Bewildered time traveler Vicki tells her lawyer/ gaoler/ boyfriend/ accomplice/ therapist/ assailant Peter that her time in the late eighteenth century seems like a nightmare. She then does something she often did in the early months of Dark Shadows, reminiscing about her childhood as an inmate of the farcically horrible Hammond Foundling Home. She says that she had so many nightmares when she was there that she became a connoisseur of nightmares. When she realized she was having a bad dream, she would choose to remain asleep right up to the moment she was about to be killed so that she could see how the whole thing would play out. I suppose that might have been useful training for a career as a character in a horror story, but if so Vicki has not benefited from it. She’s done nothing but make matters worse for herself since she arrived in the year 1795, and she is now in her last day as the defendant in a witchcraft trial which has been going very badly for her.
During this scene, Vicki gets very upset. Peter demands that she calm down and slaps her in the face when she doesn’t. That was a time-honored form of treatment for anxiety in fiction back then. It’s always gross to see, but is especially bad when the actor administering the slap is Roger Davis. Mr Davis was, shall we say, uninhibited in his physicality when dealing with his female scene partners. In his post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn includes screenshots of 10 distinct moments in this episode when Mr Davis aggressively rubs himself all over Alexandra Moltke Isles. Later in the series, he would, in separate incidents, hurt both Terrayne Crawford and Joan Bennett while on camera. His fake slap does not make contact with Mrs Isles today, but his sense of personal boundaries is so severely underdeveloped that we can hardly blame her for visibly ducking to avoid his hand.
Vicki takes the stand and says that she is a native of the twentieth century, whisked back in time by what force she knows not. Cross-examined by visiting witchfinder/ fanatical bigot/ prosecuting attorney Rev’d Trask, Vicki admits that her last memory of 1967 was when she was at a séance, and that this was not the first séance she had taken part in. Trask declares that this is an admission of witchcraft, which, if you think about it, it is. Vicki becomes upset, and we cut directly to a commercial break without a musical sting. This is a technique the show very rarely uses, and it is always effective when it does.
One of the witnesses against Vicki, untrustworthy naval officer Nathan, has a scene alone with Trask while they are waiting for the verdict. Nathan tells Trask he never thought he would meet a preacher whose specialty was blackmail. Trask denies that he blackmailed Nathan into testifying against Vicki. He has a point- it was more a matter of extortion, followed up with bribery. Anyway, actors Jerry Lacy and Joel Crothers were sensational together. Mr Lacy is exciting to watch when he’s wound up tight, the usual condition of a character on Dark Shadows, and Crothers always moved loosely and fluidly. The two of them strike an ideal balance.
The episode ends with the judges finding Vicki guilty and sentencing her to hang by the neck until dead. If we take her recollection of her childhood nightmares as a programmatic statement, we should expect her to mount the gallows and stick her head in the noose, then immediately find herself back at the séance.
Bewildered time traveler Vicki Winters is on trial for witchcraft, and it is not going well. Her lawyer/ gaoler/ boyfriend/ whatever else they don’t have the budget to hire another actor to play, an unpleasant young man named Peter, says that he wants the judges to see her as he does, as “a lovely girl who isn’t capable of witchcraft or anything else.” Unfortunately, Peter is right about Vicki’s capabilities- ever since she came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795, Vicki hasn’t done a thing worth mentioning.
Later, Peter catches up to much put-upon servant Ben Stokes. He persuades Ben to take him to the unmarked grave of wicked witch Angelique. Peter digs up the grave, but Angelique isn’t in at the moment, and there is no place to leave a message. Peter goes back to Vicki’s gaol cell and tells her that she may as well take the stand at her trial and tell the judges that she is a refugee from the 1960s.
In between these scenes, untrustworthy naval officer Nathan Forbes finds Ben and tries to pay him for information about a man who was once their mutual friend, Barnabas Collins. Ben indignantly refuses the money. When Nathan keeps trying to talk him into it, Ben handles him roughly, then stalks off.
This exchange will be of some interest to those who have been watching Dark Shadows from the beginning. Nathan is played by Joel Crothers, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s plays hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell. In #3, hard-charging businessman Burke Devlin found Joe and tried to pay him for information about the Collins family. Joe indignantly refused the money.
It’s interesting to see Crothers reprising the situation, playing the opposite role. Burke had poured on a heavy display of oily charm in response to Joe’s quiet stiffening, telling a rather alarming story about the beginning of his rise to wealth and inviting Joe to adopt him as a father figure. By contrast, Nathan retreats rather quickly in response to Ben’s angry outburst, but then rephrases the offer in a hale and hearty tone, trying to assure Ben that he sees him as an equal and wants to be his buddy.
