angelique – Page 6 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 618: Long goodbye

Well-meaning governess Vicki Winters came to the great house of Collinwood in #1, called to take charge of the education of strange and troubled boy David Collins. Vicki’s attempt to befriend David was the only theme that consistently generated interesting scenes in the first several months of Dark Shadows, largely because Alexandra Moltke Isles and David Henesy were able to overcome weak writing by subordinating their dialogue to a story they were telling with body language, facial expressions, and tones of voice. Often as not, they used their lines as devices to switch meaningful silences off and on.

Another arc that occasionally brought some life to Dark Shadows in those early days was the conflict between David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, and the family’s sworn nemesis, Burke Devlin. Vicki and Burke came to town on the same train, and a romance would bud between them. But Vicki is, after all, modeled on Jane Eyre, and it is not for nothing that her charge’s father has a name that sounds rather like “Rochester.”

Several times in the early days, it seemed that something might take shape between Vicki and Roger. They bantered suggestively in #4, went on a date in #78, and when they found themselves alone in an abandoned house in #96 Roger joked about carrying her over the threshold. In the original series bible, Shadows on the Wall, writer Art Wallace gave it as the first option that when Vicki’s mysterious origins were revealed, we would learn that she was the daughter of Roger’s brother-in-law, the estranged husband of his sister Liz. Wallace allowed that it might be more story-productive to have her be Liz’ daughter, and from the time Mrs Isles was cast, her strong resemblance to Joan Bennett pointed the show in that direction. The advantage of making Vicki the daughter of the unseen Paul Stoddard would be that she and Roger could marry. Of course, it is a soap opera, so if she were Liz’ unacknowledged daughter, that fact would come out when she and Roger were about to marry.

Nothing did come of Vicki and Roger’s flirtations. The relationship between Vicki and David and that between Roger and Burke were subsumed in the first of the show’s major supernatural storylines, the tale of David’s mother, Laura the immortal Phoenix. In the course of that storyline, the question of Vicki’s parentage was, for the last time, unceremoniously dropped. By the time Laura vanished in a cloud of smoke in #191, there was nothing left unresolved in Dark Shadows 1.0, and it was time to bring on the vampire.

Vicki never really found her footing thereafter. For a while vampire Barnabas Collins kept saying to his sorely bedraggled blood thrall, Willie Loomis, that he planned to make Vicki his next victim, but he didn’t get around to biting her, not even when she invited herself to spend the night sleeping at his house in #286.

Vicki traveled back in time in #365, taking us with her to the year 1795 and turning Dark Shadows into a costume drama.Vicki’s displacement in time raised the hopes of longtime viewers that she would do what Barnabas had done in the previous several months and scramble to pretend that she was native to the alien period of history in which she had suddenly materialized. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the show turned her into an intolerable moron, yammering at the actors about the roles they had played in the first 73 weeks of the show. By the time the people of Collinsport finally sent her to the gallows in #460, much of the audience was on their side.

After Vicki and Dark Shadows came back to contemporary dress in March 1968, Barnabas finally did bite her, but her time as his victim only lasted a few days. He was cured of vampirism in #466. Shortly after, Vicki found herself in a romance with an angry little man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Peter/ Jeff is exceedingly unpleasant to watch, and Vicki shares more and more of her scenes with him. Fortunately, Peter/ Jeff does not appear today, but Vicki spends most of her time talking about him, reminding us of the dead end where she has ended up.

Yesterday, Roger saw Peter/ Jeff locked in a passionate kiss with another woman while Vicki was in the next room. He yielded to Peter/ Jeff’s demand that he not tell Vicki about this, then had a nightmare in which Vicki turns into a skeleton during her wedding to Peter/ Jeff.

Today, Roger tells Vicki about the dream and declares it to be a sign that she must not marry Peter/ Jeff. She is puzzled. Roger habitually scoffs at dreams and the supernatural, so she cannot understand why he would take this nightmare so seriously. She asks if he has other reasons for opposing her marriage. He flashes a pained expression, indicating his regret that he did not tell her what he saw Peter/ Jeff doing and his sense that he is honor-bound not to tell her now. He says no, the dream is all there is. Vicki does not accept this. She says “Well, I think there has to be. And I don’t think it’s anything to do with the way you feel about me, so that only leaves Jeff. Why do you feel hostilities toward him?”

Anyone who remembers the early Jane/ Rochester hints and is still shipping Vicki/ Roger (there are some even now) will be disappointed by the utter blandness of Vicki’s “I don’t think it’s anything to do with the way you feel about me.” I sympathize- Vicki and Roger would be a lot of fun to watch as an unhappily married couple, certainly more fun than anything involving Peter/ Jeff.

Meanwhile, Barnabas has himself become the victim of a vampire, his ex-wife Angelique. She has dragged him off to some spot in the woods and told him she will turn him back into a vampire in a few days. She leaves him alone at dawn, but he is too weak from loss of blood to go far. He wonders who can help him; he decides that he cannot call on any of the friends who have been helping him in his ongoing battles, since Angelique would think of them as soon as she arises. Vicki comes to mind as someone Angelique would not associate with him. There is some verbiage about his tender regard for Vicki suggesting he would not involve her in anything so dangerous, but of course the real point is that Vicki is not part of Barnabas’ story. Just as the scenes with Roger loop back to the failure of the Jane/ Rochester romance to take wing, so Barnabas’ decision to turn to Vicki loops back to her exclusion from the vampire story.

Barnabas is staggering through the woods, calling Vicki’s name. She is far away in the great house, but has a telepathic sensation that he is on the move. She goes into a mild trance and leaves the house. Evidently the connection they established during the brief period when he was sucking her blood has not vanished entirely. In the woods, Barnabas falls to the ground, and a moment later Vicki finds him there. He is happy to see her, but says she has come “too late.” Barnabas seems to fade out of consciousness. Vicki leans down to cradle his head in her hands, and exclaims “It can’t be! It can’t be!”

