Quentin Collins is dead, his sister Judith would have you know. Their brother Carl is not so sure, but Carl is quite daft. So when high-strung governess Rachel Drummond reports that Quentin has taken a seat in the rocking chair in her bedroom, Judith is exasperated. She orders Carl to stop quivering and go into Rachel’s room himself to look at the rocking chair. Carl obeys Judith, and sees that the chair is vacant. Judith then orders Rachel to accompany her to the drawing room to see Quentin resting in his coffin. To Judith’s consternation, they see that the coffin is empty.
Judith and Rachel wonder who is playing morbid games with Quentin’s corpse. Of all the residents of the great house on the estate of Collinwood, Carl would seem to be the most obvious suspect. He is not only mentally unbalanced, but is also an inveterate prankster whose practical jokes are often disturbingly unpleasant. However, Carl is quick to break into maniacal laughter when he sees that the targets of his japes are uncomfortable, and he is not laughing now. He seems to be quite sincerely terrified. So Judith sends Carl upstairs to see if the body has been returned to Rachel’s room.
While the ladies are alone in the drawing room, Judith and Carl’s distant cousin Barnabas arrives. Judith tells Barnabas what has happened. When Judith expresses puzzlement as to how a dead body could be moved in and out of Rachel’s bedroom without using the door to the corridor, Barnabas mentions that there is a secret panel in the room. Judith is startled. She asks Barnabas how he, who only arrived from England a few weeks before, could possibly know about that panel. He claims that he read a “rare volume” by “the architect of Collinwood.” Judith does not seem entirely convinced, but she lets this explanation pass unchallenged.
Carl does not find the body in Rachel’s room, but he does notice something behind the drapes in the corridor. He pulls them apart to see Quentin. Carl screams. Quentin lumbers towards Carl and begins strangling him. Carl collapses, and Quentin leaves him on the floor.
Carl comes to in the drawing room. He tells Barnabas, Judith, and Rachel what happened. Judith cannot believe that Quentin has risen from the grave, and Barnabas takes it upon himself to tell her about zombies. He claims to have seen a zombie and to have witnessed ceremonies used to put them to rest while he was a young man on the island of Martinique.
Judith agrees to let Barnabas try his mumbo-jumbo. While the ladies are upstairs, Barnabas and Carl are in the drawing room, burning some potpourri next to Quentin’s coffin. Quentin comes lumbering in, and they withdraw to the shadows. The fun Jonathan Frid and John Karlen had working together is one of the most enjoyable things to see on Dark Shadows, but they get a little bit carried away in the moment when Barnabas and Carl hide. As they scurry off, they are so obviously a couple of kids playing that we are distracted from their otherwise outstanding performances.
Quentin comes back and resumes his place in the coffin. At Judith’s insistence, Carl and Barnabas bury the coffin on the grounds and pour cement over it. Judith assures Rachel that this means Quentin will not come back. Rachel is disappointed when Judith says she believes that Barnabas has gone back to the Old House on the estate, where he is staying. Since they have had such an exhausting night and it is almost dawn, Judith assumes that Barnabas will want to go to bed. Judith herself does retire.
Barnabas comes back and tells Rachel that he had to make sure she was all right. She thanks him, and says that during the day she will be leaving Collinwood, never to return. He asks her to reconsider. He says that he wants to see her again, but that he has to leave immediately and he cannot possibly return until the following night. He will not tell her why. Regular viewers know that Barnabas is a vampire and that he will turn to dust if he doesn’t get back into his coffin in a few minutes and stay there until sundown. Barnabas doesn’t seem to think that his relationship with Rachel has come to a point at which he can share secrets like that with her, so he evades her questions and rushes off. Rachel heads upstairs.
We see the doors open by themselves and hear the wind. Thinking Barnabas has returned, Rachel hurries down. Baffled that no one is there, she goes outside. She turns and sees Quentin. He plods towards her, and she faints into his arms. This impressively well choreographed movement brings us to a dramatic conclusion.
Well-meaning time-traveler/ bloodsucking fiend Barnabas Collins enters a cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood to find thuggish groundskeeper Dirk Wilkins standing over the freshly stabbed corpse of the rakish Quentin Collins. Since Quentin’s cause of death is a long-bladed thrusting dagger, a weapon also known as a “dirk,” it would seem clear that Wilkins is the culprit. But as it happens, Barnabas saw Wilkins enter the cottage a moment before, so he can be fairly sure he did not kill Quentin.
Nonetheless, Barnabas threatens to go to the police and accuse Wilkins unless he answers “a lot of questions.” Barnabas doesn’t have any witnesses to back up his version of events, and though he claims to be a relative of the ancient and esteemed Collins family he only arrived in town a few weeks before. But Wilkins isn’t hard to intimidate, so he answers some of Barnabas’ questions about madwoman Jenny Collins. Most importantly, he tells Barnabas that Jenny is the estranged wife of Quentin, not of Quentin’s brother Edward as the audience had been led to believe in the four weeks leading up to Friday’s episode.
As Wilkins, actor Roger Davis has been getting very careless with his lines. Jonathan Frid always had a lot of trouble with his own dialogue, but he is clearly sticking with the script in an exchange like this:
Wilkins: Mr. Collins, you gotta understand that she’s crazy in the head! She could hurt herself — or somebody!
Barnabas: Who do you mean by “we”?
This comes to a head with one of Dark Shadows‘ most famous bloopers:
Barnabas: Tell them that you saw no one here. Wilkins: Oh, that’s fine. What am I gonna tell ’em? Barnabas: That you saw no one here!
Jenny is being kept in a cell in the basement of the great house on the estate. Wilkins and maidservant Beth were assigned to watch her. On Friday Jenny bashed Wilkins on the head with her dinner tray, unfortunately not hard enough to kill him and get the odious Mr Davis off the show. She did knock him out, though, and ran off to the cottage to stab Quentin. We cut to the cell, where Jenny is babbling to Beth. It gradually dawns on Beth that Jenny is telling her she stabbed Quentin and killed him. Beth locks Jenny in the cell and rushes off to the cottage.
In the cottage, Barnabas has summoned wicked witch Angelique and asked her to bring Quentin back to life. Angelique points out some of the flaws in Barnabas’ plan, and tells him that even if she does grant his wish the price for her services will be very high. They seem to be approaching a tentative agreement when Beth arrives at the door and Angelique vanishes.
Beth finds Barnabas in the cottage. He tries to keep her out. It has long since been established that, as a vampire, Barnabas is far stronger than any mortal man, yet Beth pushes past him without apparent difficulty. For that matter, we also know that he is as capable as Angelique of vanishing into thin air, yet he hangs around while Beth sees Quentin’s body. Barnabas insists she tell no one what she saw in the cottage, and he is staring at her with the same intensity that has sometimes exerted an hypnotic effect on people. This doesn’t work on Beth. She says that she will tell Judith Collins, the mistress of the estate, that Quentin is dead and that Barnabas was with him. Barnabas just watches Beth go. Evidently he has given up on using his vampiric powers. Terry Crawford’s literal acting style doesn’t win her much enthusiasm from the fans of Dark Shadows, but it does add a touch of humor to a scene like this. Vampire? What’s that? Sounds like bullshit, I’m gonna report this to the boss.
