The first character Dark Shadows introduced was Victoria Winters. Vicki began her life as an infant in care at the Hammond Foundling Home in New York City. She grew up there, then “stayed on as a teacher.” For reasons no one would ever explain to her, Vicki was called to the great house of Collinwood to serve as governess to strange and troubled boy David Collins.
In those first months, the Collinses of Collinwood were running out of money, barely able to hold on to the estate and the family business. It was credible that if they were to hire a live-in tutor for David, they would have to settle for someone with Vicki’s slender resume.
By the time Vicki was written out of the show in its 126th week, Dark Shadows had long since forgotten all the stories about the Collinses’ straitened finances, and retconned them as boundlessly rich. So it took some explaining that they replaced Vicki with Maggie Evans. Maggie started off as a wisecracking waitress who introduced herself to Vicki in #1 by declaring that anyone who lived at Collinwood was a “jerk.” Her signature line, spoken in #128, was “Whaddaya hear from the morgue?” Long after Maggie morphed into The Nicest Girl in Town, there was never a sign that she had any formal education beyond high school or any interest in teaching at any level. She was the show’s chief representative of Collinsport’s working class, and her relationship to the Collinses was far from warm.
So when they want to get Maggie into the great house to be the besieged and uncertain new governess in an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw, they show us matriarch Liz in a tizzy over Vicki’s mysterious disappearance. Liz insists that David and his friend Amy must have a new governess immediately, that very night, and that since Maggie is available and the children both know and like her, Maggie it must be.
Now the show has become a costume drama set in 1897, when the Collinses are at the apex of their wealth. There are two young children in the great house, so there ought to be a governess. She is Rachel Drummond, and she was introduced in #705. Like Maggie, she is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott. Unlike Maggie, she was trained for the position, recommended by an agency, and brought to the estate by the children’s father. Rachel speaks with the precise elocution one might expect of a late-Victorian governess. Her talk is intellectually ambitious- today, she discusses a work of philosophy she once studied, and when we hear her make remarks such as “I should become a realist,” it sounds like she is saying that she ought to join some movement in literature or the arts. One of the things that has surprised me most on this watch-through of the show is what a capable actress Miss Scott already was so early in her career. Rachel is worlds away from the occasionally hardboiled, never bookish Maggie, and even further removed from the other role we have already seen Miss Scott play, the gracious and ghostly Josette.
The show calls our attention to the contrasts between Rachel, Maggie, and Josette today. Rachel goes to the Old House on the estate and meets with Romani stereotype Magda Rákóczi. Rachel looks at the portrait of Josette over the mantel and says “We’re supposed to look alike… at least he says we do.” The “he” in question, Magda’s boss Barnabas Collins, is a well-meaning time-traveler/ bloodsucking abomination from the depths of Hell who in May and June of 1967 abducted Maggie and tried to replace her personality with Josettte’s.
Magda takes some money from Rachel in return for reading her palm. Magda is played by Grayson Hall, who first appeared on Dark Shadows a week after Maggie escaped from Barnabas. At that time she was Julia Hoffman, MD, Maggie’s psychiatrist. Seeing her examine Rachel’s palm today and hearing her tell Rachel all about herself, we remember when Julia used to shine a light in Maggie’s eyes and probe for information about what happened to her. Knowing that Magda is in Barnabas’ service, we remember that Julia shifted her loyalties to Barnabas and used her powers of hypnosis to erase Maggie’s memory of what he had done to her. We might wonder if Magda will move in the opposite direction, and betray Barnabas for Rachel’s sake.
There is a scene today between Rachel and Edward Collins, father of her charges. Both Miss Scott and Louis Edmonds have trouble with their lines, and each of them breaks eye contact at inappropriate moments. These awkward bobbles coincide with a lot of noise that sounds like a newscast. That noise is most likely audio bleedthrough from what was on the videotape before they recorded the episode on it, but the actors’ signs of distraction coincide with it so exactly that it is hard to dismiss a suspicion that what we are hearing was audible in the studio.
When vampire Barnabas Collins first came to the great house of Collinwood in April 1967, the living members of the Collins family were embattled, isolated, and desperate for friendship. In 1966, one of the major themes of Dark Shadows had been that the Collinses were running out of money and their nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, was using his own fortune to buy up their outstanding debts and alienate the people of the village of Collinsport from the Collinses. Everywhere they turned, they met hostility in one form or another. Their two most devoted employees had been plant manager Bill Malloy and handyman Matthew Morgan; in a fit of rage, Matthew killed Bill, and went on to abduct and try to kill well-meaning governess Victoria Winters. Roger Collins’ estranged wife, Laura Murdoch Collins, showed up; she turned out to be an undead blonde fire witch out to kill their son, strange and troubled boy David. No sooner had Victoria rescued David from Laura than seagoing con man Jason McGuire presented himself and set about blackmailing matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Jason even forced Liz to give the bedroom next to her daughter Carolyn to his rapey sidekick, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis.
So when a man knocked on the door who looked exactly like the portrait of an ancestor who lived in a previous century and introduced himself as a distant cousin from England, a wealthy eccentric with courtly manners who wanted only to spend time on the estate where his forebears lived long ago, Liz and Roger were delighted to host him. Barnabas spent most of 1967 as a comic villain scrambling to maintain the pretense that he was native to the twentieth century, but as far as the adult residents of the great house were concerned his authenticity was established beyond doubt the first moment they saw him.
Now Barnabas has traveled back in time to the year 1897. In this period the Collinses of Collinwood are rich, powerful, and paranoid. Unknown to Barnabas, a woman named Magda Rákóczi, whom he had given a ruby ring as a bribe to secure her help after she learned that he was a vampire and that her husband Sandor was his blood thrall, had preceded him to the great house. Magda did not know why Barnabas had come to Collinwood, but she knew that he had some objective and that he would likely leave as soon as he had accomplished it. When Barnabas told Magda that he would keep giving her jewels as long as she helped him, he therefore gave her an incentive to slow him down as much as possible. She therefore told repressed spinster Judith Collins and Judith’s brother, libertine Quentin Collins, that they should beware of a “creature of darkness” who would be calling on them after sundown and who would claim to be “a friend, or perhaps a relative.”
Neither Judith nor Quentin has any respect for Magda, as much because of her Romani ethnicity as because of her mercenary ways. But when Barnabas introduces himself, Judith is deeply shaken. Quentin mocks her, suggesting that the resemblance between Magda’s prediction and Barnabas’ identification is as likely to be a coincidence as anything else, but as soon as he is alone with Barnabas Quentin pulls a sword, holds it at Barnabas’ throat, tells him he knows he is an impostor, and demands the truth within “five minutes” or he will run him through.
With this act, Quentin shows as little strategic nous as Barnabas had shown when he led Magda to believe that it was in her interest to make sure he stayed around for a while. Quentin does not know that Barnabas is a vampire, so that running him through with a sword would do nothing but give whoever saw it a story that he could not tell without branding himself a lunatic. But he does know that he is the black sheep of the family, and that his brothers and sister are eager to get him out of the way before their grandmother dies and her will goes into probate. If he kills a man in cold blood, they would have an excellent reason to have him committed to an asylum and whatever legacy he receives placed in a conservatorship they would control.