Too late for Vicki. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The audience wouldn’t have known it in 1968, but it was most definitely too late for Vicki. Mrs Isles had already decided to leave the show; her last episode would be recorded on 12 November 1968, less than a week after this one aired. In one of the MPI interviews, she said that this was because she was going to have a baby. “I was getting pregnanter and pregnanter,” she said, and “no one was making any moves” to write Vicki out of the show. Considering that Rosemary’s Baby was a big hit at the time, she was worried “that my pregnancy might be a convenient element to the plot,” so she took steps. Eventually the part would be recast, first with Betsy Durkin, then with Carolyn Groves. Vicki barely had any reason to be on the show even when Mrs Isles was playing her, and those other actresses didn’t get any more opportunities to contribute. Her departure was the true end of the character.

Episode 616: When a woman has a man in her power

In June 1967, vampire Barnabas Collins locked his victim Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, in the prison cell in the basement of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. The ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah appeared to Maggie several times while she was in the cell. Sarah told Maggie that no one could know she had been to the cell, and particularly warned her not to tell her “big brother” she had seen her. With some reluctance, Sarah eventually gave Maggie a clue that led her to a hidden passage. Sarah’s father had sworn her to secrecy about the passage, and that not even her big brother knew about it. Maggie finally puzzled out the clue, enabling her to escape just moments before Barnabas came to the cell with the intention of killing her. When Barnabas chased Maggie through the hidden passage in #260, the wondering expression on his face confirmed that he had never had any idea the passage was there.

From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the years 1795 and 1796, the period when Barnabas and Sarah were living beings and the Old House was their home. We saw how cruelly their father, haughty overlord Joshua, treated his indentured servant Ben, and we saw that Joshua had the great house of Collinwood built with a prison cell in its basement. Joshua confined Ben to that cell in #401. With that, we could be sure that Maggie’s cell was already in the basement of the Old House when Barnabas and Sarah lived there, and could surmise that Joshua really did forbid the living Sarah to share with Barnabas or anyone else what she had found about the hidden passage.

The show never explained how Sarah found out about the passage. We might imagine her hiding and watching Joshua or someone else do maintenance on the cell. But the fact that Joshua kept the existence of the escape hatch from Barnabas suggests he wanted the option of locking his son in the cell. Why not his daughter as well? Perhaps Sarah found the passage while confined in the cell herself. Or perhaps some other, older ghost appeared to her while she was there and told her about it. That the clue she gives Maggie is in the form of a rhyme (“One, two, away they flew…”) would suggest this latter possibility. Sarah may have memorized the rhyme as she memorized the lyrics to “London Bridge” and may have solved the riddle as Maggie solves it.

Shortly after Dark Shadows came back to a contemporary setting in March 1968, Barnabas was cured of vampirism. That cure was stabilized in May, when he donated some of his “life force” to the creation of Frankenstein’s monster Adam in an experiment completed by his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Barnabas and Julia locked Adam up in the basement prison cell for the first weeks of his life. Vampires and mad scientists are metaphors for selfishness, so it is hardly surprising that they are horribly bad parents. But if Joshua was in the habit of locking his children in that same cell, the moments when Barnabas takes fatherly pride in the imprisoned Adam take on a special pathos. It really does seem like a normal situation to him.

Adam escaped from the cell in #500, demolishing the doorway in the process. Today we see that it has been rebuilt. Perhaps to Barnabas, a house just isn’t a home unless it has a prison cell in the basement.

Now, Barnabas has himself become the blood thrall of a vampire, his ex-wife Angelique. Discovering the bite marks, Julia decides to address the situation by locking Barnabas and his servant Willie in the cell. Barnabas won’t be able to get out to heed Angelique’s summons, and Willie hangs a cross over the door to keep her from materializing inside it.

Left to right: Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid); Willie Loomis (John Karlen); Julia Hoffman (Lady Elaine Fairchilde.) Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We cut to Maggie’s house. Maggie’s memory of her ordeal as Barnabas’ victim has been wiped from her mind a couple of times. She receives a visitor, the suave Nicholas Blair. Unknown to Maggie, Nicholas is a warlock and Angelique’s master. He has a crush on Maggie which has distracted him from his managerial responsibilities, which to be frank he had not been handling very diligently in the first place. Maggie gives Nicholas several pieces of news that he really ought to have been aware of for some time. She tells him that her ex-fiancé, Joe Haskell, is still alive; that she visited Joe twice while he was at the Old House recovering from some injuries; that Joe is now in the hospital under police guard; and that Joe tried to kill Barnabas and keeps vowing that he will try again, since he believes Barnabas is trying to kill him. Nicholas is flummoxed by all of this, and meekly goes along when Maggie insists on visiting the Old House to pay a call on dear, sweet Barnabas.

The scene in Maggie’s house has an odd feature. We’ve just had a closeup of Willie hanging a cross above the door in the cell to keep Angelique away. In the early days of the vampire storyline, it was not at all clear that the cross would deter vampires in the world of Dark Shadows, since Barnabas was often seen strolling comfortably through a cemetery where half the grave markers were cross-shaped. It was not until #450, during the 1790s flashback, that we saw Barnabas recoil from a cross. In #523, we learned that the cross also immobilizes Nicholas. Yet Maggie is today wearing a dress the front of which is dominated by a red cross, and it doesn’t bother Nicholas a bit. The show is drifting into a spot where it may have to stop and spend time explaining its theurgy. Does the cross only work against a demonic creature if it is specifically aimed at that creature? Or if the person setting it up knows about the creature? Or is there some other qualification? It’s getting confusing.

At the Old House, Julia tells Maggie and Nicholas that they cannot see Barnabas, because he is resting. Maggie keeps insisting, and Julia shifts her ground, claiming that Barnabas went out, she knows not where. When Julia says this, Maggie is incredulous, but Nicholas brightens. Evidently he wants to believe that Barnabas has gone off to respond to Angelique’s call, and accepts Julia’s statement happily. Maggie apologizes for demanding to see Barnabas, and she and Nicholas leave.

