choreography – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 894/ 895: The time of the Leviathan people

Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins has become the leader of a mysterious cult. Antique shop owners Megan and Philip Todd are members of the cult, and they have a magical baby who materialized after Barnabas gave them a sacred box. Inside the box was a book that is also of tremendous importance to the cult. Philip and Megan left the book on a table in their shop, so that it appeared to be for sale. Yesterday strange and troubled boy David Collins stole the book. In its absence, the baby has developed a high fever. When Megan and Philip found that the book was gone, they flew into a panic and declared that they would have to kill the person who took it.

Many stories on Dark Shadows start with David, so it could be that the uncanny and sinister forces behind the cult want him to have the book. If so, Barnabas doesn’t know any more about it than do Philip and Megan. He finds out today that the book is missing, and takes Philip to a cairn in the woods. He tells him he will have to be punished for losing it.

When Philip first saw the cairn, he remarked that he had been that way before, but never noticed it. Barnabas explains that only people connected with the Leviathan cult can see it. This casts the minds of returning viewers to heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, Barnabas’ distant cousin. In #888, Carolyn saw the cairn and ran into a prowler there. The prowler refused to identify himself to her; the closing credits told us he was Paul Stoddard, Carolyn’s long missing father. We had seen him from behind the day before, when he saw the cairn materialize, then simply walked off. His blasé response told us that he expected to see what he saw, which can only mean he was connected with the cult. Carolyn doesn’t know anything about the Leviathans, but what Barnabas says to Philip today confirms that she is nonetheless associated with them in some sense. Indeed, Barnabas has been very solicitous of Carolyn’s well-being ever since he joined up with the Leviathans and keeps telling her that she has an extraordinary future.

Philip and Barnabas at the cairn. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There is also some business going on between Paul and Carolyn. On the surface it would seem to be a typical soap opera story, in which the daughter is trying to reintroduce her errant father into the family circle and has to keep secrets from her mother and young cousin to pull it off. Given what we know about Paul’s awareness of the Leviathans and their interest in Carolyn, we can see that it is in fact part of the supernatural A story.

There are no closing credits today, only the logo of Dan Curtis Productions. The Dark Shadows wiki says that this one was directed by Henry Kaplan. I am certain this is false. Kaplan was very clumsy with the camera, resorting to closeup after closeup and then to ever-more extreme closeups until you have scenes played by one actor’s left ear opposite another’s right nostril. Today, there is a scene between Carolyn, David, and Barnabas in the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood, a scene in which Carolyn presses David with questions about the book, that is so expertly choreographed that only Lela Swift could have blocked it. My wife, Mrs Acilius, marveled at the dance that Nancy Barrett, David Henesy, and Jonathan Frid execute so flawlessly.

This episode is double numbered to make up for a planned pre-emption, when the ABC television network showed football at 4 PM on the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day. Every Friday’s episode was supposed to have a number that ended with a five or zero, so that all you had to do was divide by five and you would get the number of weeks the show had been on. That didn’t work this time, because there was also an unplanned pre-emption when the network’s nes division took the 4 PM slot to cover the return of the Apollo 12 mission. They are producing episodes well ahead of their airdates at this point, in a couple of cases over five weeks ahead, so it will be a long while before they can get back in sync.

Episode 893: We serve him now

Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard is sitting at a table in the Blue Whale, a tavern. A man who refused to give his name when she caught him trespassing on her property invites himself to sit down with her. She objects to this. He identifies himself as her father, the long-missing Paul Stoddard. She objects far more strenuously to that. Not only did Paul leave the family when Carolyn was an infant, he and his friend Jason McGuire faked his death. Jason convinced Carolyn’s mother, Liz, that she had killed Paul and he had buried the corpse in the basement. In response, Liz immured herself in the house for nineteen years. Only after Jason came back and was blackmailing Liz into marrying him did the truth come out and Liz break free of her reclusive ways.

Paul tells Carolyn that he didn’t know Jason told Liz that she had killed him. Longtime viewers may suspect this is a lie, not least because Paul and Jason are both played by Dennis Patrick. Nonetheless, Carolyn falls for it. Soon she is agreeing to sound Liz out to see how she might react were she to hear that Paul had returned. He walks her home to the great house on the estate of Collinwood. He can’t go in, but gives her a goodnight kiss on the forehead.