Neither Burke nor Nathan gets anywhere with his persistence, but each man’s approach is typical of him. As a man born into the working class of Collinsport who became a millionaire, Burke proceeds from an ironclad certainty that every wage earner in town wants to follow his example. He cannot doubt that Joe will jump at the chance to take his money and his advice. As a self-involved navy officer, Nathan believes that enlisted sailors will be sincerely grateful to him if he acts like their friend, and extends that belief to include governesses, ladies’ maids, bartenders, streetwalkers, indentured servants, and everyone else he sees as his inferior.
Ben’s angry response to Nathan’s proposition also echoes the early days of the show. When Dark Shadows was set in 1966, Thayer David played violently irritable handyman Matthew Morgan. When Ben lunges at Nathan today, he is the very image of Matthew lunging at Burke in #64. But where Matthew had to be restrained by bystanders and threatened by the sheriff before he settled down, Ben quickly backs off.
The contrast between Matthew and Ben goes to the heart of the eighteenth century flashback. Each is a formidable fighter. Each is excessively devoted to a member of the Collins family, Matthew to reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Ben to Barnabas. Each lands himself in trouble because of that devotion. But Matthew grew up in a Collinsport that had been laboring under a curse for many generations. He is unstable, irrational, dangerous. But for Ben, the curse just began a few months ago, long after his adult personality was fully formed. He is a sane man, and a good one. We can hope that he will emerge from Barnabas’ shadow and make a bright future. In that hope, we can see what the curse will cost not only the Collinses, but all the people of Collinsport.
For the second Friday in a row, the identity of the actress delivering the opening voiceover ruins what is supposed to be the big surprise at the end of the week. Last Friday, we were supposed to be shocked when the ghost of gracious lady Josette appeared at the end, but when we heard Kathryn Leigh Scott at the beginning we knew she was coming. Today, we are supposed to be surprised that a phantom of wicked witch Angelique manifests at the trial of bewildered time traveler Vicki, but when Lara Parker gives the narration we know she will be along.
Until #274, all the opening voiceovers were delivered by Alexandra Moltke Isles in character as Vicki. From #275, other actresses would deliver them if Mrs Isles was not in the episode, and they were usually given in the third person. Mrs Isles lost her place as the show’s default narrator starting with #332, in which she appeared but which Grayson Hall narrated. Not until #459 will a man read the opening voiceover. Vicki and Angelique are both in this episode; Mrs Isles does sound like she has a cold, but surely it would be better to have her deliver the introduction even if she were struggling than it is to spoil the surprise by giving it to Parker.
Angelique shows up at Vicki’s trial to undercut a witness for the defense. Much put-upon servant Ben Stokes, once Angelique’s unwilling catspaw, has testified that he knows Vicki is not a witch, because he saw Angelique casting the spells for which Vicki is being blamed. He explains to the court that he went along with Angelique because he was himself subject to one of her spells. When he is asked why he is free of her power now, he finds himself in a tricky position. Ben knows that Angelique is dead. Barnabas Collins killed Angelique when he realized she had turned him into a vampire, and as Barnabas’ loyal friend Ben buried her body. Ben doesn’t want to expose Barnabas, so he can’t tell that story. He says that he supposes that he is free of her because she “went away.”
Angelique materializes outside the courtroom and enters. Shocked to see Angelique, Ben points at her and shouts that she is dead. She takes the stand as a witness for the prosecution and recaps some plot points from the episodes where Vicki was arrested. Everything she says is true, and she shows no animus towards Vicki, but her appearance both discredits Ben and adds to the case for the prosecution. She leaves the room and dematerializes. When everyone is gone, she rematerializes and laughs merrily.
When Angelique was alive, she never took much interest in Vicki. It wasn’t even her idea to frame Vicki for her crimes- Vicki stumbled into the witchcraft charge by her own foolish behavior, and Angelique just helped the prosecution along a couple of times. So it is a bit odd that she bothers to come back from the dead, however briefly, to ensure Vicki’s conviction. No doubt we are supposed to think she is doing it because Barnabas wants Vicki to be acquitted, and she wants to deny Barnabas any happiness. But a more intriguing interpretation is possible. In a comment on Danny Horn’s post about this episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, “Jason” writes:
I don’t really understand the confusion over Angelique”s motive. This Angelique is from the future. She knows that Barnabas is in love with Victoria in 1967. In fact I would argue that is the entire reason Vicki went back in time. Angelique orchest rated it to get rid of Vick either as part of curse or to get Barnabs when she return’s to 1968.
Comment by “Jason,” left at 12:30 AM Pacific time 10 September 2019 on Danny Horn, “Episode 435: Next Stop Kansas,” Dark Shadows Every Day
This idea was enlarged in a followup comment, apparently by the same person:
The reason it has to be Angelique from the future is this never happened the first time. So obviously thI’d Angelique is from the future. The only way this storyline makes sense!