Meanwhile, Barnabas is scheming to get out of the cell. While Willie is complying with his request to pour a glass of water, Barnabas bashes him on the head with an empty bottle. He then goes to the hatch for the secret panel, remembers that “Maggie found it a long time ago!” and figures out how to open it. Since we saw Willie open the hatch and show Adam Barnabas’ jewel box in #494, you would think Barnabas already knew how it worked. At that time, it also seemed that the passage behind the hatch had been sealed up, so that it no longer led to the beach. Apparently we aren’t supposed to remember that. Barnabas crawls out and closes the hatch behind him before Julia comes back.

As Barnabas, Jonathan Frid usually moves in the stateliest possible manner. When he escapes from the cell today, the camera lingers on him crawling, driving home the contrast with his typical gait. That is quite different from what we saw in #260, when he followed Maggie into the hatch- then, we saw him move toward the opening, but cut away before he had to take an ungainly position. Today, the makers of the show want us to hold the image of a crawling Barnabas in our minds.

Crawling suggests Barnabas’ weakness under Angelique’s power, certainly, but in this setting it suggests more. This is the house where he was born, and what he is crawling into is a lightless passage that it looks like he will have to squeeze through to emerge outside. He has regressed not only to infancy, but all the way back to birth. If Joshua did indeed confine him to this cell in his childhood, Barnabas would likely have experienced that same regression in those days as well.

The sign of the cross reminds us of one who said that we must be born again to receive a life in which our hopes will be fulfilled more abundantly than we can ask or imagine; Barnabas labored for 172 years under a curse that compelled him to die at every dawn and revive at every sunset, but perhaps even before that he was the prisoner of a cycle of abuse that forced him to experience the trauma of birth over and again, each time finding himself in the same narrow space, a stranger to all hope. Indeed, when Barnabas first became a vampire in the 1790s, he put his coffin in this basement, near the cell, and he persisted in putting it there even after it became obvious that it was very likely to be discovered. That persistence made no logical sense in terms of Barnabas’ need for operational security, but if he saw his vampirism as a continuation of his childhood experience of confinement in the basement cell, it would make all the sense in the world. That is his place, that is where he belongs, that is his reality.

Episode 612: I want you to be the guilty one

Joe Haskell has become a victim of vampire Angelique. That cost him his job, his fiancée, and everything else that gave him an identity. In #607, he went to visit Angelique and found that she had moved on to a new victim and didn’t want him anymore. Having lost even the source of his troubles, Joe stabbed himself.

Angelique shared Joe’s desire that he should die, but did not want her master, suave warlock Nicholas, to come home and find him bleeding to death on the carpet. So in #608 she called her new victim, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins, to take Joe away and leave him to die in the woods. Unable to be a party to Joe’s death, Barnabas took him back to his own house. He asked his friend, Julia Hoffman MD, to treat Joe there. Julia discovered the bite marks on Joe’s neck and figured out that he was a blood thrall and Angelique was the vampire, but she did not realize Barnabas was also in Angelique’s power.

Nicholas has for his own reasons joined Joe and Angelique in wanting Joe to die. Yesterday, he summoned a man he brought under his power in #601, unsightly ex-convict Harry Johnson, and ordered him to sneak into Barnabas’ house and pour a vial of poison into Joe’s medicine. In #528, Nicholas had scolded Angelique when she asked him to slip a potion into someone’s beverage, saying “I am much too talented to spend my time drugging drinks.” However talented Nicholas may be, the writing staff is taxed to the limit, so by #555 he was himself devising a plan to do just that. This time it doesn’t even seem to be a magical potion, just something colorless and toxic.

Nicholas isn’t the only evil genius who is failing to meet his own standards. Barnabas and Julia go on and on about the importance of not leaving Joe alone in the upstairs bedroom for a minute. Barnabas takes the first watch, but Angelique calls him away. Julia is asleep while Harry enters the house and poisons Joe’s medicine. She wakes up, goes to Joe’s room, finds that Barnabas is gone, then goes back downstairs, leaving Joe alone. When Barnabas returns, Julia is still downstairs, and she tells him he has been away for “hours.” Apparently she has left Joe unattended that whole time.

In the interval, Angelique bit Barnabas and left him unconscious in the woods. Harry found him there and took him to the great house of Collinwood, where his mother, housekeeper Mrs Johnson, was appalled by Barnabas’ pale color and evident weakness. She kept insisting on helping Barnabas, at first wanting to call a doctor, then saying Harry would walk him home, but Barnabas refused all assistance and left alone.

This is the first time we have seen Mrs Johnson in over eight weeks. It is also the first time we have ever seen her out of her working clothes. She is in a robe and has her hair down. Clarice Blackburn walks with exaggerated care, suggesting arthritis, and talks as if she were mindful of dentures that might come loose. With these tricks and in her usual costume, she does manage to seem somewhat older than her 47 years. But en déshabillé, she cannot conceal that she is younger than the character, and only 13 years older than the actor playing her son.

Mrs Johnson tries to reason with Barnabas while Harry looks on. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Early in the episode, Harry watched the clock in the foyer of the great house while we heard his voice in a recorded monologue thinking about Nicholas’ command and his reluctance to obey it. That was the first time Craig Slocum was entrusted with a simultaneous dual performance as voice actor and silent actor. The monologue is an efficiently written bit of exposition, and as a voice actor he delivers it competently enough. As a silent actor, he stares lifelessly forward throughout it, adding nothing to the words. Slocum wasn’t reliably interesting as a performer, but he could do well on occasion, and there would have been some grounds for hoping that Nicholas’ command to kill Joe would have provided him with an occasion to which he could rise. Slocum first appeared on Dark Shadows as Noah Gifford, another hopeless schlub who found himself ordered to commit a murder. The person giving that order was the unscrupulous Nathan Forbes, who like Joe was played by Joel Crothers. You’d think that the second time around, Slocum would find a way to invest the role of reluctant murderer with something subtle and compelling.