Carolyn’s young cousin, strange and troubled boy David Collins, sees Paul kissing her. When she goes inside, he asks who her new boyfriend is. Carolyn is vexed. She refuses to tell David anything, and sends him to bed.

Carolyn’s friend Philip Todd comes to the door. He tells her that he and his wife Megan want Carolyn to work at their antique shop in the village. It may seem rather odd for the keeper of a little shop to go to a vast mansion and ask the daughter of its proprietor to take a job as his assistant, but Carolyn loves the shop and was volunteering there yesterday. She agrees happily, and mentions that a man might be leaving messages for her there.

In the shop the next morning, Carolyn sees that Megan has a baby. Megan says it is her sister’s son. Carolyn asks his name. Megan thinks for quite a while before coming up with “Joseph!”

Carolyn is alone in the shop when David comes in with his friend and fellow resident of Collinwood, Amy Jennings. We haven’t seen Amy since #835; that in turn was her first appearance since #700. For eight months, from #701 to #884, Dark Shadows was set in the year 1897, with only a few brief glimpses of the 1960s. In the 1897 segment, Denise Nickerson played Nora Collins, whose own final appearance was in #859. Both Nora and Amy had long absences from the cast, and were usually unmentioned while they were away. So we’ve been afraid that we wouldn’t see Amy or any other Nickerson character again. It’s good to have her back. She even pulls her signature move and gives a meaningful look directly into the camera at one point.

Amy and David see a doll that longtime viewers will recognize as Samantha, favorite plaything of the late Sarah Collins both when we saw her as a living being in the 1790s from November 1967 to March 1968 and before that, when she was a ghost haunting Collinwood and its environs in 1967. There are also a couple of toy soldiers from “The Regiment,” which Sarah’s brother Barnabas played with when he was a young boy and which Sarah gave to people in 1967 as protection against Barnabas, who was at that time a vampire. Barnabas did sell a bunch of things to Megan and Philip the other day, but neither Samantha nor the members of The Regiment were in Barnabas’ possession when last we saw them. Presumably the camera lingers on the toys, not because we are supposed to know how Philip and Megan got them, but because we are supposed to be pleased with ourselves for recognizing them.

Paul comes into the shop. David recognizes him as the man he saw kissing Carolyn. Carolyn addresses Paul as “Mr Prescott,” sends him into a back room, and hustles the children out of the shop. She tells Paul who David is, and explains that he saw them together, complicating their plans.

When Carolyn was minding the shop yesterday, her friend Maggie noticed an old book on a table. Neither of them knew what it was, but viewers knew it was an object of great importance to a cult into which Philip and Megan have been inducted. It seemed inexplicable that they would leave it on a table in their shop, as if it were for sale. We get a hint today as to what they may have been thinking. In his room at Collinwood, David shows Amy that he has stolen the book. She asks why he would want it. He explains that Carolyn said that if they damaged anything in the shop, his father, Roger, would have to pay for it, and he creased a page in the book. David’s fear that his father would punish him drove several stories in the early months of the show. Roger has mellowed enormously since then, but evidently David is still so afraid of him that he will make a bad situation worse rather than face his wrath.

Indeed, many major storylines have begun with David. The 1897 flashback started because Barnabas was trying to keep a ghost from killing David, as the 1790s segment started when David’s governess Vicki participated in a séance meant to solve a mystery concerning him. For that matter, the whole show started when Vicki was summoned to Collinwood to take charge of David’s education. David doesn’t always have a lot to do in the stories, and when they are over it is often as not forgotten that he was in peril when they began. But he is so often the catalyst that we can suppose that David was supposed to find the book so that the current story could move into its major phase.

If that was the intention, Megan and Philip didn’t know about it. When they discover that the book is gone from the shop, they fly into a panic and declare that whoever took it must be killed. It may turn out that the mysterious forces behind the cult want David to become involved and that they created a situation in which he would find the book and take it with him, but if so, those forces are operating outside the cognizance of anyone in today’s episode.

Episode 723: A mindless hulk

Quentin Collins is dead, his sister Judith would have you know. Their brother Carl is not so sure, but Carl is quite daft. So when high-strung governess Rachel Drummond reports that Quentin has taken a seat in the rocking chair in her bedroom, Judith is exasperated. She orders Carl to stop quivering and go into Rachel’s room himself to look at the rocking chair. Carl obeys Judith, and sees that the chair is vacant. Judith then orders Rachel to accompany her to the drawing room to see Quentin resting in his coffin. To Judith’s consternation, they see that the coffin is empty.

