bloopers – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 966: All our dead have turned into skeletons

For sixteen weeks, Dark Shadows kept gearing up to tell us about the Leviathan People, a Lovecraftian race of Elder Gods who had a plan to retake the Earth and destroy humankind. During that time, the show gave us several good scenes, some striking images, a few thrilling moments, and many outstanding performances. But it never came together into anything that could be called a story. Today, they officially run up the white flag.

The harbinger of the Leviathans is a shape shifting monster from beyond space and time. The monster settled into the form of a tall young man, fell in love with heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, and decided he just wanted to be human and marry her. Nicholas Blair, high priest of the cult devoted to the service of the Leviathans, wants to join him and Carolyn, not in marriage, but in a ceremony that will turn her into the same kind of squamous, rugose, and paleogean creature the monster is when he is relaxed. The monster disrupts that ceremony, and suddenly the whole Leviathan project crumbles.

Nicholas tells the monster that he will die soon, since he can no longer change out of his humanoid form. The monster doesn’t understand what he means. Nicholas explains that the body through which he once invited people to “Call me Jabe” cannot live on its own. Since he can no longer shift shape, the monster’s future as Jabe is extremely limited.

Meanwhile, Nicholas’ henchman Bruno is hanging around the carriage house on the estate of Collinwood, where Jabe has been staying. He peels an apple and sits in a chair next to a zombie. We’ve seen plenty of zombies, but no one on the show has had anything to eat since the diner at the Collinsport Inn was a frequent set in 1966 and early 1967, so the apple is noteworthy.

In a different role, Michael Stroka visited the diner in its one post 1967 appearance, in #813. No one was being served that time, though.

Bruno finds that there is a fire raging in the back room, and orders the zombie to help him put it out. As he gives this order, the zombie’s flesh and clothing disappear. All that is left of him is a skeleton. Bruno goes to the woods and finds another skeleton, this one with eyes in its sockets and clothes around it. He sees Nicholas, and tells him that “All our dead have turned into skeletons!” Nicholas explains that the power of the Leviathans is broken, and their time is up.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins takes his distant cousin Carolyn back to her home in the great house of Collinwood. Barnabas tells Carolyn’s mother, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, that Carolyn is in a trance. They take Carolyn upstairs and put her in bed.

Liz has been under the control of the Leviathans, a dedicated and ruthless member of their cult. She asks Barnabas what is going on, and he launches into a denunciation of the Leviathans. She responds with complete bewilderment. Barnabas realizes that Liz is not only free of the Leviathans, but that she does not remember them or anything she did for their sake.

This may disappoint longtime viewers. Throughout 1967 and 1968, the show kept Liz firmly shielded from any knowledge of the supernatural stories, let alone active involvement in them. For most of 1969, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in 1897, and Joan Bennett played Judith Collins. Unlike Liz, Judith was allowed to know what was going on and to take part in the action. She was under mind-control when she shot governess Rachel Drummond to death, but when she was released from that control she remembered what she had done and was desperate to cover it up. In that desperation, she became a player in several plot-lines and we saw what Bennett could do when she had something to work with.

Liz hasn’t actually killed anyone, but she did lock governess Maggie Evans up to keep her from getting in Jabe’s way, and, when it looked like Jabe would kill Maggie, Liz’ greatest worry was that the resulting publicity would exonerate the man who has been framed for the murders Jabe had already committed. So if she came out of the cult remembering what she had done, Liz would be free to become a full participant in any story. Now, she snaps right back into her usual place, which is nowhere at all.

Jabe comes to Carolyn’s room. He orders Liz to get out of his way. As a cultist, she had responded to this sort of thing with dutiful obedience, but now she is quite properly indignant. Jabe is pleased to see that she has changed, but he keeps insisting she let him talk privately with Carolyn, and never thinks to say “please.” At Carolyn’s request, Liz finally agrees to this.

Jabe tells Carolyn that he will die soon unless he goes far away. He refuses to explain why this will happen, as he has consistently refused to answer any of Carolyn’s questions about him. But she somehow loves him anyway, so she agrees to marry him in the morning and leave town with him immediately after. Carolyn writes a farewell note to her mother, then falls asleep.

Carolyn has a dream in which she and Jabe go to the drawing room at Collinwood to get married. They find Nicholas there, and he starts in on the same Satanic invocation he had made before Jabe put the kibosh on the whole Leviathan segment. This was so incongruous that Mrs Acilius and I laughed out loud. Carolyn’s own shocked reaction absorbs the incongruity into the drama. Barnabas interrupts the ceremony and demands that Jabe admit that he murdered Carolyn’s father, Paul Stoddard.

Three times, Carolyn has had dreams in which Jabe made it clearer and clearer that he murdered Paul. Another distant cousin, Quentin Collins, came to her during waking hours and told her the same thing in so many words. But somehow it hasn’t clicked yet. In this dream, Jabe’s reaction to Barnabas finally gets the message through to her. Carolyn says she knows that Jabe killed Paul, and in response Jabe puts his hands around her throat and starts choking her.

Carolyn wakes up. She goes to the carriage house and tells Jabe she can’t marry him. She won’t explain why. Jabe is enraged by this. He puts his hands around her throat and starts choking her.

Christopher Pennock was a fine actor and a seriously nice guy, and in the last few days he has made us want to believe that Jabe has turned over a new leaf. But this closing makes it clear that he is still a no-goodnik. The Leviathan material is all they have had on the show lately; there are some other characters who have problems that could be developed into something, problems such as lycanthropy and vampirism, but those have been completely subordinated to the Leviathans and are in any case nothing new to Dark Shadows. So despite Nicholas’ assurance that Jabe can’t exist much longer, it is hard to see an end to a period when all they have to offer are Jabe’s tantrums.

When Jabe is choking Carolyn, the camera drifts a bit and exposes the “Property of ABC-TV” stencil on the side of the scenery:

Episode 964: Plan 9 from Down East

We are approaching the end of the sixteenth week of a segment made up of material drawn from the tales of H. P. Lovecraft. Central to this is the idea of the Leviathan People, a race of Elder Gods who want to retake the Earth and eliminate humankind. There has been a lot of good stuff in these episodes, but it hasn’t come together as a unit. At this point, the narrative seems to be falling apart completely.

The harbinger of the Leviathans, who appears to be a tall man in his mid twenties named Jeb but is in fact a four-month old shape-shifting monster who would rather be called Jabe, has lost interest in the plan and wishes he could be a real boy. Jabe has alienated virtually everyone with whom he has come into contact, including people who were under heavy mind-control meant to turn them into his slaves, and has been reduced to raising four recently deceased men to serve him as zombies.

