dark shadows before i die – Page 14 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 808: The mysterious shadow he can cast

Sorceror Count Petofi has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins. He has also cast a spell on broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, compelling her to lead him and his henchman Aristide to the hiding place of vampire Barnabas Collins.

Magda, Jamison/ Petofi, and Aristide. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Jamison/ Petofi and Aristide are ready to drive a stake through Barnabas’ heart. They open his coffin and find that he is away from home today. Magda does not know where his other hiding place is. Jamison/ Petofi becomes intrigued with Barnabas and decides to search through Magda’s home, the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, for papers that might give him information about Barnabas.

He and Aristide find a book published in 1965. Since the dramatic date is currently 1897, this seems to be a matter of some interest. Jamison/ Petofi calls for Magda, who tells him that Barnabas told her that the book had been brought back in time from the 1960s by “a girl named Vicki.” Barnabas’ utterance of the name “Vicki” in #797 was the first reference to well-meaning governess Victoria Winters in the 1897 segment, and this is the second. Vicki was the main character of the show for its first year, and remained in the cast for over a year after that. That the name “Vicki” would be heard only in rare and trivial echoes is not something longtime viewers would likely have predicted before she was written out of the show last year.

Magda goes on to explain that Barnabas himself traveled back in time from 1969. She has a vague idea that he was trying to save a dying child, and hasn’t the faintest clue how he made this remarkable journey. Jamison/ Petofi says that they will get the rest of the story from Barnabas himself. He also says that if he can travel in time, he will be able to live forever, a proposition which would seem to require further explanation.

Jamison/ Petofi is satisfied Magda is telling them everything she knows, but Aristide keeps making threats. The most intriguing refers to something Petofi might do to her: “You’ve heard of his powers. Hasn’t anyone in your tribe ever told you about the mysterious shadow he can cast? The shadow that isn’t your own that follows you?” Writer Sam Hall was probably familiar with a novel called Phantastes by George MacDonald, a bestseller of the nineteenth century that was influential among English fantasy writers of the first half of the twentieth century. It tells of a character named Anodos, who is tormented by a malicious shadow that moves by itself and won’t leave him alone. So perhaps Hall is planning to mine MacDonald’s works for an upcoming story.

Meanwhile, in the great house on the estate, Charity Trask has a dream. She sees Jamison/ Petofi with a portrait of rakish libertine Quentin Collins. The portrait is identical to the one she saw turn into a picture of a werewolf the night before, and she asks Jamison/ Petofi if he saw the same thing. He laughs, then tells her Quentin is a lost soul.

Quentin shows up. Charity’s father, the evil Gregory Trask, has directed her to marry Quentin, and she has set out to comply with this command. Quentin has never shown the slightest interest in her in their time awake together, and he isn’t much friendlier in this dream. He asks her to do something to lighten his mood. “Can’t you be happy? Can’t you be gay? Don’t you want to make me happy?” We’ve never seen her happy; as Gregory’s daughter, it’s hard to see how she could be. She has probably never tried to be gay, either, but it would have to be better than marrying Quentin. She does try to make him happy by imitating Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye, whom she never met or saw or heard, but whose spirit has been possessing her off and on for several days now. She sings Pansy’s theme song and does the highly suggestive dance that goes with it, only to find that Quentin has vanished.

Charity turns and finds Quentin embracing and kissing another girl. They are laughing. Quentin tells Charity that, as she can see, she has succeeded in cheering him up, and therefore she should run along. He and the girl then disappear and Magda enters. Magda tells Charity that she should forget Quentin, because he has a terrible secret. She leaves, and Quentin and the other woman reappear, still laughing at Charity.

Charity decides to ask Magda to explain the dream. Before she reaches the Old House, she finds Quentin and the girl from the dream lying on the ground in the woods. Quentin’s clothing is torn and he is unconscious, but he does not appear to be injured. The girl’s face is covered with what in black and white look like slash marks, but in color are obviously purple makeup. She opens her eyes and gasps Quentin’s name. Whether she was calling for Quentin because he was with her when they were attacked or crying out because he is the one who attacked her would not be clear to first time viewers, though returning viewers know that Quentin is a werewolf and will assume he was the attacker.

Episode 806: You’re not thinking of the foolish things

Charity Trask walks into the drawing room of the great house on the estate of Collinwood and finds a paper on the desk. It is a full confession to the murder of her mother, the late Minerva Trask, signed by her father Gregory and by Collins family attorney Evan Hanley. It also bears a red seal.