We cut to the drawing room of the great house, where Quentin’s body is laid out in a coffin with candles burning on high stands by its head and foot. Barnabas and Beth are there. Beth tells Barnabas she has not yet spoken to Judith. Apparently she just took Quentin’s body to the great house on her own? And found a coffin? And carried it into the drawing room where she put Quentin in it? And that’s how the family is going to find out Quentin is dead, by seeing him lying in state in the middle of the house?
Barnabas and Beth exit, and Angelique enters. She tells the corpse that she will raise him from the dead, and that once she does Barnabas will really be sorry.
The principal writer of the first seventeen weeks of Dark Shadows was Art Wallace, who was interested in characters as one another’s reflections. Many of his episodes were structured as diptychs, in which we would alternate between two small groups dealing with similar situations. In the comparison, we would see that people who were in some ways very different from each other or hostile to each other would make the same decisions when faced with the same circumstances.
Wallace left the show in October 1966, never to return, but his interest in mirroring comes up again and again. The current storyline centers on Barnabas Collins, who has traveled back to the year 1897. In the first months of 1969, the ghost of Quentin Collins was persecuting strange and troubled boy David, and it was to rescue David that Barnabas participated in a summoning ritual which, to his surprise, got him unstuck in time and brought him face to face with the living Quentin. It also turned Barnabas back into what he was for 172 years, a vampire.
This story is the inverted image of Dark Shadows‘ first costume drama insert, which ran from November 1967 to March 1968. In that period, well-meaning governess Vicki participated in a summoning ritual because she knew that some supernatural menace posed a mortal threat to David. She did not know who that menace was or in what way he was supernatural, but the audience knew that it was Barnabas the vampire. During the four months of that uncertain and frightening journey into the past, we learned how Barnabas became a vampire and that he could be interesting even if he were not one. Vicki didn’t learn anything, and would eventually be written out of the show.
Early in today’s episode, Barnabas is in the room on top of the tower in the great house on the estate of Collinwood. This room was introduced in the 1790s story as one of the places where Barnabas was hidden. In this period, a mentally ill woman named Jenny Collins is hidden there. Governess Rachel Drummond sneaked into the room because Barnabas’ unwilling associate, ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, read Rachel’s palm and told her she had a deadly enemy who was hiding there, and that if she let that enemy choose the time of their first meeting she would have no chance of survival. Jenny sprang from the room, locked Rachel in it, went to the main part of the house, and set fire to the sheets of the bed in which the stuffy Edward Collins lay sleeping.
Barnabas heard about this from Rachel, who reminds him of his lost love Josette. He knows that Angelique, the wicked witch who turned him into a vampire in the first place, is operating in this period and that she has already targeted Rachel. He knows nothing about Jenny, and so he assumes that Angelique is lurking in the tower room. When he enters it, he opens an armoire and finds a doll’s head. The rest of the doll is not attached and the back of the head is caved in, but the face is undamaged. This is the first suggestion of a mirror, a device in which a face can be seen intact and functional even though it is separated from the rest of the person.
Barnabas calls for Angelique and she appears. Barnabas denounces Angelique’s crimes; Angelique brings up his. She asks what he sees when he looks in the mirror, then remembers that he casts no reflection. Angelique does not mention what we have seen ever since we first met her during the 1790s segment, that the vampire curse made Barnabas into her reflection. Today, for example, she gleefully taunts him with the murders he has committed, including those her curse compelled him to commit. This reminds longtime viewers of #341, when Barnabas pressured his friend Julia Hoffman into helping him kill a man named Dave Woodard and then gleefully taunted her with her new status as a murderer.
Angelique tells Barnabas that he has only to love her and she will cease to be his enemy. She makes it clear that she knows all about the mission that has led him to travel back in time from 1969, and offers to help him accomplish it. She suggests that it is his hatred for her that has led her to treat him and everyone around him so cruelly for so long. She says that she will return his love as abundantly as she has returned his hate. She claims to be his mirror, as we know he has long been hers, and offers to show him a pleasing reflection if he submits to her desires.
Barnabas angrily refuses, and Angelique conjures up an image of his impending destruction in the window. Barnabas will not look into this magic mirror, and when he seizes Angelique she vanishes from his arms.
Quentin is on his guard against Barnabas. In the course of an adorable scene in which Quentin and his twelve year old nephew Jamison pretend to be spies, he sends Jamison to steal something that belongs to Barnabas.
Spy school.
Jamison is leery of the whole thing; he says that Quentin doesn’t know any more about real spycraft than he does, forcing Quentin to admit that he was in fact a spy for the police in Egypt not so long ago. This too will get the attention of longtime viewers. Jamison is played by David Henesy, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s plays David Collins. Jamison and Quentin are in the groundskeeper’s cottage on the estate, which from December 1966 to March 1967 was home to David’s mother Laura Murdoch Collins. Laura often told the story of the Phoenix, usually setting the scene in an unnamed land which, she said in #140, “Some call… Paradise.” But she leans heavily enough on the existing mythology of the Phoenix that she reminds even readers who have never heard of Herodotus of ancient Greece and Egypt. Laura herself turned out to be a supernatural phenomenon consisting of several distinct beings reflecting themselves back to each other.
Quentin decides that Jamison must sneak into Barnabas’ house and bring his cane back to the cottage. After he does so, Quentin casts a spell that causes Jamison to speak with the voice of Ba’al, a title for various gods whose cults are remembered very unfavorably in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Among other grim associations the name of Ba’al brings to the minds of those who adhere to the great monotheistic religions is the practice of child sacrifice among the Phoenicians, a practice that often involved the burning of the body of the sacrificed child. Since “Phoenician” and “Phoenix” sound so much alike,* longtime viewers may well associate Ba’al with Laura.
Quentin has made a voodoo doll of Barnabas. Through Jamison, Ba’al says that only silver will work against Barnabas. Silver is of course used in making mirrors, and the piece of silver Quentin uses to inflict disabling pain on Barnabas is the head of Barnabas’ own cane. So once more Barnabas finds himself oppressed by a reflection, or perhaps by the absence of a reflection.
Barnabas is with Magda when he collapses under the pain Quentin is causing him. They discover that the cane is missing. Magda figures out what is happening, and rushes to the cottage. She confronts Quentin, jeering at his cowardice. Quentin is no man at all. He is using a child as a pawn in a black magic rite, and fighting an enemy using a doll. Magda looks at Quentin’s face and reacts with horror as the image of a skull is superimposed on it. She recognizes this as a sign that he will die soon.
Jamison has scenes with both Quentin and Magda today. David Henesy had such great chemistry with David Selby that it’s no wonder Mr Selby named his son “Jamison,” and Hall’s equally great chemistry with him leads me to suspect that if her son Matthew hadn’t already been born when she joined the show he might have been named for Mr Henesy as well. Hall and Jonathan Frid are always wonderful together, and today’s Barnabas/ Angelique confrontation is the best scene Frid and Lara Parker have shared so far. Angelique’s maniacal intensity has always set an upper bound to how responsive Parker could be to Frid’s performance. She is calm enough today that we see them for the first time really in the same space.
