Heiress Carolyn has been keeping Frankenstein’s monster Adam cooped up all by himself in a dusty room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood, and he is sick of it. Suave warlock Nicholas drops in on Adam and talks to him about the situation. He encourages Adam to rape Carolyn next time she visits, and later he gives it a try.
On his Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn praised Nancy Barrett for her approach to the rape scene: “She’s fully committed to the idea that this is not sexy.” In response to this observation, I left a comment in which I said that Robert Rodan’s acting choices were directed towards the same goal:
Robert Rodan does a lot to make the scene unsexy- notice when [Adam] grabs Carolyn’s face, he strokes her cheek with his thumb so as to distort her eyelids. Looks alarming!
Comment by “Acilius,” left 11 September 2020 at 2:32 PM Pacific time, on Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day, “Episode 549: Take What You Want” (19 December 2014)
Here’s the shot. I can’t speak to your tastes, reader, but to me it is a clear example of “not sexy”:
Suave warlock Nicholas Blair has learned that Frankenstein’s monster Adam is hiding in a room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood. He materializes there and talks as if he’s trying to recruit Adam into a self-esteem cult. He says “You mustn’t worry about what other people think, Adam. And you needn’t always do what other people want you to do. You must learn to be a strong-willed individual.” In response, Adam carefully articulates the new vocabulary item: “In-di-vi-du-al.” It sounds like the big guy will be signing up for courses at the Nathaniel Branden Institute in no time.
Later, we see Adam in the main part of the house. He has let himself into the bedroom where his patroness Carolyn Collins Stoddard, the acting mistress of Collinwood, is sleeping. He wakes her and tells her of Nicholas’ visit. Carolyn tells him to wait there while she goes to the drawing room and scolds Nicholas for wandering into parts of the house he had no permission to explore. Nicholas apologizes, and tells Carolyn her secret is safe with him.
In the final part of the episode, the wicked witch known variously as Angelique and Cassandra makes her way to Adam’s room in the west wing. She finds his door locked, and makes a graceful little hand gesture to magically open it. Standing over Adam while he sleeps, she decides that she cannot use magic to kill him, since Nicholas wants Adam to live and she would like him to believe that a human committed the murder. Therefore, she lifts an ax and is ready to chop into him when the episode ends. The ax wasn’t there earlier and she didn’t conjure it up; presumably she found it in “hammerspace,” the dimension where fans of animated cartoon say characters find whatever tools they need to do whatever the script calls for them to do at any given moment.
Adam’s residence in the west wing is a drab storyline, but longtime viewers will notice that it marks a change in the geography of Collinwood. The west wing was introduced as an area separated from the rest of the house, not only by a locked door, but some kind of metaphysical rift. In #14, well-meaning governess Vicki Winters saw the locked door inexplicably open and close itself; that was the clearest indication up to that point that in Collinwood, the word “ghost” referred to something more than unresolved conflicts among people. A reminiscence of that moment in #27 reinforced the suggestion that there was something supernatural about breaching the barrier between that wing and the main part of the house.
From #84 to #87, Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins, locked her up in a room in the wing; that was such an isolated place that it seemed Vicki might die before the family found her. Again, the distance was not only physical- while in captivity there she saw a full fledged ghost, a glowing figure dripping seaweed and singing to her. When sarcastic dandy Roger went to look for Vicki in #87, we saw him open the first of Dark Shadows‘ secret panels, a bit of the wall in the drawing room that opens to a long, dusty passage leading to the west wing. That was startling to see then, and we haven’t had a look at it since. Viewers who remember it have been looking at that spot on the wall ever since, wondering what worlds lie behind it.
Adam’s presence in the west wing fits in with its unearthly character, as do Nicholas and Angelique/ Cassandra’s activities there. But since those two witches live at Collinwood, the rest of the house has taken on that character as well. The separation of the west wing from the main part thus comes to lose its significance. Why shouldn’t Adam be able to visit the rest of the house, and why shouldn’t he know his way around well enough that he goes directly to Carolyn’s bedroom? Why shouldn’t unlovely ex-convict Harry Johnson, the most mundane character on the show now, have adventures in the west wing?
