Tag: dark shadows before i die

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 722: Too good-looking to die from old age

Another drab-looking outing from director Henry Kaplan, enlivened with some witty writing by Violet Welles and sprightly acting by John Karlen and David Henesy.

Daft prankster Carl Collins (Karlen) goes to the suite in the west wing of the great house of Collinwood recently occupied by his brother, the late Quentin Collins. Carl finds his nephew, twelve year-old Jamison Collins (Henesy) sitting by Quentin’s gramophone, listening to a sickly sweet waltz of which Quentin was fond. Carl mutters and rambles, claiming at one moment that Quentin is not really dead and at the next that he has a theory about who really killed him. Jamison just stares in response. Carl, agitated, demands that Jamison turn off the gramophone. When he does not answer, Carl declares that he is Jamison’s uncle. Jamison calmly replies that Carl is not his uncle, but his brother.

Carl comes back with his sister Judith. They question Jamison, who seems to know things only Quentin would know. Judith declares that “The child is possessed!” and flounces out of the room.

Jamison’s governess, Rachel Drummond, has a dream in which Jamison and Judith make her uncomfortable. She tries to go to the drawing room, only to find Carl blocking her way. He is wearing a railroad conductor’s hat and holding Jamison’s toy locomotive. He tells her it is too late to pass this point, and shows her a gigantic pocket watch to prove the point. She wakes up to find Quentin’s body sitting in a rocking chair next to her bed.

April first, a very important date! Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 721: If he stays dead now

Well-meaning time-traveler/ bloodsucking fiend Barnabas Collins enters a cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood to find thuggish groundskeeper Dirk Wilkins standing over the freshly stabbed corpse of the rakish Quentin Collins. Since Quentin’s cause of death is a long-bladed thrusting dagger, a weapon also known as a “dirk,” it would seem clear that Wilkins is the culprit. But as it happens, Barnabas saw Wilkins enter the cottage a moment before, so he can be fairly sure he did not kill Quentin.

Nonetheless, Barnabas threatens to go to the police and accuse Wilkins unless he answers “a lot of questions.” Barnabas doesn’t have any witnesses to back up his version of events, and though he claims to be a relative of the ancient and esteemed Collins family he only arrived in town a few weeks before. But Wilkins isn’t hard to intimidate, so he answers some of Barnabas’ questions about madwoman Jenny Collins. Most importantly, he tells Barnabas that Jenny is the estranged wife of Quentin, not of Quentin’s brother Edward as the audience had been led to believe in the four weeks leading up to Friday’s episode.

As Wilkins, actor Roger Davis has been getting very careless with his lines. Jonathan Frid always had a lot of trouble with his own dialogue, but he is clearly sticking with the script in an exchange like this:

Wilkins: Mr. Collins, you gotta understand that she’s crazy in the head! She could hurt herself — or somebody!

Barnabas: Who do you mean by “we”?

This comes to a head with one of Dark Shadows‘ most famous bloopers:

Barnabas: Tell them that you saw no one here.
Wilkins: Oh, that’s fine. What am I gonna tell ’em?
Barnabas: That you saw no one here!

Jenny is being kept in a cell in the basement of the great house on the estate. Wilkins and maidservant Beth were assigned to watch her. On Friday Jenny bashed Wilkins on the head with her dinner tray, unfortunately not hard enough to kill him and get the odious Mr Davis off the show. She did knock him out, though, and ran off to the cottage to stab Quentin. We cut to the cell, where Jenny is babbling to Beth. It gradually dawns on Beth that Jenny is telling her she stabbed Quentin and killed him. Beth locks Jenny in the cell and rushes off to the cottage.

In the cottage, Barnabas has summoned wicked witch Angelique and asked her to bring Quentin back to life. Angelique points out some of the flaws in Barnabas’ plan, and tells him that even if she does grant his wish the price for her services will be very high. They seem to be approaching a tentative agreement when Beth arrives at the door and Angelique vanishes.