So Quentin’s threat is an empty one. Had Barnabas caved in and made a confession that he was a fraud, only Judith would have known of Quentin’s triumph, and she has made it clear that she is not about to yield a penny of her inheritance to him no matter what he does. At most, Quentin would have given Judith a new esteem for Magda, who herself has no use at all for him. And when Barnabas holds his ground, all Quentin can do is back down, losing face and making himself permanently ridiculous in his eyes.
The particulars of the scene are interesting, as well. Quentin tells Barnabas that he has “five minutes” to explain himself. When we heard that, my wife and I laughed out loud. Are we about to be treated to five minutes of silence while they hold their poses? Surely, we thought, it was a blooper- the scripted line must have been “five seconds.” But no! A moment later, Quentin says that “five minutes can go by rather quickly, when a man is about to die.” Had Barnabas been struck with terror at the sight of the weapon so close to him, he might have started confessing as soon as he saw it, but by the time Quentin doubles down on this “five minutes” it is obvious he has already lost the game.
Quentin tells Barnabas that he has just returned from a visit of about six months in England, during which time he discovered that he had no relatives there named Collins. This gives Barnabas an opportunity to insult Quentin, saying that his reputation may have preceded him and driven his relatives to make sure he did not find out about them. This stuns Quentin satisfactorily, but is not strictly necessary. There had been a great deal of migration from Ireland to England by the 1890s, more than enough that an Irish name as widespread as Collins would have been very familiar there. It is hardly likely that even if he had spent six months doing nothing but tracking down every Collins family in the country Quentin would have been able to have confidence that he had not overlooked some descendant of a Collins who had left Collinsport generations before. After all, they didn’t have ancestry dot com back then! It is clear that he must be lying.
Worst of all from Quentin’s perspective, he is still holding the sword at Barnabas’ throat when Judith comes in. At that sight, she has no choice but to set aside her own doubts about Barnabas. She demands Quentin apologize to Barnabas. Barnabas tells them that he can assure Quentin that he does not want any of the family’s money; in fact, he says, the English Collinses are quite comfortable financially and he plans to make some investments in local businesses while he is in Collinsport. Quentin perks up at this, no doubt seeing Barnabas as a possible mark for his next con game. Longtime viewers will remember that when Barnabas introduced himself to the 1960s iteration of the family, Roger was extremely interested in his apparent wealth and had several ideas about how he might help himself to a share of it.
Judith offers Barnabas a room at the great house. He says he would rather stay at the Old House on the estate. Judith breaks it to him that the current head of the family, dying nonagenarian Edith Collins, has let “Gypsies” live there. She makes it sound like a whole Romani clan has settled in, but in fact it is just Magda and Sandor. Barnabas feigns surprise, but still asks permission to inspect the house. Judith consents, and he sets out, alone
Danny Horn’s post about the episode on his Dark Shadows Every Dayfocuses on the ways it makes Quentin look like a child. I’d say it makes Judith look equally childish, even though she is clearly senior to Quentin. The two of them model one of Dark Shadows‘ signature pairings, that of Bossy Big Sister and Bratty Little Brother. Even when the big sister is in a position to exercise authority, as in the 1960s Liz was in a position to exercise authority over Roger, she winds up being merely bossy because however flagrantly he disobeys her, in the end she covers up his misdeeds and protects him from the punishment they merit. Longtime viewers suspect Judith will find herself doing the same.
In yesterday’s episode, Quentin entered maidservant Beth’s room and found her getting ready to go out. He asked if it was her day off; she said Judith gave her permission to run personal errands in town. He grabbed at her things and found an envelope with $300 cash. She claimed she saved this out of her salary, an obvious lie. He made leering insinuations about her relationship with his oldest brother Edward; she slapped his face.
Now, Beth is on her way back to Collinwood from her mysterious errand. Barnabas sees her in the woods and addresses her by name. She asks who he is and how he knows her. He introduces himself, and explains that he saw her photograph in an album at Collinwood. In fact, his friend Julia Hoffman saw such a photograph in 1969 and described it to him; Barnabas himself never saw it, but he did see Beth’s ghost. Evidently the photo had already been taken and put into the album, because Beth smiles when Barnabas talks about it. He asks Beth about the children at Collinwood. She mentions two; he asks about a third, and she says there is no third. He asks why he thought there was, and she seems uncomfortable. After she leaves, we hear his thoughts in a voiceover monologue. In 1969, Beth’s ghost led Barnabas’ friend Chris Jennings to an infant’s coffin; he wonders if that child has already died, and looks around, as if he might be standing on its grave.
Barnabas’ next stop is at the waterfront. When he was first a vampire in the late eighteenth century, Barnabas once found himself on the docks by chance and was overcome with thirst for the blood of the streetwalkers who worked there. This time he must have made a conscious decision to find a sex worker to drain of blood. Some wonder why he does not feed on Sandor and Magda, but longtime viewers know the answer to that one. When Barnabas was first on the show, Willie was his blood thrall, and each bite left Willie critically ill throughout the daylight hours. Barnabas needs Sandor and Magda to guard him during the day, so others will have to suffer to provide him with blood.
Barnabas picks up a small object from the pavement. He hears a soprano voice nearby, calling for an unseen “Charlie!” to help her find her lost makeup compact. The owner of the voice comes into view and introduces herself to Barnabas as Sophie Baker.* Barnabas gives her the compact. She thanks him and says it was a gift from a dear man, a Captain Strathmore. She asks Barnabas his name. He says he thinks it is best if he doesn’t give his name. “What an odd thing to say,” she responds. If she made her living the way Barnabas hoped the woman he found would make hers, it wouldn’t be odd at all; Sophie’s reaction is that of someone who has no idea that she is in a place where that trade is practiced. Evidently Sophie comes from a sufficiently comfortable background that prostitution does not impinge on her thoughts even as something other women do.
Barnabas tries to get away, and Sophie asks “Well, what’s the matter with me?” Charlie is hopelessly drunk, leaving Sophie without an escort. Barnabas is plainly alone, and the night is young. The pub is nearby- why don’t they stop in for a drink. Barnabas shows great reluctance, but finally agrees to walk Sophie to the door. She takes out her compact to freshen her face, looks in its mirror, and notices that Barnabas does not cast a reflection. She is stunned by this. Barnabas bares his fangs, and sates his bloodlust.
The compact with a mirror was apparently a new invention when one was advertised in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue in 1908, so it is an anachronism in 1897. But it is a perfect touch. Sophie’s discovery that Barnabas does not cast a reflection turns the scene from a little bit of farce into a tale of horror in a fraction of a second. That the compact allows such an efficient use of time makes it no wonder that they used the same prop in 1967, when Julia glanced in her compact to confirm her hypothesis about Barnabas’ nature in #288.