Angelique, the camera in front of her, the secret panel to the west wing behind her. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Unlovely ex-convict Harry stumbles upon Frankenstein’s monster Adam hiding in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood. He pulls a knife on Adam and demands he accompany him to the sheriff’s office, where Harry hopes to collect the reward outstanding for his capture. Adam’s arms are longer than Harry’s, and he is extremely strong and agile. So he disarms Harry easily. Adam is about to kill Harry when heiress Carolyn enters and orders him to stop.
Carolyn has been looking after Adam, and he regards her as his one and only friend. Adam obeys her, with some reluctance. While Harry waits outside the room, she explains to Adam that killing is wrong. Adam is less than ten weeks old and spent the first several of those weeks under the supervision of recovering vampire Barnabas and mad scientist Julia, so this comes as news to him.
In the corridor, Carolyn has a private talk with Harry. He threatens to tell the police that she is harboring a fugitive unless she pays him $5000. Returning viewers will remember that in yesterday’s episode, Harry’s mother, housekeeper Mrs Johnson, was terrified he would try to hide some of his criminal associates in the house. From that it would seem that if the police found out a wanted man was staying at Collinwood, it would be hard to convince them Harry wasn’t to blame. It would be especially difficult to get them to suspect Carolyn, a senior member of the family that owns the town. If Harry told them the wanted man was Adam, they would remember that Adam abducted Carolyn several weeks ago, and would probably charge him as part of a kidnapping plot.
Carolyn doesn’t bring any of that up, but she does dispose of Harry’s attempt at blackmail quickly enough. He agrees to help her look after Adam in return for a weekly wage.
Carolyn tells Adam Harry will be bringing him food sometimes. Adam is distraught. Though his language skills have developed at a fantastic rate in his short life, he has very little understanding of social relationships. Carolyn struggles to explain that she can’t be with him all the time. Before she goes, he shows her a picture that he found of a man and a woman kissing and asks her to explain what it shows. She tells him that it’s something people do when they love each other. He then tries to kiss her. She resists.
Carolyn has trouble explaining to Adam what he did wrong. He doesn’t know that there are different kinds of affection, and she doesn’t seem to be quite sure what she wants her friendship with Adam to become. After she leaves him, he says to himself “Carolyn hates Adam!” Regular viewers have seen Adam take so much abuse from Julia, Barnabas, and Barnabas’ servant Willie that it’s heartbreaking to think of the big guy failing to recognize a true friend now that he has one.
When Dark Shadows began, Carolyn Collins Stoddard was capricious, vain, and perverse. When her mother, reclusive matriarch Liz, was hospitalized in February and March of 1967, Carolyn had to take on responsibility for the family’s businesses and for the great house of Collinwood. With that, she matured dramatically, and she’s never been the flighty heiress since.
Now, Liz is back in the hospital. The show has long since stopped paying attention to the Collinses’ business interests, so we don’t know who’s running those, and the house just sort of takes care of itself while various hell-spawned abominations drop by and take up residence. So Carolyn is keeping herself busy by hiding the latest arrival, Frankenstein’s monster Adam, in the long-deserted west wing.
This is the first we’ve seen the west wing in color. Strange and troubled boy David trapped well-meaning governess Vicki in a room there from #84 to #87, and Adam appears to be staying in the same room.
Adam, who didn’t know a single word of any language when he was brought to life in #490, has in nine and a half weeks acquired the ability to speak fluent, if grammatically unorthodox, English. He is also able to read. When he is alone, he whiles away the hours with the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. He asks Carolyn for an explication of Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet VI”:
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore— Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
Carolyn does not give the poem anything like the dramatic interpretation we would have expected had Nancy Barrett read it in her own person. Carolyn hastens through it, stumbling a bit over the enjambments, and gives only the most cursory explanations. Since Carolyn has to leave Adam alone so much of the time in order to keep the other residents of the house from suspecting that she is harboring him, it makes sense that she finds a piece about loneliness and separation upsetting. When she mentions that the poem is about a woman’s love for a man, Adam caresses her face, which she finds even more upsetting. He asks if she hates him, she tells him she does not, and she leaves as quickly as she can.
