barnabas collins – Page 21 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 557: Unannounced visitors

Act One consists of recovering vampire Barnabas and mad scientist Julia standing around Barnabas’ front parlor recapping various ongoing storylines.

Danny Horn devotes his post about this episode to a detailed analysis of this scene. He shows that Jonathan Frid’s performance and Grayson Hall’s are open to many objections. They fall short in such technical categories as “knowing their lines” and “standing on their marks” and “having the slightest idea what is going on.” But they are fascinating to watch nonetheless. Danny declares that “[t]he point of these scenes is to see how long two adults can stand around in a room saying preposterous things to each other.” Frid and Hall operate at such a high level of tension that the prospect of either of them breaking character generates enough suspense to keep us on the edge of our seats.

Patrick McCray wrote two separate posts about this episode. In the one that went live 13 September 2017, he too focuses on the performances in Act One. He writes:

Poor Jonathan Frid. He must have had a rough night. I am usually oblivious to his infamous (and completely understandable) line trouble, but in this one, it is so palpable that I totally understand why he retired from TV after DARK SHADOWS left the air. In his early dialogue with Grayson Hall, you can see sheer terror in the eyes of both performers as Barnabas haltingly recalls a trip to the hospital. This is followed by the “Frid Surge,” where Barnabas becomes far more committed and energetic when he turns to face the teleprompter. Of course, this gives him that great sense of vulnerability that was the secret to Barnabas’ success.
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: August 13,” posted on the Collinsport Historical Society, 13 September 2017.

This is the only post on the Collinsport Historical Society tagged “Frid Surge”; that’s too bad, I’d like to see that phenomenon tracked throughout the series. I should also mention that Patrick goes on in this post to express his “confidence that Frid could have acted the doors off the collected ensemble had the poor guy just been given another frickin day to study his sides.”

Barnabas and Julia’s recap scene ends when an unexpected visitor barges in. He is an unpleasant man named Peter, who prefers to be called Jeff. Peter/ Jeff is fiancé to well-meaning governess Vicki, whom Barnabas and Julia know to have been abducted by Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Adam came to Barnabas’ house yesterday and threatened to kill Vicki unless Barnabas and Julia created a mate for him.

Peter/ Jeff was assistant to Eric Lang, the mad scientist who created Adam, and he knows that Barnabas and Julia were connected to the experiment. He does not know for sure that Adam is Lang’s creation, that Barnabas and Julia brought Adam to life after Lang’s death, or that Adam has abducted Vicki. He does, however, have grounds to suspect that each of these things might be true. In this scene, he announces his suspicions to Barnabas and Julia. They huddle in one corner of the room while he shouts his lines in his singularly irritating voice. They deny all three of his points. One of the commenters on Danny’s post, “Straker,” summed up their reaction admirably:

Frid and Hall were too professional to show it but I sensed they were both annoyed when Roger Davis marched in and started yelling. It’s kind of like how you feel when you’re at a party and the host’s five year old son throws a tantrum. Sort of an embarrassed tolerance.
Comment left by “Straker” at 6:21 am Pacific time 31 July 2020 on “Episode 557: A Race of Monsters,” by Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day, 1 January 2015

Roger Davis as Peter/ Jeff, in one of the most subtle moments of his performance. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

After Peter/ Jeff’s scene, it is Barnabas’ turn to be an unwelcome guest. He calls on occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Barnabas and Julia suspect that Stokes may be the evil mastermind who has turned the previously gentle Adam toward evil plans. When Stokes hears Barnabas knocking on his door, he looks up and rasps to himself “Go away… No one is home…” This is one of my favorite lines in the whole series. Stokes was quite cheerful when he first involved himself in the strange goings-on, but as he has found himself drawn deeper and deeper into the unholy world of Collinsport he has come to regret his decisions.

Stokes is quite impatient with Barnabas’ demands that he tell him what he knows and his refusal to reciprocate with information about himself. It is only because Vicki is in danger that Stokes tells Barnabas anything at all.

Stokes already knows how Adam came into being, and Barnabas tells him about Adam’s conversation with him. This brings up a question about the scene with Peter/ Jeff. Why couldn’t Barnabas and Julia have trusted Peter/ Jeff with as much information as Barnabas here gives Stokes? Peter/ Jeff can no more go to the police than Stokes can, he will not tell Vicki anything about Lang’s experiment, and Barnabas and Julia have no reason to suspect him of being behind Adam’s turn to evil. These questions don’t come to mind during the scene with Peter/ Jeff, partly because he is so disagreeable a presence that we want him off screen as soon as possible, and partly because it has long been Barnabas’ habit to tell his enemies everything he knows while he zealously guards his secrets from potential helpers.

Patrick McCray’s second post about this episode, published 30 July 2018, includes an analysis of Thayer David’s portrayal of Stokes:

Professor Eliot Stokes gains fascinating dimension in 557. Normally, jovial and helpful, we see his protectiveness of Adam reveal an irascible and sternly just man within. Anton LaVey extolled “responsibility to the responsible,” and there are few other places where Barnabas gets both barrels of that. Stokes is perhaps the most inherently good man in Collinsport since his fellow freemason, Bill Malloy, took his last diving lesson. (Ironically, at the hands of Thayer David’s first character.) Stokes’ prime reason for siding with Adam and not Barnabas? The former vampire and Julia have withheld vital information for months. Yes, they have necessary trust issues, but this is Stokes we’re talking about. Adam may be a wildly unpredictable man-beast, capable of leveling Collinsport to sand before breakfast, but he’s also (until later in the episode) a prime graduate of Rousseau’s Finishing School for Noble Savages. He’s nursed greedily on the milk of morality that spurts abundantly from the ripe and straining teat of of Eliot Stokes’ moral tutelage. It takes a Nicholas Blair — so often Stokes’ foil — to teach him the less savory lessons in humanity. Stokes knows that there’s only so much danger in which Adam can find himself… Victoria Winters is another matter.
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: Episode 557,” published on The Collinsport Historical Society, 30 July 2018

Barnabas passes the baton to Stokes, who becomes the third character in the episode to pay an unwelcome visit. He goes to Adam. He asks the big guy who has taught him to be cruel and amoral, and gets nothing but lies in return. He tries to persuade him that he must not hurt an innocent person, and Adam angrily declares that it is “fair” for him to make Barnabas watch him kill Vicki if Barnabas will not make a mate for him.

