dark shadows before i die – Page 29 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 565: I keep hearing the sea

One mad scientist built a Frankenstein’s monster, and another brought it to life. The builder, Eric Lang, had forced a man to dig up freshly buried corpses he used as materials. That man, an unpleasant fellow named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff, left Lang’s employ after he awoke on a surgical table and found Lang trying to cut his head off. Shortly after that, Lang died, and his colleague Julia Hoffman completed the experiment.

Lang and Julia’s creation is known as Adam. Adam is under the mistaken impression that Julia’s friend, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins, was his maker. He is now threatening to kill all the Collinses unless Barnabas and Julia provide him with a mate. They are complying. They have collected Lang’s journals, and are keeping a cadaver and some equipment in Barnabas’ basement.

Well-meaning governess Vicki is engaged to marry Peter/ Jeff. Barnabas is fond of Vicki, and Adam’s original threat was to kill her. He kidnapped her and held her prisoner for a couple of days; it was when he released her that he extended his threat to the whole family. When he was holding her, Adam gave Vicki’s engagement ring to Barnabas as proof of his seriousness. Now Barnabas has told Vicki that her ring turned up outside his house, and she drops by to pick it up.

Barnabas is alarmed that Vicki came to the house after dark. He knows not only that Adam is still at large, but also that a vampire named Tom Jennings is on the prowl. Vicki doesn’t remember her time as Adam’s prisoner and knows nothing about Tom, but she has heard enough about strange goings-on that she appreciates Barnabas’ concern. She assures Barnabas that she didn’t walk through the woods, and she isn’t alone. Peter/ Jeff is just outside, waiting in her car. Barnabas tells her he’s sorry Peter/ Jeff didn’t come in with her. As he says this, he looks at the door, giving the impression that he is sincere. Earlier, Peter/ Jeff had told Vicki that he was jealous of Barnabas; this scene makes it clear that he has nothing to worry about on that score. Regular viewers know that Julia has a crush on Barnabas; his behavior towards Vicki, whom he sometimes claims to love and want to marry, leaves her looking blissful.

Vicki notices that Julia is carrying one of Lang’s journals; Barnabas tells her that he and Julia are thinking of writing a book about Lang. Vicki knows only that Lang was a doctor who was a friend of theirs, so she accepts this explanation easily. When she goes, Barnabas insists on accompanying her to the car.

Barnabas returns, and tells Julia that he and his servant Willie Loomis will go out and try to find Tom before he bites someone. He speaks tenderly to her; she smiles.

Julia, content with the state of her relationship with Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Julia goes to the basement to close down the experiment for the night. She is still in a blissful mood as she listens to the radio playing the Jackie Gleason Orchestra’s truly appalling version of George Gershwin’s “Love is Here to Stay.” Since they have a stolen corpse in the basement and incriminating documents scattered throughout the house, the front door is of course unlocked. Peter/ Jeff lets himself in and is shocked to find Lang’s journal on the desk in the front parlor.

Julia comes upstairs and finds Peter/ Jeff. He explains that he wanted to see Barnabas and asks why they have Lang’s journal. Julia repeats the story Barnabas told Vicki. Peter/ Jeff laughs at the idea that Barnabas and Julia would write a book about Lang’s attempt to build a man from stolen body parts; Julia says it won’t be about that part of his life. Peter/ Jeff is still laughing when he leaves the house.

It’s odd Julia sticks with Barnabas’ story. A few days ago, Peter/ Jeff confronted Barnabas and Julia with his suspicion that Adam is Lang’s creation. Had she said they were disturbed by his suggestion and were checking Lang’s records to make sure there was no way he could be right, he wouldn’t be in a position to contradict her. He certainly wouldn’t be bothered that they lied to Vicki to cover up what they know about Lang’s experiment, since he is at one with them in his desperation to keep her from ever finding out what he did. Later, we see her writing a note to Barnabas explaining that Peter/ Jeff had not believed “my- really, your- story.” Perhaps she is embarrassed that she did not live up to her usual standards as Dark Shadows’ most fluent and most plausible liar.

Julia heads back to the basement, and we see a figure peering in the window. It is Tom. Coming on the heels of her failure to deceive Peter/ Jeff, this leaves us with no doubt that Julia’s happy night will soon give way to misery.

Bad news for Julia. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

While Julia is writing her note for Barnabas, Tom appears in the basement. Julia sees him, realizes who he is, and screams as he bares his fangs and approaches the camera.

Dead eyes, sharp fangs. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This ending comes as an anticlimax. The sight of Tom at the window was enough to let us know what Julia was in for; there was no real need to continue the episode beyond it. Moreover, the scene is poorly executed. When Tom walks toward the camera, he twice stops himself awkwardly because he’s running out of set. He also stops in the middle of opening his mouth, apparently realizing he has started that move too soon. Julia’s scream doesn’t help, either. Grayson Hall was a brilliant actress, the heart of the show, but she was terrible at screaming. This is actually one of her better attempts, but coupled with Don Briscoe’s stumbling it still brings a bad laugh.