Housekeeper Mrs Johnson notices that someone has been stealing food from the kitchen. She suspects her son, ex-convict Harry. In fact, the culprit is Carolyn, who is gathering provisions for Adam. This harks back to #120, when David stole food from the kitchen to give to the fugitive Matthew Morgan. David was about nine years old, so it made sense that he could not get supplies for his friend any other way. But Carolyn is a grown woman, with money and a car. Even if she would be too conspicuous to go to the grocery store in the village of Collinsport without having to answer questions, she could easily drive to some town where she would not be so well-known and buy food for Adam there. In the last two episodes David seemed far less intelligent and capable than he was when the show began; when we hear that she has been sneaking food from the kitchen, it seems that Carolyn has lost a lot of ground as well.
This is the first we have seen Harry since he was introduced in #471. He stumbles upon Carolyn returning to the main part of the house from the west wing; she reacts by scolding him for being upstairs. When he tells his mother about it, she is frightened. She is still frightened when she talks with Carolyn about the incident. That will remind longtime viewers that in Liz’ absence, Carolyn is in charge of the house. Clarice Blackburn does such a fine job of acting that even first time viewers will understand that Carolyn has the power to fire Mrs Johnson if she wishes.
Craig Slocum is one of the least-loved actors in all of Dark Shadows; in truth, his performances usually are pretty painful to watch. He’s reasonably competent today, but since he shares his scenes with two actresses who would hold an audience’s attention even if they were playing opposite a hat-rack it takes a lot more than reasonable competence make Harry linger in our minds.
The wicked witch known variously as Angelique and Cassandra is standing in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood, thinking evil thoughts. The camera zooms out and we see that her stepson, strange and troubled boy David Collins, is standing next to her. She starts to speak her thoughts out loud, saying “You will pay!” David asks “Who will pay?” Angelique/ Cassandra is startled to discover that David is there, and is flustered when she tries to change the subject. She so often delivers incriminating soliloquys while standing out in the open that the comic effect of this scene must be intentional.
Angelique/ Cassandra oblivious to David’s presence.
David asks Angelique/ Cassandra to help him figure out the correct operation of a tape recorder he received some time ago as a present from permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman. After Angelique/ Cassandra refuses to help, he goes upstairs and finds his cousin, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, emerging from the long-deserted west wing of the house. He asks Carolyn what she was doing in the west wing. She asks him why he thinks she was in the west wing. When he says he saw her coming out of it, she drops her attempt to evade his question and tells him she was looking for some old family photos to show well-meaning governess Vicki. She has enough trouble remembering this story that it must be obvious to David that it is a lie, but he isn’t interested enough to follow it up. He just wants someone to help him figure out which buttons to push on the tape recorder.
On their Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri speak for longtime viewers of the show when they say that it is surprising David needs help with the tape recorder. When the show started, David was two years younger and had the mechanical skill to sabotage his father’s car in a very creditable attempt at patricide. All Carolyn has to do to get the tape going is read the label that identifies the play button. This apparent loss of cognitive function is of a piece with David’s massive loss of narrative function. For the first 39 weeks of Dark Shadows, David was the fulcrum on which every story turned, and actor David Henesy had abundant opportunities to show a level of professional skill that would be remarkable in a performer of any age. But he has been receding into the background for a long time now, and his extraordinary dim-wittedness today marks a low point for him.
Once the tape starts playing, Carolyn makes a hasty exit. David listens to a minute or so of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, hoping it will end and he will hear “something spooky.” His wish is granted when the music abruptly stops, giving way to a voice addressing itself to Julia. The voice rambles about David’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins, saying that if both he and “my creation” live, Barnabas will be all right, but that if “Adam” dies, “Barnabas will be as he was before.” The name “Adam” should mean something to David. He shared a confused and frightening moment with a mysterious man of that name in #495. That man subsequently abducted Carolyn, and is still the object of a police search.
What only Julia, Barnabas, and Barnabas’ servant Willie know is that Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster created in an experiment that freed Barnabas of the effects of the vampire curse that Angelique/ Cassandra placed on him in the 1790s. The voice on the tape is that of Eric Lang, the mad scientist who began the experiment. Minutes before he died of the effects of one of Angelique/ Cassandra’s spells, Lang recorded this message for Julia. The audience has heard this message approximately a gazillion bajillion times, but until now, the only character to have heard it was Adam, and he could make no sense of it.