*As well they might- they both come from the ancient Greek Φοίνιξ, an adjective meaning “red.” Herodotus calls the legendary fire creature “red-bird,” and the Greeks named the northern Canaanites after the red dye they bought from them.
A showcase for the actors today. We begin in the room on top of the tower at the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Madwoman Jenny Collins, who has been locked up in that room for some time, is threatening to stab her sister-in-law Judith with a large pair of scissors. Judith and her brother Edward have been hiding Jenny and trying to keep the rest of the family in the dark about her presence in the house. For services to this secret, they have been paying maidservant Beth Chavez and, we heard in #707, someone named Mrs Fillmore. Beth comes in just in time to distract Jenny with talk about her “babies,” and thereby to prevent her from killing Judith. Jenny turns to some baby dolls, and cuddles them happily.
Judith goes downstairs and encounters newly hired governess Rachel Drummond. Rachel has caught on the someone is living in the tower room, and the other day sneaked up there and let Jenny out. Judith reprimands Rachel for seeing and hearing things that don’t exist. Rachel is a neurotic intellectual. Her insecurities compelled her to investigate the question of the tower room, and also make it plausible that she might eventually cave in to Judith’s attempt to gaslight her into believing that she didn’t really see what she saw.
Rachel goes out, and Beth enters. Judith shows how frustrated she is with the whole situation. This scene is a bit of a letdown. As Judith, Joan Bennett was brilliant opposite Marie Wallace’s Jenny, and brilliant again opposite Kathryn Leigh Scott’s Rachel. But she falls to pieces alone with Terrayne Crawford as Beth. So many of the fansites feature so much grousing about Miss Crawford’s literalist style of acting that I hate to pile on, but it is true that she did not give Bennett anything to play off of. When Miss Crawford delivers a line, its meaning is the dictionary meaning of the words that compose it, no more and no less. She never leaves you wondering what else is going on in Beth’s mind. Sharing a scene with her would be like sharing a scene with a sign labeled “No Right on Red.” Later, Miss Wallace will have a two-scene with Miss Crawford, but as a character in a psychotic state she doesn’t need support. Her lines in that scene are flowery gibberish that don’t work at all, but neither actress is to blame for that.
The master class in acting resumes as we cut to the Old House on the estate. The mysterious Barnabas Collins has recently arrived at Collinwood and is staying in the Old House as the guest of his distant cousins in the great house. Rachel and Barnabas are attracted to each other, and she tells him what has happened. He says that he believes her, and goes on to say that no one at Collinwood is what they seem. She pleasantly replies “Except for you!” He hesitates before agreeing.
More than meets the eye.
In fact, Barnabas has more than five hundred episodes of secrets he is keeping from Rachel and everyone else. Jonathan Frid’s work prior to Dark Shadows was almost entirely on stage, but he used his face like a movie actor, keeping every part of it but his eyes virtually immobile. With that, he can isolate emotions, playing just one feeling at a time. All anyone can see by looking at him in his scenes with Rachel today is that he is anguished. Rachel interprets that anguish as a sign that he cares about her, and she is delighted to think that she has such a straightforward and reliable friend.
Returning viewers know that Barnabas is in fact the most dangerous person Rachel has ever met. That knowledge on our part frees Miss Scott to play Rachel’s relief at Barnabas’ friendliness as broadly as she likes. Her unrestrained display of good cheer brightens the episode’s otherwise somber emotional palette, but the irony the audience finds in a woman having this reaction to Barnabas keeps the dramatic tension high.
Barnabas walks Rachel back to the great house. They have made a plan that she will bring him the key to the tower room and he will go up there to investigate. She impulsively kisses him on the cheek. Rachel goes in the house and finds to her surprise that Judith is still awake. Judith detains Rachel in the drawing room with a glass of sherry and a lot of disconnected talk. Judith doesn’t make eye contact with Rachel during this scene; she doesn’t want a conversation. She is simply enjoying her new position as head of the household. Rachel cannot get away until Beth enters and Judith abruptly dismisses her.
Barnabas has been watching the windows of the tower room and has seen lights go on and off. Nervous, he considers letting himself into the room without a key; he has the means to do that, but he would like to keep Rachel from knowing about his abilities, and so he resolves to wait for her.
After Rachel brings Barnabas the key, he goes to the tower room and uses it to let himself in. No one is there. He picks up the damaged, severed head of a doll, one of Jenny’s “babies.” Suddenly, he hears someone enter. He turns, and reacts with shock.
Vampire Barnabas Collins returns to his coffin at dawn to find it already occupied. Governess Rachel Drummond is resting there, and is under the impression that she is Barnabas’ lost love Josette. He exclaims that only his old enemy, wicked witch Angelique, could be “monstrous enough” to put Rachel in this position.
Longtime viewers remember that in #248 Barnabas forced Maggie Evans, who like Rachel is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott, into this coffin because she refused to submit to his attempt to brainwash her into thinking she was Josette. So we know that Angelique is not all alone in the ranks of the sufficiently monstrous. On the other hand, we also know that it was Angelique who made Barnabas a vampire in the first place, and that like others who labor under Angelique’s curses he is in many ways a reflection of her. So perhaps his remark is not so preposterous an example of lack of self-awareness as it initially seems.
Shortly after, Rachel comes to in the front parlor of Barnabas’ home, the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, and is puzzled to find herself there with him. She has no idea how she got to the Old House, and certainly has no memory of the coffin in its basement. Barnabas tells Rachel he found her wandering in the woods. She goes to pieces, overwhelmed that she is not in control of her actions. He talks soothingly to her. Rachel collects herself, but is still struggling not to let Barnabas see her cry. He offers to walk her home to the great house on the estate. This offer is sheer bravado on his part- the sun has been up for some time, and he cannot possibly expect to survive outdoors all the way to the great house. Luckily for Barnabas, Rachel declines his offer. Unable to keep her emotions in check any longer, she hurries out the front door, walking herself home.
At the great house, Rachel sees maidservant Beth enter the foyer carrying a baby doll. Rachel says that her charge Nora will like the doll very much. Beth sputters at this remark, and spinster Judith Collins summons Beth to the drawing room. Rachel eavesdrops while Judith scolds Beth for her carelessness. Returning viewers know that Beth is helping Judith and Judith’s brother Edward keep someone prisoner in the room atop the tower of the great house, and that it is hugely important to Judith and Edward that no one knows about this. Beth’s sputtering response to Rachel told us also that the doll is not for Nora, but for this mysterious prisoner. Rachel does not have all the information about the matter that we do, but she has enough to suspect something very much like the truth, so we wonder what she gets out of the conversation she overhears.