In Patrick McCray’s 2017 post, he praises Robert Rodan’s performance as Adam:

Robert Rodan issues a highly cerebral, emotionally packed performance. Rodan never receives the credit he deserves. Much of Adam’s stint on the show finds him equipped with an eloquent, even sesquipedalian command of the language. His inner conflict is as existential as it gets… Where do you turn? Rodan balances this absurd chimera of conflicts with effortless aplomb that makes Cirque du Soleil look as clumsy as a Matt Helm fight scene.
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: August 13,” posted on the Collinsport Historical Society, 13 September 2017.

Patrick amplifies that praise in his 2018 post:

Robert Rodan is an unsung hero of an actor, delivering his existential angst with passion and truth. It’s a shame that his identification with an eventually unpopular character was probably a factor in Rodan not being recycled by Dan Curtis, despite being the dark-haired, blue-eyed “type” that typified the ruggedly handsome, DS norm (such as Selby, Lacy, Crothers, George, Ryan, Prentice, Storm, Bain, etc.)
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: Episode 557,” published on The Collinsport Historical Society, 30 July 2018

While I always found the sight of Conrad Bain a guarantee of a fine performance, I can’t say it ever occurred to me to class him as “ruggedly handsome” in the way that one might class the other men Patrick lists. There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose.

Episode 554: What must be

Recovering vampire Barnabas Collins is in the woods on the estate of Collinwood, searching for well-meaning governess Vicki Winters. He hears dogs howling, as they used to howl when he was in the grip of bloodlust. He goes to pieces at the memory.

Barnabas’ fellow searcher, Vicki’s fiancé Peter Bradford, sees him standing petrified. Barnabas asks him if he can hear the dogs. Peter says he can, and is puzzled that Barnabas was afraid he was hallucinating their sounds. Peter asks Barnabas if he is all right. Barnabas insists that he is just worried about Vicki, and resumes searching.

Shortly after, Barnabas finds himself in the foyer of the great house on the estate, slumped in a chair under his own portrait. He makes a sad contrast with the haughty figure in the painting. His friend Julia Hoffman enters, and he gives her a pleading look that emphasizes the contrast between his present weakness and the arrogant power he wielded when he posed for the portrait, more than 170 years before.

Barnabas tells Julia that he does not know how he got into the house. The last he remembers, he was in the woods and heard the dogs howling. She suggests that their noise may not mean anything, but he is sure there is some unearthly horror afoot.

Barnabas tells Julia something else he is sure of. Earlier this evening, Frankenstein’s monster Adam came to his house. Adam mistakenly believes that Barnabas created him, and demanded that he build a woman to be his mate. When Barnabas told him that would be impossible, Adam vowed to make him sorry, then left. Shortly after, Vicki came by for a brief visit. Barnabas is certain that Adam abducted Vicki to use as a hostage, and that the only ransom he will accept is the artificially created woman he has no way of supplying.

Barnabas goes to the telephone and announces he is going to tell the police what he knows about Adam. Julia objects that Adam can tell the police enough about the two of them to expose them both to prosecution. Barnabas says that he is willing to take that risk for Vicki’s sake, and begins dialing. Julia says she is not, and places her finger on the telephone receiver to end the call.

Julia has never been able to entirely conceal her dislike for Vicki, rolling her eyes when Vicki talks to her and making sarcastic remarks when Barnabas praises her, so regular viewers can hardly be surprised that Julia does not volunteer to go to prison for her sake. Still, Julia has often enough shown a troubled conscience about the many crimes she has committed during her association with Barnabas that her utter coolness represents a new step in the character’s development. The other day she wanted to shoot wicked witch Angelique, but Angelique was not really human and was enormously dangerous. Even so, Julia was deeply upset when she made up her mind to kill her, and she backed down when she came face to face with Angelique. But Vicki is resolutely, unfailingly, rather tediously good, Good with a capital G. That Julia is so blandly willing to consign her to death at Adam’s hands suggests that her sense of right and wrong will no longer serve as a brake on any sinister plans that might advance whatever goals she and Barnabas are pursuing.

Barnabas looks at Julia, shocked. Perhaps her coldness shocks him. Perhaps what shocks him is that he is so dependent on her that he does not resume dialing.

Meanwhile, another drama has played out not so far away. Electrician Tom Jennings was inspecting the wiring in a house that suave warlock Nicholas Blair is renting from the ancient and esteemed Collins family. Tom told Nicholas that he wanted to inspect the cellar to make sure the foundation was in good repair. Nicholas replied that this would not be necessary, but Tom insisted. He opened the cellar door, and found a coffin. Nicholas told him that the coffin was there when he moved in. Tom asked if he’d called the police, and Nicholas replied there was no need, since the coffin was empty.

On his way home, Tom told himself that the Collinses wouldn’t leave a coffin in the basement of one of their houses. That shows what he knows- for the first 55 weeks of the show, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard thought that her husband was buried in a box in the basement of the great house, and when he was a vampire Barnabas kept his coffin in the basement of his house. It wouldn’t be a Collins house if it didn’t have a coffin in the basement, and a dungeon too.

Tom sees someone and asks who it is. The part of the other person is played by the camera, so we do not know. The camera zooms in, and Tom collapses.

Later, Peter finds Tom propped against a tree. He touches Tom, and Tom falls over, apparently dead. He has two bloody wounds on his neck. Peter goes back to the great house. He tells Barnabas and Julia that he must use the telephone. They hear him describe Tom’s wounds to the police. Afterward, Barnabas and Julia realize that there is another vampire operating in the area.