Judith and Rachel wonder who is playing morbid games with Quentin’s corpse. Of all the residents of the great house on the estate of Collinwood, Carl would seem to be the most obvious suspect. He is not only mentally unbalanced, but is also an inveterate prankster whose practical jokes are often disturbingly unpleasant. However, Carl is quick to break into maniacal laughter when he sees that the targets of his japes are uncomfortable, and he is not laughing now. He seems to be quite sincerely terrified. So Judith sends Carl upstairs to see if the body has been returned to Rachel’s room.

While the ladies are alone in the drawing room, Judith and Carl’s distant cousin Barnabas arrives. Judith tells Barnabas what has happened. When Judith expresses puzzlement as to how a dead body could be moved in and out of Rachel’s bedroom without using the door to the corridor, Barnabas mentions that there is a secret panel in the room. Judith is startled. She asks Barnabas how he, who only arrived from England a few weeks before, could possibly know about that panel. He claims that he read a “rare volume” by “the architect of Collinwood.” Judith does not seem entirely convinced, but she lets this explanation pass unchallenged.

Carl does not find the body in Rachel’s room, but he does notice something behind the drapes in the corridor. He pulls them apart to see Quentin. Carl screams. Quentin lumbers towards Carl and begins strangling him. Carl collapses, and Quentin leaves him on the floor.

Carl comes to in the drawing room. He tells Barnabas, Judith, and Rachel what happened. Judith cannot believe that Quentin has risen from the grave, and Barnabas takes it upon himself to tell her about zombies. He claims to have seen a zombie and to have witnessed ceremonies used to put them to rest while he was a young man on the island of Martinique.

Barnabas shocks everyone with his arcane knowledge. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Judith agrees to let Barnabas try his mumbo-jumbo. While the ladies are upstairs, Barnabas and Carl are in the drawing room, burning some potpourri next to Quentin’s coffin. Quentin comes lumbering in, and they withdraw to the shadows. The fun Jonathan Frid and John Karlen had working together is one of the most enjoyable things to see on Dark Shadows, but they get a little bit carried away in the moment when Barnabas and Carl hide. As they scurry off, they are so obviously a couple of kids playing that we are distracted from their otherwise outstanding performances.

Quentin comes back and resumes his place in the coffin. At Judith’s insistence, Carl and Barnabas bury the coffin on the grounds and pour cement over it. Judith assures Rachel that this means Quentin will not come back. Rachel is disappointed when Judith says she believes that Barnabas has gone back to the Old House on the estate, where he is staying. Since they have had such an exhausting night and it is almost dawn, Judith assumes that Barnabas will want to go to bed. Judith herself does retire.

Barnabas comes back and tells Rachel that he had to make sure she was all right. She thanks him, and says that during the day she will be leaving Collinwood, never to return. He asks her to reconsider. He says that he wants to see her again, but that he has to leave immediately and he cannot possibly return until the following night. He will not tell her why. Regular viewers know that Barnabas is a vampire and that he will turn to dust if he doesn’t get back into his coffin in a few minutes and stay there until sundown. Barnabas doesn’t seem to think that his relationship with Rachel has come to a point at which he can share secrets like that with her, so he evades her questions and rushes off. Rachel heads upstairs.

We see the doors open by themselves and hear the wind. Thinking Barnabas has returned, Rachel hurries down. Baffled that no one is there, she goes outside. She turns and sees Quentin. He plods towards her, and she faints into his arms. This impressively well choreographed movement brings us to a dramatic conclusion.

Episode 649: Why did that music stop?

Cavada Humphrey plays Madame Janet Findley, a medium who has come to the great house of Collinwood and is doing battle with the ghost of Quentin Collins. This battle takes the form of Humphrey alone in a room arguing with a series of inanimate objects. The only bipedal presence with whom she shares any of the ten minutes she is on camera is that ever-faithful member Dark Shadows’ supporting cast, a skeleton wearing a wig. Her most intense scenes are with Quetin’s record player.