Later, Rachel meets Beth in the foyer and urgently pleads with her for information about Edward’s wife, the mother of Nora and of her other charge, Jamison. Beth tells her what Edward has already made abundantly clear, that the topic is utterly forbidden. Rachel sidles up to Beth, bends her head at an angle, and speaks in an urgent whisper, something we have not seen from either Maggie or Miss Scott’s other role, Josette. Indeed, Rachel is quite a fresh character, impressively so from an actress whom longtime viewers already seen for so many hours.
Rachel pleads with Beth for more information.
Judith overhears Rachel’s questioning of Beth and Beth’s response that Rachel should leave the matter alone. Judith dismisses Beth and talks to Rachel, telling her that Beth has given her very good advice. Judith has figured so far as a stern and menacing figure; it is something of a surprise that she does not fire Rachel on the spot, and even more of a surprise that she indicates she will not report the conversation to Edward.
The opening voiceover will tell us in a couple of days that Rachel’s reckless curiosity is “spurred on by her own fears.” Miss Scott has been playing this motivation all along. When we first saw Rachel, she and Edward were in a train station. He was being courteous to her, but she was stiff and awkward, clearly very much afraid of something. She is often seen reading, and her dialogue is both filled with signs of intellectual ambition and delivered with a frantic edge, suggesting that her studiousness has its roots in her attempt to defend herself against some danger. We have no idea as yet what that danger was or how it formed Rachel before we met her, but we know that her reaction to the evidence that she has found that someone is being held prisoner in the tower room at Collinwood is a deepening of her long-established fears, not the sudden appearance of new fear.
For her part, Judith’s main concern is finding her late grandmother’s missing will. The late Mrs Collins kept the provisions of her will secret, and it was stolen shortly after her death by some people who wanted to forge a new will and get the estate for themselves.
A woman named Magda Rákóczi shows up at the house, claiming to be able to help Judith find the will. Judith is violently prejudiced against Magda for her Romani ethnicity, and dismisses her offer of help out of hand. But Magda persists. Knowing that her grandmother had a fondness for Magda, Judith lets her into the drawing room and sits behind her while she reads the tarot. Judith keeps protesting that the previous cases Magda cites as evidence that the tarot can tell the future prove nothing, and that in her interpretations of them she is “making no sense whatsoever.”
Magda then says that the arrangement of the cards means that the will is hidden in the room where Judith’s grandmother died, in “the heart of the room.” In an entirely different voice than she has been using so far, Judith asks “What is meant by the heart of the room?” With that, Magda knows that she has Judith in the palm of her hand, and she starts to ham it up. “The hearrrt of the roooom… is a booook! A book that was very important to your grandmother! A very, very oooolld booook!” Judith decides this must be the family history, and she tells Magda that she will look through it at once.
In fact, Barnabas found the will and hid it in the family history. He has sent Magda to tell Judith where to find it. It comes as no surprise to us when Judith comes downstairs with the will and is jubilant to find that she is the sole heir of her grandmother’s vast holdings. After all, Barnabas wants the original provisions of the will to be enacted, and the only way to ensure that result is to see that it comes to the hand of the person who is its chief beneficiary.
We end with Beth standing at the door to the tower room, holding the doll and addressing the person inside as “Jenny.” We learned in #701 that Beth was originally maid to a lady named Jenny, that everyone thinks Jenny has gone away, and that it is surprising Beth has stayed on at the house in Jenny’s absence. Now it is confirmed that Jenny is the prisoner in the tower room. The obvious inference is that Jenny is Edward’s estranged wife, and that she has become the sort of crazy lady who appreciates baby dolls.
Dark Shadows first developed its conception of the supernatural in depth when undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins was on the show from December 1966 to March 1967. Laura was not so much one person as she was a complex of at least three distinct beings. There was a charred corpse in the morgue in Maricopa County, Arizona; a phantom that Laura’s son, strange and troubled boy David Collins, can sometimes see through his window as she flickers above the lawns of the estate of Collinwood; and a living woman who carries on conversations with people but is never seen eating or drinking. People who encounter Laura also experience dream visitations that resemble her and unaccountable compulsions to do things relating to her, but it is never clear which of those psychic phenomena come from Laura and which from her arch-nemesis, the ghost of the gracious Josette. It is clear that the various parts that make up Laura are not always aware of each other, and sometimes work at cross-purposes with each other.
Laura’s successor as Dark Shadows‘ chief supernatural menace was vampire Barnabas Collins, who joined the show in April 1967. Like Laura, Barnabas comes in several parts, not all of them working together harmoniously. For example, sometimes doors slam shut when he is in a house, and only he can open them. This is never shown as something he deliberately makes happen, and it does not always serve any intelligible purpose of his. Also, when he is active dogs start howling. Sometimes that immobilizes his targets with fear and confusion, but just as often it costs him the element of surprise and foils his plans. So whatever uncanny forces cause these things to happen are clearly not subject to Barnabas’ will. They accompanied him out of the darkness.
Shortly after Barnabas’ arrival, the show retconned Josette as his lost love and cast her as Princess Ankh-Esen-Amun to his Imhotep in a remake of the 1932 film The Mummy. In that film, the undead man tried to remake contemporary woman Helen Grosvenor in the image of the ancient Ankh-Esen-Amun. Taking that role in Barnabas’ attempt to recreate Josette was Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. As in the 1932 film Zita Johanns played Helen in the contemporary scenes and Ankh-Esen-Amun in a flashback to ancient Egypt, so in #70 and #126 had Miss Scott already played the ghost of Josette.
While Barnabas pursued his crazed and evil plan to Josettify Maggie, the ghost of his little sister Sarah showed up. Sarah befriended Maggie and helped her escape from her “big brother.” Sarah did more and more, ultimately sending well-meaning governess Vicki back in time so that from November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s, when Barnabas and Sarah were alive.
Like Laura and Barnabas, Sarah may have looked like single person, but was in fact a complex of independent beings. In #325, she visits David in a dream and gives him information only she would have. In #327, David sees Sarah during waking hours and tells her about the dream, and it all comes as news to her. This daylight Sarah makes it clear to David that she does not want him to have the information the dream version of her gave him so shortly before.
Moreover, child actress Sharon Smyth was instructed to play Sarah as Barnabas’ conscience. When Barnabas is freed to prey upon the living, he unknowingly pulls Sarah out of the supernatural back-world behind the action of the show, the unseen realm where Josette’s ghost, the “Widows,” the ghost of Bill Malloy, and the rest of them lurk, and brings her with him into 1967. Sarah, however many of her there are, is part of the same complex that includes Barnabas and the forces that surround him.
In the 1790s portion, we met wicked witch Angelique and saw her place the curse that turned Barnabas into a vampire. Like the other supernatural forces, Angelique was a complex of multiple beings, some of which were opposed to each other. In her case, spellcasting was a matter of breaking off little bits of herself that took on lives of their own. Angelique was obsessed with the idea that Barnabas would fall in love with her. She could easily cast a spell to make him do that, but insisted to her helper that Barnabas must come to her “of his own will.” Those were the exact words Barnabas used when talking to his own thrall about Vicki, who succeeded Maggie as the object of his gruesome fantasies. When we heard Angelique take the same line, it dawned on us that the Barnabas we saw from April to November 1967 was not merely cursed by Angelique, he was possessed by her. His thoughts were her thoughts, his plans were her plans. When Barnabas fights Angelique, it is one of her replicas of herself coming back to oppose her, as the zombie version she created of Barnabas’ uncle Jeremiah came back to bury her alive in #396.