Episode 564: Three stooges

Julia Hoffman, MD, is in the hospital looking for information about Tom Jennings. Tom was never her patient, but she knows that he was bitten by a vampire and will become a vampire himself if he dies.

Julia meets Tom’s cousin Joe Haskell. Joe tells her that Tom is already dead. Seeing how distraught Joe is, Julia says she will call his doctor. When he says he doesn’t need medical attention, because “I’m upset, that’s all,” Julia responds “There’s medication for that, too, you know.” Joe tells Julia Tom will be buried before the day is out.

Meanwhile, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins is in his basement, examining a new arrival. Barnabas and Julia are being forced to create a Frankenstein’s monster, and Barnabas’ servant Willie Loomis brought a cadaver home last night for material. Willie comes downstairs and declares that the project is too dangerous and too horrible for him to participate any further. Willie refers to himself in the third person, telling Barnabas that “Willie Loomis” has something to tell him. In this, he reverts to a habit he had in his first week on the show, when he was played by James Hall. He stopped doing this shortly after John Karlen took over the role, long before he gave up trying to imitate Mr Hall’s Mississippi accent. Maybe he will go back to that next. Barnabas tells Willie that he will do as he is told, and that Julia will give him a sedative next time he comes back with a corpse. Willie storms out, and Julia comes in with the news about Tom.

Barnabas says they must drive a stake through Tom’s heart before he rises to prey on the living. He calls Willie in. At that, my wife, Mrs Acilius, laughed. “He’s going to make Willie do it!” But this time, Barnabas has decreed that all three of them will go to the cemetery.

They are clustered near a tree, looking for all the world like the Three Stooges, when they spot Joe standing at the grave. They haven’t caught on that Joe is himself the victim of a vampire. That’s a bit odd. You’d think they would be among the very first to spot the signs of such a condition, and in the opening scene Joe was even sitting directly under a “Give Blood” poster. But they are oblivious.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas and Willie dig up the coffin. Barnabas is ready with the mallet and the stake when Willie opens the lid. He is shocked to find that it is empty.

Episode 563: A kind of magician

Beverly Hope Atkinson

This episode features the first appearance on Dark Shadows by an actor of color, and the only speaking part any non-White performer ever had. (CORRECTION: Mr Nakamura, played by Sho Onodera in #903, has a couple of lines.) This fact is made even more depressing because that performer fits so perfectly into the show that a first time viewer would assume she had been a major player from episode #1.

Beverly Hope Atkinson plays an unnamed nurse who meets suave warlock Nicholas Blair when he is trying to make his way into a hospital room occupied by Tom Jennings, a victim of one of Nicholas’ evil schemes. She firmly refuses him admittance. When Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, enters and asks to see Tom, the unnamed nurse smiles brightly and says “Of course, Maggie!” in a tone that makes it sound like they’ve been friends all their lives. She then shuts the door before Nicholas can follow. He asks her why Maggie can go in and he cannot, and she tells him sternly that Maggie has permission from the doctor.

Unnamed nurse is happy to see Maggie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

I have a fanfic idea about Atkinson’s nurse that I originally posted as a comment on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day. I can’t find it there, but here is a copy of it:

In the first 42 weeks of the show, when the supernatural was in the background and the stories were slow, it would have been easy to have a couple of tea party scenes at the Evans cottage where Maggie and her lifelong friend, Unnamed Nurse, recap whatever is going on. Those scenes could have led to a whole exploration of the tension between the working-class people in the village and the jerks in the big house on the hill. That in turn could have led to the introduction of Unnamed Nurse’s family, headed by Unnamed’s parents, Mr and Mrs Nurse, including her brothers, Young Mr Nurse and Master Nurse, and her sister, Moody Miss Nurse. We could then have seen the ancestors of the Nurse family in each of the flashback segments and analogues of them in Parallel Time.

At some point in my musings about this idea, I decided the family should be named “Wilson” (if I had a reason for this, I’ve forgotten it, but I now think of Atkinson’s character as Nurse Wilson,) and that in a flashback segment we should learn that they are descended from free persons of color who settled in Collinsport before the Civil War and were the first proprietors of the Collinsport Inn. Some wicked deed by a member of the Collins family knocked them out of the entrepreneurial class long ago, and they’ve been working their way back up the socio-economic ladder ever since.

We met Maggie in #1 as the waitress at the diner in the Collinsport Inn. She, her late father Sam, and her fiancé, hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell, have been Dark Shadows‘ main representatives of the people in the village. Her house, the modest counterpoint to the mansions on the Collins family’s great estate, has been familiar to us from the beginning, and is the place where we have seen most vividly what the Collinses’ doings have meant for the people who work for their businesses and live in their town. So, as a frequent visitor there, the nurse could have given a whole new dimension to the drama, showing that it isn’t just one family whose lives hang in the balance, but that a whole community is exposed to the consequences of what happens on the hill.

The Blue Whale

Joe is sitting alone at a table in the Blue Whale tavern, and he looks terrible. He’s pale and fidgety, looking around and periodically jumping up to peek out the window.