Madame Findley gives Quentin’s record player a piece of her mind. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Humphrey’s style was more like pantomime or puppetry than it was like anything native to screen acting; she strikes a series of poses, and tells the story through them, producing the dialogue as a sort of incidental accompaniment. She has such a complete mastery of this approach that she could hold the audience’s interest for any length of time, regardless of what she had to do or with whom she had to do it. Unfortunately, today is her final appearance- at the end of the episode, Madame Findley falls down the stairs in the foyer of Collinwood, dead.

Madame Findley’s scenes give Humphrey about half the episode’s running time. Most of the rest is taken up with chatter between matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, who is worried about Madame Findley, and permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, who is not.

There are also two scenes with mysterious drifter Chris Jennings. In the first, Chris is in his apartment, dreading the upcoming full moon and feeling guilty about a barmaid he killed during the last one. We know that Chris is a werewolf. Chris’ cousin Joe Haskell knocks on the door and insists he be let in. He tells Chris that he will be leaving town soon, probably forever. Joe chastises Chris for spending so little time with his little sister Amy, who has been staying at Collinwood. Joe mentions that when he was visiting Amy earlier to pass on Chris’ message that he was yet again too busy to see her, she saw a pentagram on his face. Chris knows this means that he will be the werewolf’s next victim, and he is horrified.

Joe has been on the show since #3. From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and actor Joel Crothers played roguish naval officer Nathan Forbes. Both as Joe and as Nathan, Crothers has been a mainstay of the show’s appeal, even more so than the bewigged skull. He is about to leave the cast, and he deserves a spectacular exit followed by a huge and long-lasting display of grief. A fatal werewolf attack would fit the bill, especially since the werewolf is, in his human form, one of Joe’s closest relatives and dearest friends. If they play their cards right, Chris could be mournful and racked with guilt about Joe’s death for the rest of the show’s run, even if that goes for decades.

Later, Joe drops by Collinwood to see Julia. Julia specializes in treating monsters, vampires and Frankensteins particularly, so if Chris had disclosed his lycanthropy to her she may well have had a prescription handy. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know about that, so he just demands that Julia give him a super-powerful sedative right away. Julia routinely dispenses sedatives to address any and all conditions, including sleepiness, but she draws the line here. She has never examined Chris, looked at his medical records, or talked with a doctor who has. Still, she does finally agree to prescribe something, though apparently not the knockout drops he was hoping for.

Episode 606: Hello, Barnabas

Vampire Angelique has bitten her onetime husband, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, and brought him under her power. Barnabas asks if she plans to make him a vampire again, restoring the curse she placed on him when she was alive and they were married, 172 years before. Angelique is herself subordinate to suave warlock Nicholas Blair, and does not know what Nicholas’ plans are. All she can say in response is “Possibly.”

Barnabas keeps bringing up mad scientist Julia Hoffman and occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes, who are waiting for him in his house. When Barnabas says that they will be suspicious if he does not return soon, Angelique replies “Let them be suspicious. It doesn’t matter to me.” When Barnabas asks what he can tell Julia and Stokes, Angelique replies “Tell them anything. Tell them the truth.” At that, a smile spreads across her face. We’ve already heard Julia ask Stokes what they will do if Barnabas is in trouble, and Stokes’ reply that there is nothing they can do. When Angelique suggests Barnabas tell Julia and Stokes the truth, her smile suggests that she has come to the same conclusion.

“Tell them anything. Tell them the truth.”

Angelique is usually so frantic in her manner and so monomaniacally focused on her goal that she does not seem to have any unspoken thoughts at all. But today she is tranquil, utterly satisfied with what she has done to Barnabas. “Tell them the truth” and the smile afterward are a turning point for the character. She has what she wants, and now something else is going on inside her head, something we would not have expected and can’t quite figure out.

It doesn’t last. A moment later, she is insisting that Barnabas must find a way to keep Julia and Stokes’ suspicions under control. But for a few seconds, a vista opened before us, and we caught a glimpse of an entirely new direction the show might take, both with Angelique’s character and with the relationship of a vampire to a victim. It even seemed possible that the alternately frenzied and glum secret-keeping that gives Dark Shadows its rhythm might give way to something entirely new. When that vista disappears, we find ourselves going back over some old familiar ground, but the sense of possibility does not quite leave us.

