In episode 1 of Dark Shadows, dashing action hero Burke Devlin returned to his home town, the isolated fishing village of Collinsport, Maine. He’d left Collinsport in poverty and disgrace, and returned as a millionaire many times over, the master of a financial empire. He had vowed to use his great wealth to exact vengeance on the ancient and esteemed Collins family. In #201, he gave up his quest for revenge, which had never been very interesting to watch anyway, and now is unconnected to any storyline. He’s still in town though, spending his evenings in The Blue Whale, a waterfront tavern where he has appointed himself to act as bouncer.
In #207, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis was rude to some other patrons at the Blue Whale. Burke defeated Willie in a fight and ordered him to leave town. Today, Burke comes back to the tavern. No one has seen Willie for a week or so, but neither is it clear that he has left Collinsport for good. Burke is looking for Willie, planning to beat him up again if he finds him.
When Burke enters, he sees Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, sitting alone at a table. While she waits for her boyfriend, hardworking young fisherman Joe, Maggie talks with Burke about not knowing where Willie is.
Willie’s associate, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, comes into the tavern. Burke goes up to him. They also talk about not knowing where Willie is.
Joe shows up. He’s been helping his uncle search, not for Willie, but for a missing calf. They found remains of the little guy, far from the farm and completely drained of blood by some mysterious process. They are baffled by this development.
Willie drifts in. He sits down at the bar and starts drinking. Burke goes up to confront him, but is confounded by Willie’s broken demeanor. After a few moments, his hostility gives way to compassion, and he speaks gently to Willie.
Jason returns, and Burke tells him he’s worried that Willie seems to be very ill. Jason then confronts Willie, and is astounded when Willie tells him he doesn’t want the $500 in cash Jason is holding for him. Jason also notices that Willie has some bloodstains on his sleeve.
I like this one. Sure, the writing has its flaws, and there are a couple of shots where it’s hard to tell what the visual composition was supposed to be. And Mitch Ryan is obviously drunk. But they rise beyond all that.
Kathryn Leigh Scott plays Maggie throughout as an understated version of her original wised-up conception, very apt for the barroom setting and a fine offset to the intensity all the male characters have to show this time. She doesn’t have many lines, but she has everything she needs to keep the show on track.
Dennis Patrick’s face and voice show at least two emotions in every shot, and he and Mitch Ryan do a terrific job as two men who don’t like each other but can’t help getting absorbed in a puzzle that fascinates them both. The music that builds throughout that scene and reaches its crescendo as Jason leaves the bar matches the complex emotional palette with which the actors are working; it doesn’t sound anything like the usual Dark Shadows music, and I don’t think we ever hear it again.
Joel Crothers’ turn as the messenger announcing the tragedy of the calves is as tense as the dialogue between Patrick and Ryan, but his studiousness and deliberation change the pace sufficiently to keep the scenes from blurring together. Ryan and Scott deliver their responses to him with a calm intelligence that emphasizes those qualities and makes Willie’s stumbling entrance a real surprise.
Ryan’s scene with John Karlen is a turning point in the series. Burke’s shift from a menacing demand that Willie leave town to an alarmed concern for his well-being marks the end of Scary Violent Willie and the arrival of Wretched Broken Willie, and his conference with Jason confirms that change. Everything Karlen does on the show from this point on, right up to his performance as Kendrick, begins with this scene.
If that looks familiar, it may be because I linked to it on tumblr.
I should also link to a characteristically insightful post in which Patrick McCray explains how this episode, in which Barnabas Collins is neither seen nor mentioned, contributes substantially to the sense of danger surrounding him. The story Joe tells about his uncle’s calf is the show’s first reference to blood-sucking, and it comes after we’ve started to wonder whether Barnabas really is a vampire, or is some less familiar type of hobgoblin.