Now, Barnabas has traveled back in time to 1897. He has met governess Rachel Drummond, who is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott and whom he recognizes as a double of Josette. Angelique has also come to 1897, conjured up by some Satanists whom Barnabas has antagonized for no apparent reason. Angelique peered through the windows of the great house of Collinwood just in time to see Barnabas giving Rachel Josette’s music box. Dismayed, she went to the Old House on the estate, looked at Josette’s portrait, and declared “I am Angelique, and I hate you!” She, like Barnabas, looks at Rachel and sees another Josette.
Angelique’s motivation in the 1790s segment was ostensibly about her desire for Barnabas, but it was her hatred for Josette that drove her at every turn. Now we see that Barnabas is compelled to create another Josette whom he can love; Angelique is just as powerfully compelled to create another Josette to hate. Since Barnabas’ “love” involves killing its object and raising her as a vampire, it would seem to be as hateful as is Angelique’s overt hostility.
After Angelique proclaimed her hatred to the portrait, she took a cloth doll representing Rachel and strangled it. Rachel herself collapsed, unable to breathe. Angelique mouthed words; Rachel spoke them, leading Barnabas to believe that they were a message from Josette.
Today, Rachel is in the drawing room at the great house, recovering from her choking episode. Barnabas is holding her and looking longingly at her neck when stuffy Edward Collins enters. Edward demands to know what is going on, and Barnabas explains that Rachel had trouble breathing and fainted. Edward becomes concerned and wants to call a doctor; he becomes suspicious when Rachel, who he just met a few days ago, does not want to see a doctor. Barnabas manages to distract Edward from his suspicions with some chatter about the circumstances under which Rachel fainted.
In the groundskeeper’s cottage on the estate, Angelique casts a spell to summon Rachel. Back in the great house, Rachel suddenly looks up, her eyes wide open and focused at a point in the middle distance. She stands up and walks with her neck very still, moving like a wind-up doll. She announces to Edward and Barnabas that she will be going outside for a breath of fresh air. She refuses Barnabas’ offer to accompany her. Edward and Barnabas watch her wonderingly as she marches out with her robotic gait.
Barnabas and Edward wonder what has got into Rachel all of a sudden
Rachel arrives at the cottage and finds Angelique. Angelique calls Rachel “Josette.” When she protests that her name is Rachel, Angelique echoes the Barnabas we first knew and tells her that, when she wills it, her name will be Josette. She tells Rachel that she will not understand what is happening to her, but that Barnabas will soon understand very well.
Back in the great house, a servant tells Edward that he found a woman in the cottage. Barnabas is there, and he reacts to the description with alarm. He goes to the cottage, clearly afraid that he will find Angelique there. Before he can complete a search, a rooster crows and Barnabas hastens back to his coffin in the basement of the Old House on the estate.
Barnabas opens the coffin, and finds Rachel lying in it, unconscious. This sets up a comedy of manners. He hardly knows her well enough to lie down with her, and he can’t very well wake her and ask her to make way for him. We end with him facing this problem in etiquette.
We may also remember #248, when Barnabas expressed his frustration with Maggie’s refusal to turn into Josette by forcing her into his coffin. Perhaps Angelique knows that he did that, and is taunting him with a memory of which he has since shown an ability to be ashamed. If so, the point of the taunt is that he is not different from her. Angelique called Rachel a “pawn” in the “cruel game” she is playing with Barnabas. Angelique, who when we first saw her in the 1790s segment was so monomaniacally devoted to her goals that she could not see events from any perspective other than her own, can now understand that what she is doing to Rachel is horrible. That’s why she is doing it, to show Barnabas that he is part of the same horror as herself and that he can never transcend it.
In the groundskeeper’s cottage on the estate of Collinwood, Satanists Evan Hanley and Quentin Collins call on the powers of Hell to send a demon to help them fight Quentin’s recently arrived and deeply mysterious distant cousin Barnabas. The call is answered by none other than our old friend Angelique the wicked witch.
Quentin and Evan have no idea who Angelique is, and she does not know them either. Evan introduces himself to her as a lawyer; he seems genuinely surprised that this does not impress her. Evan tells Angelique that he and Quentin summoned her from Hell and can send her back; she agrees that they summoned her, but is not so sure they can send her back. Quentin tells her that the year is 1897, that she is on an estate known as Collinwood, and that he and Evan have an enemy called Barnabas Collins. Angelique is intrigued by the year, familiar with the estate, and thrilled to hear about Barnabas. Evan starts making demands; Angelique causes him to choke and gasp. She is quite friendly to Quentin, and when Quentin suggests she let Evan breathe and speak again, she indulges him.
Angelique puts Evan in his place.
Evan is played by Humbert Allen Astredo, who in 1968 played suave warlock Nicholas Blair. He plays Evan with exactly the same bearing, tone of voice, and range of facial expressions he had brought to the role of Nicholas. Viewers who remember Nicholas have been bewildered by this. Barnabas knew Nicholas and fought him; when he met Evan the other day, his reaction left open the possibility that he recognized him as the same person. But Evan’s dabbling in the occult, as we saw it yesterday, shows only an infinitesimal fraction of Nicholas’ vast abilities in that field, and his buffoonish response when Angelique appears shows that he is no relation.
It is when Angelique strikes Evan dumb that we learn why Astredo played him in the same way he played Nicholas. Nicholas was introduced as Angelique’s boss, the master of magical powers much greater than hers. Since the main difficulty with fitting Angelique into a story was that she could easily accomplish any goal if she just kept her focus, adding a character who is even more powerful took the show to an absolute dead end. They had to box Nicholas up inside a lot of pointless business, and he quickly became a source of frustration to the audience. Seeing Astredo as another Nicholas reminds us of that frustration, and when Angelique brushes him aside with a flick of her finger our unease evaporates. We are assured that the plot will keep moving this time, and that Astredo will be free to show us what he can do as an actor.
At the end of Friday’s episode, it was Quentin who tried to stop the ceremony when Angelique’s visage began to take shape in the fire, fearing they had gone too far. Today Quentin realizes there is no turning back, but Evan keeps saying he wants to return Angelique whence she came. It’s hard to see what he expected- he was calling on the Devil to send a demon. I suppose he really is disappointed that Angelique is not excited to find herself in the company of a member of the bar.
Quentin goes home to the great house on the estate. He sneaks up behind governess Rachel Drummond while she is dozing on the sofa in the drawing room and puts his hand on her face. That wakes her. When she protests, he asks if he did it unpleasantly. She answers, “No… I mean, yes!… I don’t know.” That summarizes precisely the natural reaction to Quentin. His behavior is abominable in the extreme, but David Selby’s charisma and easy charm come through even in the character’s darkest moments, and the audience can no more want him to stay off-screen than the female characters can want him to leave them alone.