Yesterday, he ordered the zombies to kill five of his enemies. The targets he listed were mad scientist Julia Hoffman, vampire Barnabas Collins, Barnabas’ servant Willie Loomis, and Barnabas’ distant cousins Roger Collins and Quentin Collins. The zombies have abducted Julia and brought her to Jabe’s house. She is welcomed there by a man named Sky Rumson. Sky is not a zombie, but may as well be for all the skill Geoffrey Scott brings to the role. When Scott recites his dialogue, you get the impression that he is telling you what an actor would say had they cast one in the part. Grayson Hall could fill any stage without support, making Julia’s scene with Sky relatively painless, but if it was meant to have any significance the audience will never know what that was.

Sky and a zombie force Julia into the back room of the house, where Jabe is in the squamous, rugose, and paleogean form of the true Leviathan. She is terrified by the sight. Jabe resumes his human shape. He and Julia go back to the living room, where he confides in her that he doesn’t want to take his Leviathan form ever again. He wants to renounce his powers and become human. He knows that Julia is giving Barnabas treatments to put his vampirism into remission, and that she succeeded with such treatments when Barnabas was under a different vampire curse in 1968. He asks her to help him rid himself of his Leviathan side. She is unsure she will be able to do so, but can’t resist the challenge. By the end of the scene, she is figuring out what tests she will have to run to diagnose the biochemical basis of Jabe’s condition.

Christopher Pennock really was a fine actor, and he is outstanding in this scene. He sounds like a deeply lonely, helplessly confused young boy who can’t figure out how to overcome the consequences of his own abuse of the people around him. Jabe’s request for Julia’s help and his agreement to lay off Barnabas as the price for it doesn’t fit with the orders he gave the zombies yesterday, the actions he takes later today, or anything else in the Leviathan story, and is a sign that the plot is falling apart faster than the writers can patch it up. But he and Hall are so splendid in showing Jabe’s neediness and Julia’s response to it that it doesn’t matter.

Meanwhile, Sky is at the great house of Collinwood, looking for Jabe’s foster mother-turned-makeout partner Megan Todd (it was 1970, everyone took Freud very seriously.) He meets Roger and Quentin there. They hold him at sword point until he tells them where Julia is and how to get past the zombies. To the extent that there is a reason for Sky to be on the show, it is to illustrate how total the control is the Leviathans have over the minds of the people they have co-opted, so when he gives in so quickly to Quentin’s threat to give him a scar (not even to kill him, just to compromise his potential as a model for deodorant ads) he dissolves the last prospect that the Leviathans themselves will be a danger we can care about.

Quentin goes off to rescue Julia, and Roger assumes responsibility for holding the sword. He is momentarily distracted when he sees Megan in the window, and Sky takes advantage, disarming Roger and running out of the house. Outside, he meets Megan and tells her that Jabe is upset with her for some reason. She asks if he is afraid of her. He is puzzled by the question, and tells her she is very beautiful. She invites him to look at her. As he does, she opens her mouth, revealing vampire’s fangs. She bites him.

Megan finds breakfast. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin arrives at Jabe’s house. Jabe is surprised to see him, but not surprised Sky was too chicken to keep any of his secrets. He orders the zombies to seize Quentin. The tall, portly, shaven headed zombie, who wears a mustache that keeps him from being mistaken for Tor Johnson in Plan 9 from Outer Space, slaps Quentin in the face a single time. With this, Quentin instantly loses consciousness. Yesterday, other zombies slapped Julia and Roger in the face, each a single time, and each of them instantly lost consciousness as well. Great ones with slaps, the zombies.

Jabe instructs the zombies to stuff Quentin into a coffin that is about three feet too short for him, and then has them carry it all the way to the cemetery. He has them bury Quentin in a grave that one of them had recently vacated. I suppose real-estate flipping has been interesting to TV viewers for longer than I had thought.

There is a famous goof in today’s episode. When Quentin grabs the sword out of its display on the wall of the Collinwood drawing room*, the lamp underneath it falls off the table and smashes on the floor. You know this wasn’t supposed to happen because it takes place out of frame and you can hear the stagehands sweeping the floor while Sky is pinned to the wall. Also, Dan Curtis was way too tight with a buck to break a lamp for the sake of a scene that’s mainly about a character as minor as Sky Rumson. It’s a shame they couldn’t have pulled the camera back and shown the lamp shattering, it would have been perfectly suited to the moment. And if they had to sweep up the wreckage right then, well, it would have been hilarious if housekeeper Mrs Johnson had come in with her broom and dustpan, taken care of the mess, and left without a word about what Quentin and Roger were doing to Sky.

A fine lamp about to meet its doom. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

*Something he first did in #703, when he and Barnabas first met. He knocked a lamp over then, too.

Episode 957: That’s a bad sign

Willie Loomis has come back to the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, where he once lived as the sorely bedraggled blood thrall of vampire Barnabas Collins. Willie intends to stay only for a short time, answering an invitation from Barnabas and mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Willie is engaged to marry a woman named Roxanne, and Roxanne expects to leave with him in the morning. But he finds out that Barnabas and Julia, along with the kindly Maggie Evans and some other people, are locked in battle with a vast and incomprehensible evil. So Willie announces that he cannot leave. He will stay and help Barnabas and Julia fight.

At the beginning and end, a shape-shifting monster sees something that terrifies him. Pondering this, Barnabas remembers that the two things which frighten the monster are ghosts and werewolves. Since Collinwood is the world capital of both ghosts and werewolves, that raises the question of why the monster wants to be there. The disturbance can’t be a werewolf- the first time it occurs, it prevents the monster from attacking Willie and Maggie, and if it were a werewolf it would just have gone on to attack them itself. The second time, Julia comes face to face with it. It casts a glowing light on her, and she asks what it is. One might assume she would recognize a werewolf, who in any case don’t glow. The show does a good job making us wonder just what the phenomenon is and making us hope we will find out tomorrow.

When Barnabas first enslaved Willie in 1967, he was extremely cruel and Willie was miserable beyond imagining. When Willie came back in 1968 after a stay in Windcliff, the mental hospital Julia controls, Barnabas’ vampirism was in remission and Willie took rather an insouciant attitude towards him. In those days, Barnabas put up with Willie’s insubordinate attitude with relatively mild displays of annoyance. Barnabas finally brought Willie to heel in #560, when he convinced Willie that his disobedience was putting Maggie in danger and Willie responded with agony. Torturing Willie in that way made Barnabas smile for the first time in ages. He was glad to return at last to his happy place.