Beth finds Barnabas in the cottage. He tries to keep her out. It has long since been established that, as a vampire, Barnabas is far stronger than any mortal man, yet Beth pushes past him without apparent difficulty. For that matter, we also know that he is as capable as Angelique of vanishing into thin air, yet he hangs around while Beth sees Quentin’s body. Barnabas insists she tell no one what she saw in the cottage, and he is staring at her with the same intensity that has sometimes exerted an hypnotic effect on people. This doesn’t work on Beth. She says that she will tell Judith Collins, the mistress of the estate, that Quentin is dead and that Barnabas was with him. Barnabas just watches Beth go. Evidently he has given up on using his vampiric powers. Terry Crawford’s literal acting style doesn’t win her much enthusiasm from the fans of Dark Shadows, but it does add a touch of humor to a scene like this. Vampire? What’s that? Sounds like bullshit, I’m gonna report this to the boss.

We cut to the drawing room of the great house, where Quentin’s body is laid out in a coffin with candles burning on high stands by its head and foot. Barnabas and Beth are there. Beth tells Barnabas she has not yet spoken to Judith. Apparently she just took Quentin’s body to the great house on her own? And found a coffin? And carried it into the drawing room where she put Quentin in it? And that’s how the family is going to find out Quentin is dead, by seeing him lying in state in the middle of the house?

I have questions. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas and Beth exit, and Angelique enters. She tells the corpse that she will raise him from the dead, and that once she does Barnabas will really be sorry.

Episode 720: The big, bad wolf

From #701, the episode in which Dark Shadows first became a costume drama set in the year 1897, they have been strongly hinting that Jenny Collins, the madwoman locked in the room on top of the tower in the great house of Collinwood, is the estranged wife of stuffy Edward Collins. Today, Jenny gets loose, and confronts Edward’s brother, rakish Quentin. It is only then that we learn that she is in fact Quentin’s wife. All of the clues that had led us to the other conclusion take on new meanings in that moment, making it one of the most effective twists on the show.

Man and wife, reunited, til death do them part. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Edward is the father of two children whom we have seen, twelve year old Jamison and nine year old Nora. Jenny has been preoccupied with some dolls she has with her in her prisons, which she calls “my babies.” She is afraid someone will take her “babies” from her.

We came to 1897 along with well-meaning adventurer/ bloodsucking ghoul Barnabas Collins, who in 1969 encountered the ghosts of Quentin and of maidservant Beth. Quentin’s ghost had made the great house uninhabitable and was in the process of killing strange and troubled boy David when Barnabas decided to resort to the mumbo-jumbo that has brought him back to this period. In 1969, Barnabas was not only trying to contain the damage Quentin’s ghost was doing; he was also trying to help drifter Chris Jennings, who was a werewolf. Beth’s ghost appeared to Chris and led him to an unmarked grave containing the remains of an infant wearing an amulet meant to ward off werewolves. This proved that there was a werewolf at Collinwood when Beth and Quentin were alive, and suggested that Chris’ curse was inherited from that person.

When Barnabas first met the living Beth in # 703, he asked if there were any children in the house other than Jamison and Nora. She said that there were not. He wondered if the newborn to whose grave Beth’s ghost led Chris had already died and been buried. But now that we know that Jenny is Quentin’s wife, we remember that in that same episode Quentin caught Beth with $300 and that in #707 we heard that she had taken the money to a “Mrs Fillmore” in town. Perhaps Jenny really did have babies who were taken from her, and perhaps Mrs Fillmore is taking care of them. Perhaps, too, the “Jennings” in Chris’ name indicates that he is a descendant of Jenny, and therefore of Quentin. We have already seen Quentin dabbling in black magic- perhaps he brings the curse of the werewolf on his descendants by means of it.

Jenny’s meeting with Quentin today does not come to a happy ending as far as he is concerned. She leaves him on the floor, with a dagger stuck in his chest.

