longtime viewers. In the 1790s segment, another brassy dame on the make brightened up the show for a little while before meeting a grisly demise on this spot. She was Suki Forbes, estranged wife of untrustworthy naval officer Nathan Forbes. Barnabas strangled Suki in #423, after she had discovered his secret. Suki took until #424 to die, but did not manage to disclose what she knew about Barnabas.

An even closer parallel is to #530. In that one, Frankenstein’s monster Adam hates Barnabas for making him what he is. Adam attacks a man called Joe Haskell and thinks he has killed him. At the end of the episode, Barnabas finds that Adam has planted Joe’s body in the front parlor. Any doubt that Adam was trying to frame Barnabas for Joe’s murder would be removed by consulting the novel Frankenstein, in which the Creature frames another character for the murder of his creator’s brother. Dirk knows that Barnabas made him into a vampire, and so has the same motivation to pin a murder charge on Barnabas that Adam had.

Adam was just a few months old when he tried to frame Barnabas for murder, and Dirk is a simpleton. Neither of them had the skills to get the police interested in Barnabas, no matter how many dead bodies they add to the decor of his house. On the other hand, Barnabas himself once very nearly managed to make such a plan work. In #440 and #441, part of the 1790s segment, Barnabas left the corpse of his victim Maude Browning in a bed belonging to Trask. It was only Nathan Forbes’ timely intervention that kept Trask from the gallows that time.

Episode 769: All dead things look the same

Second consecutive episode ruined by Roger Davis’ performance as crazed groundskeeper Dirk Wilkins. Crazy Dirk has more fans than do any of Mr Davis’ other roles on Dark Shadows, which I do not understand. He is such a swivel-eyed loon from the first shot to the last that he is useless as a character- he doesn’t respond to anything anyone else does or says, just carries on with a chortling mania. The unvarying bombast suggests a desperate actor, and it leaves Mr Davis’ scene partners with nothing to do.

Roger Davis attempts to act. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In a comment I left under Danny Horn’s post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, I talked about my mental habit of imagining different actors playing parts that were not well executed:

I  amuse myself during weak bits by wondering how characters would have come off if played by other actors. A character as well-written as Dirk, played by an actor as competent as Robert Rodan? Second only to Quentin Collins among the fans! Played by David Groh? Bigger breakout star than Barnabas! Played by Harvey Keitel? Such a hit the show is still in production!

Who knows how they would actually have done- maybe they would have made some kind of unfortunate choice and bungled it. And who knows what effect they would have had on the rest of the show- maybe if Dirk had been a massive hit and they’d rebuilt Dark Shadows around him, the result would have been a less interesting show. But the imaginary show in my head is good enough to get me through some pretty dire segments.

This time through I’ve been imagining Edward Marshall, who wore some of the wardrobe that became Dirk’s when he was cast as petulant ex-convict Harry Johnson in #669, in Mr Davis’ place. Mr Marshall took over the part of Harry from the not reliably brilliant Craig Slocum. He preserved the attitude and a great many of the mannerisms Slocum had given the part, but was substantially more interesting than Slocum ever was. Before he became violently insane, Dirk shared so many of Harry’s qualities that Mr Marshall would have been an obvious choice for the role. I’m sure he would have been better than Mr Davis, though perhaps not on a par with Robert Rodan, David Groh, or Harvey Keitel.

Today’s big plot point comes when Dirk tells twelve year old Jamison Collins that he has killed Barnabas Collins and that Barnabas was a vampire. Dirk is mistaken about the first of these points; he did not harm Barnabas at all. But he is right that he is a vampire.

This part of Dark Shadows is a costume drama set in the year 1897. Barnabas traveled to that year from 1969 while doing battle with some supernatural menaces. In the parts of the show set in the 1960s, the adults in the great house of Collinwood are Jamison’s daughter Liz and son Roger. Liz and Roger have accepted Barnabas’ story that he is their distant cousin from England and have let him take up residence in the Old House on the estate. If Jamison finds out that Barnabas is actually a bloodsucking ghoul, it is unlikely that his children will be sufficiently hospitable to him to allow the parts of the show in contemporary dress to exist. So when Jamison goes to the Old House to check on Dirk’s story and finds a coffin in the basement, we know that something will have to change if the show is to continue.

Episode 768: Some kind of exhibit

For most of its run, Dark Shadows was made with severely limited access to videotape editing equipment. If something went wrong, the only way to fix it was to start over. So even spectacular mistakes stayed in, especially if they took place near the end of the episode. Today there is a blooper in the opening voiceover- yesterday’s episode centered on a prophetic dream that twelve year old Jamison Collins had about his future descendant David, but the narrator names the dreamer as “David.”

It doesn’t get much better from there. The episode is a showcase for the acting of Roger Davis as crazed groundskeeper Dirk. Unfortunately Mr Davis is the sort of actor who needs close guidance from a director, and the directors on Dark Shadows famously gave their male performers a great deal of latitude. So he hams up his every scene, often interrupting himself with sounds that are variously transcribed as “huh?” or “hyunh!” or “hyuk hyuk!” He ruins every shot he is in.

Roger Davis at his most understated. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The only Davis-free scenes are interactions between maidservant Beth and the show’s two breakout stars, her boyfriend Quentin and her vampire master Barnabas. The writing staff has figured out a way to work around Terrayne Crawford’s limitations as an actress; Beth is always very earnest and straightforward. That is a great relief after the first weeks of the part of Dark Shadows set in 1897, when they gave Beth the same rich and complex motivations they lavished on everyone else and she fell disastrously flat every time. Still, Beth’s emotional transparency does not give David Selby or Jonathan Frid much for Quentin or Barnabas to play off of, so that they seem to be explaining the plot to her.

Quentin at one point slaps Beth in the face today. It used to be extremely rare for male character to slap female ones on the show, but these incidents are have started to come thick and fast since writer violet Welles joined the staff. Miss Welles was far and away the best writer of dialogue on Dark Shadows, and I suppose she must have had a reason for showing us all these women getting hit by men, but I for one am eager for it to stop.