Tom’s appearance is the debut of Don Briscoe, who would be a big part of Dark Shadows for almost two years. On his Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn told an amazing story about Briscoe:

Many years ago, when I was in high school, my mother walked into the room while I was watching Dark Shadows.

She looked at the guy on the screen, and said, “Is his name Don?”

I said, yeah, that’s Don Briscoe, and she said, “I thought so. I knew him, when I was in grad school. He asked me out once.”

Seriously, true story. She said that they were both getting a master’s in English — he was at Columbia University, and she was at Barnard, which is right across the street. He asked her out on a date, and he was very handsome, and very nice, but he wasn’t Jewish, so she said no.

At the time, I had no way to verify this, and I never really knew what to think about it. I mean, she knew the guy’s first name, but maybe she confused him with some other brown-haired guy named Don.

But now I have this excellent book called Barnabas & Company, which has extensive bios on everybody in the cast. It turns out that he really did get a master’s degree in English at Columbia University, and that means that Don Briscoe is kind of my dad.
Danny Horn, “Episode 565: Weird Science,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 10 January 2015

Granted, hundreds of actors had parts on Dark Shadows over the five years of its run, a great many people have blogged about the show, and I’m sure Danny’s mother was a very attractive young woman who had offers from lots of fellows. But Briscoe was one of the more important members of the cast, and Danny is as good as any of the bloggers. So it really is a noteworthy coincidence that they are connected to each other in that particular way.

Episode 553: The five captivities of Victoria Winters

The First Captivity

In #83, strange and troubled boy David Collins repaid his governess, the well-meaning Vicki, for her determined attempts to befriend him by locking her in a room where he hoped she would die. The room was located deep in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood, and Vicki found that she could neither open the door nor reach the window.

Vicki had two visitors during her time trapped in this dusty chamber. In #85, the ghost of local man Bill Malloy appeared and sang to her; this was the first sustained and direct interaction between a living person and a supernatural being on Dark Shadows, and it left Vicki terrified and confused. In #87, David’s abusive father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, knocked on the door and pretended to be a ghost, scaring Vicki further. When Roger then opened the door and rescued Vicki, she threw her arms around him, sobbing and saying that he was right and David really was a monster. In those days, Vicki’s attempt to win David over was the only storyline on the show that worked; when it seems that she will join all the other grownups in giving up on the little guy, the audience’s hearts break.

The Second Captivity

In #108, Vicki had come to the conclusion that Roger killed Bill. Unsure where to go, she stopped in the cottage on the estate where handyman Matthew Morgan made his home. Talking to him, she prompted him to make an indiscreet remark that revealed that he, not Roger, pushed Bill off the cliff from which he fell to his death.

Matthew would not let her leave the cottage. He acknowledged that she had done nothing wrong, but said that he would have to kill her now that she knew his secret. She tried to dissuade him, but it was only a chance visit from matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard that prevented the murder. Matthew ran away, and Vicki was free.

The Third Captivity

In #116, Vicki went to look for David in the long-deserted Old House on the estate. She did not find him, but instead found Matthew, a wanted fugitive with a grudge against her. Until #126, Matthew kept her bound and gagged in the secret room behind the bookcase in the front parlor.

Others came and went. David, no longer homicidal, is convinced Matthew is innocent of Bill’s death and unaware he is holding Vicki, and he sneaks Matthew food he has stolen from the kitchen in the great house. Vicki’s friends Burke and Joe search the Old House, and she can only listen while Matthew hides with her in the secret room.

Matthew was fetching an ax with which to kill Vicki when the ghost of the gracious Josette Collins appeared to her and told her not to be afraid. When he came back, Josette led the ghosts of Bill Malloy and of the legendary Widows of Widows’ Hill as they surrounded Matthew and scared him to death.

The Fourth Captivity

From #365 to #461, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late eighteenth century. Vicki had come unstuck in time, and found herself at Collinwood as it was in those days. Her total failure to adapt to her new environment led to her arrest, trial, and condemnation as a witch. From #401 on, she was in gaol, with a couple of brief and disastrous excursions.

Vicki had several visitors during her time in gaol, most of them people who had at some point wished her well but whom she alienated by her compulsive sharing of information she had learned when she was in the 1960s. By the time she had been sentenced to hang, she had only two friends left. One was her gaoler/ defense attorney/ boyfriend/ co-conspirator/ fellow prisoner, an unpleasant man named Peter Bradford. The other was Barnabas Collins, a vampire. Neither was able to do her much good, so in #460 and #461, Vicki mounted the gallows, was hooded, a noose placed around her neck, and the lever pulled to open the trap door under her feet. She then found herself restored to her own time, mere moments after her departure, but wearing the clothes she wore in the 1790s and bearing the marks of the wounds she sustained then, including the rope burns on her neck.

The Fifth Captivity

Shortly after Vicki returned to 1968, Barnabas’ vampirism went into remission. Peter also turned up, suffering from total amnesia and calling himself Jeff Clark, but still disagreeable to look at or listen to. Vicki and Peter/ Jeff became engaged the other day. Yesterday, Vicki left Peter/ Jeff to wait for her in the great house while she went to the Old House, which is now Barnabas’ home. She wanted to give him the news.

What freed Barnabas of the vampire curse was the creation of Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Now, Adam wants a mate, and is under the mistaken impression that Barnabas can create one for him. He has decided to extort Barnabas’ cooperation by taking Vicki as his hostage.

Adam is wanted by the police for abductions and assaults he committed before he learned to talk. Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, who is acting as mistress of Collinwood while Liz is in the hospital, took pity on Adam and has been hiding him in a dusty room in the west wing. It is not the room Vicki was trapped in back in 1966; there is a window within reach. But when she comes to and finds herself there, she tells Adam she knows where she is. He responds “No!” She says that it’s the west wing, and she has been there before Most of the audience joined the show long after Vicki’s first captivity, so it will be as much news to them as it is to Adam that Vicki is on familiar ground.