While the search is on for Jenny, Beth tells another servant that Edward and Quentin’s sister Judith has searched the west wing and is now searching the east wing. This is only the second time the dialogue has made it unequivocally clear that there are two wings extending from the main house, and the first time it is established that the east wing exists prior to the twentieth century. There was a time when the writers had not settled on which side of the house the long-deserted wing lay; the first couple of appearances of the phrase “east wing” dated from then. Subsequently, there were slips of the tongue by actors who were supposed to say “west wing.” We may wonder when, if ever, the writers will find a use for this other part of the house.

Episode 719: Every person has a theme of music

Most of the characters in the part of Dark Shadows set in the year 1897 are villains of one sort of another, but we are supposed to take pleasure in watching them. One exception is the loutish Dirk Wilkins, groundskeeper on the estate of Collinwood. Dirk is humorless, unimaginative, violent, and surly. He is unpleasant to everyone, even his employers. When spinster Judith Collins, the owner of the estate, tells Dirk today that she has an opportunity for him to make some extra cash, he virtually sneers his acceptance. He says in so many words that all he cares about is money, and that he will do anything to get it.

The show didn’t really need to work so hard to make Dirk unlikeable. They’ve already cast instantly detestable actor Roger Davis in the part. But we can see why it was important to them that we have no sympathy for him. Judith hires Dirk to keep an eye on a madwoman named Jenny, whom she and her brother Edward are secretly keeping locked up in a cell in the basement of the great house. We know that Jenny is eagerly looking for someone to stab to death, and so we might be inclined to make excuses for her captors, no matter how screwy their approach. But when Jenny tricks Dirk into looking away from her and slams her dinner tray down on his head, she wins our enthusiastic support. We don’t particularly want her to kill anyone other than Dirk, but we cannot be satisfied with her situation.

Go Jenny go! Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The reason Dark Shadows is now a costume drama set in 1897 is that the evil ghost of Quentin Collins overwhelmed every plot point in 1969. So well-meaning time traveler/ bloodsucking fiend from beyond the grave Barnabas Collins did some mumbo-jumbo and brought us back here. Part of Quentin’s reign of terror in the late 1960s was causing a sickly little waltz to resound incessantly throughout the halls of the great house. It turns out the living Quentin is equally insistent on playing the same crepuscular tune on his gramophone to the annoyance of everyone around him. Today Judith declares that the waltz is driving her mad. Quentin apparently thinks he is on a prime-time show where every character has a dedicated musical cue, and declares that “every person has a theme of music” and this creaky jingle is his, so he refuses to stop running it into the ground.

Judith can’t do anything to stop Quentin from playing the waltz over and over, but she isn’t the only one whom it bothers today. The sound of the gramophone leaks from Quentin’s room down to Jenny’s cell, and drives her into the homicidal frenzy that will carry through from her assault on Dirk to the the end of the episode, when she will be holding Quentin’s dagger and wearing a blissful grin. Quentin is so much fun to watch that even his unrelenting playing of the waltz isn’t enough to make us want Jenny to kill him, but if she could chop up his record player that’d be great.

Episode 716: Someone who is not going to come

Governess Rachel Drummond has figured out that her employers, the Collins family of Collinwood, are keeping someone locked in the room atop the tower in the great house on the estate. Rachel has seemed frightened ever since we first saw her, in #705, and this information has added to her fear considerably. Rachel recently came to the conclusion that some unknown person was trying to harm her. She then let Romani stereotype Magda Rákóczi talk her into believing that the prisoner in the tower room was that person, and that her only hope was to choose the time of their confrontation.

Today, Rachel opens the door to the room and goes in. We know that the enemy Rachel ought to fear is wicked witch Angelique, and we can tell that the person in the room is not her. Instead, she is a madwoman named Jenny, and she is tall with red hair. Jenny attacks Rachel, pushes her back in the room, and flees, locking the door behind her and trapping Rachel.

The show has been dropping broad hints that Jenny is the estranged wife of stuffy Edward Collins and the mother of Edward’s children, Rachel’s charges Jamison and Nora. Once she is on the loose, Jenny slips into Nora’s room and looks at a framed picture of Edward there, expressing her hatred for him. Nora has been outside; she had a dream that her missing mother came home, and she went out to look for her. When Nora comes back into the room, Jenny dares not show herself, but stays in the shadows and longingly caresses a doll.