Now, Barnabas is a vampire again, but Willie is full of friendship and goodwill towards him. He talks warmly to Julia about how Barnabas helped him in the past. In turn, Barnabas is genuinely concerned for Willie’s well-being, telling him that the current situation is too dangerous for him and that he should go live his own life. This new coziness leads to some intentionally funny moments. At one point, Willie walks in on Barnabas saying out loud that he doesn’t understand what’s going on. He tells the vampire “You’re talking to yourself, Barnabas. That’s a bad sign!” As if that’s the part he needs to worry about!

Willie has a conversation with Maggie that verges on the poetic. When he tells her “I never knew how awful it was to be alone until I wasn’t,” we find ourselves wanting him to go directly to Roxanne and run as far as he can as fast as he can.

There is a big mirror on the wall at the foot of the stairs in Barnabas’ house. At one point he walks in front of it and casts a reflection. Sometimes they have been very emphatic that vampires don’t cast reflections. Most famously, Julia confirmed that Barnabas was a vampire in #288, when she contrived to open her compact and point the mirror at him. The same prop was used in #704, when it exposed Barnabas’ secret to the luckless Sophie Baker, prompting him to murder her. On the other hand, when wicked witch Angelique became a vampire for a while in 1968, there were some shots that were obviously deliberate in their composition that prominently featured her reflection in mirrors, making the point that she was an exception to this rule. The mirror doesn’t have to be on the wall, but if it is we will inevitably see Jonathan Frid reflected in it, suggesting that they put it there on purpose to show that he is now another exception to the rule.

Willie was off the show for a year, from #696 (broadcast 24 February 1969) to #956 (broadcast 23 February 1970.) His absence during that period was not explained. Today he mentions to Julia that he has been working at another hospital, as he once worked for her at Windcliff. Indeed, she had offered him a job there in #537. Since Julia did not know about this other hospital job, he must have taken it sometime after leaving his position at Windcliff and without a reference from her. Before Barnabas enslaved him, Willie was a dangerously unstable ruffian, wanted by the police, so they are likely the first employers he has had who would have provided a usable reference. So he probably left Collinwood for the job at Windcliff not much later than March 1969 and held a job in some third place before getting back into hospital work more recently.

In the first year of the show, only David Henesy, as strange and troubled boy David Collins, looked directly into the camera; in the last year, that move has been the signature of Denise Nickerson as David’s young friend Amy Jennings. Today, just about every member of the cast does it. I believe it is the first time Jonathan Frid has done so, though there have been times when his examination of the teleprompter has moved him perilously close to an unintentional soliloquy.

Barnabas tells Julia that their enemies will never find his coffin “where it is now.” The first time we heard that was in 1967, and back then it made us wonder why, if he has an impregnable hiding place for his coffin, he usually just leaves it in the middle of his basement where no one coming downstairs could avoid seeing it. Barnabas spent most of 1969 as a time traveler visiting 1897. His vampirism was exposed in that year, and he was hunted. He assured his allies that no one could find his coffin where it was hidden then; they found it immediately. So longtime viewers aren’t so sure that Barnabas will escape detection during the day.

As Julia, Grayson Hall has a new hairdo today. It is a bit longer than it has been, and is swept up in front.

Episode 940: You had dark hair

A shape-shifting monster from beyond time and space has assumed the form of a young man and decided to marry heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard. Carolyn’s distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, knows all about the monster and wants to prevent the wedding.

The other day, the monster mentioned to Barnabas that when he is not in human form, nothing can kill him. That would seem to imply that when he is in human form, at least some of the things that kill humans can kill him. So Barnabas slips some poison in a drink and gives it to the monster. The plan is logical enough, but like all of Barnabas’ plans it fails. Whatever the monster’s vulnerabilities are, that particular poison is not one of them. It does not harm him at all, though it does affect the drink’s flavor sufficiently to damage the monster’s confidence in Barnabas’ bar-tending abilities.

Barnabas’ next plan is less sensible. His ex-wife, wicked witch Angelique, is living nearby with her new husband. He goes to Angelique and asks her to take Carolyn in for a while. Angelique reminds Barnabas that Carolyn knows her and dislikes her. She was married to Carolyn’s uncle Roger for a while in 1968, when she was using the alias Cassandra. By the end of that period, she had alienated Carolyn and everyone else at the great house of Collinwood. Barnabas exclaims “But she won’t recognize her; you had dark hair!” Presumably the scripted line was “But she won’t recognize you; you had dark hair!”

Barnabas pleads with Angelique. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Which doesn’t really make all that much more sense- the black wig Angelique wore when she was calling herself Cassandra was the entirety of her disguise. She didn’t need to conceal her identity any more thoroughly than that, since the only people who could recognize her were Barnabas and time-traveling governess Vicki. Barnabas couldn’t afford to admit that he had lived in the 1790s and married a witch, and Vicki was at that point not allowed to do anything that would affect the course of the A story, so the wig was plenty. To say now that the difference in hair color will keep Carolyn from recognizing Angelique as Cassandra is to lampshade the absurdity of Barnabas’ idea.

Barnabas tells Angelique that the monster is affiliated with mysterious supernatural beings known as the Leviathan People. This alarms Angelique sufficiently that she agrees to hide Carolyn.

This is also the episode in which rakish libertine Quentin Collins reintroduces himself to the family at Collinwood. They had known him as the ghost who drove them from their home in November 1968, and Carolyn met the living Quentin in late 1969, when he went by the name Grant Douglas.

Quentin is at loose ends, so he agrees when Barnabas and mad scientist Julia Hoffman ask him to help them in their battle against the Leviathans. The plan is for him to use the power of his handsomeness and charm to distract Carolyn from the monster. This would seem to be quite a sensible idea, since he has been the big attraction of the fan magazines since he joined the show.

We cut to the great house of Collinwood, where the piano is being played very well. We see that Carolyn is the pianist. This is puzzling to longtime viewers. The piano has been a prominent part of the drawing room set from the beginning of the show, an echo of the deep prehistory of Dark Shadows, which was originally based in part on old teleplays Art Wallace wrote about a lady who gave piano lessons. We have seen Carolyn poke at the keyboard a couple of times, in a manner that made it clear she could not play at all.

Quentin knocks at the front door and Carolyn lets him in. He gives his right name, and claims to be his own great-grandson. When Carolyn asks why he said his name was Grant Douglas, he claims to be a writer who used that among other pseudonyms. That doesn’t explain anything, but Carolyn settles for it, for some reason. He tells her that, since they are only third cousins, their family relationship is no bar to them spending a great deal of time together. She says she is busy tonight, but eagerly volunteers that she is free tomorrow.