This time, the compact also goes a long way towards explaining Barnabas’ attitude towards Sophie. It shows that she can afford to buy the latest and most sophisticated trinkets, and that she expects to be seen using them. Barnabas picks the compact up and returns it to Sophie as a gentleman might a lady’s handkerchief. Sophie’s personality may have led her to match the outgoing and uninhibited manner that is a professional requirement for sex workers and that made them easy targets for Barnabas, but when he sees that she is not of their class he becomes reluctant to attack her. Thus we learn that snobbery Barnabas has shown in some of his darker moments is not just an occasional failing, but that his whole career as a vampire is primarily a war on poor people.
Back at Collinwood, Quentin spots Beth taking a tray of food upstairs. He waylays her, uncovers the tray, and demands to know who it is for. She says it is for Edith, and he declares that his grandmother is far too ill to eat so much. When he finally lets her go, Beth goes to Edith’s room and tells Judith about Quentin’s interrogation. They confer about the matter in urgent whispers. Judith tells Beth they will have to be far more discreet now that Quentin is back. She urges her to take care Quentin does not see her when she takes the rest of the food “upstairs.” Evidently there is someone in the house Quentin does not know about, and Judith and Beth are conspiring to keep it that way.
Judith leaves the room, and Quentin slips in. He pretends to be Edward. Edith is not fooled, and expresses her annoyance with him. She says she is not as far gone as he thinks she is, and he assures her that she is. She will die tonight, and will tell him the family secret before she does. He seems to be threatening to kill her himself by the time the episode ends.
Every episode of Dark Shadows begins with a voiceover delivered by a member of the cast. This one reuses yesterday’s opening voiceover. I believe this is the first time they have done this.
*The closing credits give her name as “Sophie Barnes,” but she very clearly says “Baker.”
Magda Rákóczi, preposterously broad ethnic stereotype, has discovered that the recently arrived Barnabas Collins is a vampire. Barnabas has bitten and enslaved Magda’s husband Sandor, and tells her that she, too will do his bidding. When she asks what has brought him to this conclusion, he tells her that as long as she is in his employ, he will give her jewels. He hands her a ruby ring, and she agrees.
Longtime viewers know well that Barnabas’ plans regularly backfire. Today, we see one of the reasons why. Barnabas does not tell Magda why he has come to the estate of Collinwood in the year 1897, but he does tell her that the following night he will be calling on the Collins family in the great house in order to win their acceptance of him as a distant cousin from England. For all she knows he might be able to complete his task and go back to where he came from shortly after the Collinses welcome him. That would leave her with no further jewelry. So Magda goes to the great house and tells spinster Judith Collins and her brother, libertine Quentin Collins, that a stranger will visit them after sunset. He will present himself as a “friend, perhaps a relative,” but they must not trust him. He is in fact a “creature of darkness” who means them harm.
Judith and Quentin are one of Dark Shadows‘ signature pairings of Bossy Big Sister/ Bratty Little Brother, and they bicker about whether to be disgusted or amused by what they take to be Magda’s transparently fraudulent warning. When Barnabas shows up, Judith is shaken and Quentin laughs at her for taking Magda seriously. In the last scene, Quentin does pull a sword on Barnabas and threaten to kill him on the spot unless he tells a more acceptable story, so apparently he placed a higher value on Magda’s words than he wanted to let Judith know.
Her dialogue is full of lines like “I don’t care” and “It’s none of your business,” and Terry Crawford decides that the best acting choice she could make would be to play it as if Beth sincerely means every word that she says. This is different from what a good actor would do in every respect.
She should be fencing with him, half-flirting and half-angry and half-guilty. Yes, she should be playing three halves right now; that’s the point of the scene. But Terry Crawford gives you what’s on the page, because somebody explained the concept of “subtext” to her once, while she was thinking about something else.
Alas, it is so. Appealing as David Selby’s personality is and lively as his interpretation of Quentin is, Miss Crawford’s literalism means that his efforts are largely wasted, at least in his scenes with her. With Joan Bennett’s Judith or with any of the other members of the cast, we can see that while Quentin’s behavior is inexcusable, his charm is irresistible. But Miss Crawford shows us Beth resisting it with no apparent difficulty, and that leaves him as just another jerk. As I put it in a comment on Danny’s post:
I agree about Terry Crawford. She has to do something very difficult- simultaneously show contempt for Quentin and attraction to him. She manages only the first, meaning that when he keeps at her after she tells him to leave her alone, it isn’t a game, it’s just sexual assault. That makes Quentin a lot harder to like than he needs to be.
This episode ends with one of the all-time great screw-ups. A few times actors have come partly into view during the closing credits, usually just one arm briefly entering the shot. But this time Jonathan Frid comes walking right into the frame, gives a horrified reaction, and scurries off. It is a thing of beauty, enough to make you wonder how there can be people who are not fans of Dark Shadows.
A great moment in the history of television, or THE GREATEST moment in the history of television? You decide. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Every Day.
Dark Shadows has two ongoing storylines at this point. Mysterious drifter Chris Jennings came to town a couple of months ago and turned out to be a werewolf. Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard does not know of Chris’ curse. She has taken a fancy to him and set him up in the caretaker’s cottage on the estate of Collinwood. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman do know that Chris is a werewolf, and they are working to help him. Barnabas has found a place to keep him confined on the nights of the full Moon, and Julia is trying to develop a medical intervention that will keep him in his human form.
Meanwhile, Chris’ nine year old sister Amy has taken up residence in the great house on the estate. She and her twelve year old friend, strange and troubled boy David Collins, are falling under the power of the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins. At first Amy could communicate with Quentin more clearly than David could. This made David envious. In #640, David complained that Amy could hear his voice and he could not, even though “Quentin Collins is my ancestor.” That suggested to the audience that Quentin would turn out also to be Amy and Chris’ ancestor, joining the werewolf story with the Haunting of Collinwood.
Today, Barnabas and Chris have dug up a spot on the ground to which the ghost of a mysterious woman had led Chris. They find a tiny coffin holding the remains of an infant. They discover that the infant was wearing a medallion in the shape of a silver pentagram. The sight of the dead baby shocks Barnabas right away; Chris keeps his composure at first, but seems close to tears a moment later. Quentin stands in the shrubbery and watches Barnabas and Chris.
Barnabas has not seen Quentin and does not know who he is. Others have seen him and described him to Barnabas and Julia. They and those others suspect that he is a malevolent ghost with designs on David and Amy. No one has yet made a connection between Quentin and the werewolf story, however.
Julia and Barnabas have also seen the mysterious woman who led Chris to the baby’s grave. They know that she is a ghost and that she has helped Chris, and they also know that her clothing is of the same vintage as is the clothing which Quentin wears. But they do not know what, if anything, the two ghosts have to do with each other. The audience knows that the female ghost’s name is Beth and that she was with Quentin in the little room in the long deserted west wing of the great house when the children first met him.
Barnabas tells Chris that the pentagram can only be a device to ward off a werewolf, so that there must have been a werewolf in the area when the baby was buried. He also tells Chris that the mysterious woman would not have led him to dig up the grave unless what they found in the coffin would be of help to him.
While Barnabas inspects the pentagram in the drawing room of the great house, David throws darts at a board propped up on a chair nearby. The audience knows that David is under Quentin’s control, so it is obvious to us that the dart playing is an attempt to distract Barnabas and keep him from figuring out the meaning of the pentagram. Lacking our knowledge, Barnabas is merely annoyed with David. Jonathan Frid and David Henesy expertly develop the comedy in Barnabas’ fast-burn reaction to David’s behavior.
Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard interrupts the scene. She notices what Barnabas is doing. He shows her the pentagram, and she recognizes the jeweler’s mark as that of Braithwaite’s silver shop in the village of Collinsport. While Barnabas telephones Braithewaite’s and arranges to take the pentagram there to see if the proprietor can give him any information about it, Carolyn tells David she wants to have a conversation with him about some cryptic remarks he made earlier. David refuses, saying that he has homework to do. Carolyn argues with him briefly, but finally gives up and leaves. Barnabas is still involved in his conversation with Mr Braithwaite when David hides the pentagram behind his dartboard.
Barnabas gets off the phone, and David resumes throwing darts. Barnabas asks him why he isn’t doing the homework he was just telling Carolyn presented such an urgent obligation that he could not talk with her. He launches into a shaggy dog story, the upshot of which is that he has to wait for Amy.
More exasperated than ever, Barnabas turns to the desk and sees that the pentagram is gone. He demands David return it. David denies having it. He says that it may have vanished on its own. After all, unaccountable things happen at Collinwood all the time, as Barnabas is in a position to know. The way he says “You should know that” reminds longtime viewers that David has more than once shown signs of figuring out more about Barnabas’ own connections to the supernatural than have any of his adult relatives. In #316, he pointed out that none of the Collinses really knows anything about Barnabas- “He just showed up one night.” And in #660, he told Amy that “Barnabas knows a lot of things he doesn’t tell anybody.” At moments like these, we wonder just how much information David really has at his disposal. Perhaps he secretly knows everything, and has just decided there’s no point in notifying the authorities.
David invites Barnabas to search him. He lists the contents of his pockets, and turns the right front pocket inside out. He tells him that he has a pack of chewing gum, which he got from Amy. He specifies that he traded her a box of raisins for it. As David Henesy delivers the line and Jonathan Frid shows us Barnabas’ reaction, this detail is laugh-out-loud funny. Barnabas surrenders and apologizes to David, fretting about the pentagram’s absence.
Barnabas takes a sketch of the pentagram to Braithwaite’s. In the first months it was on the air, Dark Shadows took us to New York City twice, to Bangor, Maine several times, and to Phoenix, Arizona once. But now that both stories center on characters all of whom dwell in one or another of the houses at Collinwood, it is as rare to leave the estate and go into the neighboring village as it was then to go on those remote excursions.
Old Mr Braithwaite tells Barnabas that the shop has been in operation since 1781 and has been providing fine silver to the Collins family the whole time. Regular viewers know that Barnabas was alive then, and lived in Collinsport. A curse made him a vampire in the 1790s, and he was under its power until he was freed early in 1968. So he must have been quite familiar with Braithwaite’s in its early years. What is more, in #459 we saw that in the first months of Barnabas’ career as a vampire his father Joshua learned of his curse and commissioned a local craftsman to make silver bullets with which he could put Barnabas out of his misery. That craftsman must have been one of the first Mr Braithwaites.
The incumbent Mr Braithwaite tells Barnabas he will consult his records as soon as the shop closes and telephone him if he finds anything. When the call comes, David answers. Mr Braithwaite tells David that he can’t imagine why he forgot about the pentagram since it was one of the very first he made himself, back in 1897. Quentin appears, takes the phone from David, and hears Mr Braithwaite say he will stop by Collinwood with the ledger shortly.
Mr Braithwaite almost remembers.
David protests that Quentin had no right to take the phone from him. Quentin turns to him, gives him a menacing look, and walks toward him. David backs away and and takes a place on the stairs, still objecting loudly to what Quentin did.
Closing Miscellany
The closing credits list the actor who plays Ezra Braithwaite as “Abe Vigodo.” Perhaps in some parallel time-band there was a man of that name who played Tossio in The Good Father and Detective Fosh in Barney Moeller, but this is in fact Abe Vigoda.
“Abe Vigodo”
In his 1977-1978 ABC TV series Fish, Vigoda’s character was married to a woman played by Florence Stanley. Stanley was also a Dark Shadows alum, as a voice actress. She provided sobbing sounds heard in #4, #98, #515, #516, and #666. Vigoda once appeared on the panel at a Dark Shadows convention; his main statement was “I don’t remember much about it.” I can’t find evidence that Stanley ever appeared in such a setting. I would love to imagine that Vigoda and Stanley compared notes about their experiences on Dark Shadows between setups on Fish, but I would be astonished to learn that ever happened.
Vigoda always played old men. The second screen credit on his IMDb page is a 1949 episode of Studio One in which he took the role of “Old Train Passenger.” At that time, he was 28. Vigoda was a marathon runner, a form of exercise that tends to burn out all the fat under the skin of the face. And of course he was a very strong actor, easily able to convince us that he is of a great age. So even though Vigoda was only three years older than Jonathan Frid, and about 175 years younger than Barnabas, it isn’t quite as funny as it might be to hear him call Barnabas one of “you young people.”
Danny Horn devotes his post about this episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Dayto three points. The first is his exultation that his least favorite writer, Ron Sproat, was credited with his final script yesterday, so that today is the first day of the Sproatless Dark Shadows. The second is that the show is finally joining the werewolf story with the Haunting of Collinwood. The third is a point I have some reservations about. He says that this is the first episode where Quentin “has a feeling,” and therefore declares it to be Quentin’s debut as a real character. “It’s nice to meet you Quentin. Welcome to the show,” he concludes.
It’s true that Quentin shows a wider range of feelings today than he had previously, but I think it is an exaggeration to say that we are only now seeing his feelings. For example, when in #680 Quentin agrees to Amy’s demand that he stop trying to kill Chris, he looks very much like a man humiliated to find that he has to capitulate to a nine year old girl. In the same episode he showed amusement and anger at appropriate points. Those three responses may not sound like much, but David Selby’s face is a magnificent instrument, one he plays it expertly. For him, they are more than enough to make Quentin into a real person.
Chris and Carolyn have a brief scene in the drawing room as they are getting ready to go on a date. Chris defuses a potentially awkward conversation about his previous failures to respond to Carolyn’s hints that she was interested in him by saying “Oh, I didn’t notice that” in the W. C. Fields imitation he had used with Amy in #677. She chuckles delightedly. This is not implausible. Not only can we imagine her being relieved that the topic didn’t ruin their evening, but W. C. Fields was very much in vogue in the late 1960s, so much so that a fashionable young woman might have chuckled when a man briefly imitated him.
David and Carolyn have an exchange that longtime viewers will find less plausible. He asks her if she has ever seen a ghost; she responds by asking if he has. But each of them knows perfectly well that the other has seen ghosts. David spent the first year of the show on intimate terms with the ghost of the gracious Josette, and he and Carolyn both saw and had substantive conversations with the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah. In #344, Carolyn told David that when she was a little girl her best friend was the ghost of a boy named Randy. It’s just trashing character development to retcon all that away.