Barnabas bit Dirk a while ago, but before he did that Dirk was already enslaved by undead blonde fire witch Laura. So rather than becoming a blood thrall, Dirk reacted to Barnabas’ bite by going nuts. At the end of today’s installment, Dirk is trying to kill Barnabas. Dirk has yet to find a task so simple he can succeed in it, so we leave without much suspense that he will manage to kill off the main protagonist. I suppose it will do for a Wednesday cliffhanger.

Episode 764: A primitive tribe

Odds and ends today:

The Kindest, Warmest, Bravest, Most Wonderful Human Being I’ve Ever Known in My Life

The show is doing an homage to The Manchurian Candidate this week, with schoolteacher Tim Shaw brainwashed into becoming an assassin when he sees the Queen of Spades. We open with the plan going awry. Lawyer/ warlock Evan Hanley did the brainwashing with the intention that Tim would kill someone else, but when he shows Tim the card, Tim tries to kill him. As Evan, Humbert Allen Astredo shows us a man suddenly becoming frightened and just as suddenly making up his mind to be brave. In other episodes, Astredo has already shown us Evan responding to fear in other ways. He really was a remarkably good actor, and it is a pleasure to see how much variety he can find in his parts.

Later, we see Judith Collins, the mistress of Collinwood, playing solitaire. Tim comes to the house. We know that each episode ends with a cliffhanger, and so this leads us to expect that we will end today with Tim’s hands around Judith’s throat. But that is a misdirection. In fact, Judith turns the Queen of Spades away from Tim at the last second, and he leaves the room without attacking her.

Slight Enough to Vanish, But Too Dense to Live

Tim’s brainwashing is a B-story on the show right now, and it would throw off the rhythm of the week to end two consecutive episodes with cliffhangers from it. The A-story is about the rakish Quentin Collins, who has been cursed to become a werewolf. There is a full moon tonight, and the sheriff’s department is roaming the grounds of the great estate of Collinwood with guns looking for the wolf who walks like a man. Joining in the search is Quentin’s distant cousin, Barnabas Collins, who is, unknown to all but a very few people, a vampire. Barnabas has traveled back in time to the year 1897, and among the things he is hoping to do is to learn how the werewolf curse that has afflicted his friend Chris Jennings in the 1960s first began.

Barnabas learned in 1969 that in 1897 Quentin and a woman named Beth Chavez paid a man named Ezra Braithwaite to make a silver pendant in the form of a pentagram and that a baby boy was buried in that year wearing that pendant. Tonight, Ezra telephones Barnabas at the great house of Collinwood and tells him that Beth just came in, ordered such a pendant, and told him to send the bill to Quentin.

Barnabas knows that the pentagram was an amulet meant to ward off werewolves. Beth is Quentin’s girlfriend, a fact that is no secret to anyone, not even Barnabas. So you might assume Barnabas would have figured out that Quentin is the werewolf. But apparently he has not. He materializes inside Beth’s room and demands she tells him who the werewolf is. When she refuses, he bites her. That bite is the cliffhanger.

Dear cousin Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas occasionally makes remarks about how he wants to keep the original timeline intact so that the people he knew in the 1960s will still be there when he gets back. But he’s been feasting on the people he meets in 1897 with abandon. Beth is the fourth resident of Collinwood he has bitten, and he has killed at least two young women in the village. Moreover, his approach to every problem he encounters or imagines is to confront the most powerful person associated with it and antagonize them immediately. It’s hard to see how he expects anything to remain unchanged after he inserts this rampage into the history of the late Victorian age.

But You Wouldn’t Know Anything About That

Judith tells Barnabas today that Beth came to Collinwood as a lady’s maid two years ago. Beth claims to have a cousin in town to Judith today while lying to cover up her trip to Braithwaite’s, and when Barnabas asks Judith if Beth is from Collinsport she mentions this cousin as her reason for believing that she is. Judith clearly knows very little about Beth, and cares less.

The lady who brought Beth as her maid was Quentin’s then-wife, Jenny, who was secretly a member of the Romani people. In #701 it was hinted that Beth was concealing a Romani origin of her own. Casting the tall, blonde, blue-eyed, pale Terrayne Crawford as Beth would seem to indicate that they were not committed to following up this hint, but in today’s scenes with Judith they do go out of their way to emphasize that Beth’s background is a mystery.

The Woman Who Never Left

Beth has been helping the family hide the fact that Jenny went mad and bore twins after Quentin left her. Quentin murdered Jenny in #748, eliminating the need for a servant to cover up her existence, and the twins, about whom Quentin does not know, are firmly ensconced in the care of a woman in the village named Mrs Fillmore. In #750, Judith fired Beth, but it didn’t take. Beth never left the house, and after a while the family started giving her orders again. Today Beth tells Judith that Mrs Fillmore reports that the boy twin is feverish, and asks to be kept on staff until he gets well. Judith agrees.

Judith tells Beth that she has decided to tell Quentin about the twins. She hopes that is what will prompt her brother to cast aside his selfish ways and become a mature adult. Beth is horrified and begs her not to do so. Judith, puzzled, says that Beth has always urged her to tell Quentin. She asks why she has changed her mind, and she makes up something obviously false about Quentin being unable to cope with the news that his son has a fever.

Yesterday, Beth learned that Quentin’s curse is hereditary. Returning viewers might wonder if she is afraid that Quentin will also learn that, and that if he does he might kill his children to prevent them passing it on. He does keep saying that he would rather be dead than have the curse, so he might talk himself into regarding such a murder as an act of mercy.