Comment by “Jas,” left at 12:36 AM Pacific time 10 September 2019 on Danny Horn, “Episode 435: Next Stop Kansas,” Dark Shadows Every Day
When Vicki went back in time in #365, the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah was speaking through her at a séance, saying that she ought to “tell the story from the beginning.” In the months leading up to that episode, we had seen that Sarah was the face of an enormously powerful complex of supernatural phenomena, so it made sense that she would be the one to rend the fabric of time and space and turn the show into a costume drama set in the late eighteenth century. But we won’t be seeing Sarah again, not least because the actress isn’t ten years old anymore and ghosts aren’t allowed to grow up. So we’re going to tend towards other ways of thinking about the temporal disruptions. Angelique can stick with the show for the long term, and she’s already been built up as the biggest of all the Big Bads. So “Jason’s” theory is likely to become more appealing as we go.
Today is taken up with the witchcraft trial of bewildered time-traveler Victoria Winters. That is to say, the actors stand around the courtroom set and shout random nonsense at each other until it is time for the closing credits.
Two of the good actors whose talents are wasted in this episode. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
The only line of dialogue that made an impression on me was Vicki shouting “That’s! Not! TROOOO!” when untrustworthy naval officer Nathan Forbes was on the stand falsely accusing her of something or other. In the first months of the show, Vicki often shouted that to strange and troubled boy David, usually in response to David saying something that the audience knew was perfectly true. In those days, the show’s slow pace and its focus on the budding friendship between Vicki and David gave Alexandra Moltke Isles and David Henesy a chance to overcome the crummy writing of their scenes together and show us what it looks like when two people learn to trust each other. But the part of the show set in the late eighteenth century moves at a rapid clip, and nothing human is at stake in the witchcraft trial. So when we hear another “That’s! Not! TROOOO!” this time, we miss the days when Mrs Isles was in a position to rescue us from the writers’ delinquencies.
When Nathan makes his entrance, we hear some music I don’t believe we have heard before. Christine Scoleri of Dark Shadows Before I Die identified it as a piece that it is on Dark Shadows: The Soundtrack Music Collection as “Cue 157: Dramatic Curtain.” It doesn’t fit the situation. It’s a busy little tune, suggestive of fidgety nervousness. It’s true that the whole trial is just so much fidgeting on the part of the show, but the background music really isn’t the place to complain about that.
The opening voiceover melds into a sequence in which we cut back and forth between repressed spinster Abigail Collins and the fanatical Rev’d Mr Trask standing in front of black backgrounds, looking directly into the camera, and declaring that the trial of bewildered time-traveler Vicki for witchcraft must begin at once.
Soap Opera Land famously does not observe the legal codes that prevail elsewhere. If that is going to bother you, you probably aren’t in the right frame of mind to enjoy the show at all. But there is an art to depicting a fictional trial. You can deviate as much as you like from the rules that prevail in the real world, but there have to be some kind of rules the audience can understand. We can either see those rules applied with the result that a disorderly world is reduced to order, or see them flouted so that our heroes’ hopes of justice are cruelly dashed. If we aren’t aware of any rules, there is no point in setting the play in a courtroom.
That’s the first problem with Vicki’s trial. Now and then her lawyer/ gaoler/ boyfriend/ etc Peter will object to some question or move that a statement be stricken, and once or twice the judges will agree with him. But they are just as likely to respond to identical protests by ordering him to stop interrupting. The witnesses respond to questions with extended free association sessions. Vicki herself interrupts testimony repeatedly, usually to make self-incriminating remarks, and no one tries to stop her. Trask is for some reason simultaneously the prosecutor and one of the witnesses. Opposing counsel periodically engage in shouting matches with each other while the judges watch. The whole thing is so chaotic that it may as well be taking place in a bar-room or at the county fair or on the waterfront after dark.
The second problem with the trial is that it requires Peter to raise his voice repeatedly. Actor Roger Davis can deliver dialogue more or less competently when he is speaking in a normal conversational tone, but his loud voice always tends toward an ugly snarl. This is a major limitation for any performer on a show as shouty as Dark Shadows, but the opposition of Peter to Trask puts Davis head to head with Jerry Lacy, who is a virtuoso of shouting. Next to Lacy’s, Davis’ shouting is not recognizable as a performance.
When I’m watching a scene on Dark Shadows that suffers because of an actor’s shortcomings, I sometimes try to make it bearable by imagining what it would have been like had someone else who may have been available for the part been cast instead. Harvey Keitel was an extra on the show in #33; no doubt he would have accepted a speaking part if offered. Roger Davis plays Peter as a deeply angry man, and Mr Keitel is one of the very best at making audiences empathize with such characters. So it’s interesting to try to picture him as Peter.