For the first 20 weeks of its run, Dark Shadows developed its story at a stately pace. When writers Art Wallace and Francis Swann were replaced by Ron Sproat and Malcolm Marmorstein, stately became glacial, and at times ground to a halt altogether. For the last few months, Joe Caldwell has been making uncredited contributions to the writing. While Caldwell is probably responsible for some of the glittering moments of witty dialogue and intriguing characterization that have cropped up, everything is still taking a very long time. And this is the second episode in a row in which nothing at all happens to advance the plot.
There are a few interesting moments. We begin with well-meaning governess Vicki entering the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood in search of her charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins. The doors swing shut, and she cannot open them. The recently arrived Barnabas Collins comes down the stairs, startling her. He opens the doors easily.
This may not sound like a big thrill, but regular viewers will remember that doors swung open at the approach of the previous supernatural menace, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. When characters who did not know that Laura was anything other than a woman saw that happen, they didn’t react- it was a small enough thing that they could fail to notice it, and a weird enough thing that it didn’t register. So we have been prepared to watch for tricks with doors as a sign of the uncanny.
Barnabas’ big challenge today is a job of acting. He has to convince the residents of Collinwood that he is a living man from the twentieth century, not a reanimated corpse come to prey upon the living. He has trouble staying in character. When he tells Vicki that once, centuries ago, a father and son had a quarrel in the Old House that led to the son’s death, he starts laughing and repeats the word “death.” Vicki looks at him like he’s a lunatic. He gets it back together fairly quickly, but when Vicki goes back to the great house on the estate she will tell flighty heiress Carolyn that Barnabas is kind of strange.
Barnabas gives Vicki a long, flowery speech about the building of the house, one with no apparent motivation and many logical stopping places. Marmorstein has been giving these overheated orations to actor after actor, defeating them all. As Vicki, Alexandra Moltke Isles came the closest to selling one of them, at the beginning of #167, but she needed maximum support from the director in the form of close-up shots and lighting effects, and even then it was a relief when it was over.
Barnabas’ entire part consists of such speeches. Jonathan Frid stumbles over his lines quite a bit today, as he will do henceforth. No wonder- not only was he dyslexic, but at this point they were shooting seven days a week to make up for production time they lost in a strike late in March. That left him with precious little time to memorize the pages and pages of purple prose they kept dumping on him.
Listening to Frid struggle through his dialogue today, we discover the first reason why Barnabas became such a hit. In his voice, through his mannerisms, Marmorstein’s gibberish sounds gorgeous. Sometimes Frid’s struggle to remember what he’s supposed to say is a problem for the character. Since Barnabas is himself an actor essaying a demanding role, it gets confusing to see Frid’s own difficulties laid on top of his. But even at those times the sound of his voice is so appealing that we root for him to recover and deliver more of his ridiculous lines.
In his speech to Vicki about the building of the Old House, Barnabas mentions that the foundations were made of rocks deposited by glaciers. Any reference at all to glaciers is pretty brave, considering the rate at which the story has been moving in the Sproat/ Marmorstein era. It also raises a question about Barnabas. He is the man who posed for a portrait done in an eighteenth century style, and David told dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis stories about Barnabas’ mother Naomi that would place her towards the middle of the eighteenth century. We’ve also glimpsed a plaque on Naomi’s tomb that gives her dates as 1761-1821, but that prop hasn’t received anything like the screen time the portrait of Barnabas has had, and must have been made long before David’s lines to Willie were finalized. So the trend is to regard Barnabas as someone who was confined to a coffin from the eighteenth century until Monday night. When he starts talking about the rocks laid down during the Ice Age, an event unknown until the mid-nineteenth century, we wonder which night this week he spent updating his understanding of geology.
In the great house, high-born ne-er-do-well Roger comes home from a business trip to Boston. Before updating him and the audience on recent plot developments, Carolyn reminisces about her childhood, when he used to bring gifts to her when he would come home from business trips. She tells him he was the only father she knew. This is a retcon- up to this point, they’ve taken pains to make it clear that Roger and David only moved into the house a few weeks before Vicki’s arrival in episode 1.