Featuring Edward Marshall as Ezra Braithwaite

Edward Marshall plays Ezra, a part played in #684 and #685 as an 87 year old man living in the year 1969 by Abe Vigoda (who was 48 at the time, but he and the makeup department both knew their business well enough that he was entirely convincing.) Mr Marshall appeared in #669 as unsightly ex-convict Harry Johnson, a part originally created by the not-always-stellar Craig Slocum. Mr Marshall gave Harry the same attitude and many of the same mannerisms Slocum had given him, but was so much more fun to watch that I wanted to see a lot more of him.

Parts of Harry’s costume and most of his surly demeanor are recycled in the 1897 segment in the character of dimwitted groundskeeper Dirk Wilkins, played by the repulsive Roger Davis. Whenever Dirk is on screen, I imagine Mr Marshall in Mr Davis’ place. I recommend that bit of mental recasting, it goes a long way towards making Dirk bearable. Unfortunately this is Mr Marshall’s final appearance on Dark Shadows.

Episode 763: An afternoon of cards, a night of murder

Schoolteacher Tim Shaw was introduced in #731. The name “Shaw” is common enough that few viewers are likely to have found any significance in it at the time. It is true that Dark Shadows is at this point a costume drama set in 1897 and that George Bernard Shaw was coming into his own as a playwright in that year. The show was written, acted, and directed largely by theater people, and is so self-consciously stagy that it is possible there might be a reference of some kind to Bernard Shaw in a character’s name. But there doesn’t seem to be anything especially Shavian about Tim.

Today we learn the reason Tim was called Shaw. Satanist Evan Hanley gives Tim a potion that robs him of his will. He holds up a deck of playing cards and tells him that when he sees the Queen of Spades he will know it is time for him to murder someone. In Richard Condon’s 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate, soldier Raymond Shaw was brainwashed into becoming an assassin when he saw the Queen of Hearts; in the John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film based on the novel, Raymond’s trigger was the Queen of Diamonds.

Frankenheimer’s film is one of the supreme examples of a movie that shouldn’t have worked, but did. No part of the plot stands up to rational analysis for one second, but when the tale is told through stark black and white imagery that puts us deep in the world of a nightmare it is spellbinding. Unfortunately, the irrationality of the plan the villains carry out and of the other characters’ responses to their evil deeds in The Manchurian Candidate are on full display in this homage, without the paranoid verve that makes the movie compelling. All by itself the potion puts Tim so deep in Evan’s power that he gladly goes to witch Magda Rákóczi to buy poison and insists she sell it to him even after she has pointed out that it is useful for nothing but murder. It doesn’t seem there is anything left for the card to add to the control Evan has over him.

It gets worse. Evan is acting as the agent of the evil Rev’d Gregory Trask. Trask is unhappily married to a woman named Minerva, and is blackmailing Evan into sending an assassin to kill her. When Evan shows Tim the card today, he confirms that the intended victim is a woman. But why not have him kill Trask? As my wife, Mrs Acilius, points out, if Trask dies, Evan will be free of the threat of blackmail. So if he is prepared to be a party to murder, you’d think he would forget Minerva and commit the crime he has a motive to commit.

The highlight of today’s episode doesn’t have anything to do with Evan, Tim, Minerva, or Trask. It is a scene between Magda and sometime maidservant Beth.

Beth has come to the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood to plead with Magda to lift a curse she has placed on Beth’s boyfriend, rakish Quentin Collins. Quentin murdered his estranged wife, Magda’s sister Jenny, and as revenge Magda turned him into a werewolf. Magda is unimpressed with anything Beth says until she tells her that in spite of everything, she will marry Quentin and go away with him. Magda marvels at this and asks Beth if she will really go through with it knowing that any son Quentin might have will suffer from the same curse. Shocked, Beth asks Magda if she means what she has said, and she repeats that Quentin’s son will also be a werewolf. Beth replies that in that case, Magda has laid a curse upon her own kin.

Magda dismisses this, saying that Jenny had no children by Quentin. Beth says she is wrong, that Jenny bore twins, a boy and a girl. Beth lays the story out systematically, and it dawns on Magda that she is telling the truth. Magda calls out to Jenny’s spirit and begs forgiveness, saying she did not know. Beth says that it is time to lift the curse, and Magda tells her to get a pentagram and make sure the boy wears it all the days of his life. Beth has her own moment of horrified realization. “And… you can’t end it? Can you?”

Beth realizes Magda does not know how to undo the curse.

Terrayne Crawford had some weaknesses as an actress that severely undercut her in her first weeks as Beth. But this scene is right in her wheelhouse. She is flawless as she portrays Beth’s progression from weepy begging to methodical explanation to utter shock. And Grayson Hall of course brings great power and vivid color to Magda.

We’ve been waiting for this scene since #642, months before Magda first appeared in #701, let alone before she placed the curse on Quentin in #750. In that episode, back in December 1968, the show took place in a contemporary setting. The characters had noticed some strange goings-on, and held a séance as part of their inquiry. The spirit they reached was Magda, who spoke regretfully of “my currrrse!” It’s taken more than 24 weeks, but Magda has finally learned what she already knew when we first heard from her.

Episode 762: You called the Devil, and you got me

In December 1967, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. In that month it introduced the Rev’d Mr Trask, a witch-hunter from Salem, Massachusetts, came to central Maine* to drive witchcraft out of the village of Collinsport and off the estate of Collinwood. Trask was bad at this job; wicked witch Angelique easily deceived him into blaming well-meaning governess Victoria Winters for her own crimes, leading to Vicki’s hanging and exacerbating the consequences of Angelique’s evil spells.

Now the show has relocated to the year 1897, and a descendant of Trask is among the villains. He is the Rev’d Mr Gregory Trask, and he runs a boarding school along lines dictated by his own sadistic delight in punishing innocent children.