Trask enters and Charity tells him what she has read. He rants and raves for a while, claiming that she must be under the Devil’s power if she believes the confession. He forces her onto her knees and orders her to pray, then tries to destroy the paper.

Charity prays. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Later, Gregory Trask is alone in the drawing room. It goes dark, a violent storm suddenly breaks out, the windows blow open, and the flames surge much higher in the fireplace than we have ever seen them. Trask cries out for Minerva to leave him alone. When he calls himself an innocent man, the storm rages more fiercely than ever.

The storm ends as quickly as it began, and a man appears in the doorway. He asks who Trask was talking to, and Trask denies that he was talking to anyone. Trask mentions the storm, and the man says there hasn’t been a bit of wind all day. Trask turns and sees that the window is closed and there is no sign of a storm outside.

The man identifies himself as Charles Delaware Tate. Trask recognizes the name as that of a nationally famous painter. Tate explains that the late Edith Collins commissioned him to paint a portrait of her grandson, Quentin Collins, but that Quentin has refused to sit for him. He asks Trask for a photograph of Quentin. Trask remembers that there is such a photograph in a drawer in the desk. When he opens the drawer, the confession falls out, undestroyed.

Returning viewers know that Tate is associated with a 150 year old sorcerer known as Count Petofi. We also know that Petofi is currently residing in the body of twelve year old Jamison Collins and is casting spells to expose the secrets of various people connected with Collinwood. Jamison’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins the vampire is doing battle with Petofi, and has locked Jamison/ Petofi in the prison cell in the basement of the Old House on the estate. That has done little to curb his power; from the cell, he was able to project himself into a dream of Evan’s, cast a spell on him, and compel him to draw up the paper Trask keeps trying to destroy. Jamison/ Petofi does seem anxious to get out of the cell, however. He offers to cure Quentin of lycanthropy if he lets him out. When broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi talks Quentin out of accepting the offer, Jamison/ Petofi growls a threat at her.

We do not know why Petofi wants Tate to paint a portrait of Quentin, but we get a clue at the end of the episode. Tate has rented a house which longtime viewers will recognize as the Evans cottage. For the first two years of the show, the Evans cottage was a frequent set. It was home to artist Sam Evans and his daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. In December 1966 and January 1967, an unseen force compelled Sam to paint portraits of undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Those portraits had supernatural powers. They were not alone. Portraits have been a prominent part of the show’s set decoration from the very beginning, and have been a gateway between the world of the living and the world of the dead since #70. We may well assume, then, that Tate’s portrait of Quentin will also have uncanny powers.

Charity is visiting Tate in the cottage and looking at the portrait. He has only been working for a day or two, and he says it will take him about two weeks to finish. Yet the figure is almost finished now. As Charity studies it, Quentin’s face turns into that of the werewolf. In May and June of 1968, they did a story partly based on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and in #701, the very first episode in which he could speak, Quentin compared pictures and people, saying that one changes while the other stays the same. So we are prepared to see Quentin’s curse transferred from his body to his portrait.

Episode 805: The shocking condition of your face

The 150 year old evil sorcerer Count Petofi has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins. Jamison/ Petofi has been casting spells to make the various residents of the estate of Collinwood reveal their true selves. Jamison’s distant cousin, Barnabas the vampire, has locked Jamison/ Petofi in the prison cell in the basement of the Old House on the estate. When Barnabas says that he will let Jamison out once Petofi has vacated his body, Jamison/ Petofi replies “If that is what you intend to do, Mr Collins, I’m afraid that you are stupid and incompetent.” There is no need to cast a spell on Barnabas- Maker of Stupid and Incompetent Plans is his true self, and we love him for it.

The great house on the estate is currently under the legal authority of the evil Rev’d Gregory Trask, husband of Judith Collins, who is a patient in a mental hospital. Jamison/ Petofi’s spell has caused Trask’s daughter Charity to be intermittently possessed by the spirit of Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye. Trask is horror-stricken by the makeup, clothes, and hairstyle Charity wears when Pansy is in charge of her, and her East London accent, insouciant attitude towards him, and tendency to sing and dance escalate this horror further. Nancy Barrett and Jerry Lacy are both talented comic actors, and their scenes as Charity/ Pansy and Trask are hilarious.

Trask is appalled to see Charity/ Pansy. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Collins family lawyer Evan Hanley is at home. Barnabas appears in Evan’s drawing room and asks for some information which Evan denies having. Evan tells Barnabas he has renounced his former interest in black magic and Satanism. Barnabas is skeptical, and Evan replies that his latest forays resulted in a gruesome disfigurement of his face. This disfigurement was later relieved, how we (frustratingly) do not know. But he wants nothing more to do with the occult, since he values the ability to look at himself in the mirror. Barnabas reminds Evan that he cannot see himself in a mirror, implying that he will use his vampire powers against him if he does not cooperate.