Maggie comes in and joins Joe. At first she is angry with him- he stood her up last night, without so much as a telephone call. She sees how upset he is and her anger is mixed with worry. He pounds on the table while the camera is tight on her. Her startled reaction reminds us of the early months of the show, when Sam was a self-pitying drunk and Maggie was a sophisticated portrait of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

Maggie startled. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

After that moment, Maggie gets very quiet. When Joe says with alarm that it is getting dark, she responds that “It usually does, at this time of day.” It’s inherently funny to hear someone make that kind of matter-of-fact statement in response to an inexplicably intense remark, but also poignant to those of us who remember Maggie’s early interactions with Sam. From childhood on, simple rationality must have seemed to Maggie like a joke in the face of the overpowering irrationality at the center of her life.

As it happens, Joe is indeed exhibiting addicted behavior. But he isn’t hooked on alcohol. Instead, he is under the power of a vampire. Angelique, who was once the wicked witch who first made Barnabas Collins a vampire, found herself reduced to bloodsucker status when she displeased Nicholas. At Nicholas’ direction, she bit Joe the other day, and now Joe is desperate to hear her summons and report for another bite. She does call, and he does dash out, leaving a bewildered Maggie behind.

It was at the Blue Whale that we first met Joe, back in #3. Then, he was an upstanding young man who indignantly rejected the attempts of one of the Collins family’s sworn enemies to bribe him into spying against them. We’ve seen him in the tavern many times since then, always as the doughty representative of the wholesome and intelligible world against the sinister and supernatural. For example, in #215 it was a deeply troubled Joe who brought the news to Maggie and others at the Blue Whale that the cows on his uncle’s farm had been somehow drained of blood, news which turned out to be the first sign of vampirism in the area. This is the first time we’ve seen the Blue Whale since #358, back in November, and the first time a scene has closed with the formerly very familiar Blue Whale jukebox dance tunes in even longer than that. Longtime viewers see a loop closing. Joe leaves the place where he has most often shown himself as one who dwells in the daylight and goes down to the deepest dark.

Once Joe is gone, Nicholas enters. He engages Maggie in conversation, and talks his way into the seat Joe vacated. Soon he is doing magic tricks for her and she is agreeing to have dinner with him. He brings up the idea of staying out all night, and she seems amenable. Where is her old friend the nurse when you need her?

The Fix

Joe lets himself into Nicholas’ house, a place by the sea that he is renting from the Collinses. Angelique is there. Joe laments his dependency on her, and asks if she was the one who attacked Tom, whom he identifies as his cousin. Perhaps the son of the uncle whose cows fell victim to Barnabas long ago! She doesn’t bother to deny it. She tells him that they will both visit Tom tonight. She bites Joe.

Joe visits Tom, who has emerged from the coma in which Angelique’s first bite left him. He tells Joe all about Angelique’s attack on him. He says he knows how bizarre the story sounds, but that he hopes that if he has Joe to vouch for him he will be able to make the police take it seriously. Joe gives Tom a few perfunctory assurances, then opens the window. Joe explains that he is doing this because it is hot in the room. Tom does not agree that it is hot, but Joe insists, and Tom is too ill to argue long.

Joe leaves, and we jump forward to 2 AM. The window is still open- apparently no nurse was on duty. Perhaps the hospital thought Beverly Hope Atkinson’s character did such a good job on the day shift that the patients could just cruise along through the night. We hear a bat squeaking, and Angelique appears. She bites Tom.

In Barnabas’ first weeks on Dark Shadows, the show made heavy use of the idea that vampires can enter a lodging only when they have been invited. For example, he went to the diner after hours so that Maggie would have to invite him in, and later went to her house and stood just outside the front door for a noticeably long time before she explicitly asked him to enter. They haven’t done anything with that idea in a long time, but neither have they very clearly contradicted it. Perhaps Joe’s opening of the window is the invitation Angelique needs to make her way into the hospital.

Episode 562: The power of this house

Dangerously unstable ruffian Willie accidentally freed vampire Barnabas from his coffin in #210, and became his sorely bedraggled blood thrall. Barnabas has since been cured of his vampirism, more or less, and when first we saw Willie after that it seemed he might be about to revert to his old ways. But he has settled back into a life under Barnabas’ thumb. Today, he is digging up a grave, planning to steal a body for Barnabas and mad scientist Julia to use in creating a Frankenstein’s monster.

Willie is interrupted in this gruesome task when hardworking young fisherman Joe, walking through the graveyard, spots him and announces that he will be taking him to the sheriff. Joe is pale and has trouble concentrating; at one point he asks Willie about a voice only he can hear. Willie is in such a panic that he doesn’t notice the signs that Joe is ill. When Joe walks off, Willie is still pleading with him not to go to the police.

As it happens, Joe is not on his way to the sheriff’s office. He has been bitten by Angelique, formerly the wicked witch who made Barnabas a vampire, now a vampire herself. He is answering her summons. Were Willie not so terrified of the sheriff, perhaps he would have recognized a fellow sufferer of his old affliction.