At the end of the episode, Jonathan Frid has a voiceover monologue while Barnabas wrestles with Angelique’s command to give the poisoned medicine to Joe. This monologue is entirely superfluous; we know exactly what Barnabas is thinking. Frid goes to the opposite extreme from Slocum, and makes faces and gestures emphasizing every point he hears his voice make. Without the voiceover, Frid’s dumbshow might at least have been nostalgic for people who remembered the silent movies. With the voiceover, it’s just embarrassing, a bad ending to a mediocre installment.

Episode 608: The experts

Julia Hoffman, MD, is an authority on vampirism. We first saw her treating Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, who was recovering from her time as the victim of vampire Barnabas Collins. Julia then met Barnabas and transferred her loyalties to him. She used her extraordinary abilities as a hypnotist to erase Maggie’s memories of her ordeal, and conducted an experiment meant to turn Barnabas back into a human.

That experiment failed, but subsequent intervention by another mad scientist did put Barnabas’ vampirism into remission. Since then, another vampire appeared and took Julia as his victim. Barnabas staked him and freed her. Now a third vampire is on the loose. She is Angelique, Barnabas’ ex-wife and once the witch who condemned him to the ranks of the undead in the first place. Angelique has two blood thralls at the moment. One is Barnabas himself. The other is Joe Haskell, formerly a hardworking young fisherman and fiancé to Maggie.

Yesterday Angelique told Joe she didn’t want him anymore. In response, he tried to kill himself. Seeing him bleeding to death, Angelique summoned Barnabas and ordered him to carry Joe off to the woods and leave him to die. Barnabas disobeyed her, and instead brought him back to his house, where Julia treats him.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Julia spots the puncture wounds on Joe’s neck. She figures out that he is a blood thrall and surmises that Angelique, whom she knows under the alias Cassandra, is the vampire. When Barnabas resists her inquiries, she becomes suspicious of him. At first she bluntly tells him that she wonders if he knows more than he is telling, but when he tries to dismiss her theory about Angelique/ Cassandra she backs away and claims that she is proceeding from “Intuition… I’ve no logical reason… I want to find a solution so badly that I’m willing to accept the idea of Cassandra Collins coming back.” Regular viewers know, not only that Julia has an abundance of logical reasons for her conclusions, but that she is a talented liar. We may well expect to find that she is entirely in control of the situation.

Barnabas brings Maggie over to talk with Joe. Longtime viewers will find this jarring. Joe is in the upstairs bedroom where Barnabas kept Maggie when she was his victim, and she briefly recovered her memory just two weeks ago. You might think that Barnabas and Julia would be taking a terrible risk by letting her see Joe suffer as she did in the room where she did. Oddly, she remembers seeing Joe with Angelique in #599, but does not remember what she knew then, that Angelique is a vampire and that Joe is going through what Barnabas put her through.

Later, Barnabas is alone with Joe when he regains consciousness. Joe figures out that Barnabas is Angelique’s new blood thrall. He vows to kill him, and we cut to the closing credits.

Episode 607: Bedtime

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair wakes Frankenstein’s monster Adam from a nightmare. As we have seen from night-time glimpses of fisherman Joe Haskell and the unpleasant Jeff Clark, it is standard for the young men of Collinsport to go to bed fully dressed, wearing coats, ties, and shoes. Adam is the youngest man around, having been brought to life just this May, but he is wearing pajamas.

Many commenters on fan boards assume that Adam has poor personal hygiene, perhaps because he has spent so much of his short life cooped up in hiding places without running water. But he lives in Nicholas’ house now, and unlike most characters, including Nicholas himself, he has two changes of clothing- the clothes that apparently came with the corpses from which he was assembled, a bright green sweater heiress Carolyn gave him, and his pajamas. So I think we ought to assume that he keeps himself clean.

Earlier this night, Nicholas sicced vampire Angelique on old world gentleman Barnabas Collins in order to keep Barnabas from interfering with his plans for Adam. But he discovers that Adam and Barnabas have a Corsican Brothers-type connection, so that puncture marks have appeared on Adam’s neck. Adam is also weakened, and afraid of Angelique. Nicholas concludes that Angelique will have to leave Barnabas alone. She is deeply disappointed when he tells her of this, but cannot argue, as it is almost dawn and she must get back in her coffin.

We then cut to the Blue Whale, where an unshaven Joe is drinking. Joe is another of Angelique’s victims, and as a result of her power over him has lost his job, his fiancée Maggie Evans, and his self-respect. We were first introduced to Joe in this room, back in #3. In those days, he was a hardworking young fisherman who was too sturdily honest to be tempted by a bribe to spy on the ancient and esteemed Collins family. We have seen him back on this set many times, usually as a stalwart representative of whatever is wholesome and rational. But today he is one of the old drunks leaning on the bar.

Maggie enters. She walks up to Joe. He does not react, and she starts to walk away. She turns back to him and says hello. They have a sad little chat. She says he almost seems to feel about her the way he used to; he says she has no idea how he feels. She tells him what she expects him to say, that he won’t be able to explain to her what’s going on with him; he confirms that it is so. He asks if she is there to meet Nicholas; she says she is, and asks if there is any reason she shouldn’t. He says he supposes not.

Nicholas enters. He asks Maggie if she would like to sit at the bar, but she indicates a table. Joe looks at them, and we hear his thoughts as he wishes he could explain what Angelique has done to him. This gains poignancy for regular viewers, not only because of the contrast between the broken-down figure we see today and the robust young man who so often modeled health and sanity on this same set previously, but also because less than two weeks ago, in #599, Maggie knew all about what Joe was going through. She and Joe were ready to run off together when Nicholas used his sorcery to mind-wipe their knowledge away and reset the story to its current dismal status quo.