Jenny, in 1897, with a Raggedy Ann doll, first made in 1918. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

A servant named Dirk Wilkins figures in the episode a couple of times. He finds Nora outside, picks her up, and with considerable roughness carries her into the house. Perhaps this roughness is only apparent, but actor Roger Davis was notorious for physically abusing his scene-mates on camera, especially women and children. He may well have been even harder on Denise Nickerson than Dirk is on Nora.

One of my ways of making the show tolerable to watch when Mr Davis is on camera is to imagine someone else playing his part. Dirk is supposed to be unlikable; he sneers at everyone, even his employers. In the part of Dark Shadows set in 1968, a character named Harry Johnson had a similar manner, and even wore a costume like Dirk’s. The first actor to play Harry was Craig Slocum, who was pretty bad, but the second, Edward Marshall, took the same personality and made it quite amusing to watch. Mr Marshall might have made a fine Dirk. Other accomplished performers had small turns as background players on Dark Shadows and surely would have been glad to accept speaking roles. Among these, Harvey Keitel (Dancer at Blue Whale in #33) and David Groh (Ghost of One-Armed Man in #544 and Hangman’s Assistant in #664) went on to do outstanding work playing ill-tempered men, so in either of their hands Dirk might have become a breakout star.

Episode 715: The grace to be curious

The first character Dark Shadows introduced was Victoria Winters. Vicki began her life as an infant in care at the Hammond Foundling Home in New York City. She grew up there, then “stayed on as a teacher.” For reasons no one would ever explain to her, Vicki was called to the great house of Collinwood to serve as governess to strange and troubled boy David Collins.

In those first months, the Collinses of Collinwood were running out of money, barely able to hold on to the estate and the family business. It was credible that if they were to hire a live-in tutor for David, they would have to settle for someone with Vicki’s slender resume.

By the time Vicki was written out of the show in its 126th week, Dark Shadows had long since forgotten all the stories about the Collinses’ straitened finances, and retconned them as boundlessly rich. So it took some explaining that they replaced Vicki with Maggie Evans. Maggie started off as a wisecracking waitress who introduced herself to Vicki in #1 by declaring that anyone who lived at Collinwood was a “jerk.” Her signature line, spoken in #128, was “Whaddaya hear from the morgue?” Long after Maggie morphed into The Nicest Girl in Town, there was never a sign that she had any formal education beyond high school or any interest in teaching at any level. She was the show’s chief representative of Collinsport’s working class, and her relationship to the Collinses was far from warm.

So when they want to get Maggie into the great house to be the besieged and uncertain new governess in an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw, they show us matriarch Liz in a tizzy over Vicki’s mysterious disappearance. Liz insists that David and his friend Amy must have a new governess immediately, that very night, and that since Maggie is available and the children both know and like her, Maggie it must be.

Now the show has become a costume drama set in 1897, when the Collinses are at the apex of their wealth. There are two young children in the great house, so there ought to be a governess. She is Rachel Drummond, and she was introduced in #705. Like Maggie, she is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott. Unlike Maggie, she was trained for the position, recommended by an agency, and brought to the estate by the children’s father. Rachel speaks with the precise elocution one might expect of a late-Victorian governess. Her talk is intellectually ambitious- today, she discusses a work of philosophy she once studied, and when we hear her make remarks such as “I should become a realist,” it sounds like she is saying that she ought to join some movement in literature or the arts. One of the things that has surprised me most on this watch-through of the show is what a capable actress Miss Scott already was so early in her career. Rachel is worlds away from the occasionally hardboiled, never bookish Maggie, and even further removed from the other role we have already seen Miss Scott play, the gracious and ghostly Josette.

The show calls our attention to the contrasts between Rachel, Maggie, and Josette today. Rachel goes to the Old House on the estate and meets with Romani stereotype Magda Rákóczi. Rachel looks at the portrait of Josette over the mantel and says “We’re supposed to look alike… at least he says we do.” The “he” in question, Magda’s boss Barnabas Collins, is a well-meaning time-traveler/ bloodsucking abomination from the depths of Hell who in May and June of 1967 abducted Maggie and tried to replace her personality with Josettte’s.