Joe has been on Dark Shadows from the beginning, long before Willie and Barnabas joined the cast. For his first 112 weeks, he was the show’s most straightforward specimen of Healthy Man. His only foible was his tendency to lose track of his plans when he had the chance to help a neighbor. Now Angelique has transformed him into an addict desperate for a fix.

Joe needs a fix. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Joe and Willie represented opposite extremes of personality before they were bitten, and actors Joel Crothers and John Karlen were similarly remote from each other in their approaches to their work. Karlen used techniques like those popularized by Marlon Brando and James Dean to throw himself into a depiction of Willie’s emotions that could be compelling no matter how stale the dialogue he was given. Crothers could overcome weak lines as well, but he did it with a manner as precise and deliberate as Karlen’s was volatile and intense. For example, today he says “There are places I should be, other places,” which may not look like much in print, but his delivery shows a deep poetry in it.

Joe goes to Angelique in the house by the sea where she is staying. He wrestles with his compulsion to submit to her bite; she assures him that he will soon forget everything else in his life, including his love for his fiancée Maggie. Regular viewers will hear an unexpected echo in this; Maggie is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott, who in the part of Dark Shadows set in the 1790s played gracious lady Josette. It was her frustration that Barnabas loved Josette and not her that led Angelique to cast the spells that caused disaster in those days, culminating in her transformation of Barnabas into a vampire.

Joe awakens after the bite and tells Angelique about his encounter with Willie. Angelique’s master Nicholas appears. He instructs Joe to tell him what happened in the graveyard, and dismisses Angelique. We see Joe’s old gallantry one last time as he tells Angelique she doesn’t have to take orders from Nicholas. She tells him she does, and leaves him alone with Nicholas.

Nicholas tells Joe that he controls Angelique, and therefore controls him. Joe tells him he did not stop to tell the sheriff about Willie. It is Nicholas who wants a Frankenstein’s monster and has set up the scheme that is forcing Barnabas and Julia to try to make one, and so he is relieved to hear that. Nicholas gives Joe an order we do not hear.

Meanwhile, Willie is back at Barnabas’ house, still in a state of panic. Barnabas asks what is wrong, and he tells him that Joe found him digging up a grave and said he would go to the police. Willie wants to leave town at once, but Barnabas refuses.

Barnabas is figuring out how he can dump responsibility for the whole mess on Willie when a knock comes at the door. Thinking it is the sheriff, he sends Willie upstairs, telling him that if he talked to them he would only make it worse. It turns out to be Joe, come to tell Barnabas what he saw and explain that he decided that, since Willie saved his life a while ago, he won’t go to the police after all. Barnabas is very quiet and very courtly, sounding for all the world like Boris Karloff. After Joe leaves, Willie enters, jubilant to be off the hook. Barnabas is troubled by Joe’s obvious ill-health.

Back in the house by the sea, Nicholas tells Angelique that he has received some alarming news from the hospital. The victim of her first bite, easygoing electrician Tom, is coming out of his coma. If Tom tells what he knows, Nicholas and Angelique will be exposed. Angelique has only been a vampire for a short time, and is unsure of her powers. But Nicholas has demonstrated sufficient ability that it is difficult to see Tom as much of a threat to him. The episode thus ends without any particular suspense.

Episode 561: Rob a grave

Hardworking young fisherman Joe has always been at his most appealing when he is going out of his way to help a new friend. My favorite example is #58, when strange and troubled boy David asks him for help deciphering a set of tide tables. He drops everything and is completely absorbed in the task.

Friday, we saw Joe’s impulse to help turned against him. Vampire Angelique claimed to be a prisoner of the suave and mysterious Nicholas. He wanted to take her straight to the sheriff’s office, but agreed to let her rest her head on his shoulder first. With that, she bit him, and he was enslaved.

Joe examines his wounds. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Today, old world gentleman Barnabas pays a call on Joe. Barnabas was a vampire himself for 172 years, and he knows that a vampire is operating in the area. He is deeply disquieted by what he sees of Joe, but does not attempt to diagnose his condition.

Barnabas came to the 1960s when dangerously unstable ruffian Willie opened his coffin in #210. Willie hoped to steal jewels, but was instead bitten and enslaved, becoming a sorely bedraggled blood thrall. Now that Barnabas’ curse has gone into remission, he controls Willie without supernatural means. He wants Willie to dig up corpses so that he and his friend, mad scientist Julia, can build a Frankenstein’s monster. On Friday, Willie tried to refuse, and Barnabas extorted his agreement by describing a scenario in which Maggie, the girl on whom Willie has a crush, might be killed if Barnabas and Julia do not complete their grotesque plan. Willie protests again today that he cannot “rob a grave.” Well he might protest- all of the trouble going on now started the last time he tried it.

