Magda Rákóczi, preposterously broad ethnic stereotype, has discovered that the recently arrived Barnabas Collins is a vampire. Barnabas has bitten and enslaved Magda’s husband Sandor, and tells her that she, too will do his bidding. When she asks what has brought him to this conclusion, he tells her that as long as she is in his employ, he will give her jewels. He hands her a ruby ring, and she agrees.
Longtime viewers know well that Barnabas’ plans regularly backfire. Today, we see one of the reasons why. Barnabas does not tell Magda why he has come to the estate of Collinwood in the year 1897, but he does tell her that the following night he will be calling on the Collins family in the great house in order to win their acceptance of him as a distant cousin from England. For all she knows he might be able to complete his task and go back to where he came from shortly after the Collinses welcome him. That would leave her with no further jewelry. So Magda goes to the great house and tells spinster Judith Collins and her brother, libertine Quentin Collins, that a stranger will visit them after sunset. He will present himself as a “friend, perhaps a relative,” but they must not trust him. He is in fact a “creature of darkness” who means them harm.
Judith and Quentin are one of Dark Shadows‘ signature pairings of Bossy Big Sister/ Bratty Little Brother, and they bicker about whether to be disgusted or amused by what they take to be Magda’s transparently fraudulent warning. When Barnabas shows up, Judith is shaken and Quentin laughs at her for taking Magda seriously. In the last scene, Quentin does pull a sword on Barnabas and threaten to kill him on the spot unless he tells a more acceptable story, so apparently he placed a higher value on Magda’s words than he wanted to let Judith know.
Her dialogue is full of lines like “I don’t care” and “It’s none of your business,” and Terry Crawford decides that the best acting choice she could make would be to play it as if Beth sincerely means every word that she says. This is different from what a good actor would do in every respect.
She should be fencing with him, half-flirting and half-angry and half-guilty. Yes, she should be playing three halves right now; that’s the point of the scene. But Terry Crawford gives you what’s on the page, because somebody explained the concept of “subtext” to her once, while she was thinking about something else.
Alas, it is so. Appealing as David Selby’s personality is and lively as his interpretation of Quentin is, Miss Crawford’s literalism means that his efforts are largely wasted, at least in his scenes with her. With Joan Bennett’s Judith or with any of the other members of the cast, we can see that while Quentin’s behavior is inexcusable, his charm is irresistible. But Miss Crawford shows us Beth resisting it with no apparent difficulty, and that leaves him as just another jerk. As I put it in a comment on Danny’s post:
I agree about Terry Crawford. She has to do something very difficult- simultaneously show contempt for Quentin and attraction to him. She manages only the first, meaning that when he keeps at her after she tells him to leave her alone, it isn’t a game, it’s just sexual assault. That makes Quentin a lot harder to like than he needs to be.
This episode ends with one of the all-time great screw-ups. A few times actors have come partly into view during the closing credits, usually just one arm briefly entering the shot. But this time Jonathan Frid comes walking right into the frame, gives a horrified reaction, and scurries off. It is a thing of beauty, enough to make you wonder how there can be people who are not fans of Dark Shadows.
A great moment in the history of television, or THE GREATEST moment in the history of television? You decide. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Every Day.
Robert Rodan joined the cast of Dark Shadows in #485 as Frankenstein’s monster Adam. For his first few months, Adam could barely speak, limiting Rodan’s performance to facial expressions expressing his very intense emotions. He did well with that, and, as Adam came to master English, Rodan’s considerable range as an actor quickly became apparent. He gets a showcase today.
An experiment meant to bring Adam’s mate back to life has failed, and he decides that old world gentleman Barnabas Collins is at fault. Adam originally extorted Barnabas’ cooperation with the experiment in #557 by threatening to kill well-meaning governess Vicki and everyone else in the great house of Collinwood unless he were given a mate. Now Adam is in that house ready to carry out his threat.