Vicki and Barnabas enter the great house. She introduces him to Carolyn and Roger. Roger quickly escorts Barnabas to the study where the two of them talk alone. Roger mentions that a vineyard in Spain that had been in the family in the eighteenth century was still theirs until shortly before World War Two. Barnabas does not react to the phrase “World War Two” at all. Whether this is because he has been studying history as well as geology, or because he was simply overwhelmed with so much new information, is not explained.
While Roger and Barnabas are in the study, Vicki tries to explain to Carolyn why she thinks Barnabas is a bit odd. Carolyn doesn’t want to hear it. She explains the basis of the Collins family’s attitude towards Barnabas when she says it’s a relief just to meet someone friendly after the rough time they’ve had lately. Viewers who have been watching from the beginning will understand how strong that sense of relief must be, and will know that Barnabas is in a position to ride it right into a permanent billet on the estate.
Barnabas leaves, and Roger shows Vicki and Carolyn the portrait. He points out that Barnabas is wearing the same ring as its subject. He does not point out that he is also carrying the even more distinctive wolf’s-head cane.
While those three talk about the wealthy and genial visitor from England Barnabas appears to be, we wonder what he really is. Barnabas first appeared as a hand darting out of a coffin, he has shown up only at night, he lived hundreds of years ago, and he is played by an actor who bears a noticeable resemblance to Bela Lugosi. So we assume that he is a vampire. But so far, there hasn’t been any direct evidence of blood-sucking. During the months Laura was on the show, they made a point of not assimilating her to any familiar mythology. So for all we know, he might be something we’ve never heard of.
The final shot before the credits roll is in the outdoors, where Barnabas is standing perfectly still, surrounded by shrubbery, and with a big smile on his face. Perhaps that shot is telling us that Barnabas is not the vampire we might assume he is, but that he is in fact an undead garden gnome.
We begin in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood, where reclusive matriarch Liz and seagoing con man Jason are shouting at each other. Jason showed up and started blackmailing Liz when the last interesting storyline ended four weeks ago, and she is so fed up with the whole thing she doesn’t even bother to close the door when they’re yelling about her terrible secret. Liz’ daughter, flighty heiress Carolyn, comes in and overhears a chunk of the quarrel. She demands to know what it’s all about. Liz tries to fob her off with an obvious lie. Carolyn stalks off, frustrated that her mother won’t tell her what is happening.
Carolyn tries to figure out what’s going on with her mother and Jason
Carolyn goes to the local tavern, The Blue Whale. There, she meets two other characters who don’t have any particular reason to be on the show right now. One of them is dashing action hero Burke Devlin, whose quest to avenge himself on Carolyn’s family drove much of the action in the early months of the show, gradually fizzled out, and came to an abrupt conclusion in #201.
With Burke is hardworking young fisherman Joe. When Dark Shadows started, Joe and Carolyn were dating, and there were a bunch of scenes about how their relationship wasn’t working. Since they were already terminally bored with each other the first time we saw them, this was never much of a story. Now Joe is seeing Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. Joe and Maggie are relaxed and happy together, and they want to get married. During the Revenge of Burke Devlin story, there was the prospect that Maggie’s father’s connection with Burke’s plans would get in their way. Now that’s all over, and nobody’s stopping them from getting on with their lives.
Burke, Joe, and Carolyn hang around the tavern for most of the episode and apologize to each other for what they did and said back in the days when they were principals in ongoing narrative threads. Meanwhile, the jukebox keeps going, playing a wider assortment of music than we’ve ever heard from it. In addition to several pieces by Robert Cobert, including an orchestral bit I don’t think we’ve heard before, we hear Les and Larry Elgart’s versions of a tune by Gerry and the Pacemakers and of “Brazil.” This latter is something of a signature of Burke’s. He has often talked about his business interests in South America, and “Brazil” usually plays when a scene at The Blue Whale focuses on him. In his conversation with Carolyn, he behaves as if he is at home and she is his guest, even escorting her to the door when she leaves. As he shows her out, “Brazil” swells on the soundtrack.