Adam agrees that Vicki has done nothing to harm him, but tells her that he may nonetheless have to kill her. In this, he reminds us of what Matthew said to Vicki when he held her prisoner in his cottage.

Peter/ Jeff is still waiting for Vicki in the foyer of the great house when Carolyn finds him. He tells her Vicki went to Barnabas’ house more than two hours before, promising to return in an hour. Carolyn smiles and, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, tells Peter/ Jeff that Barnabas and Vicki are “such good friends” it’s no wonder the two of them would lose track of time when they were alone together. This bothers Peter/ Jeff almost as much as it was obviously intended to do, and he goes to the Old House.

Peter/ Jeff arrives and demands Barnabas take him to Vicki. Barnabas is taken aback by Peter/ Jeff’s tone, and for good reason. When actor Roger Davis shouted his lines, which he did most of the time, he projected his voice not from the muscles of the pelvic floor, as singers are often taught to do, but from the sphincters in his buttocks, with the result that he sounded like he was trying to defecate. Barnabas has some nice rugs on his floor, so an angry Peter/ Jeff is an alarming visitor.

While Peter/ Jeff yells at him, Barnabas remembers that Adam had been in the house just moments before Vicki came, and that he had threatened to make Barnabas “very sorry” for not doing what he wanted. It was odd that Barnabas didn’t offer to walk Vicki home after that, a fact which has apparently dawned on him. He rounds on Peter/ Jeff and says that they are both to blame if anything happened to Vicki, since neither of them should have let her walk through the woods alone. Peter/ Jeff agrees with that, and his yelling moderates a bit. They get some flashlights and go out to search for her.

As they are searching, Peter/ Jeff proves that he is a true member of the Dark Shadows cast when he shines a flashlight directly into the camera. Barnabas tells him they should split up. This may or may not be a logical step towards finding Vicki, but it definitely will reduce Barnabas’ exposure to Peter/ Jeff, so it is no wonder he is eager to do it.

Peter/ Jeff carries on the tradition. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas goes to the great house and talks to Carolyn. He tells her that Vicki is missing, that he and Peter/ Jeff have searched the woods thoroughly, and that he suspects Adam has abducted her. He insists that she tell him where Adam is, and she denies knowing. He tells her he does not believe her, and says that if Adam harms Vicki, she “will be held responsible.” Jonathan Frid and Nancy Barrett were always interesting to watch together, and this is the first time they have played a scene where their characters were adversaries facing each other down. The dialogue is nothing special and the situation is all too familiar, but their performances make for a few fresh and exciting minutes.

Carolyn goes to Adam’s room. As Barnabas had been reading when Peter/ Jeff called on him, so Adam, who shares a mystical connection with Barnabas, has a book in his hand when Carolyn stops by. As David sneaked food from the kitchen to Matthew at the Old House, so Carolyn has been sneaking food from the kitchen to Adam in the west wing.

Adam is very slow to let Carolyn into the room. She notes that he has always invited her in before, and does not go away when he claims to have been asleep. He lets her in. As Burke and Joe had searched the Old House when Matthew was hiding Vicki in the secret room there, so Carolyn looks around the room while we know Vicki is somewhere inside it. Adam denies having been out of the room, and tells her Barnabas was lying when he said he had gone to his house. Adam has not lied to Carolyn before, so she accepts what he says. After she leaves, Adam opens the door to his own secret room, a closet in which Vicki is bound and gagged as Matthew had once bound and gagged her.

This is the twelfth episode directed by John Walter Sullivan, but the first credited to him as “Sean Dhu Sullivan.” The name “Jack Sullivan” appeared on the previous installments.

Episode 552: He talk so good

In the great house of Collinwood, well-meaning governess Vicki is talking to her fiancé, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. She asks Peter/ Jeff to wait there for an hour while she goes to the Old House on the estate to break the news of their engagement to old world gentleman Barnabas. It has been established in previous episodes that the Old House is no more than a fifteen minute walk from the great house, so we know that Vicki expects the conversation to last about half an hour. Peter/ Jeff seems worried that it might have consequences that go on even longer. He tells Vicki that Barnabas loves her. She agrees that he does, but says that she loves only Peter/ Jeff, and tells him he needn’t be jealous.

Vicki arrives at the Old House and tells Barnabas the news. She tells him she knows how he feels about her. In a mild tone, he says that she and Peter/ Jeff don’t seem to have known each other very long. Vicki isn’t worried about that, so Barnabas wishes her well, tells her nothing will ever change his feelings for her, gives her a peck on the cheek, and sees her to the door. She leaves the Old House about four minutes after she got there, much less time than she had expected.

Vicki tells Barnabas the news. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas’ calm reaction and quick dismissal of Vicki suggests that he might not be quite so hung up on her as she and Peter/ Jeff imagine him to be. The end of her visit corroborated this far more powerfully than Vicki could know. Moments before she came to the Old House, a man named Adam had left. Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster. He mistakenly believes that Barnabas created him. He came to the house to demand that Barnabas create a mate for him. When Barnabas told him he could not, Adam said he would wreak a terrible vengeance. Evidently he did not intend to attack Barnabas directly, since he then turned and left. Even though Barnabas knows that Adam is nearby and is out for someone’s blood, he does not offer to accompany Vicki home through the woods; it doesn’t even occur to him to do so.

For over a year, Barnabas has been saying that he and Vicki are going to wind up together, but he has done next to nothing to make this happen. In recent months, he has been pushing her away every time they are together. In #490, he went so far as to tell her that “loving me would have been the greatest mistake of your life.” My wife, Mrs Acilius, wonders if Vicki backed Barnabas into a corner when she told him “I know how you feel about me.” After that, he couldn’t very well have done less than tell her he would always feel about her as he does now. A girl has her pride, after all.

Once Vicki is in the woods, Adam shows up and grabs her. He announces that she will help him persuade Barnabas to give him what he wants.