The monster enters. He meets Quentin, and they take an instant dislike to each other. That doesn’t mean much, since the monster is extremely obnoxious and everyone not under the power of the Leviathans dislikes him. For that matter, some who are under their power can’t stand him, either. For example, Barnabas was a devotee of theirs until he had to deal with the monster, and his personality broke the spell. So it remains to be seen what contribution, if any, Quentin will make to this story.

Quentin doesn’t try to persuade Carolyn to break her date with the monster. He, Julia, and Barnabas are at Collinwood when the monster calls. He tells her Carolyn is on her way, two hours earlier than originally planned. The monster and Carolyn share a drink; he slips her a mickey. Once she is passed out, he carries her up to the room in which he assumes his true form, declaring that her new life is about to begin.

Up to this point, drugging drinks has chiefly been a source of comedy on Dark Shadows. Barnabas tried to poison Angelique in #402, when they were married; that led to a farce scene when his mother showed up, Angelique passed the poisoned drink to her, and he had to scramble. For a while in 1968, a warlock calling himself Nicholas Blair hung around and functioned as Angelique’s boss; in #528, she asked him to slip some poison to Vicki, prompting him to complain that “I am much too talented to spend my time drugging drinks.” By the time he was done, he had not only complied with Angelique’s request, but drugged a couple of other people’s drinks on his own initiative. He may as well have kept his pride, since none of those poisonings got him what he wanted. So the monster’s use of that tactic might lead us to suspect that Carolyn’s odds are better than they appear.

Episode 904: To have fun, like everybody else

Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Joan Bennett) was usually a blocking figure in the first 73 weeks of Dark Shadows, and when the pace of the stories picked up sufficiently that they didn’t need to slam on the brakes so often she drifted far to the margins. When she does show up, she is usually a talk-to for characters who might actually do something. The few times she has been the center of attention have been when she was so crushingly depressed she was a suicide risk. At one point she went beyond that, succumbing to a boredom so extreme that she lapsed into a catatonic state and was mistaken for dead.

Today, Liz is being atypically dynamic. She is trying to figure out what her nephew, strange and troubled boy David Collins, has been up to. Her investigations have shown her that David stole an old book from an antique shop and bought some clothes at a department store. These aren’t exactly the most thrilling discoveries of the age, especially when it appears that David has already returned the book to its rightful owners, but it represents a big step up from her usual activity level.

Liz walks in on David in his room, and finds him reading from a book. He denies that it is the book from the antique shop, but she doesn’t believe him. Later, Liz is poring over the book in her drawing room when her distant cousin Barnabas comes in. She tells him she doesn’t recognize the language or the script in which it is written, but that she has found certain blocks of text that are repeated throughout, in the manner of ritual language. She thinks it must be a religious book of some kind. Barnabas recognizes this as a remarkably intelligent observation. He offers to take the book to the antique shop himself. Liz happily accepts his offer, and goes upstairs to bed.

Liz has a dream. In the dream, David is wearing a fat suit. He takes her to a funhouse. At first the mirrors merely add to her chronic depression, but she brightens when she sees Barnabas in one of the mirrors. And when David recites a bit of doggerel- “Fat and Skinny had a race, all around the steeplechase./ Fat fell down and broke his face./ Skinny said, I won the race!” she laughs heartily. She wakes up. In her bed, she is staring into space, all jollity gone.

David’s fat suit. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Most of the dream is shot in a kaleidoscopic style, splitting the screen into many copies of the same image. Regular viewers know that Dark Shadows puts kaleidoscopic patterns on the screen when it is showing people submitting to one or another form of mind control. For example, when mad scientist Julia Hoffman hypnotizes people, we often see pictures that seem to come from inside a kaleidoscope. Liz herself asks David at the beginning of the dream if the mirrors will show her “all the people I could have been”; he says that no, “They’ll show you all the people you really are.” Since the dream is full of odd looking dolls and puppets, that suggests all the people she really is are controlled by someone other than herself. The cut from her laughing face at the end of the dream sequence to her blank expression when she wakes up would also suggest a discontinuity between the Liz who had the dream and the Liz who will rise from bed.

Over the last few weeks, the show has been developing a story about a cult devoted to mysterious supernatural beings known as the Leviathan people. The cult is secretly absorbing one person after another, enabling the Leviathans to act through them. Barnabas and David have taken turns leading the cult, and the owners of the antique shop are members of it. If Liz is no longer herself, we must conclude that she has now been coopted into the cult as well.

Liz’ daughter Carolyn works at the antique shop. Early in the episode, she met a man whom we could see only from the chest down. He was wearing a belted overcoat. In #902, we had the same view of a man wearing the same overcoat as he wandered into Liz’ house, straightened a portrait of Barnabas, hid from Carolyn, and wandered out again. Evidently this is the same man. Later, Barnabas went to the shop, and Carolyn told him she was smitten by the man and that he would be coming back when the shop closed, after 10 pm.

The man does come back as promised, but doesn’t quite make it into the shop. He is between the streetlight and the door, in a space which we must interpret as representing a sidewalk, when Barnabas runs him down with his car. Carolyn comes out of the shop and Barnabas claims that the man just darted out of nowhere, giving him no chance to stop. It is unclear when Barnabas learned to drive. When he was first on the show in April 1967, he was a vampire who had been sealed in a coffin since the 1790s. He was cured of the effects of vampirism in March 1968, and in #687 we heard about him driving. Perhaps his training in the rules of the road was irregular. Still, you would think he would have a better excuse for driving into a pedestrian than failing to expect him to be on the sidewalk.

The camera zooms in on the injured man’s face. We don’t see enough of it to be sure who it is. The closing credits tell us that “Unknown Man” is played by David Selby. It must be a goof that we don’t see much of Mr Selby’s face. Over the year he has been playing the rakish Quentin Collins, Mr Selby has become a huge breakout star, rivaling the fame Jonathan Frid has gained as Barnabas. Surely they wouldn’t put him on unless they wanted us to recognize him.

Quentin first came on the show as a ghost at the end of 1968, and found his greatest success from March to November 1969, when the show was set in the year 1897. Since the show returned to a contemporary setting, we have been sure that Quentin will be back, but we haven’t had any reason to expect him to return at any particular time. In #887, the first episode set in November 1969, we saw the back of a man prowling about the estate of Collinwood; we might have suspected he was Quentin. But he turned out to be Liz’ ex-husband Paul Stoddard, who had never before been a real character on the show and who has been unmentioned for more than two years. So when we are kept from seeing the face of another prowler, he could be anyone at all. Perhaps Frank Garner is training to be a ninja, or Ezra Hearne is having a personal crisis.