On the other hand, there’s nothing in the scripts that requires Peter to constantly seethe with barely contained rage. That was Mr Davis’ contribution. Had the show gone with a more amiable Peter, they might have been able to cast Frederic Forrest in the part. In #137, Forrest was a background player. While Forrest played his share of angry men over the years, he also excelled as goofily cheerful characters, most famously as Chef in Apocalypse Now. I would have liked to see Peter played that way. I think he would have had some real chemistry with Alexandra Moltke Isles’ Vicki, and that we would have had protective feelings for him as he went up against the formidable Trask.
There is a third problem with the trial that neither Harvey Keitel nor the late Frederic Forrest could have done any more with than could Mrs Isles. That is that Vicki and Peter are written as phenomenally stupid. Vicki hasn’t done a single intelligent thing since arriving in the late eighteenth century in November,* but she has become, if anything, even dumber since 1795 gave way to 1796. Peter’s behavior has also been deeply foolish, and today he hits rock bottom when he blurts out to the court that he abused his position as gaoler to help Vicki sneak out, to commit a burglary at the great house of Collinwood, and to steal evidence against her so that it could not be presented to the court. Even under Soap Opera Law, that’s three felonies.
Some claim that the phrase “Dumb Vicki” is ableist. I disagree. “Dumb” really does not mean “mute” anymore, so that using it isn’t ableist against people who do not have the power of speech. And the intelligence characters like Peter and this version of Vicki lack is not the intelligence that IQ tests are supposed to measure. One of the most interesting characters in the part of Dark Shadows set in the eighteenth century is fluttery heiress Millicent Collins, who would probably fall far short of a triple digit score on a Stanford-Binet scale, but whose behavior makes sense to us because we tell what she wants out of life and how she thinks her actions will help her get it. That’s really all we mean when we talk about a “smart character.” A well-crafted story about someone with profound developmental disabilities can depict that person as a smart character, in that sense, as easily as can one about a great sage or a brilliant scientist. Vicki and Peter are not smart characters, no matter how what kind of school we might suppose would best suit them as students, because there is nothing for us to learn by observing their behavior and no suspense as to what their several actions will add up to. They just do one damn thing after another.
Clarice Blackburn and Jerry Lacy do some fine acting today, as does Grayson Hall in a brief turn as the Countess DuPrés. The pre-title bit with Blackburn and Lacy in front of the black backgrounds is so specific to theater in the 1960s that I can’t help but smile at it, but I’m glad it’s there. It isn’t as though you could ever really forget that the show is 56 years old, and I like to see that they preserved something that would have been so typical of the off-Broadway productions that would have been such a big part of the working lives of the cast and other creatives in those days.
*In her testimony today, Abigail gives the dramatic date of Vicki’s arrival in the past as 12 October 1795. The episodes in which the events she describes happened were broadcast on 17 November and 20 November 1967. In the last few weeks, the show has explicitly told us that the day and month of the dramatic setting in 1796 is the same as the broadcast date in 1968, so it’s confusing.
The Countess DuPrés (Grayson Hall) complains to her niece, gracious lady Josette (Kathryn Leigh Scott,) that life on the great estate of Collinwood is nothing but “a series of prepared speeches.” It’s hard to top that for commentary on this episode, but I do have a couple of things to add.
Josette has been seeing her lover and onetime fiancée, the late Barnabas Collins. Since his death, Barnabas has become a vampire. On Friday, he bit Josette. Now, she is trying to conceal her neck wounds from her aunt.
Josette, her neck wounds visible. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die. These wounds are a single piece of makeup. Kathryn Leigh Scott still has it, she showed it in a Dark Shadows cast reunion on Zoom in 2020. The other cast members didn’t know why she wanted it any more than I do. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Those who have been watching Dark Shadows for a while will find this story all too familiar. Until #365, the show was set in contemporary times, 1966 to 1967. Since then, it has been set in the years from 1795 to 1796. In the segments set in the 1960s, Miss Scott plays Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, and Hall plays mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Maggie was Barnabas’ victim in May and June of 1967, and after she escaped from him, Julia was her psychiatrist. The countess is different enough from Julia that Hall has a lot of room to maneuver. But there are only so many ways an actor can convey the idea that her character is in a daze and alternately blissful and defensive. So Miss Scott winds up recycling the performance she gave as Maggie, and the result is pretty stale.
We traveled back to the 18th century with well-meaning governess Vicki. Vicki has not in any way adapted to her new environment, with the result that she is now in gaol on charges of witchcraft. When the countess visits her today, Vicki tells her that she is from the 1960s and that in that period she had learned from history and legend that a grim fate awaits Josette. The countess concludes from Vicki’s presentation that she is indeed a witch, and that she is not giving her warnings, but is cruelly gloating over the evil spells she has cast.