Carolyn returns to Collinwood. The drawing room doors are closed now, but Liz and Jason are so loud that she can tell they are still having the same quarrel they were having when she left. Carolyn goes into the room and tells her what she couldn’t help overhearing. Liz tells another transparent lie, then leaves.
Liz is still visible on the stairs when Carolyn asks Jason what they were really talking about. When she presses him for answers, Jason tells Carolyn that if she doesn’t stop asking questions, her mother could get into serious trouble. We’ve seen Jason threaten Liz many, many times, but this is the first time he has shown his nasty side to another member of the family.
Dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis is under the impression that Dark Shadows is still the show ABC originally bought, a Gothic romance. So when he hears a tale of a grand lady in a manor house who fell in love with a pirate and is buried with a fortune in jewels that he gave her, he takes the story at face value and sets out to find and rob her grave.
Willie’s associate, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, believes that Dark Shadows is now the crime drama it more or less became for a couple of months after the Gothic romance approach petered out. He is blackmailing reclusive matriarch Liz, and refers to his incessant threats against her in their first conversation today.
Yesterday, the Caretaker of Eagle Hill cemetery tried to warn Willie that Dark Shadows has changed direction, and has been developing as a supernatural thriller/ horror show since December. Willie wouldn’t listen to him, but regular viewers know that all the old storylines are finished, and even people tuning in for the first time today will notice that the emphasis is on the uncanny.
At the end of today’s episode, Willie finds a hidden coffin and forces it open. It doesn’t have the jewels he was seeking, but something is in there that will bring great wealth to ABC and Dan Curtis Productions.
This is the first episode of Dark Shadows most people see. Posting commentary on episodes 1-209 is a bit like driving down a quiet, picturesque country road. By contrast, googling “Dark Shadows episode 210” is like merging onto a busy highway. I want to respond to two of the many, many commentators on this one, Patrick McCray and Danny Horn.
Elizabeth calls Jason into the drawing room and throws an envelope of money at him — she’s paying Willie to leave town. She tells Jason to count it, but he turns on the charm, assuring her, “It’s all there. I can tell by the feel of it.” She barks at him that his friend should leave the house immediately. He apologizes: “I wanted this to be kept quiet. You know, the same way you wanted something kept quiet?” She walks out, and as soon as her back is turned, he opens the envelope and counts the money. Jason is funny. We like Jason.
Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day, “Episode 210: Opening the Box,” 2 September 2013
Danny makes a point of ignoring the first 42 weeks of the show, often claiming never to have seen most of it. As his blog goes on, it becomes clear that he has seen a lot more than he wants to let on, but he is consistent enough about writing from the point of view of someone who started from this episode that I could always find a place in his comment section to add remarks about the connections to the early months.
And indeed, it is easy to see how someone tuning in for the first time today could say “We like Jason.” He is trying to keep control of the situation when he doesn’t understand what’s going on and he can’t afford to tell anyone the truth, so he has to keep coming up with fresh lies that will keep the ladies of the house from calling his bluff and new ways of pretending to be scary that will keep Willie from laughing at him. That’s a winning formula for a character, as witness the history of theater all the way back to the Greek New Comedy. Actor Dennis Patrick has the craft and the charisma to sell it beautifully.
Returning viewers may well have a far less enthusiastic response to Jason. His conversations with Liz today are the first time the two of them talk without falling into a pattern where Jason makes a demand, Liz resists, he threatens to expose her terrible secret, and she capitulates. They’ve enacted that depressing ritual ten times in the weeks Jason has been on the show, sometimes twice in a single episode. In Jason’s scenes with Willie and some of the other characters, we’ve had hints of the breezy charm Dennis Patrick exudes today. But the Jason/ Liz exchanges are so deadly that we get a sinking feeling every time either of them appears. Since blackmail has been the only active storyline going for the last two weeks and the two of them are the only full participants in it, that’s a lot of sinking feelings.