Episode 551: Different like me

Craig Slocum tops many fans’ lists of Dark Shadows‘ worst actors, so I would be remiss in my duty as a commentator if I did not mention that he does a genuinely good job today as unlovely ex-convict Harry Johnson. Harry brings a tray of food to the very tall, very strong Adam, who is in a dusty room in the long deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood, hiding from the police as the guest of heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard. Harry finds that Adam is trying to stab himself to death, and calmly talks him into giving up the effort and handing over his knife.

Harry goes to the drawing room in search of Carolyn, and finds the suave and mysterious Nicholas Blair. Nicholas tells him that Carolyn is out. He shocks Harry by asking if Adam is in trouble. Harry had no idea anyone but he and Carolyn knew Adam was in the house, and Carolyn has scared him out of his few wits with her orders to keep the secret.

Nicholas takes command of the situation. He insists Harry tell him what happened, and posts him in the foyer to wait for Carolyn to return while he goes up to talk to Adam. When Carolyn comes back, Harry tells her about Adam’s suicide attempt and about his encounter with Nicholas. She angrily reminds Harry that Collinwood is her house, not Nicholas’, and Harry had damn well better remember to take his orders from her and no one else. Harry is left with nothing to say but a meek “Yes, ma’am.”

Slocum is convincing as someone who is not intimidated by a physically imposing man with a knife, but who is entirely out of his league when confronted with people who outrank him in social class. So far as I can tell, none of the other fansites mentions his good work today. Dark Shadows fans are accustomed to ghosts and witches and vampires and Frankensteins and time travel, but a good performance by Craig Slocum is such an unexpected sight that they cannot bring themselves to admit that they have seen it.

Nicholas is a middle manager in Satan’s terrestrial operations, a member of Hell’s bourgeoisie.* He knows that Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster. The other day, he persuaded Adam to try to rape Carolyn. Adam’s attempt doesn’t seem to have got very far, but it has convinced Carolyn that she can no longer harbor Adam in her house. The audience knows that Nicholas has plans for Adam; presumably he knew that if Adam attacked Carolyn, she would want him to leave Collinwood, paving the way for him to take the big guy into his own house where he would have unlimited access to him. While Carolyn is downstairs chewing Harry out, Nicholas is up in Adam’s hiding place adding to the evil ideas he has planted in his impressionable mind.

Carolyn goes up to Adam’s room and finds Nicholas still there. Nicholas tells her that the crisis is past, then leaves the room. Carolyn finds that Adam is perfectly composed and looking forward to some improvement in his circumstances, but is unwilling to talk to her about anything substantial.

Carolyn goes down to the drawing room, where Nicholas is playing the piano. This is the first time we have seen anyone play the piano since #330, when sarcastic dandy Roger Collins banged out a few notes. Carolyn has been suspicious of Nicholas since she met him and was angry with him when she first learned he had gone into the west wing and found Adam, but can only thank him when she sees that he has talked the big guy out of suicidal despair.

Later, we see that Adam has left the great house of Collinwood and gone to the Old House on the same estate. The Old House is home to old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. Adam knows that Barnabas was present when he first awoke, in a laboratory, ten weeks ago, and that he spent the first weeks of his life as a prisoner in Barnabas’ dungeon. When he learned yesterday that he was an artificially constructed man, he jumped to the conclusion that it was Barnabas who created him.

Adam knocks on Barnabas’ door. Barnabas is astonished to see that Adam has returned. Adam announces that they will talk and walks in.

Barnabas marvels at Adam’s fluent speech. When last they saw each other, he could speak only a few words, such as “music!,” “food!,” “friend,” and, most importantly, “kill Barnabas!” Now, he tells Barnabas that he no longer plans to kill him, but says that he is right to be afraid of him. He has come for what he is entitled to. He wants Barnabas to make another creature like himself so that he will no longer be alone.

Barnabas asks questions Adam will not answer. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas tries to explain that he did not create Adam, that Dr Eric Lang did. Adam has never heard of Lang, and dismisses Barnabas’ statement as a lie. Barnabas goes on saying that he isn’t even a doctor, but Adam won’t listen. He will be provided with a mate, or he will take his revenge.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out that Adam’s demand for a woman who shares his nature should sound familiar to Barnabas. When Barnabas first came on the show in the spring and summer of 1967, he was a vampire, and was obsessed with turning a living woman into a vampiric replica of his lost love Josette. Adam, who came to life by an infusion of Barnabas’ “life force,” shares his longing for a female counterpart.

In 1973, Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis produced an adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein for ABC-TV. The second half of that long movie was devoted to the creature’s demand that Frankenstein build him a mate, and the terrible vengeance he exacted when the scientist refused to comply. The original audience of this episode can’t have known that that production was in the future, but they would have been aware of the 1935 Universal film Bride of Frankenstein and Hammer’s 1967 Frankenstein Created Woman. It seems likely they had assumed that Adam would sooner or later set aside his bachelor ways, and were waiting for a development such as this.

*Mrs Acilius has an advanced degree in sociology, and she coined the phrase “Hell’s bourgeoisie.”

Episode 548: Too much a part of him

Wicked witch Angelique defied her supervisor, suave warlock Nicholas, one too many times. Yesterday, Nicholas stripped Angelique of her powers, including her immunity to aging. Since she is 194 years old, this leaves her with a sharply limited future.

Today, Nicholas tells Angelique he will think of sparing her from her imminent demise if she can persuade recovering vampire Barnabas to forgive her for her extreme abuse of him and of everyone he has ever cared about. She goes to Barnabas and begs him for forgiveness. Barnabas replies that when he asked her for forgiveness, she responded by turning him into a vampire. He does show signs of concern for her, but cannot pardon everything she has done. He specifically mentions The Dream Curse, a three month storyline that not only brought great suffering to him and a dozen other characters, but which also made the audience miserable. She dies.