The sun goes down, and we return to Nicholas’ house. Angelique rises. She hasn’t been a vampire long, and doesn’t know how to summon Joe until Nicholas tells her. From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and Angelique was a wicked witch. Her spells, including the one that made Barnabas a vampire, so often misfired that it seemed she was new to witchcraft. Viewers who remember that phase of the show and see her today will be quite sure that Barnabas was the first vampire she ever made, and that she is on altogether unfamiliar ground.

While Joe is responding to Angelique’s summons, he crosses paths with Willie in the cemetery. The episode ends with Joe announcing he will take Willie to the sheriff. In itself, that doesn’t produce much suspense. We know that he has no choice but to go directly to Angelique. But since Nicholas is ultimately behind both Angelique’s vampirism and Barnabas and Julia’s attempt to stitch a person together, it does suggest that his skill at manipulating events might ultimately prove to be as faulty as is Angelique’s. Perhaps the next time Nicholas’ pawns bump into each other, there will be consequences that he cannot control.

Episode 558: Talking of right and wrong

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair is lounging in his living room, blissfully contemplating the imminent success of all his evil plans. An unexpected visitor arrives. He is Adam, a Frankenstein’s monster whom Nicholas has been teaching to adopt a cruel and amoral code of extreme egoism. Adam is under the mistaken impression that recovering vampire Barnabas Collins created him, and he wants Barnabas to create a mate for him. Much to Nicholas’ approval, Adam abducted well-meaning governess Vicki Winters and told Barnabas he would kill her unless he gave in to his demands. Nicholas has Vicki stashed in a room in his attic.

Adam is bringing news Nicholas does not welcome. Adam’s former mentor, Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, visited him in his hiding place. Barnabas had told Stokes of Adam’s threats against Vicki. Stokes tried to talk Adam into letting Vicki go. His last appeal was to ask the big guy to imagine how he would feel if someone were holding his favorite person, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, and threatening to kill her if his demands weren’t met. That got through to him. He has come to tell Nicholas that they must release Vicki.

Nicholas asks Adam why he finds Stokes’ arguments convincing. Adam finally says that by making the comparison between Vicki and Carolyn, Stokes made him feel bad. Nicholas seizes on this, and says that those bad feelings are not evidence of any truth about the situation, but are just something Stokes imposed on him by trickery. Nicholas’ dismissal of conscience as a product of other people’s influence rather than an intuitive source of knowledge sounds rather like one of the crass immoralists Socrates shoots down in Plato’s dialogues, or like a simplified version of the criticisms of conventional morality with which thinkers like Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud scandalized the late nineteenth century.

Old Nick wins Adam over. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Adam goes back to Barnabas’ house and repeats his demand. Barnabas and his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, waver. Barnabas finally agrees to try to build a woman for Adam, but only after he sets Vicki free. The big guy thinks about it for a moment, then agrees. He tells Barnabas that if he backs out of his part of the bargain, he will not only find Vicki again and kill her, but that he will murder everyone who bears the name of Collins. Since that includes Carolyn, it would seem that Nicholas’ teachings have had a very profound influence on him indeed.

Christine Scoleri of Dark Shadows Before I Die dramatized Stokes’ and Nicholas’ competing attempts to influence Adam with this image:

Episode 557: Unannounced visitors

Act One consists of recovering vampire Barnabas and mad scientist Julia standing around Barnabas’ front parlor recapping various ongoing storylines.

Danny Horn devotes his post about this episode to a detailed analysis of this scene. He shows that Jonathan Frid’s performance and Grayson Hall’s are open to many objections. They fall short in such technical categories as “knowing their lines” and “standing on their marks” and “having the slightest idea what is going on.” But they are fascinating to watch nonetheless. Danny declares that “[t]he point of these scenes is to see how long two adults can stand around in a room saying preposterous things to each other.” Frid and Hall operate at such a high level of tension that the prospect of either of them breaking character generates enough suspense to keep us on the edge of our seats.

Patrick McCray wrote two separate posts about this episode. In the one that went live 13 September 2017, he too focuses on the performances in Act One. He writes:

Poor Jonathan Frid. He must have had a rough night. I am usually oblivious to his infamous (and completely understandable) line trouble, but in this one, it is so palpable that I totally understand why he retired from TV after DARK SHADOWS left the air. In his early dialogue with Grayson Hall, you can see sheer terror in the eyes of both performers as Barnabas haltingly recalls a trip to the hospital. This is followed by the “Frid Surge,” where Barnabas becomes far more committed and energetic when he turns to face the teleprompter. Of course, this gives him that great sense of vulnerability that was the secret to Barnabas’ success.
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: August 13,” posted on the Collinsport Historical Society, 13 September 2017.

This is the only post on the Collinsport Historical Society tagged “Frid Surge”; that’s too bad, I’d like to see that phenomenon tracked throughout the series. I should also mention that Patrick goes on in this post to express his “confidence that Frid could have acted the doors off the collected ensemble had the poor guy just been given another frickin day to study his sides.”