Barnabas says something that will catch the ears of properly obsessed fans. When he is in the shop, he tells Mr Braithwaite that he will gladly drive back from Collinwood whenever he has any information for him. There have been some suggestions lately that Barnabas has learned to drive and has come into possession of a car, but this is the first definite confirmation of that point.
This one survives only in a black and white kinescope. That format serves the story quite well. Five of the characters sound like they would generate fast-paced, high-pitched action- Barnabas Collins is a recovering vampire, Julia Hoffman is a mad scientist, Chris Jennings is a werewolf, Quentin Collins and his associate Beth are ghosts. But today is all about Barnabas, Julia, and Chris trying to figure out whether Quentin and Beth really are ghosts and wondering if they have something to do with Chris’ nine year old sister Amy and Amy’s twelve year old friend David Collins. They have to spend their time painstakingly chewing over the few wisps of evidence they have managed to collect. That slow story depends entirely on atmosphere and suggestion to connect with the audience, and the visual simplicity and abstraction of black and white images gives it the best chance it could have of working.
Barnabas and Julia go to Chris’ place to ask him if he knows anything about Beth. Julia hypnotizes him to make sure he isn’t blocking any memories of her; he isn’t. They leave, he goes outside alone, and he meets Beth. She points to a spot on the ground, then vanishes. He goes to get Barnabas and tell him about this encounter. They go to the spot she had indicated and find that a shovel has materialized nearby. They dig there, and turn up a child’s coffin. Barnabas is puzzled by this. He hasn’t buried any children in unmarked graves on the grounds lately, and there is nothing distinctive about the coffin itself. So he suggests they open it. The episode ends with the lid of the coffin filling the screen.
This was the last of hundreds of episodes written by Ron Sproat. When Sproat joined the show in the fall of 1966, he sorted through the storylines, discarding some that couldn’t possibly go anywhere and tightening the focus on those that seemed to have potential. He was an able technician who did a great deal to make sure that new viewers could figure out what was happening on the show. He shouldered the heaviest share of the writing burden in the period when the vampire storyline began and Dark Shadows suddenly leapt from the bottom of the ratings to become a kind of hit, and was a workhorse through the months when the show was a costume drama set in the 1790s and emerged as one of the major pop culture phenomena of the 1960s. He was the one who pushed his Yale classmate Jonathan Frid for the role of Barnabas, and he was the first person connected with the show to go to the conventions the show’s fans organized, laying the foundation for a community that brought them together with members of the cast, crew, and production staff.
Vital as his contributions were to the show and its afterlife, the brutal conditions under which Dark Shadows‘ tiny writing staff worked made it impossible to ignore Sproat’s weaknesses. When there were never more than three people involved in creating scripts for a hundred minutes a week of drama, scripts which were often produced verbatim as they came from the writer, there was nowhere to hide. So it is clear to us that Sproat’s imagination was not an especially fertile source of plot development. On his great Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn frequently complained of Sproat’s habit of locking characters up in various forms of captivity so that the story would not progress and he would not run out of flimsies to fill in. Danny called these captivities “Sproatnappings.” Sproat probably should have found a different job several months ago, and certainly should have been part of a larger group of writers.
Still, we will miss him when he’s gone. Alexandra Moltke Isles played well-meaning governess Vicki from #1 to #627; for the first year, she was the main character on Dark Shadows, and she continued to be a core member of the cast until she left. Nowadays, Mrs Isles remembers that a few months after her departure she found herself free at 4 PM and tuned into the show. She couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on. She wasn’t the only one. The staff that will take the show through its next several months- Sam Hall, Gordon Russell, and Violet Welles- would do brilliant work, on average far and away the best the show ever had, but none of them spared a thought for any but the most regular of viewers. For much of 1969, missing one episode will leave you bewildered- missing several months, well, Mrs Isles may as well have been watching a different show altogether.
Most episodes in the first 66 weeks of Dark Shadows ended with ABC staff announcer Bob Lloyd’s voice in the closing credits telling us that “Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis production.” We hear that announcement during today’s closing credits for the first time since #330. That isn’t because they’ve brought Mr Lloyd back, but because they were using an old tape for the theme music and didn’t realize his voice was on it. You can tell it wasn’t on purpose, since the announcement comes in the middle of the credits, not in its usual place at the end when the Dan Curtis Productions logo appears.
An extraordinarily uneventful outing. In yesterday’s episode it looked like heiress Carolyn would go to visit Chris the werewolf as he is in the middle of a transformation and would be attacked. But she didn’t go. Governess Maggie did go to Chris’ cottage, and at the end of the episode it looked like she might be attacked. As we open today, she is there and he is about to change, but she leaves and gets home safely while he is still in human form.
It again looks like Carolyn might be attacked when she walks through the woods to visit the mausoleum where her mother, matriarch Liz, is entombed. Liz was alive when she was mistakenly buried and is still alive now. Liz is unable to move or speak, but she somehow shares the audience’s thought that Carolyn might possibly be attacked. We see her in her coffin and hear her interior monologue as she thinks about the “terrible danger” her daughter is in.
As it happens, Carolyn makes it home fine. Later she goes out again; we see the werewolf prowling nearby, again raising the theoretical possibility that she will be attacked. But Carolyn hears Liz’ voice in her head, a telepathic warning that she should hasten off. The werewolf also reacts as if he can hear Liz’ voice, and he goes off in another direction. The screen goes dark and the credits start rolling. The werewolf hasn’t attacked anyone and no one has learned anything about him.
It appears that the werewolf is trying to figure out where Liz’ voice is coming from.
It’s kind of interesting that Liz can transmit telepathic messages now. She could use a supernatural power or two if she’s going to get into the swing of things on the show. It’s also interesting that the werewolf seems to be able to overhear the messages Liz sends to Carolyn. Chris’ little sister Amy lives in the great house of Collinwood now, and along with strange and troubled boy David she is falling under the power of the evil ghost of Quentin Collins. Quentin communicated with Amy before he could get through to David. David was miffed by this, since “Quentin is my ancestor.” That suggested that Quentin will turn out to be Amy’s ancestor as well, making her and Chris members of the Collins family. If so, that might explain why Chris, even in his lupine form, was able to pick up a telepathic transmission Liz directed to her blood relatives.
There is a wardrobe malfunction in this one of a type that showed up several times in the first year of the show. When Carolyn makes her first entrance, she walks down the stairs in the foyer. At each step, Nancy Barrett’s chest thrusts into her sweater with results that would probably not have made it on the air had anyone from the ABC network’s office of Standards and Practices been watching the show. In the early days, they put the actresses into very form-fitting tops often enough that I thought they were challenging the audience to take an adult attitude towards female anatomy, and so I did my best to rise to that challenge by leaving it unremarked when we could see the exact shape of their breasts. But it’s a rare occurrence now, so I think we have to list it among production faults.
Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, in temporary charge of the great house of Collinwood, has decided to pack children David Collins and Amy Jennings off to boarding schools in Boston. They pretend to be happy about this, but in fact want to stay in the house, where they have come under the power of the evil ghost of Quentin Collins. Neither they nor Quentin can figure out a way to stop Barnabas’ plan. David takes a photo of Barnabas standing with heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard; when the photo is developed, a mysterious figure appears in the background, hanging by the neck. Barnabas believes that the figure represents vanished governess Victoria Winters, and that he must travel back in time to rescue her. He therefore has no time to go to Boston and put the children in schools, so the plan is off.