Trask comes to Evan’s house. He asks him to draw up papers that will complete his plan to seize control of all the Collins family’s assets. He mentions in passing that Jamison thinks he is Petofi. Evan knows enough about Petofi to be terrified. He tells Trask that neither of them has a chance in a battle with Petofi, and refuses to draw up the papers. Trask responds contemptuously.

Alone in the cell, Jamison/ Petofi decides to have some fun with Evan. We see Evan dozing in his armchair. He has a dream in which Jamison appears. Jamison kisses him; it is by his kisses that Petofi spreads the “true self” spell. Later, Evan goes to the great house at Collinwood and presents Trask with a paper to sign. Trask signs it eagerly, assuming it is the document he asked Evan to bring him. Instead, Evan has prepared a full confession to the murder of Trask’s first wife Minerva. The two of them plotted this murder together, and Trask is horrified when he sees his signature on it. He throws the paper in the fire; after he leaves the room, it rematerializes on the desk, complete with signatures.

During Trask’s confrontation with Charity/ Pansy Faye, the picture suddenly changes from color to sepia tone. After about a half a minute, it changes back. Evidently there was a fault in the videotape master at this point, and an excerpt from the kinescope was used to patch it. The color comes back right after Trask slaps Charity/ Pansy, causing Pansy to release Charity for a bit. It creates the eerie feeling that Trask somehow fixed our TV set by slapping her.

Dark Shadows continually comments on itself as it goes along. In the early days, all the episodes were scripted by Art Wallace. Wallace’s favorite method of composition was a sort of diptych, in which two sets of characters faced similar situations and responded to them differently, highlighting the contrast between their personalities. Petofi’s “true self” spell is of course another way of creating similar contrasts between characters played by the same actor.

As the show came to focus on time travel stories, they could cast actors as characters who represent alternative versions of parts they played in other periods, again putting characters played by the same actors in contrast with one another. And as Wallace would juxtapose similar situations within a single episode, the multiple times periods allowed them to take themes that had been developed in one way in a story set in one year and develop them differently in a story set in another. So Jamison/ Petofi’s contagious curse is a reworking of the “Dream Curse,” which dragged on from April to July 1968. The Dream Curse involved a lot of repetition and very little variety of tone. Jamison/ Petofi’s spells all get right to the point, and are sometimes scary, sometimes bizarre, and often quite funny. So the second time is definitely the charm here.

At one point Charity holds a recorder and tells her father she wants to learn how to play it. The first time we saw this prop was in #260. That episode was set in 1967, and Barnabas was holding Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, prisoner in the cell where Jamison/ Petofi is today. The ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah befriended Maggie, and materialized in the cell playing “London Bridge” on that recorder. Over the next several months, the recorder came to be a symbol of Sarah, one that she occasionally left behind as a sign that she had been in a place. Longtime fans will likely remember that, and see it as an indication that what is happening to Charity is going to have permanent consequences, as Sarah’s haunting had permanent consequences.

Episode 803: As soon as you’re finished with the mumbo-jumbo

The spirit of evil sorcerer Count Petofi has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins, much to everyone’s consternation. David Henesy spends most of the episode mimicking Thayer David’s Petofi, with hilarious results.

Jamison/ Petofi sipping a glass of “mineral water… for the digestion.” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We see Jamison’s favorite uncle, Quentin the Satanist, trying to cast a spell to break Petofi’s possession of Jamison. As he always does when he is calling on the dark powers of the unseen realms, Quentin gets very fervent. We pan to Jamison/ Petofi, standing next to Quentin in a state of utter boredom, asking if Quentin will bring him a glass of mineral water once he’s “finished with all the mumbo-jumbo.”

Twice, Jamison/ Petofi pretends he is not possessed, but is his usual preteen self. He does this in order to trick people into letting him kiss them, which is how Petofi’s power spreads to them. This gives Mr Henesy the challenge of showing how Thayer David would play Petofi playing Jamison. That’s the sort of thing an actor needs a director’s help to pull off. Unfortunately, the woeful Henry Kaplan was at the helm today, so we discover that Petofi’s imitation of Jamison sounds exactly like the original, who is in turn uncannily like Jamison’s grandson David Collins and his great-great-grandfather Daniel Collins, who are also played by Mr Henesy.