He stands outside Vicki’s bedroom door. Through it, he hears heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard talking with Vicki. Adam fell in love with Carolyn some time ago, while she was protecting him from the police. Since Vicki is Carolyn’s best friend, and since Carolyn, her mother, her favorite uncle Roger, and Roger’s son David all live in the great house, Adam’s threat to kill everyone there always lacked a certain credibility. He eavesdrops as Carolyn tells Vicki she was recently very much attracted to a man, she can’t say who, and that ever since that man had to go away she has been depressed. Regular viewers know that Carolyn is talking about Adam, and he may know as well. Once Carolyn has left the room, Adam slips in. He tries to abduct Vicki. She screams, and Carolyn comes.
Adam slaps Vicki in the face and she collapses on the floor. In #515, Adam struck his friend Sam Evans across the face, inflicting an injury that contributed to Sam’s death shortly after. Adam didn’t know his own strength then; now, he only knocks Vicki unconscious. Carolyn tries to call the police; Adam takes the telephone from her hand and rips it from the wall. She is shocked that he is prepared to hurt even her. He puts his hands on her throat and squeezes it between his thumbs. The reason his mate needed to be brought to life a second time is that he strangled her in #626, and what he is doing to Carolyn looks unnervingly like what we saw him do then.
Rodan is self-possessed and deliberate when Adam is alone with Vicki, apparently smug in his certitude that whatever plan he has for her will work. When Carolyn enters, he abruptly shifts to a mixture of sorrow and rage. While he is strangling her, the sorrow overwhelms him completely. He knows exactly what he is doing, and is utterly miserable to be doing it.
Mad scientist Julia Hoffman is in Barnabas’ house. Barnabas had figured out that Adam was likely to go to Collinwood to carry out his threats, and she is waiting for him to come home and tell her whether he succeeded in thwarting Adam. She hears a noise, and calls out for Barnabas. He does not come, but the equipment in her basement mad science laboratory starts making its noises. Adam enters.
Julia and Adam exchange some mutually evasive dialogue. Rodan had played Adam’s scene with Carolyn and Vicki very hot, his emotions right on the surface. Now he shows that he can just as effectively play cold. Julia keeps asking him questions, which he parries without losing his smile, becoming excited, or in any way giving a clue as to what is in his mind. He deploys each syllable like a chess player selecting the right square for a piece. He shows a bit of feeling at first when he refers to the charred skeleton in the basement as “the only bride I ever had,” but then settles into an imperturbable calm. He responds to Julia’s repeated questions about his plans for vengeance against Barnabas with perfectly logical questions of his own about what he would have to gain by hurting Barnabas- “or you, for that matter?” He is indifferent to the news that suave warlock Nicholas Blair, whom he once considered a friend, has vanished, never to return. When Julia tries to escape, he asks her where she is going, and she tries to deflect the question. He is still altogether composed until the very second Julia turns to go to the basement, when the placid surface suddenly breaks and he knocks her out.
Barnabas donated the “life force” that brought Adam to life, and there are moments when longtime viewers will recognize deep similarities between the two characters. For example, when Julia first met Barnabas he was a vampire, and he was deeply suspicious of her interest in him. In that period, they often faced each other in this room in conversations that could easily have ended with Barnabas murdering her. Barnabas would not condescend to using Julia’s first name, addressing her only as “doctor.” Adam has no way of knowing about that history, but he does know that each time he calls Julia “doctor” she seems a little bit more uncomfortable. So he does it as often as possible.
Julia regains consciousness sometime after Adam attacked her and finds that Barnabas is with her. She tells him that Adam is in the basement doing something with the equipment; he tells her what he found when he talked with the slightly injured Carolyn earlier, that Adam has abducted Vicki. They put two and two together, and go to the cellar door. It is locked, so they have to find another way to the basement.
We cut there to see Vicki strapped on a table, energy flowing from the equipment into her while she writhes and cries out in pain. Adam is at the controls. Images of Julia and of Carolyn, speaking and pleading with Adam to show mercy to Vicki, wipe across the screen. These effects may seem a little corny nowadays, but must have been quite startling on daytime television in 1968, and are typical examples of director Lela Swift’s visual artistry and technical ambition.