Several characters see the photo, but only Barnabas recognizes the hanged woman as Vicki. No wonder- Vicki has been played by two actresses, and neither of them posed for it. The original Vicki was Alexandra Moltke Isles; the second was Betsy Durkin. This is Carolyn Groves, who will play Vicki in a couple of upcoming episodes. The usual rule of nomenclature when discussing recast parts is to give the performers numbers, and so Mrs Isles would be Vicki #1, Miss Durkin Vicki #2, and Miss Groves Vicki #3. But in deference to their first names, we might call them Vicki A, Vicki B, and Vicki C.
Craig Slocum appears on the show for the last time today. He plays Harry Johnson, a household servant. When Carolyn Stoddard orders Harry to fetch the children’s luggage, the camera lingers on the look of distaste she gives him. Carolyn and Harry had some unpleasant dealings several months ago, when she was hiding a Frankenstein’s monster named Adam in the long deserted west wing of the house and Harry tried to use this information to blackmail her. Carolyn kept control of that situation, but her facial expression as she looks at him today shows that she remembers Harry’s behavior and does not regard him as a man to be trusted.
Upstairs, Harry finds the children in David’s room. He catches them using an antique telephone through which they have been able to communicate with Quentin. He wants to know what they have been doing. David says that they might as well tell him, prompting an alarmed reaction from Amy. He gives a partly accurate account. The true parts are the ones Harry instantly disbelieves. This wouldn’t have worked with any of the other grownups at Collinwood; they have all had too much experience of the supernatural to disregard such a story. But Harry is relatively new to the house, and is too dim-witted to understand what he has seen. Their secret is safe with him.
Slocum ‘s performances were uneven in quality. He first appeared as Noah Gifford, a criminally inclined sailor who figured in five episodes from #439 to #455, a period when Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. He was very bad in those five. He didn’t know what to do with his voice, so that he always sounded like he was reading words one at a time off a teleprompter that kept speeding up and slowing down on its own. Dark Shadows returned to contemporary dress a few weeks after Noah’s last appearance, and Slocum returned to the cast as Harry. He had the same trouble with his speech in his early stabs at that role, but he did eventually learn to relax. In #551, he amazed the world by doing a genuinely good job. He has been passable most of the time since, and he is all right today. Still, Harry doesn’t have much room to grow, and Slocum was so bad so many times that it’s a relief to see him go.
There is an intriguing little blooper near the beginning. Barnabas is supposed to say that he is on his way to see Carolyn. Jonathan Frid actually says that he is going to see “Barrah- Carolyn.” In a recent episode, a day player asked to see “Mister Jonathan” and was ushered to Barnabas, so perhaps he caught the bug and is going to call Carolyn “Barrett, Nancy.”
The residents of the estate of Collinwood are under the impression that the mistress of the great house, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, is dead. Her brother, Roger Collins, is on a business trip to London, and cannot be reached, even by the executives of the business he is there to represent. Liz’ daughter Carolyn is her heir, but she is apparently too doped up on sedatives prescribed by permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, to take any part in the action of today’s episode. So it falls to Barnabas Collins, Liz’ distant cousin and the master of the Old House on the estate, to move in and start making decisions.
Barnabas is the show’s chief protagonist and its main attraction, and he ran out of story three and a half weeks ago. The ongoing plot-lines both involve Amy Jennings, a nine year old girl who is staying at the great house as Liz’ guest. Amy’s brother Chris is a werewolf, and she and strange and troubled boy David Collins are under the power of the evil ghost of Quentin Collins. The urgent thing is to make Barnabas responsible for Amy so that he can take the lead in addressing both Chris’ lycanthropy and Quentin’s haunting. To that end, it is key that he should be in charge of the great house for a while.
A stranger comes to the door and asks housekeeper Mrs Johnson if he can speak to “Mister Jonathan.” Without batting an eye, she leads him to Barnabas. This proves that Barnabas has become such a breakout hit that even the other characters know that he is played by Jonathan Frid. Perhaps we are to imagine them reading about him in the fan magazines.
The stranger is a mortician who received a telephone call about Liz’ death. Barnabas informs him that they have made other arrangements, and his services will not be needed. Barnabas and Mrs Johnson are puzzled as to who made the call. It turns out that David did it at Quentin’s bidding; how this advances Quentin’s purposes is not clear.
Amy and David’s governess, the well-meaning Victoria Winters, vanished into a gap in the space-time continuum the other day and is not expected to return. Liz hired Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, to replace her. Barnabas sticks up for Maggie when Mrs Johnson makes an unflattering comparison of her with Vicki, but he has evidently decided to eliminate her position almost immediately. He wants her to accompany him and the children on a trip to Boston where he will choose boarding schools for them to attend.
Barnabas has not spoken with Roger, who is David’s father. It is not clear who Amy’s legal guardian is. Her parents are dead, and her brother Tom was taking care of her before he died (the first time- he became a vampire and kept coming back.) Chris was away spending the nights of the full moon in the woods at that time, so Amy was sent to Windcliff, a sanitarium a hundred miles north of town. Julia is the nominal head of Windcliff and is Amy’s doctor, so it is possible she is Amy’s legal guardian. Julia is also Barnabas’ closest friend and most frequent accomplice, so it is possible she has agreed to his plan.
Even though Maggie’s job may not last for more than another week, she still needs a place to stay. So she, Mrs Johnson, and Barnabas clear Vicki’s stuff out of her room. Barnabas was hung up on the idea that he and Vicki might someday fall in love, an idea he did remarkably little to put into practice, and so he finds it distressing to be around her clothes. He demands that Mrs Johnson destroy them all. This shocks her. She finds an antique music box, and asks what to do with that. Barnabas orders her to destroy that too. Maggie takes the music box, listens to it for a second, grows wide-eyed, then hurriedly hands it to Mrs Johnson.
This moment amounts to a programmatic statement. In May and June of 1967, Barnabas was a vampire and Maggie was his victim. He forced her to listen to the music box for hours on end, believing that it had a hypnotic power that would erase her personality and replace it with that of his lost love Josette. Several times it has seemed that her memory of what Barnabas was and what he did to her would come back, only for her to be subjected to one magical mind-wipe after another. That she is so quick to give Mrs Johnson the box when Barnabas has ordered her to destroy it, and that her relaxed and friendly attitude towards Barnabas does not change for one second, is a sign that the question “Will Maggie’s memory come back?” will not be coming up in Dark Shadows version 5.0.
Maggie looks for David and Amy and finds them in the drawing room. Amy is playing “London Bridge” on the piano. We have seen David interact with only one other child, the ghost of Barnabas’ nine year old sister Sarah. Sarah sang and played the recorder, and the only song she seemed to know was “London Bridge.” Evidently, David has a type.