The closing credits run over this image from Liz’ dream. The dolls move while the credits are scrolling over them, the effect is hilarious. I didn’t think the dream sequence was particularly effective, but I wish every episode ended with these two figures doing their little act.

The real stars of today’s show. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 897: Restore our flesh and bones

The Trouble with David

Yesterday we saw strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy) go to a mysterious cairn in the woods, the ceremonial center of the cult of the Leviathan people, and announce that he was now one of the cult. The cairn then opened, revealing a little gap. David crawled into the gap. The gap was not quite big enough for him, so that the episode ended with an extended sequence of David Henesy wiggling his rear end at the camera while he tried to wedge himself into place.

Today we learn that the carpenters were not the only ones who haven’t caught on that Mr Henesy isn’t nine years old anymore. David has followed the gap to an underground chamber with a steaming cauldron. He takes some vegetation out of the cauldron and recites a cryptic poem, all the while staring portentiously off into space. His manner, words, and actions would be effective as part of a creepy little kid sequence, but the thirteen year old Mr Henesy looks mature enough that we just chalk him up as one more member of the Leviathan cult.

The Trouble with Chris

Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard calls on drifter Chris Jennings in his cottage. They talk about someone named Sabrina who has told Carolyn that while Chris is a nice enough guy, he will, in spite of himself, kill her if she keeps hanging around him. Chris tells Carolyn that this is true and that he is “a monster.” He does not explain. She leaves, and he takes out a pistol. First-time viewers will wonder if Chris has a compulsion to fire his pistol at people. Regular viewers know that he is a werewolf, and that his particular case of lycanthropy is so advanced that he sometimes transforms even when the moon is not full. We can assume that he plans to use the pistol to put himself out of his misery.

Regular viewers also know that Chris was safely confined to a mental hospital until he checked himself out recently. When he returned to the great house of Collinwood, he told his psychiatrist, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, that he just couldn’t stand the conditions at the hospital. Since leaving the hospital means that Chris will resume killing at least one random person a month, this decision just about completely erased any sympathy we might have for him as a character. It also undercuts his motivation in this scene. If Chris really wants to stop killing, he is free to go back to the hospital at any time.

The ghost of Chris’ great-grandmother, Jenny Collins (Marie Wallace,) appears. She tells him not to commit suicide. Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in 1897 from March to November 1969; in those days, we got to know Jenny as “Crazy Jenny,” who played nothing but one mad scene after another. She was sane and well-put-together just once, when she appeared as a ghost in #810 and #811. In this second postmortem appearance, Jenny is extra mad, wearing a disheveled wig that reaches heights few hairpieces have dared. She does not tell Chris to return to the hospital, but to find his great-grandfather, Quentin Collins. She says that she cannot help him, but Quentin can.

This confirms what the show has been hinting, that Quentin is alive. Chris doesn’t know that, nor does he know of his relationship to Quentin. He is left bewildered and helpless by Jenny’s pronouncement. His response would no doubt be more complex if he were up to date, but he has been so ineffective at managing his curse and so irresponsible generally that we can’t imagine he would do anything constructive even if he knew everything we do. The character seems to have reached a dead end.

The Trouble with Barnabas

Upset by her conversation with Chris, Carolyn goes to her distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. She enters his home, the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, and finds the front parlor empty. She hears Barnabas’ voice coming from behind a bookcase, repeating over and over that “There is no margin for error. Punishment is necessary.”

Longtime viewers know, not only that a room is hidden behind this bookcase, but that Carolyn knows about that room. Her friend, David’s well-meaning governess Vicki, was held prisoner there by a crazy man in December 1966, several months before Barnabas joined the show. Carolyn is moving her hands, as if she is looking for the release that makes the bookcase swing open, when Barnabas comes downstairs.

When Carolyn says that she heard his voice, Barnabas explains that he was simply keeping busy by “conducting an experiment in electronics.” The candles around the room will suffice to show that the house doesn’t have electricity, and even if Barnabas weren’t so resolutely technophobic it would still require explanation that the text he set his speakers to reproduce over and over was “There is no margin for error. Punishment is necessary.” Moreover, Carolyn knows Barnabas well, and she can’t have overlooked that he is not his usual self these days. He is distant, calm, and utterly self-possessed, a far cry from the fussy, excitable chap who so often stumbles over his words. He remains formidably well-composed as he reiterates his position that Chris is a dangerously unstable person whom Carolyn should avoid, and that she has a bright future ahead of her. He gently but firmly guides her to the front door, and she is out of the house in record time.

Carolyn does not know that Chris is the werewolf, but at least she knows that there is a werewolf. She does not know that the Leviathan cult exists, and so it is understandable that she does not suspect that Barnabas is acting as its leader. But as the story unfolds, others will no doubt catch on that something is up, and so many people have spent so much time with Barnabas that it is difficult to see how they can all fail to notice the drastic change in his personality and to connect it with the strange goings-on. Putting him in this position makes it likely that the writers will have a harder time managing the story’s pace than they would if his involvement were more subtle.

Once Carolyn has exited, Barnabas opens the bookcase and reveals Philip Todd, antique shop owner. He rewinds a reel-to-reel tape and replays “There is no margin for error. Punishment is necessary.” Philip and his wife Megan are members of the cult, entrusted with the care of many of its most sacred items. Yesterday Barnabas found out that one of these, a book, had gone missing. He summoned Philip to the cairn, and it seemed he might be about to kill Philip. But now, he sends Philip off to administer the punishment to someone else, presumably Megan.

The Trouble with Megan

Megan (Marie Wallace) has been in an extremely overwrought state ever since she found that the book was gone. Today’s episode ends with a long scene in which she is alone in the shop, feeling that someone is coming to kill her, reacting sharply to every noise.

Danny Horn devotes most of his post about the episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day to reasons why this scene does not work, among them the fact that a depiction of a person descending into madness requires that the person start off as something other than over-the-top loony. Megan has been so frenzied for the last few days that Miss Wallace has nowhere to go when she hears the ominous noises. Moreover, her first two characters on Dark Shadows, fiancée of Frankenstein Eve and Crazy Jenny, were both intense, overbearing characters who were so inflexible that they had little opportunity to respond to anything their scene partners might do. Longtime viewers therefore expect to see Miss Wallace screaming and carrying on by herself, so nothing she does here will unsettle us. They lampshade this iconography problem by showing us Crazy Jenny’s ghost today, but that doesn’t help at all.