Magda takes some money from Rachel in return for reading her palm. Magda is played by Grayson Hall, who first appeared on Dark Shadows a week after Maggie escaped from Barnabas. At that time she was Julia Hoffman, MD, Maggie’s psychiatrist. Seeing her examine Rachel’s palm today and hearing her tell Rachel all about herself, we remember when Julia used to shine a light in Maggie’s eyes and probe for information about what happened to her. Knowing that Magda is in Barnabas’ service, we remember that Julia shifted her loyalties to Barnabas and used her powers of hypnosis to erase Maggie’s memory of what he had done to her. We might wonder if Magda will move in the opposite direction, and betray Barnabas for Rachel’s sake.

Expert examination. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There is a scene today between Rachel and Edward Collins, father of her charges. Both Miss Scott and Louis Edmonds have trouble with their lines, and each of them breaks eye contact at inappropriate moments. These awkward bobbles coincide with a lot of noise that sounds like a newscast. That noise is most likely audio bleedthrough from what was on the videotape before they recorded the episode on it, but the actors’ signs of distraction coincide with it so exactly that it is hard to dismiss a suspicion that what we are hearing was audible in the studio.

Episode 714: The available ladies in the house

One day in the year 1897, Edward, Carl, and Quentin Collins hear their sister Judith read their grandmother’s will. Stuffy Edward and childlike Carl are shocked to find that Judith is the sole heir of their family’s vast holdings. Quentin stole the will and tried to forge a new one, so he is not shocked, but he is weirdly gleeful about the paragraph relating to him. He will receive no property and no income, but will be guaranteed a place to live in the great house of Collinwood forever. This enshrines his relationship with Judith as one of the clearest examples of Dark Shadows’ signature dynamic of Bossy Big Sister and Bratty Little Brother. No matter how atrociously Quentin may behave, no matter how loudly Judith may disapprove of him, she has no authority to punish him and her concern for the family’s good name will compel her to cover up his misdeeds and shelter him from their natural consequences.

Edward flummoxed, Quentin delighted, Judith in charge. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Meanwhile, governess Rachel Drummond and ladies’ maid Beth Chavez are busy with a mystery concerning the room on top of the tower that stands in the middle of the great house. Rachel has seen lights in the room and suspects someone is being held prisoner there; contrary to the direct orders of Judith and Edward, and against Beth’s very strongly worded advice, Rachel is investigating this matter aggressively. She sneaks up the stairs to the top of the tower, listens at the door to the room, and sees Beth coming out of it with a tray.* She then goes to Beth’s room, where she interrupts Quentin sexually harassing Beth. When she tells Beth what she saw in the tower and asks about it, Beth is shocked that Rachel went into the tower. She denies everything.

Later, Rachel goes back to the top of the tower and again listens at the door. She hears a cradle rocking. We saw that cradle in #645, when Dark Shadows was set in contemporary times and Quentin and Beth were ghosts haunting children David Collins and Amy Jennings. They sent Amy and David to fetch the cradle from the attic of the Old House on the estate and to bring it to Quentin’s old room in the west wing of the great house. This is one of the first times in the 1897 segment when we explicitly close a loop opened during the “Haunting of Collinwood” story.

*At the beginning of the episode, we saw Beth approach the room with the tray and a baby doll. During that scene, we hear what I believe is new music. It has been quite some time since we have heard any new cues, so this stands out.

Episode 713: The heart of the room

Vampire Barnabas Collins returns to his coffin at dawn to find it already occupied. Governess Rachel Drummond is resting there, and is under the impression that she is Barnabas’ lost love Josette. He exclaims that only his old enemy, wicked witch Angelique, could be “monstrous enough” to put Rachel in this position.