Fans often say that while the original Trask** was a sincere believer who did harm because of his fanaticism, Gregory is a hypocrite who uses a pretense of religion to enable his perversions and his greed. I think the truth is more complicated, and more interesting, than this. In #441, the original Trask found the strangled body of a professionally agreeable lady named Maude Browning in his bed; it had been placed there to frame him for Maude’s murder. Trask’s principles, were he to follow them, would seem to imply that he should go directly to the authorities. If the worst happened and they hanged him, to the extent that he was targeted because of his Christian witness his death would win for him an everlasting crown of martyrdom. But fear got the better of Trask. He enlisted a man named Nathan Forbes to help him hide Maude’s remains, and went on from there to expand his conspiracy to suborn Nathan’s perjured testimony against Vicki. Considering the emphasis the Reformed movement put on the Ten Commandments, Trask could not have been unaware of the sinfulness of bearing false witness against a neighbor.

I think Trask’s fanaticism led him to overestimate the importance of the success of his mission in this world. It is not enough that he will be vindicated in the courts of God; God must be vindicated through Trask’s success in the courts of Massachusetts. Thus it is his very sincerity that turns Trask into a hypocrite. Eric Hoffer’s book The True Believer was one of the most influential publications of the 1960s; Trask, the fanatic-turned-hypocrite, could easily have found a home in its pages.

Gregory Trask is certainly a hypocrite. Today we hear Gregory’s wife Minerva talk about women he has dallied with over the years. Gregory comes upon Satanists Quentin Collins and Evan Hanley in the act of summoning the Devil; Gregory’s response is to blackmail Evan into using his command of the black arts to cast a spell to brainwash hapless schoolteacher Tim Shaw into murdering Minerva. We have seen in previous episodes that Gregory has plans for spinster Judith Collins and her enormous fortune; Minerva’s death, if it can be arranged just so, will leave him well-positioned to marry Judith and become the Master of Collinwood.

Trask tells Evan the price of his silence. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

As his ancestor’s very sincerity turned him into a hypocrite, so Gregory’s hypocrisy occasionally turns him into a sincere believer in his own powers, if not exactly in God. We saw in #735 that Gregory does not take the same pleasure in reading the Bible that he does in leafing through his “Punishment Book,” a ledger which evidently details his abuse of the children attending his school. But he does read it and quote it, and when in #726 he encountered a case of possession, he immediately and with untroubled self-assurance set to work performing an exorcism. The possession was real, and so far as Gregory could tell his exorcism was successful. He reacted to that apparent success with a serenity that betrayed no suggestion that he had ever doubted that he was the right person to cast out the spiritual forces of darkness.

As the original Trask was a stranger to the routine play-acting that makes ordinary social life bearable and therefore gave himself permission to become a party to the most horrendous deceptions, so Gregory wears his mask so tightly that his face grows to fit it. Dark Shadows was often very self-conscious about showing characters who were acting; its greatest success, vampire Barnabas Collins, won over the audience when they saw him trying desperately hard to play the role of a living man native to the twentieth century. In the Trasks, we see men who do not know that they are acting and therefore cannot manage the effect that the parts they play in everyday life have on their personalities.

Gregory does have a tight mental focus on his projects. When he goes to Evan with his blackmail demands, Evan has learned of his eye for the ladies, and is hoping to use that information to lower his price. So his opening gambit is to describe himself as a man who drifts from one idea to another as other men drift from one woman to another. Three times he says the word “woman,” in each case as the last word of a sentence, in each case about twice as loudly as the words before it. Gregory is unimpressed, and Evan realizes he doesn’t have anything definite to use against Gregory. He crumbles and agrees to Gregory’s extreme demand.

Gregory’s academic standards seem considerably less exacting than are his expectations of his co-conspirators. He mentions to Tim today that when he was a young teacher, the first class he ever taught was in elementary Latin. He challenges Tim to translate the words amo, amas, amat; Tim wearily replies “I love, you love, he loves.” “Very good!” exclaims Gregory. Traditionally the first words students learned on the first day of Latin class were amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant– I love, you love, s/he loves, we love, you (plural) love, they love. “Very good!” would seem to be an outrageously inflated appraisal to apply to someone who has merely recognized the first three of those six words.

Gregory sends Tim to Evan’s house to read a Latin document that has some bearing on a legal matter that has come up in Evan’s work as an attorney. As it happens, I went to graduate school in ancient Greek and Latin at the University of Texas at Austin, and local attorneys would sometimes call our department asking for someone to help them translate Latin they had found in old Spanish legal documents. They would usually refer those calls to the ablest Latinists among us, since the legal Latin used in the Spanish Empire in the days it ruled Texas was rather a specialized form of the language. Tim can virtually speed-read Evan’s document, suggesting that “amo, amas, amat” was not a particularly stringent test of his abilities.

*Maine was part of Massachusetts until 1821.

**Who is never given a first name. One of the Big Finish audio dramas refers to him as “Vilorus Trask” and actor Jerry Lacy once said he thought his name should have been “Orville.” Neither of those sounds like a very plausible name for a junior-grade Puritan divine of the late eighteenth century. So we are left calling him “the original Trask.” My wife, Mrs Acilius, points out that this seems to suggest that Gregory should be “the extra-crispy Trask.” Maybe he will die by fire, as others have done.

Episode 759: It’s not our fault, what we are

Dark Shadows‘ first supernatural menace, on the show from December 1966 to March 1967, was undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. In those days, we learned that at intervals of exactly 100 years Laura incinerated herself and her young son, always a boy named David, and that she (but not the Davids) rose from the ashes as a humanoid Phoenix. Well-meaning governess Victoria Winters led the resistance to Laura.

The story came to its climax as Laura she tried to take her son, Vicki’s charge David Collins, to the fate that had claimed David Stockbridge in 1767, David Radcliffe in 1867, and who knows how many other Davids in the preceding centuries. At the final moment, David Collins ran from the burning shack to which Laura had brought him and found his way to Vicki’s arms. With that, he chose Vicki and life over his mother and death, and Dark Shadows 1.0 reached its conclusion.