Vicki is accompanied by her gaoler/ defense attorney/ boyfriend, Peter. Peter had tried to stop her blabbing to the countess, and asks her why she did it. Vicki says that she is counting on the idea that if she keeps telling the truth, people will have to believe her. Peter asks her to think of how she would react if someone from the 21st century traveled to 1968 and went around telling everyone how and when they were going to die. At this, Vicki’s eyes widen. “Oh, Peter, what a fool I’ve been!”
At that, we can hear the sound of the viewing public giving up on Vicki once and for all. Peter isn’t even the first person to try to explain her situation to her. Both kindly gentleman Jeremiah Collins and caddish naval officer Nathan Forbes gave her explicit instructions about her need to lie and scam her way through her predicament, and neither of them made any impression on her. Movie reviewer Roger Ebert famously described stories that work only because the characters do things the average member of the audience would be too smart to do “idiot plots”; for the last eleven weeks, Vicki has been the Designated Dum-Dum at the heart of the most irritating idiot plot imaginable.
There actually is a very sweet little scene between Vicki and Peter right after that low point. She tells him about airplanes and other features of twentieth century life, and he tries to figure out what she’s talking about. Almost all of the anger we feel towards Vicki for being written so badly and towards Peter for being played by Roger Davis melts away by the end of that scene.
For the first 39 weeks of Dark Shadows, well-meaning governess Vicki was the main protagonist. Her understated, sometimes diffident manner fit with the pace and themes of the show in that period. When the show introduced its first supernatural villain, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, Vicki rose to the occasion and led the opposition to her. When Laura went up in smoke, the last of the themes that made Vicki a suitable lead went with her. Vicki remained our chief point-of-view character for some time after that, but she didn’t find much footing in any of the stories. She receded steadily from center stage for months.
In November 1967, Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795. At first this seemed to be an opportunity for a reset, but Vicki wound up being written in the time-travel story as a complete moron. She kept yelling at the other characters that they were being played by actors who had other parts in the first 73 weeks of the show, refused to take advice from people who tried to explain how she could fit in with her new surroundings, and insistently held onto possessions that eighteenth century people would take as evidence that she was evil. Now she finds herself in gaol, accused of witchcraft and facing a possible death sentence.
The other day, the gracious Josette visited Vicki in gaol and begged her to lift the spell that had brought a terminal illness on the gallant Barnabas Collins. Unable to persuade Josette that she was not a witch, Vicki told her that she had come from the future and brought with her a book about the history of the Collins family printed in the twentieth century. She told Josette where to find this book. When she did find it, Josette was more convinced than ever that Vicki was the witch.
Now, Barnabas has died. Josette visits Vicki again, and vows to do whatever she can to see that she is hanged. Josette is so distraught over Barnabas’ death that she quite calmly says she may want to take her own life soon, but she does look forward fondly to testifying against Vicki and seeing her execution.
Josette takes consolation in the idea that she will help get Vicki sentenced to death. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
After Josette leaves, Vicki asks her gaoler/ defense attorney/ prospective boyfriend Peter to sneak her out of the gaol. She wants to go to Collinwood and steal the book back.
Evidently Peter is no brighter than Vicki, because he agrees to this plan. Vicki goes to Josette’s bedroom. As we might have expected, Vicki is seen in the room- Josette’s aunt, the Countess DuPrés, opens the door and finds her with the book in her hands. By the time the countess returns with Josette and the witch-hunting Rev’d Trask, Vicki and the book are gone. This will be Vicki’s own bedroom in 1967, and she knows of a secret passage leading out of it. The other three do not know of this passage, and no one in 1795 knows of any reason Vicki would be aware of it. So far as they know, she has appeared and disappeared by magic.
Back in the gaol, Peter locks Vicki in her cell and hides the book in his desk. Trask and the ladies knock on the door and demand to see Vicki. Peter swears that she has been in her cell all night. Josette is concerned that they no longer have the book, but Trask says they don’t need it- only a witch can be in two places at once. Peter’s statement will suffice to put Vicki’s neck in the noose.
As of this writing (18 January 2024,) four of the five actors in this episode are still alive. Only Grayson Hall is no longer with us; she died in 1985. Hall’s countess, like Kathryn Leigh Scott’s Josette and Jerry Lacy’s Trask, is a lot of fun to watch. Vicki is so brainless that the part defeats Alexandra Moltke Isles, and Roger Davis is never an agreeable screen presence. So we wind up cheering on the people who want to put the heroine to death and hoping that her love interest joins her on the gibbet.