Longtime viewers remember that in #248 Barnabas forced Maggie Evans, who like Rachel is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott, into this coffin because she refused to submit to his attempt to brainwash her into thinking she was Josette. So we know that Angelique is not all alone in the ranks of the sufficiently monstrous. On the other hand, we also know that it was Angelique who made Barnabas a vampire in the first place, and that like others who labor under Angelique’s curses he is in many ways a reflection of her. So perhaps his remark is not so preposterous an example of lack of self-awareness as it initially seems.

Shortly after, Rachel comes to in the front parlor of Barnabas’ home, the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, and is puzzled to find herself there with him. She has no idea how she got to the Old House, and certainly has no memory of the coffin in its basement. Barnabas tells Rachel he found her wandering in the woods. She goes to pieces, overwhelmed that she is not in control of her actions. He talks soothingly to her. Rachel collects herself, but is still struggling not to let Barnabas see her cry. He offers to walk her home to the great house on the estate. This offer is sheer bravado on his part- the sun has been up for some time, and he cannot possibly expect to survive outdoors all the way to the great house. Luckily for Barnabas, Rachel declines his offer. Unable to keep her emotions in check any longer, she hurries out the front door, walking herself home.

At the great house, Rachel sees maidservant Beth enter the foyer carrying a baby doll. Rachel says that her charge Nora will like the doll very much. Beth sputters at this remark, and spinster Judith Collins summons Beth to the drawing room. Rachel eavesdrops while Judith scolds Beth for her carelessness. Returning viewers know that Beth is helping Judith and Judith’s brother Edward keep someone prisoner in the room atop the tower of the great house, and that it is hugely important to Judith and Edward that no one knows about this. Beth’s sputtering response to Rachel told us also that the doll is not for Nora, but for this mysterious prisoner. Rachel does not have all the information about the matter that we do, but she has enough to suspect something very much like the truth, so we wonder what she gets out of the conversation she overhears.

Later, Rachel meets Beth in the foyer and urgently pleads with her for information about Edward’s wife, the mother of Nora and of her other charge, Jamison. Beth tells her what Edward has already made abundantly clear, that the topic is utterly forbidden. Rachel sidles up to Beth, bends her head at an angle, and speaks in an urgent whisper, something we have not seen from either Maggie or Miss Scott’s other role, Josette. Indeed, Rachel is quite a fresh character, impressively so from an actress whom longtime viewers already seen for so many hours.

Rachel pleads with Beth for more information.

Judith overhears Rachel’s questioning of Beth and Beth’s response that Rachel should leave the matter alone. Judith dismisses Beth and talks to Rachel, telling her that Beth has given her very good advice. Judith has figured so far as a stern and menacing figure; it is something of a surprise that she does not fire Rachel on the spot, and even more of a surprise that she indicates she will not report the conversation to Edward.

The opening voiceover will tell us in a couple of days that Rachel’s reckless curiosity is “spurred on by her own fears.” Miss Scott has been playing this motivation all along. When we first saw Rachel, she and Edward were in a train station. He was being courteous to her, but she was stiff and awkward, clearly very much afraid of something. She is often seen reading, and her dialogue is both filled with signs of intellectual ambition and delivered with a frantic edge, suggesting that her studiousness has its roots in her attempt to defend herself against some danger. We have no idea as yet what that danger was or how it formed Rachel before we met her, but we know that her reaction to the evidence that she has found that someone is being held prisoner in the tower room at Collinwood is a deepening of her long-established fears, not the sudden appearance of new fear.

For her part, Judith’s main concern is finding her late grandmother’s missing will. The late Mrs Collins kept the provisions of her will secret, and it was stolen shortly after her death by some people who wanted to forge a new will and get the estate for themselves.

A woman named Magda Rákóczi shows up at the house, claiming to be able to help Judith find the will. Judith is violently prejudiced against Magda for her Romani ethnicity, and dismisses her offer of help out of hand. But Magda persists. Knowing that her grandmother had a fondness for Magda, Judith lets her into the drawing room and sits behind her while she reads the tarot. Judith keeps protesting that the previous cases Magda cites as evidence that the tarot can tell the future prove nothing, and that in her interpretations of them she is “making no sense whatsoever.”