Angelique begs Barnabas for forgiveness. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Nicholas’ only acknowledged motivation to this point has been a selfless devotion to evil for its own sake. That makes it odd that he would place a value on forgiveness. Dark Shadows is pervaded with ghost stories, and ghost stories are, first and foremost, explanations of how unresolved conflicts in the past can poison relationships among people in the present. It is also a soap opera, and the biggest events in soaps are changes in the way particular characters feel about each other. So both genres tend to elevate forgiveness, not only as a virtue, but as the highest form of The Good in human life. We saw this in the first year of the show, when well-meaning governess Vicki kept forgiving strange and troubled boy David for his attempts to kill her, acts of forgiveness which culminated in #191 when David ran from the mother who was trying to lure him to his own death into Vicki’s arms and an acceptance of life. Two weeks later, in #201, dashing action hero Burke closed another narrative thread left over from episode #1 when he forgave sarcastic dandy Roger for an old grievance he had against him. With those events, it was pardoning that cleared the flotsam left over from Dark Shadows 1.0, paving the way for the introduction of Barnabas and the advent of Dark Shadows 2.0.

Perhaps Nicholas was so certain Barnabas would not be able to bring himself to forgive Angelique in the time available before her death that making her beg for forgiveness was his way of perverting the world’s best thing into yet another instrument of cruelty. Certainly he suggests this interpretation when he introduces the idea with a laugh and a comment that he might find it “amusing.”

When Nicholas stands over Angelique’s corpse, he tells her that her own hatred had made it impossible for Barnabas to forgive her because it had “become too much a part of him.” That Angelique’s hatred became a part of Barnabas rings a bell for longtime viewers. The show has always depicted supernatural beings, not as self-contained individuals, but as complexes of phenomena that operate more or less independently, often without each other’s knowledge, sometimes in pursuit of mutually exclusive goals. For example, in 1967 the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah visited David during the day and tried to prevent him finding out Barnabas was a vampire, but she also appeared to David in a dream and showed him everything the daytime ghost wanted to keep hidden. When David told the Sarah of the waking hours what her dream visitation form had shown him, she was horrified and forbade him from following up on any of that information.

When Angelique places a curse, she sometimes seems to create a little version of herself, give it possession of the person she is targeting, and turn it loose in the world. Sometimes that little Angelique turns against her. For example, she raised the body of Barnabas’ uncle Jeremiah from the dead to use for her own nefarious purposes, only to find that it would not return to its grave when she was finished with it. When Barnabas was a vampire, he had some obsessions that were strikingly similar to obsessions Angelique had shown. So Angelique wanted Barnabas to love her, and had the power to cast a spell that would make him do so, but instead wrought immense havoc on everyone else with one wild scheme after another, because she wanted him to come to her “of his own will.” Likewise the vampire Barnabas wanted to make Vicki his victim, but passed up one opportunity after another to bite her because he wanted her to come to him “of her own will.” That similarity is so close that it makes us wonder if the Barnabas we first met was simply Angelique in disguise. Not only her hatred, but all of her quirks had become part of him.

Angelique came from the 1790s to 1968 by some magical process that involved a portrait of her that is now on a stand in Vicki’s room. Today she uses a secret panel to let herself into the room and look at the portrait. We first saw that panel open when the show was a costume drama set in the 1790s. The room was occupied then by gracious lady Josette, and it was the vampire Barnabas who used the panel to enter. We haven’t seen the panel since, leaving it strongly associated with Barnabas in the minds of regular viewers. Angelique’s use of it today further suggests her identity with him when he is in his vampire state.

In their post about the episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri find a resemblance between Angelique’s old age makeup and another TV character:

Captured from Dark Shadows Before I Die.

But look at Angelique’s creator, writer Sam Hall. She came by her looks honestly:

Episode 547: I can’t let you lose this moment

In the great house of Collinwood, well-meaning governess Vicki awakens to find a strange glow emanating from the portrait of wicked witch Angelique which, for some reason, she keeps on a stand in her bedroom. The portrait transforms itself before her eyes into that of an extremely old woman. Vicki goes to get permanent houseguest Julia. Seeing the transformed portrait, Julia agrees with Vicki that the portrait is like a living thing, says that Vicki knows more about Angelique than anyone else, and is unable to answer when Vicki asks what the portrait’s transformation means for someone called Cassandra.

Transformed portrait. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Vicki and Julia know that Cassandra, wife of sarcastic dandy Roger, is Angelique in a black wig, come from the eighteenth century to wreak a terrible vengeance on old world gentleman Barnabas. Vicki apparently does not know what form that vengeance was meant to take.

In the 1790s, Angelique/ Cassandra turned Barnabas into a vampire, and her curse was in effect for 172 years. After his vampirism went into remission, she returned, obsessively driven to restore him to his undead state. Since it was the vampire story that first made Dark Shadows a hit in May and June of 1967, and it has ever since been known as the “1960s vampire soap opera,” Angelique/ Cassandra’s obsession likely reflected the concern of ABC network executives who must have been nervous when the makers of the show decided to turn Barnabas into a human. Angelique/ Cassandra’s attempts to revive the curse do keep the threat of vampirism at the center of the action.

Julia knows all about Barnabas and Angelique/ Cassandra, and so she rushes from Vicki’s room to Barnabas’ house. There, she finds Angelique/ Cassandra slumped in a chair in the front parlor, her face concealed inside a deep hood. Barnabas explains that Angelique/ Cassandra told him that her associate Nicholas told her she had wasted too much time trying to restore his curse, that Nicholas had then punished her by stripping her of her powers, that one of those powers was her immunity to aging, and that she had come to his house to shoot him to death before her 194 years caught up with her and she turned into a pile of dust. Angelique/ Cassandra began to collapse before she could fire the gun, and now it is on the mantel.