Many fans compare this scene to episode #361. Most of #361 is devoted to a one-woman drama in which Julia is tormented by sights and sounds in her bedroom, suggesting that her mind is collapsing. I don’t think that episode is a success, but because Julia had always been in control of herself up to that point we can see what is supposed to be at stake in it. That’s more than we can say for Megan’s fearful turn.

In John and Christine Scoleri’s post about the episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, Christine points out the prominence of the taxidermied animals in the background, and speculates that the scene is an homage to The Night of the Living Dead. I wouldn’t have guessed that director Lela Swift or writer Violet Welles would have studied that film, but Christine provides screenshots from it and from the episode, and the parallels are so striking that I can’t see how she could be wrong.

Closing Miscellany

I think the tape recorder is the same one we saw in the summer of 1968, when it was part of the Frankenstein story. It also appears to be the one that parapsychologist Peter Guthrie brought to Collinwood early in 1967.

Her haunting of Chris marks Jenny’s final appearance. Miss Wallace reprised the role decades later in a couple of the Big Finish audio dramas.

During Megan’s big scene, the camera swings a bit to the left and we can see beyond the edge of the antique shop set. We get a good look at a tree that stands near the cairn in the woods. Making matters worse, when they turn the camera away from the tree they go too far right, showing a stage light on the other side.

The antique shop and the cairn. Screenshot by Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day.

As the opening credits begin to roll, the camera is pointed a bit too far to the right and a stagehand is visible, adding dry ice to the steaming cauldron in the underground chamber.

Closing credits blooper. Screenshot by Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day.

Episode 864: Shipwreck Point

Sorcerer Count Petofi is currently occupying the body of rakish Quentin Collins. When he is in this form, I refer to him as Q-Petofi.

Q-Petofi. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Lawyer/ Satanist Evan Hanley has displeased Q-Petofi. Q-Petofi has put the zap on Evan and made him dig his own grave. Evan begs for his life, but does so in a stilted, robotic voice that suggests he is struggling against Q-Petofi’s power. It is a neat job of acting by Humbert Allen Astredo.

Evan points out that it would raise suspicions if Q-Petofi were seen with his servant Aristide, especially inside the great house of Collinwood. Evan himself, however, is the Collins family’s attorney, trusted by everyone in the house. If anyone there has suspicions about Q-Petofi, they will confide in him. Q-Petofi decides that he may as well let Evan live, and orders him to keep tabs on wicked witch Angelique.

We cut to the foyer of Collinwood, where Angelique is staying. She is on the telephone trying to reach the local pharmacy, and is annoyed that the meds she wants are not yet available. Another houseguest, Cockney showgirl/ mentalist Pansy Faye, enters. Angelique hurriedly ends the call. Pansy taunts Angelique for the end of her engagement to Quentin. After Pansy exits, Angelique gets back on the phone and resumes talking to the pharmacist. Q-Petofi enters, and Angelique pretends she is talking to someone else, then hangs up.

Returning viewers know that Angelique is carrying on a medical intervention designed by time-traveling mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD. Julia’s friend, vampire Barnabas Collins, made his way from 1969 to 1897, and she followed him. Julia had recreated an experimental treatment that put Barnabas’ vampirism into abeyance for a little while early in 1968 when she snapped back to her own time, vanishing from 1897. Shortly before Julia disappeared, Angelique agreed to complete the procedure and turn Barnabas into a real boy.

Angelique seems less powerful than usual today. Her dealings with the pharmacy are a logical consequence of her agreement to take over Julia’s plan, but she doesn’t usually have to get exasperated with people over the telephone, and not since her early days as a witch in the 1790s has she been so vulnerable to discovery by random passersby. Later, she goes to Barnabas’ hiding place, and Evan follows her. There have been times when Angelique could materialize and dematerialize at will, and it was impossible for any mere mortal to keep track of her whereabouts, but evidently she doesn’t feel up to that today. She does tell Q-Petofi she has a headache, maybe that’s true.

Pansy has a scene in the studio of artist Charles Delaware Tate. She tells Tate she wants to buy one of his paintings; he tells her that everything is for sale, but that his prices are high. She picks out a portrait of the lovely and mysterious Amanda Harris; he throws a tantrum and doesn’t want to sell it to her. When she reminds him that he said all the paintings are for sale, he names the ridiculously high price of $5000. That would be well over $150,000 in 2025. Without missing a beat, Pansy pulls out a few large-denomination bills and fans them under Tate’s nose.

Pansy’s only source of income was a cabaret act she recently did at the Blue Whale, a tavern in the village of Collinsport. We saw her there the other day shortly before nine PM, when she was the only person in the barroom. So it doesn’t seem likely she could have earned that quantity of cash there. Nor is there any apparent reason why Pansy would want a portrait of Amanda, whom she saw as a rival for Quentin’s affections. It seems likely that someone else put her up to buying it.

The obvious candidate would be Judith Collins Trask, owner of Collinwood and all the Collins family businesses. Judith is married to the odious Gregory Trask, whose late daughter Charity provided the host body through which Pansy, who died in #771, has been interacting with the world of the living since Petofi erased Charity’s personality in #819. Judith has persuaded Pansy to move back into Collinwood. Judith has herself recently returned to the great house after Trask had her confined to a mental hospital for a period of more than thirteen weeks. Her stuffy but lovable brother Edward told Judith that Trask spent much of that time trying to seduce Amanda, and Judith wants to get the facts about what went on in her absence.

Closing Miscellany

Director Henry Kaplan was not in good form in this one. In the opening, studio lights are clearly visible right in the middle of the screen, between Evan and Q-Petofi. The same thing happened in yesterday’s episode. The other directors might have made a mistake like that once, but I don’t think any of them would have done it two days in a row.

The camera is also frequently out of focus, as is typical of Kaplan’s shows, and it moves unsteadily. He must have been trying to get the camera operators to do something he hadn’t prepared them for, it looks really bad.

There are a couple of notable bloopers that aren’t particularly Kaplan’s fault. When Angelique makes a remark about Q-Petofi’s attitude towards brandy, David Selby says “Don’t you think it’s possible for one’s…change…or one’s taste to change in brandy?” That is followed by a silent beat, as both he and Lara Parker are stunned by the nonsense that just came out of his mouth.

When Tate lets Pansy into his studio, the shade falls out of the window. He looks at it for a second, then the scene goes on. It is one of the all-time great goofs.