Mrs Johnson can’t bring herself to destroy Vicki’s clothes. She tells Maggie she has closed them up in a storeroom in the basement. The only room we have heard referred to this way is the one that was kept locked for the first 54 weeks of the show because Liz was under the mistaken impression that the corpse of her husband Paul was buried there, so that must be the room she means. Longtime viewers will appreciate the reference; Vicki herself was intrigued by the room in the early days of the show, and now her things have found a home there.
They don’t stay there for long. Maggie goes to hang up her own clothes, only to find that Vicki’s are back in the closet. She asks Mrs Johnson what could have happened. In #69, her second appearance, Mrs Johnson declared that “I believe in signs and omens!” Ever since, she has shown an attitude that might be called superstitious in our world, but that in the universe of Dark Shadows is just plain common sense. She ends the episode with a monologue about how “no human hand” had moved the clothes, that it must have been some supernatural force announcing that Vicki will be coming back.
This is disappointing for a couple of reasons. First, the character of Vicki was played out at the end of #192, and the show refused to find anything interesting for her to do for the 90 weeks that followed. Alexandra Moltke Isles finally gave up and used her pregnancy as grounds to get out of her contract early, but they recast the part to continue wasting screen time on this exhausted figure. The second Vicki, Betsy Durkin, was condemned to be a fake Shemp, moping her way through utterly pointless activities unconnected with anything the audience could care about. It was a great relief when she finally vanished.
Second, the show has a poor record of using objects to evoke its themes. The music box was an exception, but most have been pretty bad. The most famous example is Burke Devlin’s filigreed fountain pen, which was the main focus of 21 episodes spread from August through November of 1966. It was supposed to be evidence in a homicide investigation and to suggest a number of things about Roger’s feelings towards his friend-turned-nemesis Burke, but at the end it was just a bunch of people looking for a pen. The most recent at this point was a wristwatch that fake Vicki gave to her husband shortly before his disappearance. It turned up after he was gone and would occasionally start ticking when his spirit was near. Miss Durkin had to play scene after scene with that watch as her main partner, and it is no reflection on her acting ability that the results were so uniformly dismal. There’s a definite sinking feeling when we see Vicki’s wardrobe presented as another symbolic object.
Robert Rodan joined the cast of Dark Shadows in #485 as Frankenstein’s monster Adam. For his first few months, Adam could barely speak, limiting Rodan’s performance to facial expressions expressing his very intense emotions. He did well with that, and, as Adam came to master English, Rodan’s considerable range as an actor quickly became apparent. He gets a showcase today.
An experiment meant to bring Adam’s mate back to life has failed, and he decides that old world gentleman Barnabas Collins is at fault. Adam originally extorted Barnabas’ cooperation with the experiment in #557 by threatening to kill well-meaning governess Vicki and everyone else in the great house of Collinwood unless he were given a mate. Now Adam is in that house ready to carry out his threat.
He stands outside Vicki’s bedroom door. Through it, he hears heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard talking with Vicki. Adam fell in love with Carolyn some time ago, while she was protecting him from the police. Since Vicki is Carolyn’s best friend, and since Carolyn, her mother, her favorite uncle Roger, and Roger’s son David all live in the great house, Adam’s threat to kill everyone there always lacked a certain credibility. He eavesdrops as Carolyn tells Vicki she was recently very much attracted to a man, she can’t say who, and that ever since that man had to go away she has been depressed. Regular viewers know that Carolyn is talking about Adam, and he may know as well. Once Carolyn has left the room, Adam slips in. He tries to abduct Vicki. She screams, and Carolyn comes.
Adam slaps Vicki in the face and she collapses on the floor. In #515, Adam struck his friend Sam Evans across the face, inflicting an injury that contributed to Sam’s death shortly after. Adam didn’t know his own strength then; now, he only knocks Vicki unconscious. Carolyn tries to call the police; Adam takes the telephone from her hand and rips it from the wall. She is shocked that he is prepared to hurt even her. He puts his hands on her throat and squeezes it between his thumbs. The reason his mate needed to be brought to life a second time is that he strangled her in #626, and what he is doing to Carolyn looks unnervingly like what we saw him do then.
Rodan is self-possessed and deliberate when Adam is alone with Vicki, apparently smug in his certitude that whatever plan he has for her will work. When Carolyn enters, he abruptly shifts to a mixture of sorrow and rage. While he is strangling her, the sorrow overwhelms him completely. He knows exactly what he is doing, and is utterly miserable to be doing it.
Mad scientist Julia Hoffman is in Barnabas’ house. Barnabas had figured out that Adam was likely to go to Collinwood to carry out his threats, and she is waiting for him to come home and tell her whether he succeeded in thwarting Adam. She hears a noise, and calls out for Barnabas. He does not come, but the equipment in her basement mad science laboratory starts making its noises. Adam enters.
Julia and Adam exchange some mutually evasive dialogue. Rodan had played Adam’s scene with Carolyn and Vicki very hot, his emotions right on the surface. Now he shows that he can just as effectively play cold. Julia keeps asking him questions, which he parries without losing his smile, becoming excited, or in any way giving a clue as to what is in his mind. He deploys each syllable like a chess player selecting the right square for a piece. He shows a bit of feeling at first when he refers to the charred skeleton in the basement as “the only bride I ever had,” but then settles into an imperturbable calm. He responds to Julia’s repeated questions about his plans for vengeance against Barnabas with perfectly logical questions of his own about what he would have to gain by hurting Barnabas- “or you, for that matter?” He is indifferent to the news that suave warlock Nicholas Blair, whom he once considered a friend, has vanished, never to return. When Julia tries to escape, he asks her where she is going, and she tries to deflect the question. He is still altogether composed until the very second Julia turns to go to the basement, when the placid surface suddenly breaks and he knocks her out.
Barnabas donated the “life force” that brought Adam to life, and there are moments when longtime viewers will recognize deep similarities between the two characters. For example, when Julia first met Barnabas he was a vampire, and he was deeply suspicious of her interest in him. In that period, they often faced each other in this room in conversations that could easily have ended with Barnabas murdering her. Barnabas would not condescend to using Julia’s first name, addressing her only as “doctor.” Adam has no way of knowing about that history, but he does know that each time he calls Julia “doctor” she seems a little bit more uncomfortable. So he does it as often as possible.
Julia regains consciousness sometime after Adam attacked her and finds that Barnabas is with her. She tells him that Adam is in the basement doing something with the equipment; he tells her what he found when he talked with the slightly injured Carolyn earlier, that Adam has abducted Vicki. They put two and two together, and go to the cellar door. It is locked, so they have to find another way to the basement.
We cut there to see Vicki strapped on a table, energy flowing from the equipment into her while she writhes and cries out in pain. Adam is at the controls. Images of Julia and of Carolyn, speaking and pleading with Adam to show mercy to Vicki, wipe across the screen. These effects may seem a little corny nowadays, but must have been quite startling on daytime television in 1968, and are typical examples of director Lela Swift’s visual artistry and technical ambition.