Magda then says that the arrangement of the cards means that the will is hidden in the room where Judith’s grandmother died, in “the heart of the room.” In an entirely different voice than she has been using so far, Judith asks “What is meant by the heart of the room?” With that, Magda knows that she has Judith in the palm of her hand, and she starts to ham it up. “The hearrrt of the roooom… is a booook! A book that was very important to your grandmother! A very, very oooolld booook!” Judith decides this must be the family history, and she tells Magda that she will look through it at once.

Magda goes over the top. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In fact, Barnabas found the will and hid it in the family history. He has sent Magda to tell Judith where to find it. It comes as no surprise to us when Judith comes downstairs with the will and is jubilant to find that she is the sole heir of her grandmother’s vast holdings. After all, Barnabas wants the original provisions of the will to be enacted, and the only way to ensure that result is to see that it comes to the hand of the person who is its chief beneficiary.

We end with Beth standing at the door to the tower room, holding the doll and addressing the person inside as “Jenny.” We learned in #701 that Beth was originally maid to a lady named Jenny, that everyone thinks Jenny has gone away, and that it is surprising Beth has stayed on at the house in Jenny’s absence. Now it is confirmed that Jenny is the prisoner in the tower room. The obvious inference is that Jenny is Edward’s estranged wife, and that she has become the sort of crazy lady who appreciates baby dolls.

Episode 710: The raven and the viper and all the dark creatures

Libertine Quentin Collins has stolen his late grandmother Edith’s will, intending to forge a substitute that will give him control of her vast estate. His distant cousin, the recently arrived and thoroughly mysterious Barnabas, has warned Quentin that Edith’s ghost will haunt him if he persists in this plan. Quentin hears a loud pounding emanating from the walls of the great house of Collinwood. He goes to the study, where Edith lies in her coffin. He sees her there, grinning at him. Quentin returns to his room; the still-grinning Edith sashays in and taunts him. He tells her she is dead; this does not seem to bother her. She just keeps on grinning.

Edith may be dead, but she is clearly having a blast. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Every Day.

Quentin strangles Edith. She falls into an armchair in his room, unmoving but still grinning. He buries her somewhere on the grounds of the estate; her hand sticks up from the earth. He wakes up.

Quentin’s friend, unethical lawyer Evan Hanley, comes calling. Evan asks Quentin to give him the will so he can take it to a forger of his acquaintance. Quentin tells Evan about the dream, and how shaken he is. He also tells him about Barnabas, and his concern that Barnabas is a formidable enemy who may have uncanny powers. When Evan tries to dismiss Quentin’s worries, Quentin responds that he is the last person who should make light of the supernatural. When Quentin speaks of Evan’s “devil-callings,” we learn that the clandestine “meetings” they spoke of the other day are Satanist ceremonies. Evan agrees to meet Quentin at 8:00 that night in the groundskeeper’s cottage on the estate to summon one of the spiritual forces of darkness to fight Barnabas.

Returning viewers know that Quentin is right to fear Barnabas’ connections to the supernatural. Barnabas is a vampire, and his powers include the ability to send hallucinations to torment people with guilty consciences. He is also a time-traveler, who has come to 1897 from 1969 on a mission to prevent Quentin from becoming a ghost who will drive the Collins family of that year out of the great house and plague strange and troubled boy David Collins to the point of death.

First time viewers will not learn that today; aside from the opening voiceover, this episode tells us nothing about Barnabas. It does tell us something about Quentin and Evan. They are super-racist against Romani and Sinti people.

Evan has decided to hire Sandor Rákóczi to forge the will. Sandor and his wife Magda have been staying at the Old House on the estate for some time as Edith’s guests. Quentin’s brother Edward and sister Judith are offended by the presence of these “gypsies” in their midst. Unknown to Evan and Quentin, and unmentioned in today’s episode, Barnabas has bitten Sandor, enslaving him. Presumably Sandor has no secrets from Barnabas, making him a bad choice to be Quentin and Evan’s henchman.