Angelique/ Cassandra recently made an unsuccessful attempt to renew Barnabas’ curse, and is desperately searching for the obstacle that prevented it from working. Carolyn’s actual task in the west wing was showing Adam to a hiding place there. So Angelique/ Cassandra is now under the same roof with both the information she needs to identify her obstacle and the person she can remove that obstacle by killing. Things are looking bad for Barnabas and for Adam.
While David is upstairs with the tape recorder, Vicki is sobbing in the drawing room. Suave warlock Nicholas, who is staying in the house in the guise of Angelique/ Cassandra’s brother, enters and asks her what’s wrong. She says that she has just learned that Barnabas is dead. His back to her, Nicholas smiles brightly when he first hears this news, then puts on a sad face and turns to her with sympathetic words. In response, Vicki reveals that she knows all about Angelique/ Cassandra and that she has little patience for Nicholas’ pretensions. Carolyn enters and doubts Vicki’s news. Angelique/ Cassandra is the last to enter. She says that she saw Barnabas alive and well after the time when he is supposed to have been dead. Vicki and Carolyn look at each other, and do not see Nicholas’ look of disappointment. They go upstairs, and Nicholas and Angelique/ Cassandra go into the drawing room.
Nicholas scolds Angelique/ Cassandra for her failure. He addresses her as “dear sister.” He suggests she may not hate Barnabas sufficiently to impose a curse on him. When she denies this, he leans to her ear and teasingly asks if she loves him. He threatens to send her back where she came from if she doesn’t re-vamp Barnabas by midnight, and to focus her mind replaces her arm with a fleshless bone.
Director John Weaver was not much of a visual artist, and in his post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day Danny Horn analyzes the dismally inept blocking of the scene between Vicki and Nicholas. Danny also has some unkind words for writer Ron Sproat, but I think those are unfair. It’s true the opening scene between Adam and Carolyn goes on too long, David’s helplessness with the tape recorder is dismal, and Vicki and Carolyn’s reaction to Angelique/ Cassandra’s report that Barnabas is still alive doesn’t make sense. That’s a long enough list of flaws that we might fairly classify Weaver and Sproat as the B-team, not on a par with director Lela Swift and writers Sam Hall and Gordon Russell.
But it is genuinely funny when we first see David standing next to Angelique/ Cassandra, David’s questioning of Carolyn is intelligently written, Lang’s message is for once an actual source of suspense, Vicki’s lines to Nicholas as Alexandra Moltke Isles delivers them show the character’s strength, Nicholas’ teasing Angelique/ Cassandra with her alleged love of Barnabas raises a laugh as it makes them sound like a couple of kids, and the final gag with the arm bone is at once goofy enough to keep up the humor in the episode and startling enough to be effective as a touch of horror. All in all, it’s an enjoyable episode, if not one that fans would be tempted to use to turn their friends on to the show.
Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, expert on the occult, finds himself laboring under the direction of Julia Hoffman, MD. Stokes does not understand why Julia insisted on leaving the long abandoned shack where a very tall, very mysterious man named Adam seemed to be suffocating, he does not understand why Julia has buried her friend Barnabas Collins in an unmarked grave in the woods, and does not understand why Julia has concluded that Barnabas is alive and they must dig him up. Julia tells Stokes she will answer his questions when the exhumation is complete. Stokes keeps digging. They reach a coffin. They open it to find Barnabas. Julia detects a faint “pulsebeat” in his wrist. Before Stokes can raise his questions, Julia says she wants to be alone with Barnabas and reminds Stokes that Adam needs attention.
Back in the shack, Stokes finds heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard with Adam. Earlier, Carolyn was distraught, unable to find a “pulsebeat” in Adam’s wrist, but now he is up and moving, apparently quite well. Stokes says that Julia is on her way, and Adam becomes agitated. He hates Julia and Barnabas, but has never explained to Stokes or Carolyn why. Carolyn decides to hide him in the long-deserted west wing of her family’s home, the great house of Collinwood. Stokes sees many drawbacks to this plan, but can suggest no alternative.
Only Stokes is still in the shack when Julia comes. He will not tell her where Adam has gone, and she will not answer any of his questions. With a smile, he tells her that he looks forward to understanding Barnabas’ secret. At this, she looks uneasy, clearly not welcoming that prospect.