Joe leaves the bar and goes to Nicholas’ house to call on Angelique. She is surprised to see him. She didn’t summon him, and she isn’t hungry. She tells him to go away. He says that he’s lost everything because of her, and that she is all he has left. She says he doesn’t have her either, because she is done with him. To make him even more miserable, she takes him to Nicholas’ magical mirror, which can be used to spy on whomever the user chooses, and shows Joe that Nicholas has walked Maggie home. Joe hears Maggie agree that she might fall in love with Nicholas, and watches them exchange a long, passionate kiss.

Joe asks Angelique if she cares that she has utterly ruined his life, to which she replies “Not particularly.” He says that he hates everything he has become, and that he despairs of ever being anything else. He picks up a letter opener intending to stab Angelique. Unable to bring himself to attack her, he sticks it into his own belly.

Angelique makes Joe feel like Mickey Mouse. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Joel Crothers was dissatisfied with the part of Joe and with Dark Shadows generally. In a couple of months, he will leave the show and take a role on another soap. Very few viewers would have been likely to know that was coming in 1968, but Joe was a popular character who was chronically underutilized. He would have had many fans who might have shared Joe’s fear that the show will leave him in the state to which this storyline has reduced him.

Episode 606: Hello, Barnabas

Vampire Angelique has bitten her onetime husband, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, and brought him under her power. Barnabas asks if she plans to make him a vampire again, restoring the curse she placed on him when she was alive and they were married, 172 years before. Angelique is herself subordinate to suave warlock Nicholas Blair, and does not know what Nicholas’ plans are. All she can say in response is “Possibly.”

Barnabas keeps bringing up mad scientist Julia Hoffman and occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes, who are waiting for him in his house. When Barnabas says that they will be suspicious if he does not return soon, Angelique replies “Let them be suspicious. It doesn’t matter to me.” When Barnabas asks what he can tell Julia and Stokes, Angelique replies “Tell them anything. Tell them the truth.” At that, a smile spreads across her face. We’ve already heard Julia ask Stokes what they will do if Barnabas is in trouble, and Stokes’ reply that there is nothing they can do. When Angelique suggests Barnabas tell Julia and Stokes the truth, her smile suggests that she has come to the same conclusion.

“Tell them anything. Tell them the truth.”

Angelique is usually so frantic in her manner and so monomaniacally focused on her goal that she does not seem to have any unspoken thoughts at all. But today she is tranquil, utterly satisfied with what she has done to Barnabas. “Tell them the truth” and the smile afterward are a turning point for the character. She has what she wants, and now something else is going on inside her head, something we would not have expected and can’t quite figure out.

It doesn’t last. A moment later, she is insisting that Barnabas must find a way to keep Julia and Stokes’ suspicions under control. But for a few seconds, a vista opened before us, and we caught a glimpse of an entirely new direction the show might take, both with Angelique’s character and with the relationship of a vampire to a victim. It even seemed possible that the alternately frenzied and glum secret-keeping that gives Dark Shadows its rhythm might give way to something entirely new. When that vista disappears, we find ourselves going back over some old familiar ground, but the sense of possibility does not quite leave us.

Angelique bites Barnabas twice today. Lara Parker was much shorter than Jonathan Frid, and the first time she bites him she has to get to his neck from a standing start with only a couple of seconds before the shot fades out to the opening titles. Her straining to get to her tiptoes was so obvious it made me and Mrs Acilius laugh out loud. But the second time, she comes at him from several feet away, and she takes the opportunity to make a sweeping turn and end with a balletic rise to en pointe, I believe using the rolling motion known as relevé. Frid helps Parker somewhat by bowing his head while Barnabas pleads with Angelique not to bite him. That one looks great.

Episode 602: Someone who will make you happy to be a vampire

Frankenstein’s monster Adam came to life in #485, and has been cooped up in one cage after another ever since. Last week a mate was created for him and given the name Eve. Eve hates Adam, and today tells him that she will kill him as soon as she can. Adam is getting pretty tired of the whole thing.

Adam’s latest keeper is suave warlock Nicholas. Nicholas masterminded the creation of Eve because he hopes she and Adam will make Frankenbabies, founding a humanoid species that will owe its creation to Satan. Adam doesn’t know about Nicholas’ allegiance to the Devil or about his plans, but he is sick of taking his orders. The two quarrel at the beginning of today’s episode. Nicholas quiets Adam by showing off one of his magical gimmicks. Hanging on his wall is a device that is usually a mirror, but that can be switched over to function as a closed circuit television focused on anyone he chooses. Today, he wants to know where his unruly subordinate, vampire Angelique, has wandered off to.

Nicholas and Adam look into the mirror, where we see Angelique at the bedside of an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. She is about to bite Peter/ Jeff, contrary to Nicholas’ rules for her diet. We zoom in, and the scene from the mirror takes over our own screen. After a moment, Nicholas is there too, stopping Angelique and scolding her for disobeying his nutrition guidelines. It’s too bad we didn’t see Nicholas step into the mirror, like Buster Keaton in Sherlock, Junior, but you can’t have everything.

After Angelique obeys Nicholas’ command to leave Peter/ Jeff’s apartment, Nicholas puts Peter/ Jeff back to bed. He casts spells on him to cause him to forget his encounters with Angelique and to heal from the effects of them. While he was doing this, my wife, Mrs Acilius, was talking to the screen, pleading with Nicholas to cast a spell on Roger Davis to give him some acting ability. Shortly after that, Mr Davis delivered some more lines, making it instantly clear that Nicholas had no such power.

Back at Nicholas’ house, Adam is fuming that Nicholas switched the mirror back to reflecting mode just as the show was getting interesting. In the room with him, and she is too bored for words. The two of them have a rough physical confrontation, and Adam locks her up in the basement. Eve has the memories and personality of Danielle Roget, an eighteenth century homicidal maniac whom Nicholas conjured up to animate Eve. He first brought her out of Hell in a ceremony he conducted in this basement; when Adam takes her there, she is terrified he will send her back. Eve is so impatient with Adam’s naivete that it is startling to see her overestimate his knowledge of the situation.