Episode 859: Not this grownup

Nine year old Nora Collins enters the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. She walks in on her father, the stuffy but lovable Edward, embracing Kitty Soames, the dowager countess of Hampshire. She gives them a dirty look and says she supposes Edward is too busy to join her in a game of checkers. He says he does have to run an errand, but suggests that Nora play with Kitty.

Kitty is eager to ingratiate herself with Nora, who clearly wants nothing to do with her. Nora asks, in an icy voice, if the reason Kitty wants to be her friend is that she is planning to marry her father. Returning viewers suspect she is right. Kitty and Edward have more in common than they know. Both are penniless, each is sure the other is very rich, and each imagines marriage to the other will solve all their problems. Kitty can’t very well level with Nora about this, so she claims that the women in the Collins family, being outnumbered by the men, have to stick together. Nora does not hide her distaste at Kitty’s inclusion of herself among the women of the family. Kitty asks Nora if she wants her father to be happy. Nora drills her eyes into Kitty’s face and says in a firm, flat voice “I want that.”

Nora asks Kitty if she is just letting her win at checkers. While she is asking this, Nora moves twice in one turn and takes three of Kitty’s pieces. Kitty watches this without protest and denies that she is letting her win. She then says she wants to concede the game and listen to whatever information Nora is willing to share about the family.

Nora is not impressed with Her Ladyship. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Edward comes back from his errand to find Nora packing up the checkers and the board. He asks if she enjoyed her game with Kitty. Not looking up, Nora says they never finished it. Kitty hastens back in and asks if she wants to finish it now. Edward points out that it is getting close to Nora’s bedtime. He kisses her, and bids her say goodnight to Lady Hampshire. Kitty asks Nora to call her by her first name. Nora pointedly says “Good night, Lady Hampshire.”

It doesn’t show in her scenes with Nora, but Kitty seems to be suffering from a severe mental health crisis. Returning viewers know that the ghost of Josette Collins is taking possession of her, and suspect that she will turn out to be a reincarnation of Josette. Edward knows enough about the supernatural doings on the estate of Collinwood that he might give Kitty the benefit of the doubt when, for example, she comes running in today and is shrieking about a haunted house, a vanishing woman, and a curse that follows her everywhere. But she is so often so highly distraught that Nora must have noticed that she is not right in the head, and she can hardly look forward to having such a person as a stepmother.

Shortly before Nora enters, Edward calls Kitty “Katie.” This is a small enough slip of the tongue, but Kathryn Leigh Scott’s friends call her Katie, so it is a case of an actor’s name in place of the character’s. I think I can see Louis Edmonds blush a little when he realizes what he has done.

This episode marks the final appearance of Nora, and very nearly the last time we will hear Nora’s name. I think she was badly underused, disappointingly so after the outstanding work Denise Nickerson did as Amy Jennings in the months leading up to the segment set in 1897. She will be back later, in other parts.

Director Henry Kaplan was not much of a visual artist, and his deficiencies are particularly glaring today. Especially during Kitty and Nora’s first scene, the camera keeps drifting up to the actors until we see a randomly selected two-thirds of their faces in extreme closeup. Once the shot excludes the eyes or the mouth, it abruptly pulls back. Even the successfully framed closeups are rarely in focus, and you can forget about finding coherent visual storytelling in any kind of shot other than a closeup. The actors themselves do a good job, in spite of Kaplan’s notoriously unpleasant behavior towards them, but aside from a few evocative facial expressions, most of them by Nickerson, it may as well have been a radio play.

Episode 853: Strange and horrifying spirits

Kitty Soames, a young American woman who is the dowager Countess of Hampshire, is gradually turning into Josette DuPrés, who has been dead for 101 years. Kitty is staying at the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Also among the houseguests is Angelique, the immortal, time-traveling wicked witch who was responsible for Josette’s death.

Kitty has been getting information about Angelique, apparently from Josette’s ghost. She interrogates Angelique’s fiancé, rakish libertine Quentin Collins. Quentin does not give her any useful information about Angelique. When Kitty asks if Angelique has ever lived in England, Angelique herself enters and says that she has not. Kitty asks Angelique if she was ever a servant. Angelique made it quite clear yesterday that she knows perfectly well what is happening to Kitty, but she regards the transformation as a nuisance and does not want to help it along. She chooses to pretend that Kitty is being a snob, and says that Quentin is not marrying beneath his station. With that, Kitty has nowhere to go but back to her room.

Angelique has made an alliance with Julia Hoffman, MD, a fellow time-traveler from the late 1960s. Julia followed her friend and the object of Angelique’s lunatic obsessions, vampire Barnabas Collins, to 1897. Barnabas is now believed to have been destroyed, but we’ve already seen that Julia is continuing work replicating the experimental procedure that put his vampirism into abeyance for a little while in the spring of 1968. Today, Angelique brings some medical supplies to Julia in her hiding place, and Julia asks if she can come a little earlier the next day.

The two women sit down and have a friendly chat. Longtime viewers will find this breathtaking. Angelique was at Collinwood in 1968, wearing a black wig, calling herself Cassandra, and functioning as Julia and Barnabas’ bitterest enemy. Now that Angelique has turned to Quentin and has let go of her drive to dominate Barnabas, she and Julia have made an alliance against sorcerer Count Petofi. Their animosity set aside, they can commiserate about the difficulty of a life yoked to Barnabas.

“Ugh, vampires, all the good ones are either obsessed with recreating their dead ex or gay.” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Angelique wants to liberate Quentin, whom Petofi has enslaved. Julia is horrified today when Kitty, in Josette mode, bursts into her hiding place and demands to see Barnabas. Quentin follows her in and hears her ask why she is keeping Barnabas in the next room. Neither Kitty nor Quentin believe Julia when she keeps insisting that Barnabas is no more. If Quentin knows that Barnabas is still around, Petofi will soon know it as well, and that can only be bad news.

Petofi is not content keeping Quentin as a slave. He wants to abuse him even more totally. We saw the other day that Petofi wants to swap bodies with Quentin as his means of escaping from his deadly enemies, the Rroma people. Petofi visits Quentin in the drawing room at Collinwood this evening and gives him a scalp massage. Quentin notices Petofi’s ring, and agrees that he would like a new life. He falls asleep, then wakes up to find Petofi’s ring on his finger. To his alarm, he cannot take it off. My wife, Mrs Acilius, called out to the screen to suggest he spray some Windex on his finger, but that wasn’t invented until 1933 and the dramatic date is 1897. Presumably the transfer of the ring is the first step towards Quentin’s eviction from his own body and his replacement in it by Petofi.