Barnabas was, for 172 years, a vampire. His curse went into remission earlier in 1968, and he has been virtually human since #490, when he took part in an experiment that brought Adam to life as a Frankenstein’s monster. Julia ordered Barnabas’ servant Willie to bury him the other day, because she was afraid he was about to become a vampire again, but yesterday she figured out that Adam’s existence was keeping that from happening.
When Barnabas is unearthed, he is afraid that he has reverted to vampirism. Julia shows him his reflection in her compact mirror, proving to him that he is still human. The first time they did the vampire/ mirror bit was in #288, when Julia saw that Barnabas did not cast a reflection in a compact mirror and thereby confirmed her suspicion that Barnabas was a vampire. That led him to try to kill her. Now they are fast friends, and the same gimmick, with the opposite result, brings them a moment of shared joy.
Barnabas goes to the great house, and sees wicked witch Angelique/ Cassandra standing on the terrace. She was the one who cast the spell that prompted Julia and Willie to think they ought to bury him, and Julia had told her that he was dead. She is rather surprised when he shows up. He taunts her with the failure of her attack on him, she pretends not to know what he is talking about, and he goes along his merry way. Alone, she vows that she will soon regain her power over Barnabas.
This was the second of five episodes credited to director John Weaver. One possible reason he wasn’t contracted to do more is seen in the first minute, when recovering vampire Barnabas crouches down to lift a paper from the floor. The camera lingers on the show’s biggest star in this ungainly posture.
The latest installment of our occasional series of photos, “Sex Symbols of the 1960s.”
The paper is a note in the handwriting of well-meaning governess Vicki. It says that Vicki wants to go away rather than tell Barnabas about a dream she had. It ends with the declaration that Vicki would “rather die” than hurt Barnabas; he jumps to the conclusion that this means she is about to commit suicide, and he rushes off to the great house of Collinwood to stop her.
Barnabas and Vicki know what regular viewers also know, that her dream was no ordinary nightmare, but was the penultimate event in the “Dream Curse” that the wicked witch known variously as Angelique and Cassandra has set as part of her quest to destroy Barnabas. Each of an appallingly long list of characters has the same dream and suffers terrible torment that can be relieved only by telling it to the next person in line, who repeats the process. Vicki knows that when the dream gets back to Barnabas, Angelique/ Cassandra’s goal is supposed to be complete. Vicki thinks that goal is Barnabas’ death; he and we know that it is his relapse into active vampirism.
Barnabas’ interpretation of “I’d rather die than do that” as Vicki saying she is going to kill herself may seem silly to first-time viewers, but those who have been watching Dark Shadows from the beginning will see some grounds for it. In #2, Vicki was standing on the cliff of Widows’ Hill when sarcastic dandy Roger startled her by asking if she was planning to jump; he went on to tell her that she wouldn’t be the first to end her life in that way. In #5, drunken artist Sam saw her in the same place and told her the story of gracious lady Josette, who apparently was the first to do so. In the months that followed, we several times heard of a legend that governesses kept jumping off the cliff. Throughout the first year, Vicki came to be deeply involved with the ghost of Josette. When Barnabas joined the show, Josette was retconned as his lost love, and her suicide as her response to his vampirism. So Vicki’s connection to Josette, her job as a governess, her affection for Barnabas, and her involvement in a crisis about his curse combine to prompt him to think of her as a likely suicide.
When Barnabas gets to the great house, Vicki tells him she did not write the note. They figure out that it was a forgery by Angelique/ Cassandra, meant to bring Barnabas into contact with Vicki so that she would have an opportunity to tell him the dream. Barnabas goes, and permanent houseguest Julia, who is Barnabas’ best friend and partner in crime, talks with Vicki about the dream.
Later, Julia goes to Barnabas’ house, and he tells her that he cannot let Vicki go on suffering for his sake. He says that he will make her tell him the dream to end her suffering. Julia points out that this will make him a vampire again, and he says he will just have to accept that.