Adam and Eve fight. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Nicholas comes home and has another chat with Adam. Angelique enters the room and announces that it is almost dawn. Nicholas dismisses Adam. Angelique expects to be punished for her unauthorized attacks on Peter/ Jeff, but Nicholas tells her that he has a job she will like. He wants her to bite old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and enslave him. Since Angelique has been obsessed with Barnabas since the 1790s, this assignment delights her.

*Peter/ Jeff is fully dressed, in a coat, tie, and shoes, by the way. That’s the bedtime uniform for young men in Collinsport, as for Angelique’s other victim, the recently unemployed Joe Haskell.

Episode 581: Death and I are old friends

Vampire Angelique wants to take part in an experiment. The experiment is modeled on one in Hammer Studios’ 1967 film Frankenstein Created Woman. A mate will be created for patchwork man Adam by a process that involves draining the “life force” from a person into a female body made up of parts salvaged from several cadavers. Angelique wants to be the “life force” donor.

Angelique knows that when Barnabas Collins donated his “life force” to Adam, he not only survived the process but emerged cured of the vampire curse she had herself placed on him 172 years before, when she was a wicked witch. She is hoping that if she follows his lead, she too will be freed to walk in the daylight.

Angelique has been snacking on an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Peter/ Jeff is working on the experiment as a lab tech. She keeps demanding that he run the experiment with her as the “life force” donor. He keeps explaining that he’s just there to set up the equipment and has no idea how to operate it. The only person qualified to do that is mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Angelique says that no one else must be involved, and gives Peter/ Jeff 24 hours to become an expert on the process.

Meanwhile, Adam visits heiress Carolyn in her bedroom. He describes their relationship in terms that show a far greater maturity than she has seen from him before, and she calls him an “amazing creature.” The word “creature” wounds him. We hear his thoughts in a voiceover monologue, the first time Dark Shadows has used this device in mid-conversation. It is quite unnecessary; Robert Rodan’s face tells us everything we need to know about Adam’s feelings. Carolyn certainly sees that she has hurt Adam, and scrambles to make up for it.

Carolyn gives Adam a bright green sweater, and he bursts into tears. He says that no one has ever given him a gift before. Carolyn does not know about Adam’s origin, and is puzzled by this remark. He tells her no one is as nice as she is, that he wants to be her friend forever and never to hurt her, and rushes out of the room, overwhelmed by his emotions.

The experiment to build a female Frankenstein’s monster began after Adam told Barnabas that if he were not given a mate, he would murder everyone in the great house of Collinwood, including Carolyn. The scene in Carolyn’s room shows that this threat is a hollow one. On Friday, Adam dropped in on suave warlock Nicholas, who put him up to extorting Barnabas and Julia, and told him he loved only Carolyn and was ready to tell Barnabas to forget about the experiment. Nicholas talked him out of that, promising him that he would make it possible for him to have both his mate and Carolyn if only he would do everything he told him to do.

Angelique returns to the lab. Peter/ Jeff isn’t there, but Adam is. She tells Adam that he is breaking his word to Nicholas. Nicholas did not in fact tell Adam to stay away from the lab, but he did give Angelique that command. Adam is skeptical of Angelique, but he has no reason to stay in the lab or to throw her out. So he leaves her there.

Soon Peter/ Jeff is back. He keeps trying to explain to Angelique that he has no idea what he is doing, but she puts herself on the table and insists he start right away. While he throws switches, she moans.

Danny Horn’s post about this episode on Dark Shadows Every Day details the similarities between this scene and the way TV variety shows of the period presented “psychedelic” rock and roll acts such as The Doors. Danny’s commenter “PrisoneroftheNight” (a.k.a. Marc Masse of the intermittently available blog Dark Shadows from the Beginning) points out that The Doors themselves were likely aware of the similarity, as witness a voice that can be heard at the eight second mark of track 11, disc 2, of the CD release of The Doors in Concert calling similar visual effects “Dark Shadows time!”

Danny doesn’t say anything about Lara Parker’s rendering of Angelique’s experience on the table. On Dark Shadows Before I Die, John Scoleri says that Angelique “seemingly enjoys the experiment (because we’ve seen her shriek in pain, and this definitely was not the same),” to which his sister Christine adds that Peter/ Jeff “seemed to be pressing all the right buttons.” When we were watching the episode, Mrs Acilius noticed Peter/ Jeff’s uncomprehending reaction to Angelique’s moans and remarked “Yeah, yeah, we know you’ve never heard a woman make those sounds.”

Angelique beside herself. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Two of the four actors in this episode, Nancy Barrett and Roger Davis, are still alive as of this writing. I believe it is the first episode to have a cast that all survived as late as 2021. Robert Rodan died in that year, and Lara Parker in 2023. I don’t know if there are any episodes that still have all-surviving casts. (UPDATED: #751 does!)

Episode 576: Enough to occupy your mind

Well-meaning governess Vicki is engaged to marry an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Vicki knows that Peter/ Jeff has some kind of job that keeps him busy during the day. She does not know that he has been spending all night working at a second job. He is helping to build a Frankenstein’s monster. This second job is unpaid; his incentive is that if the monster is not built, an already existing Frankenstein’s monster named Adam has said that he will kill Vicki and everyone else in the great house of Collinwood.

As we open today, Peter/ Jeff is bitten by vampire Angelique. After Peter/ Jeff regains consciousness, Angelique starts giving him orders. He ignores them, and she bites him again. After that, he seems dazed and agrees to do whatever she commands. She wants him to hook her up to the body under construction and to use her “life force” to animate it. He tells her that he doesn’t know how to do that, and that the body isn’t ready to come to life in any case. Turns out she needn’t have bothered.

Meanwhile, Vicki gets some news. Roger, brother of matriarch Liz, tells her that he wants to send Peter/ Jeff on a six-week training program along with two junior executives from the Collins family business, and that if he works out there will be a job for him at the end of it. Vicki is dazzled by the offer.