Quentin and Rachel sit together; his hands are on her face again when Barnabas shows up. Quentin gets up and twits Barnabas with his obvious closeness to Rachel, then excuses himself to go to bed.
Barnabas gives Rachel a music box that once belonged to the gracious Josette. This will induce further flashbacks in longtime viewers. Barnabas is a vampire, and as a living man in the 1790s he was in love with Josette. In May and June of 1967, Barnabas lived in contemporary times. He abducted Maggie Evans, who like Rachel in the portion of the show and like Josette in the portion set in the 1790s, is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott. He tried to erase Maggie’s personality, overwrite it with a copy of Josette’s, and to turn her into his vampire bride. The music box played a crucial part in this remake of the 1932 film The Mummy.
When Barnabas urges Rachel to listen to the music box, we pan to the window and see Angelique peeking in. As Angelique’s great power is the main difficulty with fitting her into a plot, so her single-mindedness is the main difficulty with making an audience enjoy watching her. This shot of her does as much to enlist the sympathies of longtime viewers as does the moment when she shuts Evan up. The whole time Barnabas and Rachel are involved with the music box, we are groaning. It was during the imprisonment of Maggie that Dark Shadows first became a hit, and it is a story that the show has been strongly identified with ever since. But we do not need to see it again. Angelique once married Barnabas and is maniacally possessive of him, and she does not want to see it either.
Angelique is as dismayed as we are, though for a different reason.
In the 1790s segment, which ran from November 1967 to March 1968, we saw that Angelique was motivated at least as much by her hatred of Josette as by her desire for Barnabas. After she has seen Barnabas getting up to his old tricks with Josette-lookalike Rachel, Angelique visits the portrait of Josette which hangs above the mantel in the parlor of the Old House on the estate. Longtime viewers know that Josette’s ghost inhabits the portrait. In #70, the portrait glowed, her ghost (also played by Miss Scott) emerged from it, then went outside and danced among the pillars. In #102, strange and troubled boy David Collins stood in front of the portrait and had a lively conversation with it. We could hear only his side, but it was clear the portrait was answering him. Today Angelique stands where David stood then. She scowls at the portrait and declares “I am Angelique, and I hate you!” She then goes back to the cottage where Evan and Quentin conjured her up and chokes a cloth doll, causing Rachel to collapse. She mouths words, and Rachel speaks them. Hearing Rachel talk about Josette’s death, Barnabas cries out in anguish.
This was the first episode credited to writer Violet Welles, who worked as a Broadway publicist before and after working on Dark Shadows. Ms Welles had been an uncredited collaborator with Gordon Russell on a great many of his projects, including several episodes of Dark Shadows prior to this one. She was by far the best writer of dialogue on the show. It is no wonder that the “Memorable Quotes” section of the Dark Shadows wiki entry for this episode includes whole scenes; the lines glitter with wit. Now that she is with Dark Shadows as a senior writer under her own name, the show enters its most successful period, both artistically and commercially.
Vampire Barnabas Collins has traveled back in time to the year 1897 where he hopes to prevent his distant cousin, libertine Quentin, from becoming a ghost who will ruin things for everyone in 1969. Barnabas knows that if events play out as they did originally, Quentin will die soon. He tells him today that it is his understanding that people become ghosts when they leave unfinished business behind them. He does not know what business Quentin originally left unfinished, or how he can keep him from dying without finishing it on this iteration of the timeline. So you might think that his first priority would be to get as close as possible to Quentin and learn as much as he can about what he wants.
Instead of doing this, Barnabas has gone out of his way to antagonize Quentin by accusing him of stealing his grandmother Edith’s will. Quentin and his siblings are all frenziedly searching for the will, but it is of no concern to Barnabas. Edith cannot possibly have left him any money, and he knows that the original timeline worked out so that the Collins family assets wound up in the hands of people who were oblivious to his sinister nature and happy to let him make his home on their estate. Showing interest in the will can do nothing but raise suspicions as to who this stranger really is and why he showed up when he did.
Quentin did in fact steal the will. Edith’s ghost may be at work in the house- her glove mysteriously shows up in the corridor near Quentin’s room, the furniture in the room is turned upside down, and before the end of the episode Quentin alone can hear the pounding of an enormously amplified heartbeat emanating from the walls of his room. But Quentin accuses Barnabas of planting the glove and disordering his room, and in #538 we saw that Barnabas is capable of making people with guilty consciences have hallucinations of just this kind. Barnabas is also frequently seen reading, and it is certainly possible he might have read Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” and decided to make it come to life. He may not even have needed to read the story- we saw in #442 that in 1796, early in his career as a vampire, he bricked up an enemy of his in the style Poe would describe in his 1846 story “The Cask of Amontillado.” Evidently his imagination and Poe’s ran along similar lines.
Barnabas meets governess Rachel Drummond. He is immediately attracted to Rachel, unsurprising since she is played by the lovely Kathryn Leigh Scott. He tells Rachel that she strongly resembles the portrait of Josette Collins, and he relates some facts about Josette’s life and death that did not make it into the family history. Indeed, Miss Scott played Josette in the part of Dark Shadows set in the 1790s.
Yesterday, Barnabas met unethical lawyer Evan Hanley, played by Humbert Allen Astredo. His reaction to Evan was not inappropriate, but the same reaction would also have been fitting had Barnabas thought Evan was Astredo’s previous character, warlock Nicholas Blair. This may have reminded longtime viewers of the 1790s segment, when time-traveling governess Vicki alienated the audience by time and again telling the characters that they were being played by actors who had other parts in the first 73 weeks of the show. Do the characters not look alike to Barnabas, or does he simply have the presence of mind not to waste everyone’s time with tedious drivel about who used to be who? We now know that in Rachel’s case, at least, it is the latter.
Quentin has a scene with his sister Judith in which he tells her that he did not like to play with her when they were children, because she was a “scaredy-cat.” Joan Bennett was 31 years old when David Selby was born, a fact of which the original audience would have been well aware since she was already a major star of motion pictures at the time. Indeed, her father Richard Bennett had been so big on Broadway that her birth was announced on the front pages of the New York papers, so that she never bothered to be coy about her age. But she and Mr Selby are such strong actors that it doesn’t raise an eyebrow when we hear that Judith and Quentin were children together.
Not everyone we see today merits such high praise, alas. Executive producer Dan Curtis was friendly with a man called Roger Davis, and he often let Mr Davis come on the set of Dark Shadows and assault the actors while they were trying to work. Unfortunately this happens today. Mr Davis is usually presented as if he were himself an actor playing a part. His idea of acting is simple enough. For example, he was once supposed to play a character named Jeff Clark, and his approach involved shouting “My name is Jeff Clark!” every episode or two. More recently, he was credited with a role called Ned Stuart, and he went around saying “My name is Ned Stuart!” That’s one way of attempting characterization, I suppose.