Jason is harassing Willie. The big one is abusing the little one, demanding that he account for his whereabouts and doing so violently. David and Goliath. Shrill and meek. Had we started earlier, it would be tougher to be on Willie’s side. Starting here? Jason is the villain. He accuses the bruised kid of having a scheme, and the kid obviously lies to the Irish galoot, gazing at the portrait conspiratorially. It’s as if he and the man in the painting already have a relationship. Cut to opening credits.
A lovable weasel. A bully. A silent and stern third party, hanging on the wall like a watchful ally, holding his action. Only a few lines, but resonantly human to anyone who’s been victimized by a know-it-all lout. Somehow, we know this power dynamic is bound to change, and that, for once, the know-it-all knows zip.
Patrick McCray, The Collinsport Historical Society, “Dark Shadows Daybook: April 13,” 13 April 2018
Willie has been a frantically violent character, showing every intention of raping every woman he meets and picking fights with every man. Some of Willie’s attempted rape scenes, especially in his first five appearances when he was played by Mississippian method actor James Hall, were so intense that they were very difficult to watch. Nor has Willie become less menacing since John Karlen took the part over. Just yesterday, Jason had to pounce on Willie as he was creeping up on well-meaning governess Vicki. It is indeed tough for anyone who has seen the previous episodes to be “on Willie’s side” in the sense of hoping that he will be the victor, even if we find him interesting enough that we want him to stay on the show.
But I think Patrick McCray overstates the degree of sympathy Willie is likely to gain from an audience watching Jason’s attempt to bully him today. At no point does Willie seem the least bit intimidated by Jason. He chuckles at him throughout the whole scene, and keeps his head up and his eyes open. The bruise Willie still has around his eye from a bar fight he lost the other day is faint enough that it does not give him any particular look of vulnerability. It’s true Willie is smaller than Jason, but he’s also younger and in good shape, so there is no reason to suppose he would be at a significant disadvantage were they to come to blows.
Returning viewers will also notice that the carpenters have been busy. Today we get a look inside the Tomb of the Collinses, a new set introduced yesterday. We also see a much more modest structural addition for the first time, a second panel of wall space downstage from the doors to the great house of Collinwood.
During the first weeks of the show, the foyer set ended right by the doors. When they added a panel to represent a bit more wall space, they decorated it at first with a metal contrivance that looked like a miniature suit of armor, then with a mirror, then alternated between these decorations for a while. When Jason first entered the house in #195, the mirror reflected a portrait, creating the illusion that a portrait was hanging by the door.
Episode 195
By #204, a portrait was in fact there, one we hadn’t seen before, but that they must have been painting when Jason first came on the show.
Episode 204
In #205, the portrait is identified as that of Barnabas Collins, and it is accompanied by special audio and video effects. Sharp-eyed viewers remembering #195 may then suspect that the point of Jason and Willie is to clear out the last remnants of the old storylines and to introduce Barnabas Collins.
Today, a second panel is added to the wall next to the portrait, and the mirror is mounted on it. Liz and Vicki are reflected in the mirror. The split screen effect not only puts the painting in the same shot as their reactions to it, but also establishes a visual contrast between the present-day inhabitants of the house and another generation of Collinses.
Today we’re in Collinsport’s night spot, The Blue Whale tavern. Seagoing con man Jason McGuire is at the bar, trying to convince his henchman, dangerously unstable Willie Loomis, to stop acting like he’s about to rape every woman he meets before they get thrown out of town.
A party comes in consisting of artist Sam Evans, Sam’s daughter Maggie, and Maggie’s boyfriend Joe. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin enters and joins Sam, Maggie, and Joe at their table. Burke has confronted Willie a couple of times, and Willie tells Jason that they are fated to have it out sooner or later. Jason tries to persuade him to abandon this idea, telling him that Burke would be a useful friend and a formidable enemy.