Barnabas and Julia enter. Barnabas points a gun at Adam and says he will kill him unless he lets Vicki go. Adam laughs at him. He and Barnabas have a connection like that between Alexandre Dumas’ Corsican brothers, so that any harm one suffers will endanger the other. Adam knows this, and he also remembers an audiotape in which the designer of the Frankenstein experiment that created him says that if he dies, “Barnabas Collins will be as he was before.” Barnabas knows about the Corsican brothers thing, but he never heard that tape, so he is puzzled when the laughing Adam says “If I die, you will revert back to what you were. That’s what it said on Dr. Lang’s tape and I heard it. I memorized it. I don’t know what you were but I know you don’t want me to die.” While Adam reaches for the switch to give Vicki a lethal jolt of electricity, Barnabas shoots him in the shoulder and he falls.
Adam’s laughter in this scene is of a piece with his sorrowful expression while he chokes Carolyn. Nothing matters, no one matters, life and death are just the same, he will kill and torture and maim and it will all be a big joke. Viewers who remember the first weeks of Adam’s life, when Julia the mad scientist and Barnabas the recovering vampire, symbols of extreme selfishness both, kept him locked in a cell a few paces from the spot where he is standing now, will see in this total nihilism the logical outcome of that horrifying act of child abuse. As Rodan sold Adam’s heartbreak so effectively that his scenes in the cell were hard to watch, so he sells his total alienation from humanity so effectively that we can believe that he is ready to commit any crime against any person and to laugh all the way through it. This utterly bleak moment brings the character’s development to a fitting climax.
There are a couple of notable goofs in this one. The right sleeve of Adam’s sweater can be seen at the edge of the shot when the closing credits start; the camera zooms in to get clear of him. Robert Rodan had played his part with so few slips that he hadn’t quite seemed at home on Dark Shadows; it’s good to see him making up for lost time now. Much more embarrassingly, while Barnabas and Julia are looking through the barred window of the cellar door Jonathan Frid touches his face, and it looks very much like he is picking his nose.
Yesterday, wiggéd witch Angelique/ Cassandra sent her cat’s paw Tony to kill sage Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes pulled “the old switcheroo” on him, and Tony drank from the glass into which he had put Angelique/ Cassandra’s poison. Today, we learn that Stokes gave Tony an emetic to save his life. Stokes calls mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD to examine Tony and assist with the next stage of the battle against Angelique/ Cassandra.
Recovered, Tony has no idea why he obeyed Angelique/ Cassandra’s command to kill Stokes, and is ready to surrender to the police. Stokes tells him he is under the power of a witch, and enlists him in the battle against her.
Stokes takes out the memoirs of his ancestor Ben, who was Angelique’s cat’s paw in the eighteenth century. He does some automatic writing in Ben’s hand and finds that they must contact the spirit of the Rev’d Mr Trask, a witchfinder who inadvertently helped Angelique in those days. Fortunately, Trask, like Tony, was played by Jerry Lacy, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get hold of him. Stokes also finds that Trask was walled up in “the coffin room,” which Julia tells him is for some mysterious reason a nickname given to the space at the foot of the stairs in the basement of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Stokes decrees that he, Julia, and Tony must go to this room and hold a séance there.
On his way to the Old House, Tony follows Stokes’ instructions and stops at the main house on the estate and tells Angelique/ Cassandra that Stokes is dead. This follows a scene between Angelique/ Cassandra and her husband, sarcastic dandy Roger, in which Roger complains about her lack of interest in him. Her mind isn’t on the game of chess they are playing, she hasn’t been attentive to him for several nights, and she refuses to go on a honeymoon. Angelique/ Cassandra ensorcelled Roger into marrying her so that she could have a perch at Collinwood, and he seems to be slipping out of the spell’s power.