Barnabas and Julia’s recap scene ends when an unexpected visitor barges in. He is an unpleasant man named Peter, who prefers to be called Jeff. Peter/ Jeff is fiancé to well-meaning governess Vicki, whom Barnabas and Julia know to have been abducted by Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Adam came to Barnabas’ house yesterday and threatened to kill Vicki unless Barnabas and Julia created a mate for him.

Peter/ Jeff was assistant to Eric Lang, the mad scientist who created Adam, and he knows that Barnabas and Julia were connected to the experiment. He does not know for sure that Adam is Lang’s creation, that Barnabas and Julia brought Adam to life after Lang’s death, or that Adam has abducted Vicki. He does, however, have grounds to suspect that each of these things might be true. In this scene, he announces his suspicions to Barnabas and Julia. They huddle in one corner of the room while he shouts his lines in his singularly irritating voice. They deny all three of his points. One of the commenters on Danny’s post, “Straker,” summed up their reaction admirably:

Frid and Hall were too professional to show it but I sensed they were both annoyed when Roger Davis marched in and started yelling. It’s kind of like how you feel when you’re at a party and the host’s five year old son throws a tantrum. Sort of an embarrassed tolerance.
Comment left by “Straker” at 6:21 am Pacific time 31 July 2020 on “Episode 557: A Race of Monsters,” by Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day, 1 January 2015

Roger Davis as Peter/ Jeff, in one of the most subtle moments of his performance. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

After Peter/ Jeff’s scene, it is Barnabas’ turn to be an unwelcome guest. He calls on occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Barnabas and Julia suspect that Stokes may be the evil mastermind who has turned the previously gentle Adam toward evil plans. When Stokes hears Barnabas knocking on his door, he looks up and rasps to himself “Go away… No one is home…” This is one of my favorite lines in the whole series. Stokes was quite cheerful when he first involved himself in the strange goings-on, but as he has found himself drawn deeper and deeper into the unholy world of Collinsport he has come to regret his decisions.

Stokes is quite impatient with Barnabas’ demands that he tell him what he knows and his refusal to reciprocate with information about himself. It is only because Vicki is in danger that Stokes tells Barnabas anything at all.

Stokes already knows how Adam came into being, and Barnabas tells him about Adam’s conversation with him. This brings up a question about the scene with Peter/ Jeff. Why couldn’t Barnabas and Julia have trusted Peter/ Jeff with as much information as Barnabas here gives Stokes? Peter/ Jeff can no more go to the police than Stokes can, he will not tell Vicki anything about Lang’s experiment, and Barnabas and Julia have no reason to suspect him of being behind Adam’s turn to evil. These questions don’t come to mind during the scene with Peter/ Jeff, partly because he is so disagreeable a presence that we want him off screen as soon as possible, and partly because it has long been Barnabas’ habit to tell his enemies everything he knows while he zealously guards his secrets from potential helpers.

Patrick McCray’s second post about this episode, published 30 July 2018, includes an analysis of Thayer David’s portrayal of Stokes:

Professor Eliot Stokes gains fascinating dimension in 557. Normally, jovial and helpful, we see his protectiveness of Adam reveal an irascible and sternly just man within. Anton LaVey extolled “responsibility to the responsible,” and there are few other places where Barnabas gets both barrels of that. Stokes is perhaps the most inherently good man in Collinsport since his fellow freemason, Bill Malloy, took his last diving lesson. (Ironically, at the hands of Thayer David’s first character.) Stokes’ prime reason for siding with Adam and not Barnabas? The former vampire and Julia have withheld vital information for months. Yes, they have necessary trust issues, but this is Stokes we’re talking about. Adam may be a wildly unpredictable man-beast, capable of leveling Collinsport to sand before breakfast, but he’s also (until later in the episode) a prime graduate of Rousseau’s Finishing School for Noble Savages. He’s nursed greedily on the milk of morality that spurts abundantly from the ripe and straining teat of of Eliot Stokes’ moral tutelage. It takes a Nicholas Blair — so often Stokes’ foil — to teach him the less savory lessons in humanity. Stokes knows that there’s only so much danger in which Adam can find himself… Victoria Winters is another matter.
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: Episode 557,” published on The Collinsport Historical Society, 30 July 2018

Barnabas passes the baton to Stokes, who becomes the third character in the episode to pay an unwelcome visit. He goes to Adam. He asks the big guy who has taught him to be cruel and amoral, and gets nothing but lies in return. He tries to persuade him that he must not hurt an innocent person, and Adam angrily declares that it is “fair” for him to make Barnabas watch him kill Vicki if Barnabas will not make a mate for him.

In Patrick McCray’s 2017 post, he praises Robert Rodan’s performance as Adam:

Robert Rodan issues a highly cerebral, emotionally packed performance. Rodan never receives the credit he deserves. Much of Adam’s stint on the show finds him equipped with an eloquent, even sesquipedalian command of the language. His inner conflict is as existential as it gets… Where do you turn? Rodan balances this absurd chimera of conflicts with effortless aplomb that makes Cirque du Soleil look as clumsy as a Matt Helm fight scene.
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: August 13,” posted on the Collinsport Historical Society, 13 September 2017.