Barnabas laments his own past selfishness throughout this scene, but his willingness to revert to vampirism suggests that he has learned nothing. He will not be the only one who suffers if that condition reoccurs. Vicki herself was his victim when his blood-lust went into remission, and there is no telling how many other people he will bite, enslave, and kill if he reverts. That he can strike a noble pose while claiming that he is going to sacrifice himself for Vicki creates an image of total narcissism.
Meanwhile, heiress Carolyn learns that a very tall man named Adam is still alive and is being hunted by the police. Adam abducted Carolyn and held her prisoner in an old shack in the woods some weeks before, but later saved her life. What she does not know is that Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster and that before she met him, he had spent virtually his whole conscious life chained to a wall in a prison cell in Barnabas’ basement. As far as he knew, holding each other captive was just how people behaved. In those days, Adam spoke only a few words, and could not explain this to Carolyn. But she did find a gentleness in him, and even while she was his prisoner she never hated him.
Now, Carolyn is very concerned about Adam’s well-being. She goes back to the old shack in the woods and finds him hiding there. She discovers that he has learned a great many words since she knew him; he confirms that Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes had been harboring him and teaching him. She goes off to get Stokes, promising to bring him back so that he and Adam can reconnect.
In the discussion following the recap of this episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, Christine Scoleri remarks on Carolyn’s “Frankenfantasy date with Adam.” That was the first I’d seen the expression “Frankenfantasy,” or had thought that enough people harbored erotic feelings about Frankenstein’s monster that such a term would be necessary.
Amused as I am by the word “Frankenfantasy,” I really don’t think it applies to Carolyn. But since she is the only woman with whom Adam has ever had a conversation, it makes sense that he might interpret her behavior that way. As my wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out, that would continue theme that has been developed among the other male and female characters who interact in the episode. Barnabas sees Julia as a close friend, and she wants him to be her lover. Barnabas and Vicki share a real affection, which he has a vague idea of converting into a romance, but there is zero erotic chemistry between them. If Adam mistakes Carolyn’s earnest friendship for sexual desire, he’ll fit right in.
Mad scientist Julia Hoffman has summoned sage Timothy Eliot Stokes to the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, home of her friend, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins. Julia and Stokes talk about the ongoing Dream Curse, a distributed attack on the mental software of a series of people who are more or less connected with Barnabas. The curse takes the form of a nightmare that afflicts one person after another. When Julia declares that Stokes must stop the dreams, he says that she makes it sound like he is responsible for them. She replies that in a way, he is- he was the one who introduced Cassandra Blair to Roger Collins. Roger married Cassandra, giving her a home in the great house on the same estate. Stokes does not dispute the assumption that Cassandra set the curse, but he does deny that he had any influence over Roger’s decision to marry Cassandra.
In #488, Barnabas told Stokes that Cassandra is the witch, and his reaction to Julia’s remark shows both that Julia knows that Stokes is aware of this fact and that he has accepted it. Yet when Julia refers to the witch as “she” later in the episode, Stokes responds as if this were jumping to a conclusion.
Stokes puzzles us again when he says that in the eighteenth century, Josette DuPrés was “a love of Barnabas Collins.” We’ve known that for some time, since Barnabas keeps dwelling on his experiences in the 1790s. But Barnabas doesn’t let on about his past when Stokes is around, nor did his relationship with Josette make it into any written records or any of the legends that circulate in the town of Collinsport. How does Stokes know about it?
The obvious explanation would be that Stokes has been talking with well-meaning governess Vicki. Vicki came unstuck in time in #365 and was marooned in the 1790s until #461. She saw in those days that Barnabas and Josette had been lovers, a fact which Barnabas had inadvertently revealed to her in #233. Neither Vicki nor Stokes has been on the show much lately, leaving them plenty of time for off-camera consultations.
Vicki could also be a source of another piece of information Stokes surprises us with. So far as Stokes knows, the Barnabas of the 1960s is a descendant of another man with the same name. Vicki believes this too, even though she has seen a great deal of evidence that he was a vampire, as for example when he used to bite her on the neck and suck her blood. She did notice that the Barnabas of the 1790s looked, sounded, and moved exactly like his namesake of the 1960s. Today Stokes says that the two Barnabases are “interchangeable” in appearance and behavior, just what Vicki would have told him.