Angelique bites Barnabas twice today. Lara Parker was much shorter than Jonathan Frid, and the first time she bites him she has to get to his neck from a standing start with only a couple of seconds before the shot fades out to the opening titles. Her straining to get to her tiptoes was so obvious it made me and Mrs Acilius laugh out loud. But the second time, she comes at him from several feet away, and she takes the opportunity to make a sweeping turn and end with a balletic rise to en pointe, I believe using the rolling motion known as relevé. Frid helps Parker somewhat by bowing his head while Barnabas pleads with Angelique not to bite him. That one looks great.

Episode 572: Anyplace else

The Evans Cottage

Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, was under the influence of vampire Barnabas Collins in May and June of 1967. At the beginning of that period, she spent her days sick in bed at home, and at night regained strength and insisted on going out. When her father Sam and her boyfriend Joe tried to keep Maggie in, her adorable personality vanished and she raged at them.

Maggie eventually escaped from Barnabas, and mad scientist Julia Hoffman erased her memory of the ordeal. Since then, Barnabas’ vampirism has gone into remission. Julia has taken up residence at the great house of Collinwood and has become Barnabas’ fast friend.

Julia drops in at Maggie’s house today. Maggie says she is worried about Joe. He has been standing her up for dates, hasn’t reported for work for three days, and won’t answer his phone.

After Julia leaves, Joe comes in through the back door. He is pale, sweaty, and wild-eyed, obviously ill. He faints for a second. Maggie goes to call a doctor. Joe protests against this idea, almost shrieking, and Maggie relents. He asks her to keep him in the house overnight no matter what he says or does; this is very much the sort of thing Maggie used to say when she was falling under Barnabas’ power. Also like Maggie in those days, minutes later Joe announces that he will be leaving the house and that Maggie has no right to keep him from going. Maggie tries to block the door; Joe grabs her, flings her aside violently, and rushes out.

Kathryn Leigh Scott and Joel Crothers do an excellent job with this last bit of business. Yesterday and the day before, there was a fight scene that was so poorly done I couldn’t get a screenshot that didn’t look like a joke. But the choreography is perfect here. The actors really make it look like Joe is throwing Maggie to the floor, and in her closeup at the end of the sequence Miss Scott convinces us Maggie is hurt.

The similarity between Maggie’s behavior in May 1967 and Joe’s now is no coincidence. He is the victim of Angelique, formerly a wicked witch, now a vampire under the control of suave warlock Nicholas Blair.

After he had asked Maggie to keep him in the house no matter what he said and before he told her he was going to leave no matter what she did, Joe talked to her about going away from Collinsport, far away, going anywhere at all, anywhere from which they would never come back. It’s a poignant moment. Once there were other places for Joe and Maggie, and once there were ways to go there. When art dealer Portia Fitzsimmons called on Sam in this room in #193, Dark Shadows had run out of story. For all we knew, Sam might have gone to New York and taken Maggie and Joe with him, and the show might have reinvented itself to follow them there. But Sam is dead now, Mrs Fitzsimmons is long forgotten, and outside Collinsport there is nothing but a mental hospital. Even Hell seems to be located in a corner of Barnabas’ basement, and Purgatory in the woods outside.

The House by the Sea

Nicholas lives in a house by the sea. Collinsport is a fishing village, so a lot of its people probably live in houses by the sea, but there are two that we have heard referred to as “The House by the Sea,” and this is the second of them.

Barnabas and Julia know that there is a vampire on the loose and are pretty sure that Nicholas is to blame for that fact. Maggie mentioned to Julia that Nicholas will be coming to her house at 5 PM to buy a painting, and so Julia suggests to Barnabas that they go to Nicholas’ at that time and search.

They find the door unlocked. The green screen behind them has an image that makes it look as if the house is floating in the sky. Maggie’s house has always been the place the show has taken us when it wanted to give us a feeling of realistic kitchen sink drama; the effect of this background outside Nicholas’ front door is to tell us that we are leaving that world behind and entering an exotic, paranormal space.

As they enter, Julia has second thoughts about trespassing. Now it is Barnabas’ turn to insist they probe forward.

They split up. Barnabas runs into Joe. The two men ask each other what they are doing there, and each tells a lie about having business with Nicholas. They then take turns ordering each other out of the house. We end with a view of Angelique’s coffin, its lid opening.