The Rev’d Mr Trask, a cleric of sorts, is convinced that there is a witch in the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. He is right about this. He is also convinced that the witch is the eccentric Victoria Winters. He is wrong on this point. The real witch is Angelique Collins, wife of the master of the house, the gallant Barnabas. Barnabas, who as a man of the Enlightenment asserts that there are no witches, is hiding Vicki, and has reluctantly agreed to let Trask perform a rite of exorcism, believing that once he is finished he will have to go away and everyone will have to admit that Vicki is innocent.
At the top of the episode, we see Angelique building a house of cards and delivering a soliloquy about her plan to cast a spell to make it look like Trask’s fraudulent ritual has proven Vicki’s guilt. There is an element of suspense as we wonder what the character’s actions will lead to, and an even more powerful suspense as we marvel at the courage it took for the actress to remain calm enough build a house of cards on what is essentially a live television show. Forget the Daytime Emmys, Lara Parker deserved a medal for this feat.
Angelique recites a spell over the house of cards, then sets it on fire. The first time they used an incompletely contained fire on Dark Shadows was in #191, and as a result of that daring experiment a load-bearing beam caught fire and collapsed in the middle of a scene. They finished taping before putting the fire out, and somehow everyone survived. There was also an off-camera fire during a conversation between Barnabas and Vicki in #290, and Jonathan Frid and Alexandra Moltke Isles just kept delivering their lines while we heard fire extinguishers blasting in the background. As a result of an excessive pre-treatment of the cards with lighter fluid, today’s fire burns faster and expels debris over a wider area than had been intended. I suppose a technical term for a rapid fire that expels debris is an “explosion.” Parker keeps up her incantation while this explosion progresses directly in her face. That shows an entirely different kind of courage than she showed with the house of cards, but she exhibits it in an equally rare degree.
Downstairs, Trask is standing at the threshold of the house, doing his own fire ceremony. He draws Vicki’s initials on the doorstep, holds up a dowsing rod, and jabbers for a while. Then he sets fire to the rod. In her room, Vicki sees flames erupting from the floor. She shouts in panic.
Barnabas is upstairs. He hears Angelique shouting “Eye of fire, heart of ice!” Her shouts grow louder and louder as she repeats the phrases faster and faster. My wife, Mrs Acilius, said that the pattern of Angelique’s voice sounded to her like someone having an orgasm. The willingness to risk the laugh that pattern might bring represents a third form of courage; by this point, we would have to admit that whatever we may think of Angelique, Lara Parker was one of the bravest people imaginable.
Barnabas is about to investigate, but then he hears Vicki shouting “Fire!” Between these two shouting women, he goes to the one who doesn’t sound like she’s enjoying herself. By the time he gets to Vicki’s room, she is gone. He sees no sign of fire.
Vicki runs out the front door, into Trask’s arms. He shouts “I’ve caught the witch!” and forces her to the ground. He looks delighted that his shtick actually worked, for once.
This moment is an odd inversion of the ending of #191. That episode ends with strange and troubled boy David running out of the burning building where his mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, was trying to immolate him, and finding refuge in Vicki’s arms. At that moment, life triumphs over death, and Dark Shadows version 1.0 reaches its conclusion.
When Vicki runs out of the house and into Trask’s arms, death and folly win a victory over life and reason. Nothing comes to a conclusion- the story just gains new layers of complexity. We don’t even go to a commercial break, but get a reaction from Angelique first.
Barnabas talks with Angelique, mystified by what just happened. When he mentions that he heard her in her old room shouting strange words, she lies and says she was in the sewing room. After she leaves, we hear his thoughts- he had searched the sewing room, and knows she is lying. He now believes that there is a witch. He would find it much easier to believe that Vicki, a strange girl who claims to be displaced in time from the year 1967, 172 years in the future, is that witch than to face the prospect that his own wife is, but he can neither overlook the lie she has told nor the sheer improbability that so flagrant a quack as Trask came up with the right answer to any question. He remembers that indentured servant Ben claimed to have been enslaved by the witch, and resolves to find out what Ben can tell him.
We first got to know Barnabas in the months between April and November of 1967, when he was a vampire preying on the living in Vicki’s native time. In those days, he never mentioned Angelique, and there was no indication that he suspected any of the witchcraft we have seen since we embarked on our journey to 1795. Perhaps in the original timeline, when the place Vicki has taken was occupied by a woman named Phyllis Wick, Angelique had to proceed more slowly and carefully, with the result that Barnabas was turned into a ghoul without ever picking up on what was going on. If so, it would be Vicki’s complete failure to adapt to her new time in any way that accelerated the pace of events and thereby exposed Angelique to Barnabas’ suspicions.
Wrongly suspected of witchcraft, bewildered time-traveler Vicki has found refuge in the home of young gentleman Barnabas Collins. Vicki doesn’t know it yet, but last night Barnabas married a woman named Angelique. Vicki knew Angelique when they were both working in the home of Barnabas’ family, Vicki as a governess, Angelique as a lady’s maid. Unknown to almost anyone, Angelique is the real witch and is glad Vicki has fallen into taking the blame for her evil deeds.