Those whom Jamison/ Petofi kisses reveal their “true selves.” So maidservant Beth reveals that she was under the power of Jamison’s distant cousin, vampire Barnabas Collins. When Jamison’s father Edward passes this word along to Quentin, Quentin tells him is going to confront Barnabas. Edward has been hunting Barnabas, and by saying this Quentin implies that he knows where Barnabas is and that he has been helping to hide him. For some reason, Edward only smiles in response to this revelation.

Petofi wears a prosthesis in place of his right hand; Edward finds that Jamison’s right hand has also been replaced with a prosthesis. After this horrifying discovery, Jamison/ Petofi kisses Edward. Quentin returns shortly after, and finds that Edward does not recognize him or know the name of the house. Edward identifies himself as a newcomer to the area, and says that he would be glad of any work the family might hire him to do. Evidently his “true self” is a guy who needs a job. Since he has not inherited any assets or accumulated enough to live on, I don’t suppose we can disagree with whatever force it was that declared this to be Edward’s reality.

Episode 801/802: Ignore the truth whenever you can

In the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi accuses a man who calls himself Victor Fenn Gibbon of being Count Petofi, a sorcerer who, a hundred years before, was cured of lycanthropy at the price of his right hand and most of his magical powers. Fenn Gibbon denies the charge, and fills the awkward silence with a story that Petofi’s saddest morning came when he awoke to find that his pet unicorn was dead, killed by the wolf. Also in the room is the desperately handsome Quentin Collins, who is himself a werewolf. Quentin says that after they return to human form, werewolves do not remember what they did the night before. Since Fenn Gibbon’s story reveals his knowledge of that fact, Quentin takes it as confirmation that he is indeed Petofi.

Petofi’s severed hand is still in existence, and still carries with it great power. Magda stole the hand from Romani tribal leader/ New England crime boss King Johnny Romana several weeks ago in hopes that she could use it to lift the werewolf curse from Quentin. Since then it has been stolen by one person after another, none of whom has much benefited from it. Now schoolteacher-turned-adventurer Tim Shaw has taken the hand and skipped town. Petofi threatens to use his remaining powers to harm Quentin and Magda unless they find the hand and return it to him by morning; they have to admit they have no idea where it is.

At the end of the episode, we are in the great house on the estate. Petofi makes a series of ominous remarks to Magda and Quentin as he takes his suitcase and goes out the front door. Quentin’s twelve year old nephew Jamison appears at the top of the staircase. He is speaking in a raspy voice, continually suppressing a chuckle at his own witty remarks, and squinting by tightening his eyelids in the middle. He addresses Quentin as “Mr Collins,” says he is not in the habit of being interrupted, and walks downstairs with a slow gait, raising himself slightly from the hips as he comes to each step. We recognize an imitation of Petofi, and Magda declares that the boy is possessed.

David Henesy as Count Petofi. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Regular viewers will be intrigued to see Jamison as a medium for Petofi. Jamison is played by David Henesy, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s plays strange and troubled boy David Collins. In #186, David Collins participated in a séance during which he channeled the spirit of David Radcliffe, a boy who was burned alive by his mother in March 1867, exactly one hundred years before. In December 1968, David Collins was intermittently possessed by the ghosts of Quentin and Jamison, and when Quentin was temporarily dead and his body was a zombie in April 1969 Quentin possessed Jamison. So by this time Mr Henesy has substantial experience playing a boy who is being used as the vehicle for another spirit.

Mr Henesy is also deeply familiar with the style and manner of Thayer David, who plays Petofi. Thayer David’s first role on the show was crazed handyman Matthew Morgan, who had many scenes with David Collins, and his second was much-put-upon indentured servant Ben Stokes, who when the show was set in the 1790s shared screen time with Mr Henesy’s character Daniel Collins. Thayer David’s third role, Ben’s descendant and occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes, crosses paths with David Collins only occasionally, but he was on so much that all Mr Henesy would have to do to keep up his status as an expert on Thayer David would be to watch the show on his days off. So it is exciting to see what Mr Henesy’s interpretation of Thayer David’s Petofi will be.

David Collins is always on the minds of longtime fans when Mr Henesy appears, and is especially so today. Magda has a crystal ball into which she occasionally peers; she gets melodramatically frustrated with it shortly before we cut to Jamison and Petofi today. This ball originally belonged to David Collins. He received it as a gift from dashing action hero Burke Devlin in #48, and thereafter used it several times to get information to advance the plot and to establish himself as a link between the visible action of the show and the supernatural forces which at that point lurked in an unseen back-world. Magda’s failed attempt at scrying today may seem like a throwaway to relatively recent fans, but when those who have been with the show from the beginning see the ball and then see Jamison so shortly afterward, they will know that something spooky is coming.