Patrick amplifies that praise in his 2018 post:

Robert Rodan is an unsung hero of an actor, delivering his existential angst with passion and truth. It’s a shame that his identification with an eventually unpopular character was probably a factor in Rodan not being recycled by Dan Curtis, despite being the dark-haired, blue-eyed “type” that typified the ruggedly handsome, DS norm (such as Selby, Lacy, Crothers, George, Ryan, Prentice, Storm, Bain, etc.)
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: Episode 557,” published on The Collinsport Historical Society, 30 July 2018

While I always found the sight of Conrad Bain a guarantee of a fine performance, I can’t say it ever occurred to me to class him as “ruggedly handsome” in the way that one might class the other men Patrick lists. There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose.

Episode 556: A pocket in time

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair has turned his subordinate Angelique into a vampire. Nicholas tells Angelique that she will bite only those people he orders her to bite.

Nicholas leaves Angelique in his house. She answers a knock at the door and finds a sheriff’s deputy asking questions related to a local man who recently suffered some mysterious neck wounds. Angelique identifies herself as Nicholas’ secretary and answers some questions. She invites the deputy to sit on the couch. He asks why, and she responds that it is because they are obviously attracted to each other. Within seconds, they are locked in an embrace. Angelique is about to bite his neck when Nicholas enters and breaks things up. The embarrassed deputy clambers to his feet and straightens his uniform. He asks Nicholas a few cursory questions about the injured man, then hastens away.

Angelique seduces the deputy. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Some of the commenters on the various fan sites point out that the deputy’s behavior does not conform to law enforcement’s conventional best practices, and others compare the scene to porno movies they have watched. I think the strength of the scene is that it shows how quickly an encounter between two people can take a turn in an utterly unexpected direction, perhaps with drastic consequences.

The deputy seems competent enough when first we see him, and for all we know he might have been a model policeman for years up to this point. But all he has to do is get lost in Angelique’s eyes for one second, and there he is in her arms, about to become her breakfast. When Nicholas interrupts them, the deputy’s reaction shows that he knows he is misbehaving and risking his job; the audience is clearly supposed to know that police officers are not supposed to act this way.

I don’t know about the porno movies, but a resonance with them would reinforce the same point. The movies those commenters describe begin with fully clothed people delivering dialogue and establishing scenarios, as if they were in domestic dramas or situation comedies. But then the clothes come off and the unsimulated sex starts, and they jump into a different genre, one from which there is no return. The deputy may act like a character in a police procedural, a genre in which Dark Shadows dabbled in its first months on the air. But it is a horror story now, and he comes within an ace of becoming someone who could fit only into such a story.

Nicholas chastises Angelique for ignoring his commands. He is holding well-meaning governess Vicki prisoner in another room in the house, and orders Angelique to go to that room and terrorize her. It turns out that he also wants her to persuade Vicki to give her her engagement ring. Vicki was unconscious when Nicholas claimed her and took her to his house, so if he simply wanted the ring he could have taken it then. Perhaps the people who bring up the porno movies are onto something about Nicholas’ motivations, and he is hoping to drop in on another seduction scene.

Vicki knows Angelique and knows that she has died. Vicki suspects that Angelique is a ghost; Angelique offers her hand as proof that she is not. This rather chilly contact is the only moment the two women touch.

Not hot enough to draw Nicholas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

As it happens, Vicki has had extensive experience with ghosts, most of it quite friendly. During her first captivity, when strange and troubled boy David trapped her in a room in the west wing of the great house of Collinwood, the ghost of local man Bill Malloy appeared to her, sang, and dripped seaweed on the floor. That frightened her at the time, but led to the breakthrough that ended David’s hostility to her. During her third captivity, when crazed handyman Matthew Morgan kept her in a secret room in the Old House on the same estate, the ghost of gracious lady Josette appeared to Vicki, told her not to be afraid, and led other ghosts, including Bill’s, in scaring Matthew to death before he could kill her. Vicki and Josette’s ghost teamed up to lead the opposition to David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, when she came back to Collinwood and tried to lure David to his death. So Angelique might be missing a chance to ingratiate herself to Vicki when she shows her that she is not a ghost.

Angelique asks Vicki for her ring and promises to give it to Vicki’s fiancé, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Vicki refuses, explaining that the ring is the only possession she has in this latest captivity to assure her that she is still connected to the world outside. Angelique says that if she does not give her the ring, she will spend eternity in the room.

Some time ago, Vicki spent nineteen weeks in the late eighteenth century, during which time she learned that Angelique was an enormously malign being responsible for the deaths of any number of people. She was herself accused of and sentenced to be hanged for some of Angelique’s crimes. Since she returned to the present, Vicki and the people she most cares about have suffered further agonies at Angelique’s hands, and Vicki knows about this, too. There is absolutely no reason why she should trust her, and she explicitly tells her she does not. Yet she does give her the ring at the end of the scene. The performers do what they can. Alexandra Moltke Isles’ steady gaze and trembling body do suggest that Vicki is so worn out, confused, and desperate that she might turn for help even to her bitterest enemy. But the script just does not give her enough support to make this interpretation stick.