Dark Shadows 2.0 picked up immediately after, and focused on another supernatural villain, vampire Barnabas Collins. There isn’t an established mythology for filicidal humanoid Phoenixes, so the writers had leaned heavily on Bram Stoker’s Dracula and on stage and film adaptations of the novel for the structure and details of the Laura story. For example, in many scenes they went out of their way to show that Laura never eats or drinks. They eventually established that Barnabas doesn’t eat or drink either, but when he first came on they had to show that they were not just repeating what they had done so shortly before. So in #221, Barnabas clearly drinks a cup of coffee.

The original plan had apparently been that Barnabas would wreak terror for thirteen weeks while Vicki gradually figured out what was going on, organized a force to do battle with him, and then staked him in #275, destroying him in the last episode the ABC network was likely to air before cancelling the show. But Barnabas brought a new audience with him, prompting ABC to renew for another thirteen weeks. So his destruction had to be postponed indefinitely, and Vicki wound up on the margins of the story. She became Barnabas’ friend and stalwart defender before ultimately disappearing altogether.

Since then, Dark Shadows has been reinvented several times. Version 3.0 ran from November 1967 through March 1968; it was a costume drama set in the 1790s, to which Vicki had been transported by the mysterious powers represented by the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah. Version 4.0 ran from March through November 1968; it was a Monster Mash in which a variety of vampires, Frankensteins, witches, and other refugees from the Universal Studios back catalog stumbled over each other in an ever-more futile search for a coherent plot. Version 5.0 began in November 1968 with two stories revolving around nine year old Amy Jennings. These were the Haunting of Collinwood by the malign ghost of Quentin Collins, who represented a special threat to Amy, and the Werewolf Curse on Amy’s big brother Chris. I don’t know what was in the original flimsies, but I suspect this portion of the show was originally meant to be much shorter than it is and to serve as a prologue to Version 5.0.1, a costume drama set in 1897, when Quentin was alive and the werewolf curse began. It shows signs of having been greatly extended when Quentin’s ghost started to attract a large and fervent fan-base and the producers were unsure whether he could keep that following as a living being.

We finally went back to 1897 in #701, twelve weeks ago. Barnabas, who at the beginning of the Monster Mash period was freed of the effects of the vampire curse, tried to save Amy, Chris, and everyone else at Collinwood by doing some mumbo-jumbo, and found himself transported back in time. Having traveled to the past, he has once again become a vampire.

Among the many people Barnabas has met during his uncertain and frightening journey to the past is another iteration of Laura. It turns out that he remembers her from 1767, when he was a child and she was married to his uncle. She at first accepted his story that he was the great-grandson of the original Barnabas. He was a small boy when she burned that time, and all she can see is that her new acquaintance has a family resemblance to that boy. But he knew that she was planning to incinerate her children, among them the ancestor of the Collinses whom he knows at Collinwood in the 1960s, and he has been flagrantly aggressive in his opposition to her. She has learned that he is a vampire, and has tried to destroy him.

The highlight of today’s episode comes when Laura enters the foyer of the great house and Barnabas pops up to greet her. He calls her Laura Stockbridge, and she begins talking about what he was like as a boy. She refers to their similarity, implying that she is herself a type of vampire. She tells him he shouldn’t oppose her, and he says that he would want her to stop him if he were about to do what she is planning. She says that he cannot know what her plans are. He assures her he does know, and she lists all the people with whom he may have discussed her, dismissing each in turn as an unreliable source. Barnabas keeps smiling. For a thrilling moment, we wonder if his key informant was Vicki. Perhaps she told him about her encounter with the Laura of 1966-1967, and he knows everything she figured out in those days.

Hello, Auntie! Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Alas, it is not so. Barnabas opens a door and reveals the slumped figure of Laura’s dimwitted thrall Dirk. Earlier Barnabas, in bat form, had attached Dirk to prevent him bringing a letter to the house that would have exposed Barnabas’ secret. Barnabas tells Laura he hasn’t killed Dirk, merely bitten him and questioned him. In the first two-thirds of the episode, Dirk, played by the always-regrettable Roger Davis, kept grabbing Laura and pawing at her; at one point Diana Millay does an adroit little judo move to block his hand before he can put it on her left breast. As a result of these scenes and countless others in which Mr Davis engaged in similar behavior, many in the audience will groan with disappointment when Barnabas says that Dirk is not dead.

Millay and Jonathan Frid are wonderful in this scene. Laura’s lines are perfectly suited to display Millay’s gift for subtle emotional transitions, and Frid’s delivery shows what he can do when he has time to learn his part and the lines do not require him to verbalize the character’s every thought. Mr Davis is also well within his range, playing as he does an unconscious and apparently dead body. He should have specialized in that, it’s the first thing we’ve seen him do really well in all of his many appearances on the show.

Episode 755: So many strange habits

Every character we see today is a trespasser at the great estate of Collinwood. Libertine Quentin Collins was banished from Collinwood the year before by his grandmother Edith, but came back shortly before Edith died and left the estate to his sister Judith. He then accepted $10,000 from Judith on condition that he would leave, but he did not keep his end of the bargain. Judith is too afraid of scandal to take Quentin to court for an eviction order, so he’s still living in his old room.

Judith fired maidservant Beth Chavez the other day. Beth never did leave, and now the family has given up and started giving her orders again.

Quentin and Judith’s distant cousin Barnabas was ordered to leave Collinwood forever by his father Joshua. That took place almost a hundred years before. Barnabas then became a vampire. Now he’s back, masquerading as his own imaginary great-grandson.

Quentin and Judith’s brother Edward is estranged from his wife Laura. Quentin and Laura had an affair, and she followed Quentin to Egypt upon his banishment. When she came back to Collinwood several weeks ago, Edward ordered her to leave. She threatened to make a scandal, and he caved in, agreeing to let her stay in the groundskeeper’s cottage on the property. Today she is in the great house, and Beth tells her that she has orders from Judith and Edward that she is to see to it that she leaves the house and does not come back. They quarrel, and Beth leaves her in the drawing room. Later, Laura comes back to the house and demands Beth let her back in the drawing room, and for some reason Beth feels she must comply.