Thayer David might never have been cast on Dark Shadows if he had acted under the name he was given at birth. He was originally called David Thayer Hersey. It’s hard to imagine a producer adding David Thayer Hersey to the cast of a show that had already for eight weeks featured David Thomas Henesy.

Episode 800: Nothing further to lose

When broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi learned that her sister Jenny had been murdered, she placed a curse on the murderer, Jenny’s husband Quentin Collins. The curse makes Quentin and his male descendants werewolves. In #763, Magda learned that Jenny had given birth to Quentin’s twin children, and ever since she has been trying desperately to lift the curse. It was only this week Quentin found out about the children, after another witch’s curse had already claimed the life of the boy twin. Now he and Magda are debating what risks they should take in their further efforts to save Quentin and any descendants his infant daughter may have.

In #778, Magda returned to her home in the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. She had gone to Boston because she had heard that a Rroma group was in the area and that an old woman who knew how to cure werewolves might be among them. The woman wasn’t there, so Magda did the next best thing. She infiltrated the private quarters of a tribal leader/ organized crime boss known as King Johnny Romana and stole his prized possession. This is a severed hand in a wooden box. It is known as “The Hand of Count Petofi,” after a Hungarian nobleman from whom it was detached over hundred years before, and it has magic powers.

Neither Magda nor anyone she knows has the slightest idea how to control the hand. It has not cured Quentin, briefly disfigured him and his sometime friend Evan Hanley, led to the death of a young woman named Julianka, has been stolen by one person after another, and must soon bring an emissary of King Johnny tasked with Magda’s murder. Moreover, two mysterious and unsavory men known as Aristide and Victor Fenn Gibbon have come to town intent on stealing the hand; at Fenn Gibbon’s bidding, Aristide tortured Quentin and tried to kill him last week, and now he is trying to lure him into a deal.

Magda tells Quentin he is a fool to do business with Aristide and Fenn Gibbon, but Quentin says they have nothing to lose. Aristide implied that Fenn Gibbon can lift the curse; no one else can. They find Fenn Gibbon and Aristide ransacking the Old House. Magda recognizes a design on one of Fenn Gibbon’s buttons. Fenn Gibbon and Quentin struggle, and Fenn Gibbon loses a prosthetic right hand. We have known all along that he was not using his right name, and Magda tells us who he really is. He is Count Petofi himself, still alive more than a century after his mutilation, come to reclaim the hand and all its powers.

Quentin seizes, not the Hand of Count Petofi, but the Hand of Mr Fenn Gibbon. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Magda and Quentin don’t actually have the hand or know where it is. It has been stolen yet again. This time it is in the possession of Tim Shaw, schoolteacher turned junior executive for the Collins family enterprises. Tim took the hand from the Old House when Magda was out. He takes it to Evan today. Evan is terrified of the hand. Tim threatens him with it. Evan tells Tim what he knows about the hand, and also confesses that he and the evil Gregory Trask brainwashed Tim some time ago and used him to murder Trask’s wife Minerva.

When Evan and Trask decided to use Tim for their evil scheme, he was an innocent. The audience may have known that Tim had the same last name as Raymond Shaw, the main character in The Manchurian Candidate, but nothing else about him suggested he was likely to be of use to sinister figures like Evan and Trask. With his theft of the hand and his interrogation of Evan, we see that Tim has lost his innocence. The stuffy and repressed pedagogue whom we first met was a better fit for Don Briscoe’s heavily interiorized acting style than were the parts he played when the show was set in 1968 and 1969, accursed brothers Tom and Chris Jennings. Briscoe often seemed to be at sea as a vampire or a werewolf, but when he has to show a tortured soul peeking out from inside a three-piece suit he does an expert job. Now that Tim is capable of driving the story, we have a chance to see what Briscoe can do with a starring role crafted for his particular strengths as an actor.

Episode 799: Who understands the Moon

Broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi is in her home, the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. She takes a hatchet and chops a plastic model of a severed hand into two plastic models, each representing half of a severed hand. She then throws a handkerchief into the fireplace, all the while declaring that no further trouble will come from the hand. Later, she goes to the great house on the estate and tells handsome libertine Quentin Collins about this; to her surprise, he responds by flying into a rage and choking her.

Quentin’s rage abates when a huge image of the hand materializes in the room and floats towards Magda’s rear end. After she goes home, it materializes again and again drifts towards the same destination. With that, she runs outside.