Peter/ Jeff comes by. Roger meets him alone in the drawing room to make the offer. Peter/ Jeff can neither leave the Frankenstein project nor tell Roger about it. He has to turn the offer down without explanation, leaving Roger offended. Vicki then asks Peter/ Jeff what he was thinking, and he can’t explain the situation to her, either. She is frustrated that she tells him everything about herself, but she can’t get any information from him. She says that the offer must have represented a “family decision” on the part of the Collinses, implying that Peter/ Jeff’s refusal will reflect badly on both of them in their eyes.

When Dark Shadows started in June 1966, Vicki was its chief protagonist, Roger its most menacing villain, and the Collinses’ business interests a major part of the story. Vicki receded to the margins after her most interesting storyline, her difficult relationship with her charge David, was resolved in March 1967, and by that time Roger had become harmless and the business had long since ceased to be a source of interest. When we hear Roger talking about a job for Peter/ Jeff, for a moment it seems that he and the business might once again be important, and that Vicki might again have something to do with the plot. Vicki’s disappointment in her beau reminds us that the character doesn’t really have a place on the show any more.

Upstairs, Liz is taking clothes out of her closet and talking about them with her daughter Carolyn. They jar longtime viewers when they look at a particular dress and reminisce that they bought it on a trip to Boston. For the first 55 weeks of the show, Liz was a recluse who hadn’t left home since Carolyn was an infant. I suspect Liz had worn that dress during that period, and wish I’d looked for it when we were on those episodes during this watch-through. There certainly hasn’t been enough time since then for the trip to Boston to evoke the nostalgic tone in which they describe it, or for the dress to have fallen so far out of fashion that the ladies agree it is time to throw it away.

The Liz-is-a-recluse story was never exciting, and once they ditched it the show was quick to give us scenes of Liz happily going out. It is sometimes said that Dark Shadows is what Star Trek would have been if they had replaced space travel with agoraphobia, and Liz’ seclusion was the first exploration of this topic. Following the deep cut into the early days of the show in Roger’s offer to Peter/ Jeff with a moment when such a prominent part of its first year is simply forgotten is so typical of this period’s episodes that I wonder if some of the dialogue was written by uncredited contributors who weren’t up to date on bygone story points.

Carolyn is glad that Liz, who just recently escaped from a mental hospital, is taking an interest in her wardrobe. Liz lets her down hard when she says that she wants to get rid of as many belongings as possible in the short time before her death. Carolyn tries to tell her that she isn’t dying, but Liz refuses to listen. She demands that Carolyn promise to have an open casket at her funeral.

Liz was in the mental hospital because of a psychological disturbance with which Angelique afflicted her some months ago. When she did that, Angelique was a witch. Since then, Angelique has been stripped of her witchly powers, killed, and brought back to the world as a vampire. You might think Angelique’s spells would all have been broken when she was de-witched; that has been the pattern on Dark Shadows previously. For example, when blonde fire witch Laura vanished in #191, the spell she had cast that caused Liz to mope around and be obsessed with death until she was sent off to a hospital was broken. Longtime viewers wonder if Liz’ continuing obsession with death and her paranoid fear of being buried alive are natural symptoms of the trauma Angelique put her through, and if she just needs better therapy than she was getting in the hospital.

Liz has a dream. It opens with Angelique looking directly into the camera. Angelique is wearing the same costume she wore in the scene with Peter/ Jeff and laughing. When Liz knew Angelique, she never dressed that way, she wore a black wig, and so far as the audience knows she never let Liz hear her signature evil laugh. So it seems that Liz’ current troubles are indeed a part of Angelique’s ongoing spell.

Facing us, Angelique tells Liz that she will be plagued by her obsessions until she dies. This is enough to trigger PTSD flashbacks in regular viewers. Twenty weeks ago, in #477, Angelique was looking at us when she described “The Dream Curse,” an abysmally repetitious, ultimately pointless storyline that dragged on for months. Joan Bennett was a fine actress and a great star, but there was only so much even she could do with a character who just mopes around and talks about death, and Dark Shadows has already made her do it more than once. In a comment on Danny Horn’s post about this episode, I wondered if Angelique couldn’t have cast a spell on Liz that isn’t just a retread of one we’ve seen before, and suggested one that would give her “a compulsion to put on a top hat and tails and sing and dance.” Here’s an animated gif of a cartoon showing Joan Bennett’s sister Constance dancing with Jean Harlow and Joan Crawford; it has more entertainment value than did the entire Dream Curse, and might serve as a consolation to those of us left shaking by Angelique’s threat to clog up the story again:

Episode 575: This rotten collection of death

How Revolting and Disgusting You Really Are

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair has a job for a woman. Talking to his subordinate, vampire Angelique, he says that the job must go to “the most evil woman who ever lived.” At this, Angelique breaks into a smile, then raises her head proudly. Nicholas then says, “Someone like Lucrezia Borgia.” At this, Angelique’s face falls, and she protests that Lucrezia is dead.

Angelique, flattered when she thinks Nicholas is describing her as “The most evil woman who ever lived.”

Nicholas brushes this objection off, saying that “The spirit of evil can be made to live again.” Longtime viewers may have been wondering whether Lucrezia Borgia would make an appearance, since her name has come up more than once. In #152, sarcastic dandy Roger insulted his sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, by comparing her to Lucrezia; in #178, Roger insulted his niece, heiress Carolyn, in the same way; and in #523, Carolyn brought up Lucrezia to insult Angelique, whom she knew when Angelique was calling herself Cassandra and was married to Roger. Perhaps we might have imagined some kind of story where Roger turns out to have some kind of supernatural connection to Lucrezia.

Nicholas continues teasing Angelique, bringing up the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, alleged serial killer and blood drinker of the 16th and 17th centuries. Angelique calls that lady “a vile woman,” in a tone that suggests she knew her personally. From November 1967 through March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and Angelique was its chief villain. She was not a vampire then, but a witch. Her spells were very powerful, but she was quite clumsy in her use of them, suggesting that she was a young woman new to witchcraft. Perhaps this line is meant to open the door to a retcon, one which will make it possible to tell stories about Angelique set in even earlier periods than the 1790s segment.