The only person we see who has a legitimate reason to be in the great house is servant Dirk Wilkins. Dirk has been bewitched by Laura and now is her cat’s paw. She orders him to let himself into the Old House on the estate, where Barnabas is staying, and to steal any papers that might shed light on Barnabas. Dirk and Laura certainly know that neither Judith nor Barnabas would want them to do this, so Dirk winds up not only as a trespasser in that house, but as a burglar there.

The end of the episode takes us to an old graveyard for an even more egregious example of trespass. Dirk found an old document written by the late Ben Stokes confirming that Barnabas has a secret, but ending with Ben’s vow to take that secret “to the grave.” Laura takes this expression literally, and orders Dirk to dig up Ben’s grave. Sure enough, they find more papers hidden in the coffin.

Here it is, the secret he took to the grave! Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Diana Millay was a fine actress, capable of subtle psychological drama and unsurpassed at dry comedy. But her delivery of today’s opening voiceover is stunningly bad. Between her first tour of duty as Laura in December 1966-March 1967 and her current run, Dark Shadows changed from a Gothic drama aimed at adults to a supernatural thriller popular among preteens. This left little room for what she did best. She may well have been frustrated by the new situation. If so, that frustration might show in her decision to deliver the summary of the plot so far as if she were a nursery school teacher reading to a group of groggy three year olds.

Episode 750: Hold back the night

Magda at Jenny’s grave. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The name “Magda” was first mentioned on Dark Shadows in #642, broadcast and set in December 1968. At that time, the residents of the great house of Collinwood had noticed unaccountable goings-on, and as they often do they held a séance to appeal to the spirits of the dead for guidance. The spirit they reached in that one identified herself as Magda. She repeated two things- “My curse!” and “He must not return!” Magda said enough to suggest that she had cursed someone and regretted doing so, and that she knew that the Collinses were threatened by the return of someone from her own period, but that was all. Since the Collinses of 1968 had never heard of anyone associated with their house named Magda and could find no record of such a person, those suggestions remained vague and useless to them.

They meant a good deal more to regular viewers. We already knew that the malign ghost of Quentin Collins had appeared in a room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house, that children David Collins and Amy Jennings were falling under the ghost’s influence, and that Quentin lived at Collinwood near the end of the nineteenth century. We therefore assume that Quentin is the one who “must not return!,” and that Magda, whoever she was, must have known Quentin and therefore also have lived sometime in the 1890s.

Among the participants in the séance was Amy’s older brother, mysterious drifter Chris Jennings. Chris broke the séance off before Magda could go into enough detail to help the others. The show had long since established that the person who ends a séance prematurely is the one who harbors a dreadful secret that the voice from beyond might uncover. Even the characters have caught on to this pattern; they treat Chris with suspicion. They do not know what we do, that Chris is a werewolf. So he is indeed under a curse, and we can take it that his curse originated when Magda placed it on one of his ancestors.

Over the next few months, Quentin’s power steadily grew, and at the same time Chris’ periods in his animal form grew longer and more frequent. These two developments moved in such close tandem that we had to suspect that there was some causal relationship between them. This suspicion was reinforced when, in #683, another ghost associated with Quentin, that of a tall, thin, blonde woman named Beth, led Chris to what proved to be the unmarked grave of an infant. That infant was wearing an amulet meant to ward off werewolves. The records of the silversmith who made the amulet showed that it was commissioned and paid for in 1897 by Quentin Collins and Beth Chavez. Thus we learned that a werewolf was active in the area of Collinwood when Beth and Quentin were alive, and that they cared about a baby who died at that time. The logical inference would be that the curse under which Chris labors originated at that time, that Beth and Quentin had something to do with it, and that the baby was related to someone who became one of Chris’ ancestors.

Now, the show has become a costume drama set in 1897. Quentin and Beth are alive. Beth is a maidservant who first came to Collinwood in the train of Quentin’s estranged wife, Jenny. Quentin left Jenny and was banished from the house the previous year; word was put about that Jenny responded to the desertion by going away and leaving no forwarding address. When Quentin returned to Collinwood in #701, he was surprised to find Beth still on staff, and he set to work trying to seduce her.

In #720, Quentin discovered that Jenny had not in fact gone so far away as he and everyone else had been led to believe. She turned up and stabbed him. He then learned that Jenny had become violently insane when he left her and that his sister Judith and brother Edward had responded to her illness by locking her up in a room hidden inside the great house. They kept Beth in their employ because she was the one entrusted to care for Jenny.

Now, Beth has given in to Quentin’s charms. The other night Jenny was hiding in Beth’s room while Beth and Quentin shared a tender moment, and she reacted by coming at them with a knife. Quentin disarmed Jenny, restrained her, and then put his hands around her throat. While Beth pleaded with him to stop, he choked Jenny to death. He keeps protesting that, because Jenny at one point had a knife, this was an act of self defense, but the audience and Beth both saw what happened, and she won’t agree with him any more than we will.

Edward and Judith have decided to shield Quentin from the legal consequences of his actions, and in the village of Collinsport the will of the Collinses supersedes the laws of the state of Maine. But Quentin finds no comfort in his immunity from criminal prosecution. Just hours before he murdered Jenny, Quentin discovered that he knew nothing about her origins. He thought she was some kind of Anglo, but she was passing. She was actually a Romani woman. Her sister is one of the neighbors, broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi.

In Wednesday’s episode, Edward convinced Magda the police and courts would do nothing to punish Quentin, and so Magda threatened to place a curse on him to avenge Jenny’s death. Edward, a rational-minded modern man, dismissed Magda’s threat as “words.” But Beth and Quentin know things about the universe they occupy that Edward does not know. When Beth heard Magda’s threat, she looked wide-eyed at Quentin, walked backwards away from him, and ran off. Quentin, who is obsessed with the occult, was immediately terrified, and has been dissolving into a puddle ever since.