Jason delights Willie by telling him that Burke is an ex-convict. John Karlen brings such enormous joy to Willie’s reaction to this news that it lightens the whole atmosphere of the episode.
Jason buys Burke a drink and tells him that Willie is secretly a nice person. He and Burke find that they both have a high opinion of psychoanalysis, of all things, but their shared admiration of the Freudian school does not lead them to agree about Willie.
Sam goes to the bar, leaving Maggie and Joe to themselves. A bit later, Joe has to leave Maggie alone for a few minutes while he makes a telephone call to check in with a situation at work. He urges her to stay at the table and avoid Willie. She notices that Willie is talking to her father, and is alarmed. Joe tells her not to worry- from what they’ve seen, it appears that Willie only likes to hurt girls.
At first, Willie and Sam’s conversation is cheery enough. Willie is impressed with Sam’s beard, and even more impressed that Sam is a professional painter. For a moment, we catch a glimpse of Willie, not as an explosively violent felon, but as an awkward guy who is trying to make a friend. This passes when the idea of nude models pops into Willie’s head, and he asks again and again where Sam keeps the naked ladies. Sam tells Willie that he doesn’t use live models, at first politely, then with irritation. Willie responds with his usual vicious menace.
Maggie goes up to intercede. This would seem to be an odd choice. Jason is at the next table, and when Willie was harassing her and picking a fight with Joe last week she saw Jason rein Willie in. She knows that Jason is eager to smooth things over with the people Willie has already alienated, so it would be logical to appeal to him. Burke and Joe are nearby as well, and have both made it clear that they are ready to fight Willie. If either of them goes to Willie, he will be distracted and Sam will have a clear avenue of escape. And of course Bob the bartender really ought to have thrown Willie out of the tavern long ago. Maggie, on the other hand, will attract Willie’s leering attentions and complicate her father’s attempt to get away from Willie by making him feel he has to defend her.
From his first appearance in #5, Sam was a heavy-drinking sad-sack. Today, Sam seems to have become a social drinker. He’s gone out with friends for a couple of rounds, and is pleasant and calm the whole time. Soap operas are allowed to reinvent characters as often as they like. If Sam’s alcoholism isn’t story-productive anymore, they are free to forget about it.
The problem with this scene is that Maggie hasn’t forgotten. Maggie’s whole character is that of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic. It makes sense that an ACoA, seeing her father in trouble, would cast aside all rational calculations and rush up to protect him. But if Sam isn’t an alcoholic anymore, Maggie is just a very nice girl who laughs at inappropriate times.
Burke comes to Maggie and Sam’s rescue. Willie draws a knife on Burke, they circle, Burke disarms Willie and knocks him to the floor.
We’ve seen many couples move about on the floor of The Blue Whale while music was playing, and usually their movements have been so awkward and irregular that it is not clear that what they are doing ought to be called “dancing.” But Burke and Willie’s fight is a remarkably well-executed bit of choreography. At one point Willie brushes against the bar, and it wobbles, showing that it is a plywood construction that weighs about eight pounds. But it doesn’t wobble again, even though the fighters both make a lot of very dynamic movements within inches of it, and at the end of the fight Willie looks like he is being smashed into it.
After the fight, Willie and Jason meet in a back alley, the first time we have seen that set. Jason assures Willie that he will eventually get his cut of the proceeds of Jason’s evil scheme, but tells him he will have to leave town right away. Willie vows to kill Burke.
The jukebox at The Blue Whale plays throughout the episode. In addition to Robert Cobert’s usual “Blue Whale” compositions, we hear Les and Larry Elgart’s versions of a couple of Beatles tunes and of a Glenn Miller number.