Stokes, Julia, and Tony gather in the coffin room. They begin the séance. This is the fifth séance we have seen on Dark Shadows, but the first that does not include well-meaning governess Vicki. In four of the previous five, it had been Vicki who went into the trance. On the other occasion, it was strange and troubled boy David who became the vessel through which the dead spoke to the living. The first three times Vicki served as the medium, she channeled the gracious Josette Collins, and when David filled that role he gave voice to David Radcliffe. In those days, Vicki was closely connected to Josette, perhaps a reincarnation of her, as David was another version of the cursed boy David Radcliffe. The final time Vicki spoke for the dead, she spoke for nine year old Sarah Collins, with whom she was no more closely connected than were any of a number of other characters. Sarah has no present-day counterpart, so her appearance at a séance suggested that Dark Shadows was moving away from its use of necromancy as a way of connecting characters from different time periods.
This time, Tony goes into the trance. In #481, Angelique/ Cassandra told Tony that she chose him as her cat’s paw because he resembled Trask, so when he is the medium through whom Trask speaks we are returning to Dark Shadows‘ original conception of how séances work. Trask mistakes Stokes for Ben, as Angelique did in a dream visitation last week. The brick wall behind which Trask’s remains are hidden bulges and is about to crumble when we fade to the credits.
True fans of Dark Shadows know that the episode’s real climax comes during those credits. Thayer David strolls onto the set under Louis Edmonds’ credit for Roger. He even looks into the camera when he realizes what he has done.
In the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, vampire Barnabas Collins frets that his sorely bedraggled blood thrall, Willie Loomis, is failing to die. A couple of weeks ago, the police shot Willie and jumped to the conclusion that he was responsible for the abduction of Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, among many other crimes that Barnabas actually committed. He’s been in a coma ever since, and if he dies, Barnabas will be off the hook.
Barnabas tells his co-conspirator, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, that he will go to the hospital and murder Willie. Her assurances that Willie will soon die of natural causes don’t stop Barnabas, but her news that the sheriff is on his way to the house does. Barnabas then orders her to go to the hospital and carry out the murder, but she refuses.
Meanwhile, Sheriff George Patterson, addled quack Dr Dave Woodard, and Maggie’s father Sam are hanging around Willie’s hospital room recapping the story so far. The sheriff wonders where Willie could have kept Maggie during the weeks she was held prisoner. Willie lives in Barnabas’ house and does not appear to have access to any other building. You might think this would be grounds for suspecting Barnabas of involvement, but no such thought crosses the minds of any of the three luminaries keeping Willie company. They just take it for granted that no crime could have taken place in Barnabas’ house.
George, Dave, and Sam, or their intellectual equivalents.
Back in the Old House, Barnabas has had an inspiration. He took a ring from Maggie in #253, and today he hides it in a candlestick in Willie’s bedroom. When the sheriff and Sam come to search that room (but no other part of the house,) Barnabas watches until they’ve given up, then knocks the candlestick over and exclaims in a ridiculously fake voice “Look! A ring!” Sam recognizes it as Maggie’s, and he and the sheriff are convinced it is conclusive evidence of Willie’s guilt.
For her part, Julia has made her way to Willie’s hospital room. She is there with Woodard when Willie shows signs of regaining consciousness. Woodard rushes out to tell the deputy to get the sheriff, and leaves Julia alone with Willie. She looks at Willie’s IV and remembers Barnabas urging her to kill him.
The sheriff and Sam are leaving Barnabas’ house with the ring when the deputy comes to the front door. He announces that Willie is coming to and is likely to start talking at any moment. We end with a closeup of a horrified Barnabas.
During the opening titles, announcer Bob Lloyd tells us that the part of Sheriff Patterson will be played by Vince O’Brien. This week’s episodes were shot out of broadcast sequence, so we will see Dana Elcar as Patterson one more time. O’Brien was on the show four times in January and February of 1967 as the second actor to play Lieutenant Dan Riley of the Maine State Police, an officer attached to an investigation concerning undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Patterson isn’t much of a character, and even an actor as distinguished as Elcar had trouble making him interesting. If we remember O’Brien from his time as Dan Riley Number Two, we know that he was a competent professional, but we won’t have much hope that he will outdo Dana Elcar.
O’Brien does show beyond all doubt that he belongs on Dark Shadows, though. While the closing credits are rolling, he strolls onto the set behind technical director J. J. Lupatkin’s name.
Dark Shadows Commentary 