Closing Miscellany

Danny Horn’s post about the episode at his great Dark Shadows Every Day is a study of Kathryn Leigh Scott’s facial expressions. His thesis is that Miss Scott is imitating Grayson Hall, who plays Julia. Later in the series there will be a moment when Miss Scott imitates Hall in a scene they play together; Hall’s reaction then will be hilarious.

Kitty sees the portrait of Barnabas Collins hanging in the foyer on the spot by the front door. She Josettifies and becomes fascinated by it. Stuffy but lovable Edward Collins had the portrait removed when Barnabas was exposed as a vampire some time ago, and is shocked to find that it has returned. Presumably whatever supernatural agency is Josettifying Kitty put it there. Longtime viewers, who remember how active Josette’s own ghost was at Collinwood before Barnabas first appeared on the show, will think she is the likeliest suspect.

When Kitty/ Josette is kneeling beside the grave of Josette’s husband Jeremiah Collins (spelled “Jerimiah” on the marker,) Edward shows up and tells her that she was married, not to Jeremiah, but to the late Gerald Soames Earl of Hampshire. That was the first time it dawned on me that both Josette and Kitty married guys named Jerry.

Angelique’s intrusion into the scene between Quentin and Kitty might have been more effective if the camera hadn’t swung wide and shown her standing outside the door waiting to make her entrance. We don’t see Angelique eavesdropping, but Lara Parker standing well upstage waiting to make her entrance.

Episode 841: Beyond it lies the future

From April to July 1968, Dark Shadows was bogged down in a repetitious story called “The Dream Curse.” Each of a dozen characters had the same nightmare, in which they were in a small room with several doors. Behind each door they saw something that was supposed to be frightening.

When occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes (Thayer David) had the dream in #508, he defied its rules, caused wicked witch Angelique to appear in it, and brought the curse to a halt. Angelique had to cast another spell later to restart it.

Now the show has gone back in time and is a costume drama set in 1897. Thayer David plays sorcerer Count Petofi, who is among other things a vision of what Stokes might have been as a supervillain. Petofi has learned that both vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman have traveled to 1897 from 1969. Petofi is convinced that they would not have made this journey unless they knew exactly what they were doing and had a foolproof plan for getting home. Petofi does not know Barnabas and Julia very well.

Petofi and his servant Aristide are holding Julia prisoner in their home, an old mill. This might be called a hiding place, except that virtually everyone in the village of Collinsport and its environs has visited Petofi and Aristide there at least once. There’s so much foot traffic in and out of it someone could make a fortune if they set up a food cart outside the door.

Yesterday, Petofi forced Julia to tell him that she and Barnabas each came back in time by meditating on a set of I Ching wands. Petofi then cast the wands, and his “astral body” was transported to a room very much like that in which the nightmares of the Dream Curse took place. At first it seems that he will match Stokes’ performance when he had The Dream. There is in the world one person over whom Petofi has no power and who is sworn to kill him. All Petofi knows is that this person is Rroma by ethnicity, and is going to try to use a particular scimitar to cut off his right hand, where his magical powers are concentrated. As Petofi is entering the room, he sees the scimitar. When the unseen person holding the scimitar points it at Petofi’s throat rather than his wrist, he realizes that he is not in jeopardy, and he orders the wielder of the scimitar to be gone.

In the room, Petofi opens a couple of doors. Behind one is Barnabas baring his fangs; behind the other, a wall of fire. One of the notable features of the room are red velvet curtains hanging from the ceiling to the floor. Fans of Twin Peaks sometimes say that “Once you learn to see it, the Red Room is everywhere”; I guess they’re right.

This is the waiting room. Do you like Count Petofi? Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Petofi keeps his cool when he sees the gimmicks behind Door #1 and Door #2, but he does seem uncomfortable when he hears the voices of a male chorus singing a Romani song. After a moment, he finds his magical right hand squeezing his throat. All of a sudden he is back in his physical body, with Julia and Aristide by him, strangling himself. Petofi’s powers are so great that there are times when it seems that he will overwhelm all opposition and leave the show without a story to tell; the image of him crushing his own windpipe with his right hand suggests that he will ultimately be a victim of his own power.

Petofi recovers. He is sure Julia created his experience; he cannot conceive of events taking place outside anyone’s control. This marks a contrast with Stokes. Stokes, an upright and decent man, knows that Barnabas and Julia are keeping many secrets from him. When he has to work with them, he grumbles about this and makes it clear that he has dark suspicions. But though Stokes wishes he knew more about them, he does not press them very hard to reveal what they are hiding. Further, he was the one who explained the I Ching to them, including that meditation is a process of giving up control. Unlike Petofi, Stokes can easily accept that there are things that happen whether or not anyone wants them to.

When Julia cannot answer any of his questions, Petofi tells her why he keeps Aristide around:

Look at Aristide here. In point of fact, I don’t need a servant. The boy himself is no intellectual giant. He detests all forms of culture. Why then do I keep him on? Because I am a man who by nature shuns all forms of violence. I loathe the sight of blood. Aristide, on the other hand, has no such scruples. He revels in every form of torture and bloodshed known to the mind of man. I believe he even invented a few himself. He kills without the slightest feeling for his victims. He will kill you, Dr. Hoffman, if you do not tell me what I want to know.

As Aristide, Michael Stroka’s reactions when Petofi delivers this speech are quite funny. He looks really wounded when Petofi says that he is “no intellectual giant” and that he “detests all forms of culture,” but when he starts talking about how sadistic he is, he brightens up. When Petofi tells Julia that Aristide will kill her unless she tells him what he wants to know, he looks positively blissful.

Since Julia has nothing to tell, Petofi leaves Aristide to do his worst. He ties her to a chair in the back room. He rigs a string to the trigger of a revolver so that turning the doorknob will fire a round into Julia. He tells Julia that he hopes Barnabas will come to her rescue and therefore be her executioner.

Barnabas does shows up and confront Aristide. He turns the knob. We hear a shot, and see Julia slumped over in the chair.

Julia after the shot. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

One of the recurring faults on Dark Shadows is that when people are bound and gagged, they often have to use their teeth to hold the gags in place. Today they don’t even bother wrapping the cloth around Grayson Hall’s head- Michael Stroka just tucks it into her mouth. The suspense as Barnabas approaches the door depends on Julia’s inability to warn him not to turn the knob, and the closing shot loses its shock value when we can see Julia still biting down on the cloth. So this time it really is a problem.