Julia is a medical doctor, and makes an effort to examine Angelique/ Cassandra. Angelique/ Cassandra rushes out of the house, and Julia asks Barnabas why he didn’t kill her when he had the chance. Barnabas, who had already killed his uncle in a duel before he began his long career as a bloodsucking fiend and part-time serial murderer and who within minutes of being freed from the effects of the curse picked up a gun with the intention of shooting a man named Adam, gives a self-satisfied little speech about how much he values life. Julia, who was extremely reluctant to join Barnabas in the murder of her onetime friend Dave in #341 and was miserable when he gleefully taunted her afterward with her “new status” as a “murderer!,” takes the gun and announces that she will go kill Angelique/ Cassandra herself.

Outside the door of the great house, Barnabas tries to talk Julia out of killing Angelique/ Cassandra. Julia says that if Angelique/ Cassandra is out of the way once and for all, she might herself be able to return to her old life. Barnabas points out that she is overlooking the obstacle that a murder charge might present to that plan. Julia says that no one would convict her if they knew what Angelique/ Cassandra was, to which Barnabas replies that no one will know, since no one would believe the true story. He does not mention what he had brought up earlier, that Nicholas is more powerful than Angelique/ Cassandra, or draw the obvious inference, that he must be at least as dangerous. As long as Nicholas is around, killing Angelique/ Cassandra won’t gain Julia or Barnabas very much.

Inside, Barnabas and Julia find that Roger has let Angelique/ Cassandra into the house. She has aged tremendously, so much so that Roger did not recognize her as his wife. She is resting on the couch in the drawing room, where Julia examines her while Roger and Barnabas talk in the foyer.

Julia comes out and tells the men that her patient’s heartbeat is so weak she can have only minutes left to live. Barnabas gives a stern response, and Julia assures him she did nothing to change the woman’s condition. The word “minutes” will strike a chord with returning viewers, who remember that Nicholas yesterday referred to Angelique/ Cassandra’s future as “the minutes remaining to you.” If we also remember how easy it is to underestimate Angelique/ Cassandra, we will not be very surprised when, after Roger insists on driving the old woman to the hospital, they go into the drawing room they find that she is gone and the windows are open. Angelique/ Cassandra is so interesting that the number of minutes she will continue to exist is rarely less than the 22 minutes that make up an episode of Dark Shadows.

Angelique/ Cassandra is Lara Parker’s usual young and beautiful self at the beginning of the episode. She then goes off camera for a moment and comes right back with her face hidden inside a hood. She is in a couple of scenes as a hooded figure before we see her face again, close to the end, when she is wearing the same old age makeup she had on in #499. Considering that the show was done live-to-tape, that leads me to wonder if the makeup was applied in stages during multiple commercial breaks.

Episode 546: A woman, born on Martinique in 1774

Suave warlock Nicholas has expressly forbidden his subordinate, the wicked witch known variously as Angelique and Cassandra, from killing Frankenstein’s monster Adam. But now he has twice caught her trying to do just that. He punishes her by stripping her of her powers. He tells her that she is now a human being, and that she will die soon.

Nicholas de-witches Angelique/ Cassandra, while also trying to hold her wig in place. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Angelique/ Cassandra’s husband, sarcastic dandy Roger, comes downstairs and confronts her about her indifference to him. She responds that there never was anything between them and never will be, and rushes out of the house. My wife, Mrs Acilius, is a soap opera fan from way back, and she says that as far as she is concerned this archetypal soap moment makes for a “Genuinely Good Episode.”

Angelique/ Cassandra goes to see recovering vampire Barnabas. He opens the door and asks what she wants. She says that she was once the mistress of the house and that as such she has a right to enter.

Ever since she showed up in the year 1968, Angelique/ Cassandra has been trying Barnabas’ patience and the audience’s by pretending that she was not the witch he married in the 1790s. He asks her why she has dropped that pretense now, and she says that she, like he, has become human. She also says that she will die at dawn. It is unclear why she thinks this- all Nicholas told her was that her life expectancy was to be measured in “minutes.” She declares her intention to kill Barnabas, and is pointing a gun at him when the episode ends.

If it does not lead to her immediate demise, depriving Angelique/ Cassandra of her powers would be an intriguing way of making her a more flexible character. In the costume drama segment set in the late eighteenth century, she was so powerful that she painted herself into a corner, facing no real opposition. The only suspense she could generate came when she was indecisive or distracted and got in her own way. In 1968, her subordination to Nicholas has pushed her to the opposite extreme. She has been very busy, but hasn’t done much. If she survives without her powers, it might be interesting to see her learn how to live as a human after all this time.

Angelique/ Cassandra’s appearance reflects the end of her dual identity perhaps more clearly than was intended. When she answered to the name Angelique in the 1790s, she had blonde hair; when she turned up in 1968 calling herself Cassandra, she wore a black wig. Throughout this episode, the wig keeps sliding around on her head.

This episode includes another of the innumerable replays of an audiotape message about Barnabas and Adam. The other day, it seemed that Nicholas and Cassandra had taped over the message, as undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins taped over a recording she didn’t want parapsychologist Peter Guthrie to hear in #172. But Friday they played it for us yet again. When Nicholas threatens Angelique/ Cassandra with death if she keeps disobeying him, Mrs Acilius said to the screen “I’ll kill you myself if you play that tape again!” I am glad to report that this is the last time we will hear the thing.

Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day post about this episode juxtaposes screenshots and dialogue from the scene in which Nicholas strips Angelique/ Cassandra of her powers with screenshots and dialogue from a contemporary episode of General Hospital. The contrast is hilarious. It also shows why even the conventionally soapy scenes with Roger and Barnabas stand out from the other daytime dramas of the period. Director Lela Swift’s use of the camera was incomparably more dynamic and ambitious than anything General Hospital was doing, Robert Cobert’s original orchestral score is comprehensible to a modern audience in a way that an organ playing in the background would never be, and the action is paced so that it takes less time for Angelique/ Cassandra to lose her supernatural powers, end her marriage to Roger, and pull a gun on Barnabas than it took Lucille to explain to Audrey that she had an idea about how she could learn to play bridge.