Three times today, Evan addresses Sandor as “Gypsy.” When he is putting it to him that he wants him to forge the will, he barks at him with “Now, one moment, Gypsy.” He insists Sandor fix his price in advance. When Sandor tells Evan he is sad that he does not trust him, he replies “Well, then, be sad, Gypsy, but give me your price, now!” Later, Sandor will express curiosity about Quentin and Evan’s plans, to which Evan will reply “Well, don’t be curious, Gypsy, just do as you’re told.”

Evan told Quentin that the “devil-calling” at the cottage should involve twelve year old Jamison Collins as a “sacrificial lamb.” Quentin sincerely cares about his nephew Jamison, and he protests that he won’t do anything to hurt him. Evan assures him that Jamison will simply be a symbol of the innocence that their dark lord exists to despoil and that the boy himself will not be harmed. When Quentin is talking Jamison into joining him and Evan for a secret meeting that night, he tells him they will look into the future. Jamison asks”How, with a crystal ball?” Quentin replies “No, of course not. That kind of thing is for gypsies. It’s not for men, like you and me.” Scripted television in the US in the 1960s rarely gave such flagrantly racist remarks to recurring characters, not only because the audience included members of minority groups, but also because they are so unattractive that they limit the utility of the characters who make them. In this case, Quentin and Evan are already in league with the Devil, and Quentin is on track to die soon and become a ghost. So we know that they are due for a comeuppance. Moreover, their prejudices may lead them to underestimate Sandor, both on his own account and as a tool of Barnabas, so it is useful to the plot that they are in the grip of such ugly attitudes.

Sandor is in the cottage, preparing to forge a new will for Edith, when Jamison drops in. Jamison does not see what he is doing. He and Sandor spend a couple of minutes sparring verbally. Sandor ends the match when he points out to Jamison that it is getting dark. The boy looks alarmed and runs home while Sandor laughs.

In #701, Sandor and Magda mentioned that the Collinses were afraid of the night. Shortly after, they found out about Barnabas, and learned that they had good reason to be. But Sandor can still laugh when he sees that a boy as old as Jamison runs away at the news that the sun is setting.

Sandor is still in the cottage when Quentin brings Jamison by. Evidently Evan plans to let Sandor participate in the ceremony. Regular viewers will remember that in 1969 the first place Quentin manifested himself outside the little room in the great house where David and his friend Amy discovered him was in the cottage, and that he showed considerable power there. That he and Evan have their Satanic “meetings” in the cottage suggests that the evil he did in 1969 has its roots in what he did during them.

Evan directs Jamison to stare into the fire burning in the hearth. This will ring another bell for longtime viewers. Jamison is played by David Henesy, as is David Collins. From December 1966 through March 1967, David Collins’ mother Laura Murdoch Collins lived in the cottage. She was an undead blonde fire witch, and her plan was to lure David to join her in a fiery death. She would rise from the dead as a humanoid Phoenix, as she had done at least twice before. On each of those previous occasions, she went into the flames with a son named David; the Davids did not rise again, as becomes clear when one of them is available to speak in a séance in #186. Laura often urged David to join her in her favorite pastime, staring into fire. So when Evan urges Jamison to do the same, we wonder if Jamison, too, is in danger of being consumed by its fascination.

As the ceremony goes on, Jamison becomes alarmed. He runs out, and Evan orders Sandor to follow him. Quentin, too, runs to the door and protests that they have gone too far. He points to the flames, in which the likeness of a skull wearing a wig takes shape. We may wonder if more will be added to the skull, perhaps so much as to make up a whole woman, and if this woman will be someone we have met before.

Edith’s role in Quentin’s dream unfortunately marks Isabella Hoopes’ final appearance on Dark Shadows. She was just terrific. I wish they had done a parallel time story set around the period of the Civil War in which Hoopes played an aged Sarah Collins. Her nose, chin, and cheekbones resembled those of Sharon Smyth sufficiently that you can imagine an elderly Sarah looking like her, and she had a playfulness that would make longtime viewers remember the nine year old ghost we met in June 1967.