Yesterday, Quentin fell into a trap Magda set for him and brought a curse upon himself. Today, Magda stands with her husband Sandor by Jenny’s grave, watches the full Moon rise, and recites an incantation specifying that Quentin’s male descendants will suffer from the same curse he does. So far as Magda knows, Quentin does not yet have any descendants, male or female, and so that proviso is just an abstraction for her.

We know more than Magda does. Not only have returning viewers heard her spirit say that she regrets the curse and been led to the conclusion that it fell on Chris Jennings, but even those who are watching the show for the first time today know that Quentin and Jenny are the parents of twin infants whom Judith is paying a Mrs Fillmore to raise in her home in the village of Collinsport. Mrs Fillmore’s name was first mentioned in #707, and it comes up today when Judith is firing Beth.

Judith explains to Beth that, since Jenny is no longer around, she no longer has any work to do at Collinwood. She indicates her dissatisfaction with Beth, and says that it is only through Edward’s influence that she included a severance payment with her letter of dismissal. Beth mentions her task of taking money to Mrs Fillmore to pay her for taking care of Jenny and Quentin’s children; Judith does not see a need to retain an employee simply to carry an envelope full of cash to the village every now and then.

Beth objects that Judith is terminating her employment because she has become involved with Quentin; Judith takes that as an opportunity to castigate her for the impropriety of that relationship. Joan Bennett plays Judith’s reaction to Beth quite effectively; in a comment on Danny Horn’s post about the episode at Dark Shadows Every Day, “Rev Velveteen” writes:

I wanted to mention a Judith Collins, er, Joan Bennett acting moment I found particularly entertaining here. When she’s giving Beth the boot and the servant attempts to “innocently” inquire as to why she’s being let go, Judith turns around and gives her SUCH a look! Huge eyes, a stifled gasp, then bright pursed lips…Her expression goes from incredulous (Are you freaking KIDDING me?) to amused (Just how stupid does she think we are?) to triumphantly satisfied (Fine, we shall just both play out this little charade and I’ll soon be rid of you.) Her chin goes up as she turns away snarkily-“Let’s just say that now Jenny’s gone, your services are no longer needed,” which everyone on and off screen knows is a total lie. It’s such a sweet piece of work by Ms. Bennett, I need to keep an eye out to see if she repeats that expression because it just sums up the whole character of any Collins she plays when as the perpetual straight man, she’s faced with yet another absurd situation. And is also just stunning in that gorgeous green dress.

Comment left by “Rev Velveteen” at 12:43 am Pacific time, 25 June 2020, on Danny Horn, “Episode 750: Gypsy Ascendant,” 18 October 2015, Dark Shadows Every Day

Yesterday, Judith gave the penniless Quentin $10,000 on condition that he leave Collinwood forever and induce Sandor and Magda to do the same. Quentin had hoped to use the money to bribe them into forgoing Jenny’s vengeance, but they only pretended to take it to lure him into bringing the curse on himself. Magda contemptuously threw the cash at him after he did so.

Quentin has told Judith that Magda took the money and agreed to go. Today, Magda comes to the house to ask for Jenny’s things. Judith starts in with lecture about how she must go at once, since she and Sandor have been paid so well to leave, and Magda reveals that she did not take the money. Enraged at Quentin’s childish lie, Judith demands he return the $10,000. He tells her to sue him, and stalks off. Judith fumes, knowing that she has been cheated and that she cannot assert her rights without creating the public scandal that she fears above all else.

Quentin finds Beth packing Jenny’s things. He tells her he has to leave tonight, and announces that she will be coming with him. She responds in a mild tone that she doesn’t seem to have any say in the matter. She tells Quentin that she has lost her job, and says that she will give him her decision in the afternoon.

Sandor comes for Jenny’s things. Quentin offers him the $10,000 all for himself if he can lift the curse. He says he doesn’t know how. Quentin says he will give it all to him if only he will tell him what form the curse will take. Sandor shakes his head at Quentin’s desperation and says that knowing that would be of no benefit to him.

As night falls, Quentin goes to Beth’s room. She agrees to go with him, but insists on running a personal errand first. Even though she just told him that they have to be honest with each other, she will not tell him what it is. She is still honoring Judith and Edward’s decree that Quentin must not know that Jenny gave birth to his twin children after he left her, and that they are in Mrs Fillmore’s care.

Quentin keeps saying there is no time left to do anything but run. We might wonder why he didn’t stop by Beth’s room earlier. She is on her way out the door when Quentin cries out and collapses in severe pain. Regular viewers recognize Quentin’s pains as the same Chris had when he turned into a werewolf. When we see the rising moon and hear the baying of the hounds, we know who Chris’ forebears are, and why Magda came to regret her curse.

Episode 749: The kiss of death

In the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s, Louis Edmonds plays Roger Collins, younger brother of matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. In 1966 and 1967, we saw that Roger had squandered his entire inheritance. He was reduced to living as a guest in Liz’ house and working as an employee for her business. Roger was the show’s first villain. His villainy was confined to a storyline known as “The Revenge of Burke Devlin.” That story never really caught on, and by #201 even Burke Devlin had lost interest in it. Roger receded to the margins, and for the rest of the series Edmonds’ gift for sarcastic dialogue kept the character alive as occasional comic relief.

From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. Edmonds, a costume drama specialist in his years on Broadway, came into his own as haughty overlord Joshua Collins. Joshua’s focus on moneymaking and his determination to preserve the glamour of the Collins family name at all costs placed him at the opposite pole from Roger, a blithe spendthrift pathologically lacking in family feeling. Joshua used his power to cover up all of the tragic and horrible events we saw in the 1790s segment, and imposed a false history in its place.