Barnabas and Julia enter. Barnabas points a gun at Adam and says he will kill him unless he lets Vicki go. Adam laughs at him. He and Barnabas have a connection like that between Alexandre Dumas’ Corsican brothers, so that any harm one suffers will endanger the other. Adam knows this, and he also remembers an audiotape in which the designer of the Frankenstein experiment that created him says that if he dies, “Barnabas Collins will be as he was before.” Barnabas knows about the Corsican brothers thing, but he never heard that tape, so he is puzzled when the laughing Adam says “If I die, you will revert back to what you were. That’s what it said on Dr. Lang’s tape and I heard it. I memorized it. I don’t know what you were but I know you don’t want me to die.” While Adam reaches for the switch to give Vicki a lethal jolt of electricity, Barnabas shoots him in the shoulder and he falls.
Adam’s laughter in this scene is of a piece with his sorrowful expression while he chokes Carolyn. Nothing matters, no one matters, life and death are just the same, he will kill and torture and maim and it will all be a big joke. Viewers who remember the first weeks of Adam’s life, when Julia the mad scientist and Barnabas the recovering vampire, symbols of extreme selfishness both, kept him locked in a cell a few paces from the spot where he is standing now, will see in this total nihilism the logical outcome of that horrifying act of child abuse. As Rodan sold Adam’s heartbreak so effectively that his scenes in the cell were hard to watch, so he sells his total alienation from humanity so effectively that we can believe that he is ready to commit any crime against any person and to laugh all the way through it. This utterly bleak moment brings the character’s development to a fitting climax.
There are a couple of notable goofs in this one. The right sleeve of Adam’s sweater can be seen at the edge of the shot when the closing credits start; the camera zooms in to get clear of him. Robert Rodan had played his part with so few slips that he hadn’t quite seemed at home on Dark Shadows; it’s good to see him making up for lost time now. Much more embarrassingly, while Barnabas and Julia are looking through the barred window of the cellar door Jonathan Frid touches his face, and it looks very much like he is picking his nose.
An eighteenth century homicidal maniac named Danielle Roget was raised from the dead in 1968 to serve a warlock’s evil scheme. Today, she is taking a break. Another witch has sent her back to her original era for a short visit.
Danielle wants to see a man named Peter Bradford, who has also been raised from the dead and whom she has seen several times in 1968. Peter has a collection of intensely annoying habits which serve as a substitute for a personality. Among these is a tendency to fly into a rage whenever anyone calls him by his right name, and to insist that he be called “Jeff Clark” instead. Danielle has traveled back to the 1790s in search of some evidence that will convince him to desist from this tedious practice.
Today we open at the Collinsport gaol. Peter is in a cell, the gaoler and his assistant are reading Peter’s death warrant, and a gallows is under construction outside. Danielle materializes behind the gaolers, and talks with them for a while. They tell her that a woman named “Gloria Winters” was recently hanged for witchcraft. Danielle realizes that they are actually talking about Victoria Winters, who was the chief protagonist of Dark Shadows for about a year. In November 1967, Victoria came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795. She was trapped there until March 1968. Victoria’s utter failure to adapt to her new surroundings led to her condemnation as a witch. At the last second she was whisked from the gallows and returned to her own time. The luckless person whose place she had taken when she arrived from the 1960s appeared at the end of the rope and died in her place.
Danielle asks to see Peter. The gaolers escort her into his cell, lock her in with him, and leave them alone together for several minutes. Peter is unhappy to see Danielle, to whom he was once engaged but whose murderous ways have alienated him. He tells her it saddens him that she is free while he, an innocent person, is about to be executed. Indeed, it was Victoria who killed the man Peter was convicted of murdering, and she did it only to prevent that man killing a child. She tried to tell the court what had happened, but since she was already sentenced to hang and was in love with Peter, her testimony did not persuade the judges.
Danielle offers to break Peter out of gaol. He agrees. She tells him she will go to the great house of Collinwood to enlist much-put-upon indentured servant Ben Stokes in her scheme. Ben, she says, could refuse her nothing.
During the flashback that lasted from November 1967 to March 1968, Ben was ensorcelled by wicked witch Angelique. Now we learn that before Angelique came along, he had been under the influence of Danielle, another beautiful woman with an evil heart and a greatly heightened acting style. Perhaps Ben would do better if he looked for a homely, soft-spoken woman.
We cut to Collinwood, where haughty patriarch Joshua Collins is summoning Ben. They discuss Peter’s upcoming hanging and Victoria’s recent one, and lament the injustice of it all. Joshua calls Ben’s attention to a book Victoria brought with her from the twentieth century. It is a highly inaccurate history of the Collins family up to that time. Joshua says that he believes the book is an evil thing and that getting rid of it is the only hope of ending the cascade of horrors that have befallen the family and everyone they know since Victoria first arrived. Joshua orders Ben to take the book deep into the woods and burn it. He tells him something else- he has read the book thoroughly, and will see to it that posterity accepts all of its false reports as true. Rather than risk the world finding out that his son became a vampire, his wife committed suicide, and his cousin married a bounder, he will see that it is published that the son moved to England, the wife died of natural causes, and the cousin was a spinster all her life. Thus we learn how the events we saw during the 1795 segment were kept out of the historical record.
Ben is barely out the front door when Danielle stops him. He is dismayed to see her. He tells her she wasn’t supposed to come back, and refuses to look at her. She says she has a plan to spare Peter. Ben says that her plans always involve hurting someone, and she says that this time it is different. Ben asks if she intends to poison the gaoler. She tosses her head, laughs at the thought, and assures Ben all she will put in the gaoler’s drink is a “harmless drug.” Ben asks if she is sure the man won’t be hurt, and she assures him she has no grievance against him, only a desire for him to sleep long enough to get Peter to safety. At length, Ben agrees to take two horses to the gaol. There won’t be time for him to burn the book first; Danielle takes it from him for safekeeping.
We cut to the office of the gaol, where Danielle has been reading the book. She tells herself that Victoria must have brought it from the 1960s, and that it might be very valuable to her. The gaoler enters, and Danielle tells him she wants to see him after the hanging. He doesn’t understand why; she clarifies that she is making a pass at him. They are an unlikely couple, and he seems dubious of her interest in him. He tells her Peter is writing a note, probably for her, and sends her back to see him.
The gaoler has the look of a man who believes that if a thing seems too good to be true, it probably is. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Peter tells Danielle he has decided not to escape. He hands her a note which he predicts she will have trouble understanding. Delivered by another actor, this might have sounded like an apology for an unsuccessful effort to express a complicated idea, but Roger Davis has a way of spitting out his lines that makes it sound very much like he is telling Danielle she is stupid. The gaoler and his assistant come to take Peter off to be hanged, not a moment too soon.
In the office, Danielle reads the note and is pleased with it. She closes it in the book. Apparently she expects to be able to use both of those items to get Peter to stop boring everyone with his nonsense about being named “Jeff Clark.” The gaoler stands behind her and watches as she fades away, taking the book with her.
The gaoler is played by Tom Gorman. Gorman was on Dark Shadows at least 14 times, until now always as an uncredited background player. His first part was in November 1966, when each episode began with the words “My name is Victoria Winters.” So it really is remarkable when he proclaims “Her name was Gloria Winters!” Despite that spectacular blooper, he does a nifty job playing the gaoler’s confusion and skepticism about Danielle, and it is too bad this is his final appearance.
Dark Shadows Commentary 