Vicki might possibly have contributed to another bewildering proclamation of Stokes’. He tells Julia that when Barnabas is under great stress, the dream comes to a person who is very close to him, while it settles on people who have no particular connection to him when he is relaxed.
This theory doesn’t work at all. The dreamers whom Stokes classifies as “comparative strangers” to Barnabas are Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town; Mrs Johnson, housekeeper in the great house; strange and troubled boy David; and an annoying man named Peter who keeps insisting people call him “Jeff.” Of these, only Peter/ Jeff is less than essential to Barnabas. Maggie was the first victim Barnabas sought out. It was his abuse of Maggie that defined Barnabas as a monster the audience should fear, as a lonely guy the audience can feel sorry for, as a bridge between past and present who is pulling the show deeper into the supernatural and towards time travel, and as a figure who will drive stories that bring the residents of Collinwood together with the townsfolk of Collinsport. Mrs Johnson was the first person we saw speak to Barnabas and was the one who invited him into the great house, at a time when the show was putting heavy emphasis on the idea that vampires can enter only where they are invited. David was the first we heard speak Barnabas’ name, and Barnabas was obsessed with killing him for eleven weeks, an obsession that led directly to Vicki’s trip back in time.
Vicki doesn’t know anything about the vital roles these three characters have played in shaping Barnabas’ relationship to the audience and to the structure of the show’s universe, so if Stokes were dependent on her for his information he may have believed they were “comparative strangers” to him. The most puzzling thing is Julia’s reaction. Julia has taken over the function Vicki had at the beginning of the series as the audience’s point of view. She knows what we know and learns what we need to learn. Julia is also supposed to be super-smart, so that when she reacts to Stokes’ theory with excited agreement the show is telling us that he is right.
Barnabas’ servant Willie had the dream the other night, and is supposed to pass it on to heiress Carolyn. He was foiled in his effort to do so yesterday, when Carolyn bit him before he could tell her how it went. Willie got off easy- the last time he was aggressive with Carolyn was in #204, when she pulled a loaded gun on him. He did manage to get enough through to her that she has the first minute of the dream, and she is filled with dread of it from the time she wakes up.
Today, Carolyn is in the Old House with Julia and Stokes. She doesn’t want to have the dream, Stokes believes that if she does he can take control of it and break the curse, and Julia mediates between them. Carolyn goes along with the plan, and it looks like it might succeed. That’s the whole story, which doesn’t add up to much, but Nancy Barrett, Grayson Hall, and Thayer David are all superb actors, and they maintain a fierce intensity that makes it work.
All of the storylines in the part of Dark Shadows set in 1968 bear a heavy weight of repetitious elements. The “Dream Curse” consists of countless reenactments of the same dream sequence, almost all of them followed by at least one scene in which the character who had the dream struggles with a compulsion to tell it to someone else, and then by a speech in which we hear the details of the dream yet again. That curse was set by wicked witch Angelique, who for no particular reason keeps insisting that her name is Cassandra. Angelique is a time traveler from the eighteenth century, as is shouting man Peter, who for no particular reason keeps insisting that his name is Jeff.
Mad scientist Eric Lang tried to cure Barnabas Collins of vampirism by an experimental procedure that involved the creation of a Frankenstein’s monster. Angelique killed Lang before he could finish the experiment, but fortunately for Barnabas his best friend Julia is also a mad scientist, and she completed it. Barnabas named the creature Adam. Lang left behind an audiotape explaining that Barnabas will be free of vampirism as long as Adam lives, but that he will revert if Adam dies. Barnabas and Julia have not heard this message, but it has been played for the audience many times. Yesterday’s episode closed with yet another replay of the message, and today’s opens with still another. Since the message is nearly a minute long, it will soon have accumulated a full episode’s worth of airtime.
After the message, we see a new set. It represents the rocky shore below the cliff on Widows’ Hill. Barnabas is there with his servant Willie, looking for Adam. Adam jumped off the cliff yesterday. Since episode #2, that plunge has always been shorthand for certain death, so the opening voiceover introduces a new idea when it tells us that Adam’s leap merely “appeared to be” his self-destruction. Barnabas believes that Adam is still alive, though Willie does not. The two of them stand around and shout Adam’s name over and over; after the fifth or sixth repetition, Mrs Acilius and I cracked up laughing. At least they could have broken it up a little, and alternated “ADAM!!!” with “STELLA!!!”