Episode 536: Now we’re gonna hear the dogs howlin’ again!

A magical bat has bitten recovering vampire Barnabas Collins on the neck and Barnabas appears to have died. Barnabas’ friend Julia and his servant Willie have a conference to discuss their next steps. Barnabas had expected such an attack, knowing that the witch who made him a vampire in the first place has been working to renew her curse. Willie laments the situation, crying out, “Aw, now we’re gonna hear the dogs howlin’ again!” Evidently that’s the bad part.

No more quiet nights for Willie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas had directed Julia and Willie to drive a stake through his heart once it had stopped beating. They can’t do it. They decide to bury him in the woods instead. Willie mentions a cross; a silver cross inside the lid of his coffin had kept Barnabas immobilized for the 171 years before Willie inadvertently released him to prey upon the living in April 1967, so perhaps that’s how they plan to show mercy to their friend.

Once Willie has dug the grave and put Barnabas’ coffin in it, he and Julia decide to pray. She takes the lead, kneeling and throwing dirt, presumably including stones, onto the coffin. Dark Shadows avoided the topic of religion almost completely until repressed spinster Abigail Collins made her first appearance in #367; she and the Rev’d Mr Trask, introduced in #385, presented a wildly unfair, highly entertaining lampoon of eighteenth century New England Congregationalism. Recently the show has been lurching towards a vaguely friendly attitude towards Christianity. If Julia keeps strewing stones onto the grave once it is filled in, we might think that this friendliness extends to Judaism as well.

Julia praying. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Meanwhile, a very tall man named Adam is having a bad time. Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster, and when he was created he drew the effect of the vampire curse from Barnabas. He does not feel the effects of that curse, but he does suffer pain when Barnabas is injured. When heiress Carolyn calls on Adam at the old shack in the woods where he is hiding, she finds that his neck hurts where Barnabas was bitten. When Julia declares Barnabas dead, we cut back to the shack, where Adam has stopped moving. Occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes has joined Carolyn; he feels Adam’s wrist, and in a bit of Collinsport English that is becoming increasingly prominent on the show says that he can find no “pulsebeat.”

Barnabas was bricked up in a wall from #512 to #516, and Adam felt his pain during that period. So it is no surprise to returning viewers that Adam suffers along with Barnabas now. We also have heard countless repetitions of something neither Julia nor Willie has ever heard, an audiotape in which Eric Lang, the mad scientist who created Adam, explains that as long as Adam lives Barnabas will be free of vampirism. So we doubt that Barnabas’ curse will return, and hope that Adam’s suffering will be the clue that leads Julia and Willie to rescue Barnabas from being buried alive. Since Julia and Willie have no idea where Adam is and Adam hates them both, it’s as difficult to see how they could find out what he’s going through as it is to see how Barnabas could get out of the grave any other way. In that difficulty is the suspense with which the episode ends.

Episode 535: The dream begins

Three months ago, the wicked witch known variously as Angelique and Cassandra cast a spell that has kept the story going in tight little circles ever since. It is “The Dream Curse.” A character has a nightmare, is compelled to tell it to another person, that person has the same nightmare, and the process repeats. When the nightmare makes its way to well-meaning governess Vicki Winters, she is compelled to tell it to old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. She and Barnabas both know that he is Angelique/ Cassandra’s real target. Vicki thinks the dream will kill Barnabas; he knows that it is meant to turn him back into what he was for 172 years, a vampire.

Vicki is struggling against the urge to tell Barnabas the dream. He knows that she is suffering mightily, and is resigned to his fate. So he shows up at the great house of Collinwood and insists that she tell him the dream. When she resists, he says that “I haven’t loved many things in my lifetime, but, Vicki, I love you.” The last time we heard Barnabas say “I love you” was in #415, when his little sister Sarah died in his arms. We have reason to believe that Vicki knows a lot more about Barnabas than she seems to; for example, she officially believes Barnabas’ story that he is the descendant of Sarah’s brother, but in this conversation she mentions that “the original Barnabas” died before he could have had any children. We also know that her feelings about him are complicated; when she looks at him after his “I love you” we see that she has something she very much wants to say. What that might be, we can only imagine.

Vicki tells Barnabas the dream. After he leaves, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, sits with Vicki. Julia is Barnabas’ best friend and partner in crime, and she usually has trouble concealing her impatience with the ingenuous Vicki. But today the two women are united in their grief. They share a touching scene that ends when Angelique/ Cassandra enters. Julia slaps Angelique/ Cassandra’s face and storms off. Vicki tells Angelique/ Cassandra she deserves far more than a slap, then walks out as well.

Back in his house, Barnabas takes an evil looking pill. Julia comes in with her medical bag and offers to give him something to stave off the dream. He says that he has already taken a pill to bring sleep on. Further, he tells her that he has ordered his servant Willie Loomis to sharpen a wooden stake. When he has the dream and passes into apparent death, she is to drive the stake through his heart.

In moments of despair, Barnabas has often presented his resignation to reverting to vampirism as his noble self-sacrifice. But this is the first time he has presented a plan to ensure that he will not resume preying on the living. It suggests that there really is something in him other than narcissism. Maybe he knew what the words meant when he told Vicki he loved her.

Barnabas has the dream. It stops short of the climactic moment, and he awakens. He jumps to the conclusion that Angelique/ Cassandra botched her curse and it’s all over. He sends Julia to get Willie. As soon as he is alone, a knock comes at the door. He opens it and goes outside. A bat lowers on him, and he falls to the ground screaming.

This was the last episode of Dark Shadows ABC-TV asked its affiliates to broadcast at 3:30 PM. Starting Monday, it moved to the 4:00 timeslot, suitable for viewing by kids running home from school. In his delightful post about the episode, Danny Horn envisions the show as a patient on a therapist’s couch, talking about its need to leave its tedious recurring dream behind before it makes its big move.