Angelique herself is in the dark about Vicki’s presence in the house. She chances upon Vicki in the morning. Angelique is the only character in the segment of Dark Shadows set in the year 1795 to address her as “Vicki”; everyone else insists on calling her “Victoria” or “Miss Winters.” Since we have known Vicki since the first episode, and we know that her friends call her “Vicki,” hearing her use that form of the name tells us that Angelique has presented herself to Vicki as a friend.
Angelique tells Vicki that she and Barnabas are now married. If Vicki had learned anything from the long string of failures to adapt to the mores of 1795 that have brought her to her current state, she would respond to this by lowering her eyes, curtsying, and saying “Mrs. Collins.” But instead, she reacts with a blank stare. Angelique asks what if she is merely startled by the news, or is shocked. Vicki resumes babbling, still calling Angelique by her first name, still referring to Barnabas by his.
Not only is Vicki continuing to flout the modes of address conventional to the period in which she finds herself, she seems genuinely unaware that a newlywed might be disturbed to stumble upon an attractive young woman her husband is hiding in the house. After a minute or two, it occurs to her to ask Angelique if she wants her to stay. Angelique says that because Barnabas is the master of the house, it is not for her to object. Vicki responds by jumping into her face and exclaiming “But you’re the mistress!” Even after that, she keeps on with her first-naming of Barnabas and Angelique and shows absolutely no sign of awareness that Angelique might be concerned about the nature of Barnabas’ attachment to her.
“But you’re the mistress!”
Downstairs, Angelique asks Barnabas about Vicki. He asks incredulously if she is jealous. Barnabas didn’t visit Angelique in her bedroom on their wedding night and she knows that he tends to make free with servant girls, since that’s how they met. Even so, he can’t figure out why Angelique might be unhappy to find that he has Vicki stashed in the house. It really is a shame Barnabas and Vicki didn’t marry, just imagine what oblivious children they might have had. They might have been the progenitors of a whole line of Detective Frank Drebins.
Later, Angelique has a spell she wants to cast on Barnabas’ aunt, repressed spinster Abigail Collins. She summons indentured servant Ben, whom she has enslaved. She orders Ben to steal Abigail’s hair ribbon from her night-stand. Ben is horrified by the command. It would have been bad enough if he had been caught sneaking into one of the gentlemen’s bedrooms, but he might have been able to talk his way out of that. If he is found in a lady’s bedroom, he’ll be lucky if all that happens is that he’s sent back to prison for several years. Impatient, Angelique tells him not to get caught.
Abigail does catch Ben in her room with the hair ribbon in his hand. She was the first to suspect witchcraft at Collinwood, before there even was any. Ben begs her not to ask him any questions, but she isn’t having it. She presses him, and he says that the witch sent him. She demands he say the witch’s name, wanting to hear him say “Victoria Winters.” He is about to say “Angelique” when we see her, in the Old House, cast the spell that causes him to choke. This scene takes about a minute to make all the points the story needs, but goes on for several times that long. That doesn’t hurt a thing- Clarice Blackburn and Thayer David were such a pair of pros that they could hold the audience’s attention for a good deal longer with a lot less to work with. It’s a fine ending.
Well-meaning governess Vicki is wrongly suspected of witchcraft and needs a place to hide. Young gentleman Barnabas takes her into his house. In her gratitude, Vicki tells Barnabas the truth about herself. She is a time-traveler, yanked back to this year 1795 from her native 1967 by forces she does not understand. Indentured servant Ben enters the room and Vicki leaves. Mystified by her story, Barnabas asks Ben if he thinks Vicki might be a witch after all.
It is exciting when Vicki starts confiding in Barnabas. She has utterly failed to adapt to her new environment, and has none of the abilities she would need to scam her way into a secure place there. She has ended up as an obstacle to story development and an irritating screen presence. If Vicki isn’t going to lie competently, she may as well tell the truth. But that turns out to be a dead end as well- there is no use for Barnabas to make of the information she has given him.
Barnabas doesn’t repeat Vicki’s story to Ben- he just reports that she said something utterly bizarre. What Barnabas does not know, but Ben does, is that there really is a witch in the house- it is Barnabas’ bride-to-be Angelique. Angelique has enslaved Ben, so if he found out Vicki’s secret she would as well, and would be able to use it against her as she frames Vicki for all of her own crimes. Ben proclaims to Barnabas his absolute certainty that Vicki is not a witch, but since he can’t tell anyone about Angelique, this only puzzles Barnabas. Barnabas is further baffled when Ben says he hopes that Barnabas’ marriage to Angelique brings an end to his troubles.