Today he is supposed to be someone named Dirk Wilkins. Regular viewers keep waiting for him to yell “My name is Dirk Wilkins!,” but he neglects to do so. He has a mustache, perhaps he thought that was sufficient. He finds Terry Crawford playing maidservant Beth Chavez, grabs her and yells in her face. Mr Selby interrupts this encounter. In character as Quentin, he makes some flip remarks and walks away, and Mr Davis resumes abusing Ms Crawford. Later he finds Ms Crawford on another set and grabs her again. Finally he walks into the set representing Quentin’s room while David Selby is trying to show us Quentin’s panicked response to the sound of the heartbeat. Mr Davis makes some nasty remarks, and when Mr Selby tries to involve him in the scene by tussling with him as Quentin might under those circumstances, it looks like Mr Davis gives him a real punch in the midsection. Mr Selby goes on acting, but the assault takes the audience out of the story. The ABC network really should have posted security guards outside the studio to keep this sort of thing from happening.
Matriarch Edith Collins has died. Her grandson Edward stands with recently arrived distant cousin Barnabas in the study of the great house of Collinwood, viewing Edith’s body. Edward asks Barnabas if Edith told him the family’s celebrated secret. Barnabas assures him she did not. Edward claims that the oldest son of the family has known the secret in every generation for a century. This does not appear to be true- Edward is the oldest son in his generation, and he has never known it. We have learned that the family has many false ideas about the secret. That it has been passed from father to son may well be one of these.
We cut to the foyer. Edward’s brother, libertine Quentin, enters with a character we have not seen before. He is lawyer Evan Hanley. Evan and Quentin conspire to replace Edith’s will with a forgery that will leave her money to Quentin. Quentin inveigles Evan into this plot by talking about their “meetings” and intimating that they may become known if he doesn’t get his way. Since Evan is played by Humbert Allen Astredo, whom longtime viewers know as warlock Nicholas Blair, and since Quentin was first introduced as the malevolent ghost of a man who may have been involved with black magic, we might assume that these “meetings” have something to do with the occult.
Quentin exits, and Barnabas and Edward enter. Edward introduces Barnabas to Evan, then he and Evan leave to attend to business. Barnabas gives them a hard look as they go. Barnabas’ conversation with Edward about the secret had grown quite heated, and returning viewers know that he has reason to be uncomfortable about the topic. He knows that the secret in fact concerns him, and that if the family learns it he will be in big trouble. So his expression may be entirely due to the apprehension he still feels as the result of that discussion. On the other hand, Barnabas did know Nicholas and do battle with him, and it is possible that he recognizes a trace of Nicholas in Evan. Astredo plays Evan as a subdued version of Nicholas, with no noticeable difference of posture or manner or cadence. Even if Barnabas can’t see that the two are played by the same actor, he may well have observed the similarity.
Barnabas hears laughter from the walkway at the top of the foyer stairs. He looks up to see twelve year old Jamison. Jamison says that Evan is lying when he says that he had a deep regard for Edith- they hated each other, since Evan knew that Edith believed he was a “shyster.” I’m sure it was possible in central Maine in 1897 for a rich Protestant kid with red hair and an Irish name to drop a shmekndik of Yiddish here and there, but it does get your attention.
Jamison tells Barnabas he is reluctant to view Edith’s body, as he has never seen a dead person. That’s what he thinks- Barnabas is a vampire, so he’s talking with a dead person right now. Barnabas asks Jamison if he likes Quentin. Something about his tone reveals to Jamison that Barnabas is hostile to Quentin, and so Jamison yells at him that he is “just like the others” who disapprove of his favorite uncle. He storms out.
Edith’s grandchildren are scrambling to find her will. Quentin suggests they make a game of the search; stuffy Edward objects that they most certainly will not make a game of it. Of course they will, since the search for a secret will is obviously a comedy plot.
Blackmailing Evan into joining his plot to forge a will in Edith’s name is not Quentin’s only crime today. He also assaults Edith’s friend Magda Rákóczi. Magda and her husband Sandor have been living in the Old House on the estate as Edith’s guests; now Barnabas is staying there. He has bitten Sandor and made him his slave, and bribed Magda into going along with his plans. Quentin calls at the Old House, where he chokes Magda and threatens her with a knife until she tells him where the will is. He then goes back to the great house and exploits Jamison’s trust to manipulate him into stealing the will and giving it to him. Quentin is such a horrible stinker that if he were played by any actor less charming than David Selby he would be intolerable to watch. As it is, we just keep wishing that Quentin would straighten up and fly right.
At the end of the episode, Barnabas accuses Quentin of having the will and threatens to do something “drastic” if he does not give it up. As a matter of fact, Jamison has not yet handed the will over to Quentin at this point, so what Barnabas says is not true. Worse, there is no tactical advantage for Barnabas in openly declaring himself to Quentin as an enemy at this point. Quite the contrary; he has traveled back in time to 1897 to prevent Quentin’s ghost haunting the great house in 1969 and making it uninhabitable, and has no idea what will be involved in doing that. He needs to be on friendly terms with as many people as possible to get the information he needs, and he particularly needs to get as close to Quentin as he can if he is to have any hope of thwarting whatever disaster is in store for him.
This isn’t the first time Barnabas has rashly shown his enemies what he thinks of them. When wicked witch Angelique returned to torment him in the spring of 1968, Barnabas repeatedly confronted her about her evil schemes, keeping her up to date on exactly what he did and did not know, while concealing everything from the people who wanted to help him fight her. Longtime viewers can see that there is no danger that Barnabas will learn anything from his experiences.
Yesterday, we were in the great house on the estate of Collinwood when dying nonagenarian Edith Collins met mysterious newcomer Barnabas Collins. She told Barnabas that she recognized him. Edith had been entrusted with the Collins family’s darkest secret, which was about Barnabas. He is a vampire, entombed in the 1790s to be kept forever away from the living. Now it is 1897, and Edith sees that the family has failed. She must tell the secret to her eldest grandchild, Edward Collins. Edward comes into the room and Edith tries to tell him what has happened. She has difficulty speaking. Edward asks Barnabas to excuse them. He replies “Of course,” and leaves the room. He does stand at the door and listen to their conversation, apparently waiting to see if Edward will come out with a crucifix and a sharpened stake.
Today, we find that Edith was so shocked by the sight of Barnabas that she has lost her sense of her surroundings. Barnabas was kept in a chained coffin in an old family mausoleum, and Edith does manage to say the word “mausoleum” to Edward, but that’s as far as she gets with the secret. Thereafter, she weaves in and out of the moment, reliving several periods of her life, some as far back as the time of her wedding to Edward’s grandfather.
At the word “mausoleum,” Barnabas rushes back to the Old House on the estate, where he has been staying. He tells his unwilling servant, a woman named Magda Rákóczi, that she must fetch her husband Sandor and that she and Sandor must go to the mausoleum at once, take the coffin out of the secret chamber where it is hidden, leave no trace of any kind in the chamber, and carry the coffin to the house. Magda points out one of several facts that make it impossible to comply with these orders, which is that Sandor is in town where Barnabas sent him. Barnabas refuses to acknowledge this or any other insuperable difficulties, and goes back to the great house.