Screenshots by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Meanwhile, some activity is going on at The Blue Whale tavern. One man asks another for information about Quentin. The inquirer is named Aristide; the other, Tim Shaw. Tim identifies himself as an employee of the Collins family. Tim tells Aristide that all he knows about Quentin is that he is an arrogant jerk and that the only reason his family lets him live in their mansion is that their grandmother’s will requires them to. Aristide says that he already knew those things, and he asks Tim to carry a message to Quentin.

Tim is in the foyer of the great house while Magda and Quentin are in the drawing room. He eavesdrops on their conversation about the hand. He overhears them saying that the hand is magical, that properly used its powers are limitless, and that it is in a box at Magda’s. After the hand’s second attempt to grope Magda’s buttocks drives her from her house, Tim sneaks in, finds the hand, and tells it that it is just what he needs.

The message Tim brought from Aristide invited Quentin to meet at The Blue Whale. Quentin goes and brings up something that happened a few days ago, when Aristide tied him to a table and tried to kill him. Aristide agrees that this was not a good plan. Aristide says that Quentin can be “cured”; returning viewers know that Quentin is a werewolf, and that it is for this condition that he wants a cure. Aristide admits that he does not know what the cure is; Quentin says that if he had claimed he did know, he would have killed him. But he says that someone else does know. Quentin learned yesterday that Aristide is in the service of a man whom he knows as Victor Fenn Gibbon; evidently Aristide was not aware Quentin had picked up on that, because he is alarmed when Quentin drops Fenn Gibbon’s name. Nonetheless, Quentin does agree to meet Aristide again, and to give him proof that he has the magical hand. Once he has been cured, Quentin will surrender the hand to him.

Before Magda entered the drawing room at the great house, Quentin had been talking with Miss Charity Trask, his sister’s new stepdaughter. Returning viewers know that Charity’s father, the evil Gregory Trask, has decided she ought to marry Quentin. This scene is the first time we see Charity trying to follow this plan. She mentions that Quentin is a widower. It has not been clear to us whether this is generally known. His wife Jenny was hidden away the year before, after he left her, and she was buried very quickly after he murdered her in #748. For all we know, Charity may not know that Jenny is dead, or even that she ever existed. Quentin’s siblings have been holding information about Jenny very tightly; it was just yesterday that Quentin learned Jenny bore twins while he was away. At the same time, he learned that one of those twins has died. He tells Charity that he is a father, and she is confused.

I don’t suppose any of this sounds very exciting, but it is a remarkably fast half-hour. The script is crisp and rapid; even viewers who haven’t missed an episode and know all the background will appreciate the air of mystery that arises from leaving so much unsaid and unexplained. And the actors are uniformly excellent. I can imagine a first-time viewer seeing this one and making a note to watch again tomorrow.

Episode 798: A gift from the unicorn

In the first few decades of commercial television, ambitious shows tended to imitate live theater; since, they’ve tended to imitate feature films. Today’s episode is one of Dark Shadows’ stagiest, and it is a strong one.

The rakish Quentin Collins has lost his hopes of being cured of werewolf-ism, and is moping in the gazebo on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. He is staring at a revolver, trying to talk himself into committing suicide. He hears two men approaching, and takes cover in some nearby bushes. The men are known to Quentin by the names “Aristide” and “Victor Fenn Gibbon.”* The set is so small that the actors are only a few feet away from each other, but we are supposed to believe that Quentin can’t quite hear what Aristide and Fenn Gibbon are saying. So when the camera is placed at Quentin’s point of view, Michael Stroka and Thayer David vigorously mime the act of talking.

Quentin listens in from a great distance. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin sees Fenn Gibbon slap Aristide’s face. Aristide responds, not with violence of his own, but with a continuation of the talking he had been doing before, showing Quentin that Fenn Gibbon is Aristide’s boss. The other day, Aristide tied Quentin to a table and tried to kill him by reenacting Poe’s “Pit and the Pendulum,” so this tells Quentin that Fenn Gibbon is his deadly enemy.

We hear some of Aristide and Fenn Gibbon’s dialogue. Fenn Gibbon and Aristide are based on Gutman and Wilmer from The Maltese Falcon. In their previous appearances, Aristide has been eager to connect with every attractive young woman he sees, suggesting that we would not see the strong suggestions of a sexual relationship that come with Gutman and Wilmer both in Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel and the 1941 film. But today, Aristide’s unshocked reaction to Fenn Gibbon’s slap shows that he is accustomed to robust forms of physical contact with him, and when Fenn Gibbon tells Aristide that “I’m aware of your charms, my dear Aristide, but I know only too well conversation is not among them,” we can see that there is going to be a substantial gay subtext.