The rocky shore below Widows’ Hill.
Willie had the dream last night, and now feels compelled to tell it to heiress Carolyn. Adam had abducted Carolyn and held her for a couple of days before he dove from the cliff; she is now at home in the great house of Collinwood. Willie wants to sneak into Collinwood to talk to Carolyn. Barnabas points out that Willie was only recently released from the mental hospital where he was confined after he took the rap for Barnabas’ abduction of another young woman, Maggie. If he sneaks into Carolyn’s bedroom it will go badly for him. Barnabas directs Willie to search for Adam inland, prompting Willie to flash a grin. The very first night Willie was back from the hospital, he disobeyed Barnabas’ orders and ran off to visit Maggie. So his grin tells us to expect that he will disobey Barnabas’ orders again, this time to visit Carolyn.
Willie goes to the great house. We see him standing by the wall, below the second-storey window of Carolyn’s room. In her room, Carolyn talks with her mother, matriarch Liz. She explains to her mother that she is neither frightened of Adam nor angry with him, but that she pities him, because he seemed like an inarticulate and lonely little child. After this conversation, Liz leaves the room. Willie scales the wall, slips in through Carolyn’s window, grabs Carolyn, holds her mouth shut, and forces her to listen while he starts to tell the dream. Carolyn bites Willie, screams, and Liz comes.
Willie flees through the window. Carolyn explains to her mother that she is neither frightened of Willie nor angry with him, but that she pities him, because he seemed to be deeply terrified by his dream. She says that she is afraid that she, too, will have the dream.
Three people who live in the house have already had the dream. One of them is Julia, who is careful about who she talks to. The others are strange and troubled boy David, who regularly confides in both Carolyn and Liz, and housekeeper Mrs Johnson, who tells everyone everything. It is surprising that neither of them has mentioned it to either Carolyn or Liz.
Sheriff Patterson, leading his deputies through the woods in search of a very tall man named Adam who has escaped from gaol, finds a scrap of Adam’s clothing on a tree. He looks ahead and sees the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. He remarks “That’s the old Collins house. Every time anything goes wrong around here, that’s where all roads seem to lead.” He takes his party toward the house. Once they are gone, Adam comes out from behind a tree, and goes in another direction. Unknown to the sheriff and his men, Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster. He is four weeks old and has a vocabulary of fewer than a dozen words, but he easily outwits Collinsport’s entire law enforcement community.
The Old House is home to Barnabas Collins, whom the audience knows to be a recovering vampire. The sheriff calls on Barnabas and recaps the story for his benefit. In his post about the episode, Danny Horn ridicules every part of this preposterous scene, getting half a dozen genuine laughs. I won’t compete with him, but I do want to point out that while in both Wednesday’s episode and yesterday’s, the sheriff said it took twenty men to subdue Adam and take him into custody, today he says it took six. Maybe by next week it will be down to one deputy and a mynah bird.
Adam has abducted heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard. When he eludes the police, he goes to the abandoned structure where he has cooped her up. He had left her there to go look for food. That mission was interrupted by his arrest. Now, she asks to go home. He is carrying her back there when they meet the sheriff, his deputies, and Barnabas at the top of Widows’ Hill. From the second episode, we have known that people plunge to their deaths from this hill. We’ve heard stories about several such incidents, have seen a number of characters come close to falling from it, and in #425 we saw gracious lady Josette make the fatal leap. Carolyn slips from Adam’s arms to the edge of the cliff; the deputies see him pull her up. She runs into Barnabas’ arms, and Adam falls.
After Adam’s fall, we hear a message that is very familiar to us, but that Barnabas and his friends have never heard. Adam was created in an experimental procedure that was meant to relieve Barnabas of his vampirism. His creator, mad scientist Eric Lang, died shortly after recording an audiotape explaining that as long as Adam lives, Barnabas will be human, but that he will become a vampire again if he outlives Adam. This message plays out over images of the waves crashing into the rocks of the shore. It’s an effective visual complement to the message, a metaphor for the overwhelming power that will engulf Barnabas and the rest of them if Adam is in fact dead.
Dark Shadows Commentary 