Nicholas agrees that the countess was “a vile woman,” and repeats that epithet as the first in a list of her qualifications for the job he has in mind- “ambitious, cunning, devious, unprincipled, decadent!” He finally concludes his teasing of Angelique and tells her that he will not hire her for the job. She is disappointed, as one of the benefits of the job is release from vampirism. She leaves the room. In the corridor, she flashes a smile which regular viewers recognize as a sign that she is going to defy Nicholas and try to seize what he would not give her.

The Only Filthy Way It Could Be Done

The job is an unusual one. Nicholas has persuaded Frankenstein’s monster Adam to confront old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman with a threat. If Julia and Barnabas do not repeat the procedure that created Adam and produce a woman who will be his mate, Adam will kill everyone in and around the great house of Collinwood. Subjected to that extortion, they undertake the project.

The procedure not only involves building a body from parts of corpses and running electrical charges through it, but also requires that the body be somehow connected to a person who will serve as its “life force.” It is energy drained from this person that will animate the body. Barnabas was Adam’s “life force.” Before the procedure, Barnabas was a vampire. Serving as Adam’s “life force” put his vampirism into remission. Nicholas talked about this with Angelique, raising her hopes that he would let her escape from vampirism the same way, only to dash those hopes cruelly.

Julia completed the experiment that brought Adam to life after the death of another mad scientist, Eric Lang. Lang had built the body and the apparatus, and had left detailed notes. Julia had studied those notes for some time before she knew which switches to throw and which dials to turn. Under Adam’s threat, Julia has rebuilt the apparatus in Barnabas’ basement and she has a cadaver there which she is using for parts. Barnabas has ordered his servant Willie to help with the grave robbing. Barnabas has also enlisted the aid of Lang’s former grave robber, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. The equipment needs a lot of tending, and Peter/ Jeff is the lab tech on that detail.

A Nice, New, Clean Slab of Flesh

Peter/ Jeff is by himself in the basement lab when Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes walks in. It’s news to Peter/ Jeff that Stokes is aware of the project, but he tells him that he knows everything about it. Stokes stays so calm as he examines the apparatus and looks at the cadaver that one supposes he must know a great deal.

Stokes asks Peter/ Jeff how the equipment runs when Barnabas’ house has no electricity. Peter/ Jeff says that Julia installed a generator. This must be some unusual kind of generator, since it runs in absolute silence. Later in the episode, Stokes will have a conversation with another character about how Barnabas doesn’t have a telephone.

When Barnabas was a vampire, he didn’t want meter readers or other workers dropping by unannounced and he had no use for modern conveniences. So of course he did not connect his house to the electric grid or to telephone service in those days. As for other utilities, it is a fairly prominent bit of lore that vampires cannot tolerate running water, so of course he wasn’t going to have any plumbing. But he’s been unvamped for almost six months now, so he may as well just update his house. Stokes’ lines today lampshade the problems he creates by refusing to do so.

Another unannounced visitor interrupts Stokes’ conversation with Peter/ Jeff. It is Adam. He is upset to find Stokes in the lab. Stokes once took Adam in and taught him English, and in those days Adam considered Stokes to be his best friend. But Stokes shocked Adam when he broke the news to him that he was an artificially constructed man, and has thoroughly alienated him by trying to talk him out of the violent lifestyle Nicholas has persuaded him to adopt.

Adam goes on a self-pitying rant when Stokes tries to reason with him. Peter/ Jeff interrupts and tells Adam something Stokes left out of his birds and bees talk, that he was built out of parts of dead bodies. Peter/ Jeff taunts Adam about this in a speech that is full of such gems that I suspect it was written, not by the credited author of today’s script, Gordon Russell, but by Russell’s frequent uncredited collaborator Violet Welles. Welles’ name will start to appear in the credits in 711, and fans of the show recognize the sparkle that marks her dialogue.

Peter/ Jeff tries to stab Adam. Adam easily disarms him and holds the knife at his throat. Stokes tells Adam that without Peter/ Jeff the project will be delayed. Adam then flings Peter/ Jeff to the floor. Peter/ Jeff is played by Roger Davis, an actor who had a big television career and was irritating in every part. Mr Davis is so annoying on Dark Shadows that Mrs Acilius and I can’t be the only ones who are disappointed when Adam doesn’t kill his character off the show and who cheer when he throws him to the floor.

Peter/ Jeff gets up and leaves the lab. Adam demands Stokes bring him back to resume working. Knowing how violent Adam is, Stokes follows Peter/ Jeff to the great house of Collinwood. Peter/ Jeff is meeting his fiancée, well-meaning governess Vicki, there, planning to take her out for a date. Stokes tells him that they will be in grave danger from Adam unless he goes back to the lab at once. Peter/ Jeff looks out the window, and sees Adam peering in. Adam actually opens the window and reaches into the drawing room while Vicki and Peter/ Jeff are there; it is hard to understand how Vicki doesn’t notice him. Peter/ Jeff makes an excuse, and goes back to the lab.

We see him back at work. The camera pans up to a mirror. It holds on the mirror for several seconds while we see Angelique’s reflection. Previously, they have stressed that vampires do not cast reflections. There have been several moments when actors have missed their marks or other production faults have occurred that left us seeing a vampire in a mirror, but this is obviously intentional, and it is jarring to regular viewers.

Angelique and Peter/ Jeff talk for a moment, then she bites him. Evidently she plans to enslave him and use his access to the laboratory to force her way into the role of “life force” for Adam’s mate. So far, almost every victim of a vampire we have seen has been left unable to do the work s/he was doing before being bitten, so regular viewers might suspect that Angelique’s ploy will simply incapacitate Peter/ Jeff from helping with the project. This expectation becomes all the more substantial when we remember the many times Angelique’s schemes have blown up in her face. The less likely it seems to us Angelique will succeed, the less effective this week-ending cliffhanger will be.