Now, the show is set in 1897. Edmonds plays Edward, the stuffy eldest brother of the adult members of the Collinses of Collinsport. Edward has Joshua’s imperious demeanor and his determination to conceal the family’s disgraces, but like Roger he finds himself penniless, dependent on his sister’s largess. Yesterday he learned that his youngest brother, libertine Quentin, had killed his estranged wife Jenny. So far, Quentin has been a breezily amoral wastrel, easily recognizable to longtime viewers as a kindred spirit of his great-nephew Roger. But Quentin shocked himself when he murdered Jenny, and he had a terrified look on his face as he tried to sneak out of the house afterward.

Edward intercepted him then and forbade him to go. Edward had learned from Quentin’s girlfriend, Jenny’s former maid Beth, what happened. Edward was in a high dudgeon about the mess Quentin had made, but did not seem particularly surprised or at all grieved. He was quite confident he would be able to hush the whole thing up, and fabricated a story about Jenny falling down the stairs and dying shortly after from a head injury.

What did shock Edward was Quentin’s revelation that Jenny was the sister of one of the neighbors, Magda Rákóczi. Magda is a member of the Romani people, an ethnicity against whom Edward and the rest of the Collinses are violently prejudiced. “You married a Gypsy!” he exclaims in utter disgust. He remained convinced that he could keep the whole thing quiet, and drilled Beth and Quentin in the lies they were to tell Magda and her husband Sandor.

Magda did not give Edward a chance to direct the little play he had written. She found physical evidence indicating Quentin had murdered Jenny, and accused him. When she threatened to go to the police, Edward asked her what she imagined the authorities would do when asked to choose between the word of a Collins and the word of a “Gypsy.” At that, Magda dropped her plan to go to the police and vowed to place a curse on Quentin. Edward dismissed that as “words,” but Quentin is deeply involved in the occult. He is helpless with fear.

Today, Edward calls on Quentin in his room. He finds that Quentin has not slept all night. He continues to regard Quentin’s fear of Magda’s curse with total contempt, but perks up when Quentin says that he has thought of a way to escape it. Returning viewers already know that there is one way wide open to Quentin to escape the curse. He can go to the police and confess that he murdered Jenny.

This, of course, is not Quentin’s idea. He wants to offer Magda $10,000. Neither he nor Edward has that kind of money, but their sister Judith, whom their grandmother chose as her sole heiress, does. Edward says that he might be able to persuade Judith to give him that sum on one condition. Their grandmother’s will left Quentin no property or income, but it did guarantee him the right to live in the great house of Collinwood as long as he might wish. If he will sign documents renouncing that right, Judith might give him the money.

Edward embarrassed by Quentin’s craven mewling. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin drifts off to sleep. He has a nightmare. Sandor and Magda show him Jenny’s body and tell him he can escape punishment if he blesses it. He does so, and Jenny comes back to life. She asks for a kiss. Quentin gives it, and Magda and Sandor laugh. They say that the kiss has sealed his fate- it is “the kiss of death!”

Edward returns with word that Judith will give him his $10,000, but that she has added a condition. Not only Quentin, but Sandor and Magda too, will have to leave the area forever. Quentin promises to make that happen, and signs the papers.

Meanwhile, Magda and Sandor are at home in the Old House on the grounds of the estate. Magda has mixed a potion and told Sandor that “a very old Gypsy woman” once used it to place a terrible curse on someone called “Count Petofi.” All they have to do is trick Quentin into drinking the potion, and the same curse will befall him. Sandor disdainfully replies that he had thought Magda might have come up with a plan that had a chance of working. He can’t imagine Quentin drinking anything they might give him.

They look out the window, and see Quentin coming to the house. They are pleasantly surprised that he is delivering himself. He knocks. They open the door, and he bursts in. Magda makes a great show of telling him he is not welcome and demanding he leave. He tells them about the nightmare, and says he knows that it is part of the curse. He offers them money to lift it. Magda is at first openly offended, while Sandor behaves as if he is tempted. Quentin shows them the money, and Magda plays the part of a woman succumbing to greed. She asks Jenny’s spirit to forgive her, and takes the envelope. She makes a gesture that Quentin takes to be an act of spellcasting. While she counts the money, Sandor says they will have to share a drink to complete the deal. Quentin happily agrees.

Once Quentin has taken the drink, Magda tells him that he has been fooled. The nightmare was not part of any curse, but was simply the voice of his own conscience. She tells him that the drink brought the curse on him, and that he will begin to suffer its effects tonight. She throws the money at him and tells him to take it. He reels away, dazzled by the horror of it all.

Magda’s curse shows the limits of the Collinses’ power. Their prestige and connections enable them to intimidate the authorities so that they need not worry about an insistent police investigation. But their freedom from that concern has allowed Quentin to travel so far into depravity that he has committed murder and brought a curse upon himself. When they encounter someone who will not be intimidated, their only recourse is to money. Magda’s unwillingness to sell her sister’s vengeance for any number of dollars means that the rich Judith would be as powerless against her as are the impecunious Edward and Quentin.

Not only has the Collinses’ station led Quentin to indulge himself in one vice after another until he is so far gone he cannot imagine good behavior, it has led him to assume that everyone assigned to a humbler place in the world can be bought. Sandor and Magda are quite good actors, almost as good as Thayer David and Grayson Hall, and they look very much like people who are tempted to take the bribe Quentin is offering. But even to make the offer shows a complete lack of perspicacity. Jenny has not been dead for twenty four hours, and he somehow supposes her sister is ready to bargain away her memory.

Quentin cannot say he wasn’t warned. His dream told him that Magda and Sandor would trick him into bringing the curse on himself by leading him to believe they were giving him a way to escape the curse. He is so far gone in the symptoms of his over-privileged background that he cannot even interpret this message. Thus we see that the real curse of the Collinses, the obstacle that blocks the sunlight and casts all the dark shadows that shroud them, is their wealth and power. The first ten months of the show made some feints towards developing a social drama about the relations between the Collinses in their house on the hill and the working people in the village below. The village is mentioned nowadays only as a source for victims of the various monsters bred at Collinwood, but the price everyone pays for the Collinses’ exalted position is always front and center.