Mrs Isles is facing another script problem that makes her character look like that old bane, Dumb Vicki. There is a window in the room with a Venetian blind in front of it and a shutter behind. Vicki looks at the window, but we do not see her even try to open it. The room is full of all sorts of objects, and she has a bed covered with blankets. Even if the window is sealed shut, she could easily cover it with a blanket and use some of the junk to smash the glass and beat on the shutters. That it does not occur to her to do so makes it all too easy to believe Angelique is telling the truth when she says Vicki will be in the room forever.

Episode 555: Innocent, completely innocent

Suave Nicholas Blair, a middle manager in Satan’s terrestrial operations, has met with considerable success in his efforts to corrupt Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Today, Nicholas finds that Adam has abducted well-meaning governess Vicki Winters as part of his effort to force old world gentleman Barnabas Collins to create a mate for him. Nicholas praises Adam’s plan, and persuades Adam to let him take Vicki from his hiding place in the west wing of the great house of Collinwood. Nicholas says that he can keep Vicki far more securely in his own house.

Nicholas gives Adam a vial full of drugs and tells him to put them in Vicki’s drink when she comes to so that she will be easier to handle. In #528, Nicholas described himself as “much too talented to spend my time drugging drinks.” Perhaps he is, but the writers have to pump out five scripts a week, so whaddaya gonna do.

When Vicki wakes up, she pleads with Adam to let her go. She asks what reason he has for abducting her, and he immediately says “No reason!,” then scrunches up his face and says “No, I have a reason.” He won’t tell Vicki what that reason is, but he is interesting to listen to. Vicki makes a run for the door; he grabs her and puts her back on the bed. He asks her, with genuine concern, whether he hurt her. She assures him he did not. He gives her the drugged drink.

Nicholas comes to take Vicki. We cut directly from Vicki unconscious on Adam’s bed to her unconscious on a bed in Nicholas’ house. I don’t think this is the first time Dark Shadows has used a jump cut, but we certainly haven’t seen it often. Abrupt editing is so much at odds with the stately visual grammar of the show that it qualifies as a special effect. Unfortunately, it is an effect that does not make any particular point here, and so is wasted.

The other day, the corpse of Nicholas’ subordinate, wicked witch Angelique, disappeared. We then saw a coffin in Nicholas’ basement. Nicholas talked to the coffin, calling it “Angelique,” indicating that her body was inside. Yesterday, there was a vampire attack. We didn’t see the vampire, but there couldn’t be much doubt that it was her. That is confirmed in the final shot of today’s episode, when we see Angelique in the coffin, her fangs showing.

Toothsome blonde. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 552: He talk so good

In the great house of Collinwood, well-meaning governess Vicki is talking to her fiancé, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. She asks Peter/ Jeff to wait there for an hour while she goes to the Old House on the estate to break the news of their engagement to old world gentleman Barnabas. It has been established in previous episodes that the Old House is no more than a fifteen minute walk from the great house, so we know that Vicki expects the conversation to last about half an hour. Peter/ Jeff seems worried that it might have consequences that go on even longer. He tells Vicki that Barnabas loves her. She agrees that he does, but says that she loves only Peter/ Jeff, and tells him he needn’t be jealous.

Vicki arrives at the Old House and tells Barnabas the news. She tells him she knows how he feels about her. In a mild tone, he says that she and Peter/ Jeff don’t seem to have known each other very long. Vicki isn’t worried about that, so Barnabas wishes her well, tells her nothing will ever change his feelings for her, gives her a peck on the cheek, and sees her to the door. She leaves the Old House about four minutes after she got there, much less time than she had expected.

Vicki tells Barnabas the news. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas’ calm reaction and quick dismissal of Vicki suggests that he might not be quite so hung up on her as she and Peter/ Jeff imagine him to be. The end of her visit corroborated this far more powerfully than Vicki could know. Moments before she came to the Old House, a man named Adam had left. Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster. He mistakenly believes that Barnabas created him. He came to the house to demand that Barnabas create a mate for him. When Barnabas told him he could not, Adam said he would wreak a terrible vengeance. Evidently he did not intend to attack Barnabas directly, since he then turned and left. Even though Barnabas knows that Adam is nearby and is out for someone’s blood, he does not offer to accompany Vicki home through the woods; it doesn’t even occur to him to do so.

For over a year, Barnabas has been saying that he and Vicki are going to wind up together, but he has done next to nothing to make this happen. In recent months, he has been pushing her away every time they are together. In #490, he went so far as to tell her that “loving me would have been the greatest mistake of your life.” My wife, Mrs Acilius, wonders if Vicki backed Barnabas into a corner when she told him “I know how you feel about me.” After that, he couldn’t very well have done less than tell her he would always feel about her as he does now. A girl has her pride, after all.

Once Vicki is in the woods, Adam shows up and grabs her. He announces that she will help him persuade Barnabas to give him what he wants.