Fenn Gibbon is one of two roles Thayer David plays today. He appears in the opening teaser as broad ethnic stereotype Sandor Rákóczi, husband of the even more offensively conceived Magda. Yesterday, Magda was placed under a curse. At that time, the curse was that everyone who loved Magda would die, but today it is that everyone she loves will die. When Magda talks about the curse with visiting vampire Barnabas Collins, he says that he is under the same curse, which is exactly true- in #705, he was told that everyone who loved him would die, and from the next episode on it was said that everyone he loved would die. Whichever way the curse is put, one would expect it to strike terror in Magda’s heart regarding Sandor. They are a happily married couple, the only one we ever see on Dark Shadows, and so one would expect him to be the first victim of the curse.

The curse was supposed to start when Magda heard three knocks on the front door of her home, the Old House at Collinwood. She hears the knocks, opens the door, and sees Sandor. She immediately falls into the same pattern she exhibits every time she sees Sandor, accusing him of infidelity, accusing him of coming back to her only because he has run out of money, telling him not to bother to lie to her, and generally having a wonderful time. But he is standing rigidly still, his eyes are glazed over, and he can speak only a few words, none of them the usual insults they exchange. He falls dead, a knife in his back. Barnabas touches his body, and says that it is cold, as if he had been dead a long time.

Later, Magda goes to Mrs Fillmore, a woman in the village of Collinsport. Quentin’s late wife Jenny was Magda’s sister. Unknown to Quentin, Jenny gave birth to twins after he left her, and his brother Edward decreed that the twins would be raised by Mrs Fillmore. Magda has never seen the twins, but she loves them nevertheless- the boy twin, anyway; she tells Barnabas that “Gypsies do not prize girls.” When she comes back to the Old House, Magda tells Barnabas and Quentin that the boy twin is dead. Mrs Fillmore said he was perfectly healthy that evening, then she heard a mysterious scream from the children’s bedroom and she found him dead in his crib. His body was cold, as if he had been dead a long time. Quentin is numb, bewildered to learn that he was a father and simultaneously to learn that he has outlived his son.

There have been other episodes in which an actor played one character as a living being and another as a ghost. There have also been episodes that jumped between two periods in history, and in those there were actors who played one character in one time frame and a different one in the other. Thayer David’s doubling as Sandor and as Fenn Gibbon makes this the first episode in which the same actor plays two living beings contemporary with each other in the same episode.

Sandor’s death and Fenn Gibbon’s ascent to prominence mark a transition in the show. They are in the middle of a bloodbath, killing off a great many of the characters who have defined the first twenty weeks of the 1897 flashback. Previously, that has meant they were getting ready to reset the show and go back to contemporary dress. But 1897 has been such a hit that a transition need not mean a return to the 1960s. There is still enough going on in this period that they can introduce a bunch of new characters, develop some new stories, and get a new phase of Dark Shadows started right here in the late Victorian era. Who knows- if they play their cards right, this period might be the new home base for the show, and the 1960s might be an afterthought.

The contemporary world does make one appearance today. Before their encounter at the gazebo, Fenn Gibbon meets Quentin in the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood. Quentin is studying the Moon. The two of them have a little exchange about Quentin’s fascination with the Moon; considering that this episode aired a few hours after Apollo 11 lifted off on the journey that would put the first crew on the Moon, that fascination must have been pretty widely shared by the original audience.

*In this episode, everyone says “Fenn Gibbons,” which we have heard before. But the credits read “Fenn Gibbon,” so I’m sticking with that version.

Episode 797: I do not like death at all

Vampire Barnabas Collins, werewolf Quentin Collins, and broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi hold a séance to contact the spirit of Rroma maiden Julianka. This is the thirteenth séance we have seen on Dark Shadows. It deviates from the previous ones in three important ways. First, no one objects in the middle of it and has to be sternly hushed by the séance-leader. Second, it doesn’t matter that the physical contact among the participants is broken- previously it had been a fatal error if anyone stopped touching the fingers of the people on either side of them, but this time Quentin jumps up and runs out and it’s no problem. Third, Julianka does not choose one of the participants as a medium and speak through them, but manifests as a ghost.

Julianka appears. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Perhaps because they are rewriting the rules of the Dark Shadows séance, they make a reference to an earlier milestone in the show’s development. The séance is held in the parlor of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. That isn’t unusual; séances have been held there on three previous occasions, including the second and in some ways most dramatic one, held in #186. What makes the location noteworthy is Julianka’s movement when she first appears. She comes in as a green screen effect hovering somewhat above floor level, then takes several steps down an unseen staircase.