While Barnabas is sitting in the drawing room clenching his fists on the armchair where he is waiting to see what Edward will do when he learns that he is a vampire, a hidden panel opens and a man carries a pistol into the room. The man holds the pistol at Barnabas’ head and demands he tells him who he really is. The man identifies himself as Carl Collins, one of Edward’s brothers. Barnabas yields nothing. The man discharges the pistol, from which emerges a flag labeled “Fib.” He laughs. Barnabas is not amused. The audience may not share Carl’s sense of humor either, but the subsequent scene in which Carl claims to see that Barnabas has a kind face, predicts that the two of them will become close friends, and offers to let him borrow the pistol and play jokes with it himself, is hilarious. Jonathan Frid plays Barnabas’ icy reaction to Carl perfectly, and as Carl John Karlen does not betray the least glimmer of awareness of Barnabas’ affect.
Carl goes to the Old House to call on Magda. The scene there begins with Magda showing her palm to Carl. He wants her to read the Tarot cards; she says the cards will not speak unless she has money in her hand. Like his siblings, Carl is convinced that the secret which Edith keeps and which she has vowed to disclose only to Edward is the key to control of the family fortune. Magda knows better, but she goes through the cards anyway. They tell her that the family’s fortune is even larger than anyone knows, that when Edith’s will is found it will come as a surprise to everyone, that the surprise will lead to murder, and that the person who inherits the money will not keep it. The Queen of Cups turns up in a position that indicates Edith is still in control, but the last card Magda draws leads her to gasp and stand. She reels about the room, and declares that Edith is dead. “The cards are silent.”
Back in the house, Edward lets Barnabas into Edith’s room. He closes his grandmother’s eyes, and tells Barnabas that she did not tell him the secret. He vows to learn the secret even “if it’s the last thing I do!” We cut to Barnabas, looking uncomfortable. No doubt he is thinking of how inconvenient it would be if Edward were to find out the secret and he had to see to it that it was indeed the last thing he ever did.
This is the sixth consecutive installment to which I have given the “Genuinely Good Episode” tag, a record so far. Like the preceding five, it is stuffed with wonderful things. The acting is all very very good. Isabella Hoopes does a marvelous job as the delirious Edith, as Edward Louis Edmonds gives a master class in how to play a stuffy man, and the pairings of Grayson Hall, John Karlen, and Jonathan Frid with each other all unfold brilliantly, full of laughs but never losing their dramatic tension. So many of the episodes fans most enjoy would be drab for people coming to the show for the first time that it is always a memorable occasion when we see one like this, that anyone should be able to recognize as an outstanding half hour of television. It’s true the visual side lets us down a little; even by the standards of 1960s daytime television, the color is murky and there are too many closeups. But Sam Hall’s script and the performances are so good that no fair-minded person will complain very much about those problems.
Fans will take a special interest in Edith’s ramblings. When it first aired, viewers had no way of knowing how much of what she says about the family’s history will be reflected in upcoming episodes. The writers themselves probably didn’t have a much clearer idea about that than we do. But watching the series through for the first time, our default assumption about each of her lines is that it will have some significance as we go, so if we are committed to watching the show we listen closely.
We’ve already learned that Edith is over 90, so the very latest she could have been born is 1807. More likely she was born a bit before that, sometime between 1801 and 1806. She says today that her father-in-law was Daniel Collins. From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was set in the late 1790s, and we saw Daniel. He was about 11 in 1795, so he would have been born in 1784 or thereabouts. So he could have been no more than 23 years old when Edith was born. Presumably his son Gabriel was the same age as his bride, though he might have been significantly younger. Edith does say that she always hated Daniel; perhaps she was a good deal older than Gabriel, and Daniel disapproved of her initially for that reason.
Edith tells us that Gabriel has been dead for 34 years, placing his death date in late 1862 or early 1863. She does not mention his cause of death or say anything about their son who was the father of Edward, Carl, and the others. It is firmly fixed that Edward and Carl’s brother Quentin was born in 1870, so Gabriel’s son must have survived him by several years.*
Edith says several times that the secret has been passed down from generation to generation and that she must tell it to Edward because he is the oldest. That seems to imply that Daniel told his oldest child, whom we presume to have been Gabriel, and that Gabriel told his oldest child, whom we presume to have been the unnamed father of Edith’s four grandchildren. He would then have told Edith before he died, either because Edward was not yet old enough to hear it, or because he was not available at the time.
But that implication is not at all secure. Edith says that Edward must be the keeper of the secret because he is the oldest- she doesn’t say what the connection is between being the oldest and keeping the secret. For all we know, she could have decided on her own to invent that tradition, starting with Edward and continuing with Edward’s oldest child. And when she says that it was passed down from generation to generation, she does not specify how many generations have been involved or which member of each generation did the passing. All we know is that someone of one generation learned it from someone else of a different generation, and that Edith believes it is the family’s responsibility to keep Barnabas from preying upon the living.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that sometime between 1897 and 1967 the secret was lost and not continually passed down. Perhaps in the original timeline Quentin was successful in killing Edith before Edward arrived, or maybe Edward died later in life before he was able to pass it on.
As far as Joshua passing the secret on, maybe he did, or maybe it was the elderly Ben Stokes who started the tradition?
Joshua was Barnabas’ father, and Ben Stokes was a much-put-upon indentured servant who was Barnabas’ devoted friend. They were the two people who knew that Barnabas was a vampire and that he was entombed in the secret chamber of the mausoleum. I replied to “Mike”:
I love that idea. Edith’s desire to tell the oldest son may lead us to assume that it has been handed down to the oldest son generation after generation, and it does lead the “Fab Four”** to assume that it brings with it some kind of power and access to riches. But their assumption is wrong, and ours may also be. Perhaps Joshua never told anyone. Perhaps the first person to tell the secret was Ben Stokes, and the person he told was Edith.
The scene between Barnabas and Magda brought another question to my mind. In #334, Barnabas was able to lock the panel in the mausoleum that leads to the secret room. Why doesn’t he just do that? It has also been made clear that as a vampire he is far stronger than are humans- if he wants to move the coffin from the mausoleum to the Old House, surely he could pick it up himself and do it more quickly and with less risk of detection than could Magda and Sandor. My wife, Mrs Acilius, agrees that we don’t know why Barnabas doesn’t lock the panel, but she says that it is perfectly clear why he can’t move the coffin- that is manual labor, and he is an aristocrat. His servants must do that.
*In a later episode, Quentin will mention that he knew Gabriel, throwing the 1862/3 date into question. But they never get around to any stories that depend on anything that happened in Gabriel’s later years. By the time we get to that one, only obsessive fans will remember his name. Eventually we meet two characters named Gabriel Collins, one in episodes that will air in 1970 and the other in the 1971 film Night of Dark Shadows, but a death date in the 1860s is not relevant to anything we learn about either of them.
**The “Fab Four” are Edith’s grandchildren, Edward, Carl, Quentin, and their sister Judith.
Dark Shadows Commentary 