The other day, Angelique tried to solve a problem of her own by raising a corpse from its grave. This was the late Jeremiah Collins, uncle of Barnabas and his best friend until, under the influence of Angelique’s spell, he and Barnabas’ fiancée Josette eloped together. Barnabas responded to that by challenging Jeremiah to a duel. Conscience-stricken, Jeremiah decided to let Barnabas kill him and told Josette that she would be free to marry Barnabas once he was dead.
Angelique had ordered Jeremiah to plague Josette and Barnabas with angry demands that they stay apart. We could interpret that simply as puppetry on Angelique’s part. But today, Jeremiah is harassing Angelique and refusing her repeated commands to go back to his grave. He says he was at peace in the earth until Angelique disturbed him. He was content with his decision to forfeit his life, but now he has become something he didn’t bargain for. Maybe it’s the indignity of that change that accounts for his change of personality, or maybe he’s just cranky because he can’t get back to sleep.
Regular viewers will think of a third possibility. In the segments of Dark Shadows set in 1966 and 1967, we saw other supernatural beings, such as undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins and the ghosts of Josette and of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah. These beings looked at first glance like humans, but the more we learned about them the clearer it became that each was in fact a complex of multiple entities, some of which operated independently of and occasionally at cross-purposes with others. As a witch, Angelique might also be a composite being. Perhaps each time she casts a spell, she breaks off a little piece of herself and deposits it within the person she is trying to control. If so, the creature she is trying to send away is not simply Jeremiah, but the body of Jeremiah animated by a chunk of the spirit of Angelique. That would explain why the actions of the risen Jeremiah are characterized by three traits that were alien to the living man, but that Angelique has in abundance- single-mindedness, vengefulness, and ineffectiveness.
Barnabas, Ben, and a clergyman are in the front parlor, ready for the wedding. Angelique takes a long time to come downstairs. Barnabas goes up to her room to see what is keeping her. He finds her terribly upset, insisting that they have the ceremony somewhere else. Barnabas looks in her suitcase, which had a moment before held the clothes she removed to put on her bridal gown. Those clothes have vanished, and in their place Barnabas finds a doll belonging to his little sister Sarah and some pins. Had Barnabas ever seen a horror movie, he would know to interpret this as a clue from Jeremiah that Angelique had caused a recent illness of Sarah’s by sticking pins in her doll, but people didn’t get to the cinema in 1795, so it’s another dead end.
Angelique composes herself and says she will be right down for the wedding. Barnabas leaves the room. The door closes itself, and Angelique cannot open it. Jeremiah enters and tells Angelique she must be punished for disturbing the dead. He takes her to his grave, which is open. Angelique raised Jeremiah some days ago- if the grave has been open this whole time, you’d think someone would have noticed and people would be talking about it. Anyway, he puts her in the grave, and from her point of view we see him throwing dirt into it.
Jeremiah dropping dirt onto Angelique, from her point of view. Screenshot by
This is the first live burial we’ve seen on Dark Shadows. It’s true that the POV shot from inside the grave echoes a moment in #248 when Barnabas, who is in 1967 a vampire, shuts his prisoner Maggie Evans in a coffin and we see him through her eyes, but that coffin wasn’t in the ground.
Harking back as it does to that shocking moment from Barnabas’ early days on the show, the image of the reanimated Jeremiah dropping dirt in the grave invites us to make a comparison between Jeremiah and Barnabas. In life Jeremiah was a mild-mannered, good-hearted fellow, as is the living Barnabas. The destructive behavior he has exhibited since Angelique raised him from the dead is not only typical of her, but also of what we saw from the vampire Barnabas in 1967. Again, we wonder if the fate that awaits Barnabas is not only something Angelique will do to him, but if everything we saw of him in the months between April and November was what Angelique was doing disguised as him.
Closing Miscellany
Angelique’s repeated commands to Jeremiah today to “Go back to your grave!” find an echo in one of the great moments in the history of Dark Shadows conventions, when Lara Parker used that line to explain the Dark Shadows house style of acting:
“Go back to your grave!!!!!”
When Vicki tells Barnabas the truth about herself, the camerawork makes Alexandra Moltke Isles’ strabismus impossible to miss. Previously they had taken great care to photograph her from angles that would obscure this condition, but we’re going to get another clear look at it on Thursday. Combined with the lousy lines the scripts have given Vicki since the beginning of the 1795 segment, it is hard not to suspect that there was some kind of deliberate effort behind the scenes to push Mrs Isles aside.
This was the first episode of Dark Shadows broadcast in 1968. The copyright date printed on the screen at the end still says 1967. They were several months late before they stopped putting “1966” there, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised they didn’t update it for an episode shown on New Year’s Day.