We have seen that same movement on this same set. It was in #70, when the ghost of the gracious Josette was the first supernatural being to become visible to viewers of Dark Shadows. Aside from the reuse of that footage, we have not seen a ghost move that way since. Compared with the changes that began when Josette walked down from her portrait in #70 and brought the supernatural back-world that had been implicit in the show from its first week into the foreground, these changes to the rules for séances are small potatoes.

Barnabas and Magda hoped to persuade Julianka to give them some information they needed to lift the curse from Quentin and cure his lycanthropy, but she isn’t interested. She blames them for her death, and will not even let them ask questions, let alone answer them. They try to protest that they weren’t the ones who killed her, but she ignores them. So far from helping them end Quentin’s curse, she places a new curse, this one on Magda. She decrees that everyone who loves Magda will die. That was the same curse wicked witch Angelique pronounced on Barnabas in #405 when she made him a vampire. Longtime viewers will be unsure how Julianka’s curse will operate- Magda doesn’t seem likely to become a vampire, but perhaps they are suggesting she will turn into a monster of some other kind.

Unfortunately, Julianka’s appearance today is the last time we will see Diana Davila. In her approach to the role, Miss Davila concentrated very much on her eyes. She kept them open wider than I would have imagined a person could open her eyes, did not blink, and when she looked from side to side she did not turn her eyes in their sockets, but instead turned her head. This dictated a rigidity of movement for the rest of her body and a narrow range of inflection for her voice. Taken as a unit, these mannerisms made for a perfectly logical way of expressing Julianka as a strange, unreachable person, an emissary not only of the tribe of King Johnny Romana, but of another world altogether. In practice, this style had a drawback given the conditions under which actors had to work on Dark Shadows. In the three episodes where Julianka was a living being, Miss Davila did not have quite enough time to learn her lines. She did better than did most cast members, but the particular illusion she was trying to create could be shattered by the slightest bobble. This time, though, she is letter-perfect, and as a result the scene with Julianka’s ghost is one of the most effective in the series.

Episode 796: Don’t sound human

Quentin Collins is strapped to a table under a descending pendulum which supposedly has a razor sharp blade. His captor, a strange man named Aristede, tells wicked witch Angelique that Quentin will die in minutes unless she gives him the severed hand of Count Petofi, which has magical properties. Aristede is under the impression that Quentin and Angelique are engaged, and he has set the blade to strike Quentin’s body at a point causing the maximum wedding night-related inconvenience.

A little off the top I can understand, but this is ridiculous! Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Meanwhile, Quentin’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins has the hand and is hoping it will cure Quentin of a curse under which he is laboring. Rroma maiden Julianka claims that she knows how to use the hand to relieve lycanthropy. Her great-grandmother cured Count Petofi himself of that condition, and took the hand from him as payment for doing so. She is the only living person who knows the procedure, and no one else will know it until her daughter is born.

Barnabas and Angelique have a scene which ends with a decision to go to Aristede together. Barnabas tries to use his vampire powers to hypnotize Aristede; if he had been thinking logically, he could just have taken his bat form and flown around the meeting place, since Quentin can’t be very far from it if Aristede is going to be able to take the hand and stop the pendulum in the few minutes remaining. Instead, he lets Aristede lead him far in the wrong direction. When it seems to be too late, Aristede taunts Barnabas by telling him where to find Quentin’s body. To his consternation, Barnabas then vanishes and the squeaking of a bat rings out. Barnabas rescues Quentin at the last possible second, of course.

In #767, Quentin’s nephew Jamison dreamed that Quentin told him three things would happen that would spell his doom. The first was the discovery of a silver bullet on the great estate of Collinwood. That happened in that very episode. The last would be when the one person Quentin truly loved turned against him. We know that Jamison is the only person Quentin loves, so we know what to look for there. But the second has been a mystery up until now. Quentin said that the only person who could help him would be murdered. It has not been clear until now that there is one and only one person who can relieve Quentin of his curse. Now that Julianka has been identified as that person, viewers who remember back that far will not be surprised that at the end of the episode she is lying in the woods, a mysterious mark on her forehead, unable to move.

Diana Davila plays Julianka with her eyes always wide open. She does not blink, and when she looks from side to side she turns her whole head. The rest of her body is rigid, too, and she maintains a heightened tone throughout. This is quite effective for Julianka as written; she is supposed to seem distant and unapproachable. Miss Davila bobbles over a few too many of her lines for the performance to reach its full potential, but you can see what she was going for, and it was terrific.