Flighty heiress Carolyn tells her mother, reclusive matriarch Liz, that she has had a problem with one of Liz’ houseguests. Last night, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis was about to rape Carolyn, who fended him off only by pointing a loaded pistol and telling him she would blow his brains out.
Liz confronts the person who insisted she take Willie into the house, seagoing con man Jason McGuire. She demands that Jason send Willie away at once. This leads to the eighth iteration of the only conversation Liz and Jason have. He makes a demand, she resists, he threatens to expose her terrible secret, she capitulates.
The script varies the ritual slightly this time. It is prefaced with Liz’ demand that Jason evict Willie, and Liz’ final capitulation is delayed by having her stand her ground until Jason says he will get Willie out soon. Later in the episode, Liz walks in on Willie grabbing at Carolyn, and even then settles for Jason’s promise that he will get his henchman out within the week.
The show has given us some scenes of friction between Carolyn and Liz, but has spent a lot more time on Carolyn talking about how strong her mother is. Now that Carolyn realizes that her mother will let an explosively violent hoodlum stay in their house indefinitely after he has twice assaulted her, we are primed to expect that sharper conflicts between Carolyn and Liz will feature in upcoming storylines.
We get another preview at the end of the episode. Strange and troubled boy David Collins shows Willie a couple of portraits of Collins ancestors and talks about the history of the family. One of these portraits is new to us, having made its debut during the closing credits of yesterday’s episode. David identifies it as someone called Barnabas Collins. David has been pivotal to each of the major plot developments on Dark Shadows so far, so when he is the first character to speak a name on screen, we might expect to hear that name again.
The portrait of Barnabas has such a strong effect on Willie that he adds an element to the show’s format. For the first time on Dark Shadows, a character’s internal monologue plays as a voiceover. While we watch Willie study the portrait, we hear his recorded voice going on about the wealth it suggests. Willie walks off. The portrait fills the screen, its eyes start to glow, and we hear a heartbeat.
The portrait of Josette Collins that hangs at the long-abandoned Old House glows when Josette’s ghost is active, and the eyes of a portrait of Laura Murdoch Collins glowed on several occasions when Laura was on the show. So regular viewers are used to seeing the visual effects that accompany Barnabas’ portrait. But the heartbeat is new. Josette’s portrait and Laura’s are silent pictures, Barnabas’ is the first talkie.
This is the last episode in which we will see James Hall as Willie. These episodes were shot out of sequence, so this one was made on 23 March 1967 and yesterday’s was made on 24 March. Most episodes were shot in a single take, as is obvious from the bloopers and production faults that run through them. Yesterday’s- the one produced on Friday, 24 March- was the first since #1 that went to three takes. That evening they called actor John Karlen and asked him to come in on Monday the 27th and take over the part of Willie. So, while Hall may never have been told why he was let go and to this day doesn’t seem to know what happened, it’s hard not to suspect that the producers blamed him for that third take.
Karlen would bring so much to the show that I can’t really regret losing Hall, excellent as he was. Years ago, I was chatting with an old friend of mine about ways that the original Star Trek might have been improved. We agreed that we couldn’t give up the actual show, and that what we were really wishing for was access to an alternate universe where they had made those changes. So that’s how I feel about Dark Shadows. I still want all of John Karlen’s performances, but would like an antenna that I could tune to receive broadcasts from a parallel timeband where he and James Hall swapped careers.
Dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis is staying at the great house of Collinwood, much to everyone’s dismay. Yesterday’s episode ended with a scene in which he appeared to be trying to rape well-meaning governess Vicki in the study. She resisted him pretty vigorously, especially after he trapped her in front of some furniture. When reclusive matriarch Liz interrupted the confrontation and demanded Willie leave the house, Vicki ultimately let Willie off the hook, saying that he didn’t really do anything.
Today, Vicki sees flighty heiress Carolyn in the kitchen and warns her about Willie’s violent ways. After Willie has insulted everyone in the house, Vicki and dashing action hero Burke Devlin run into him while on a date at Collinsport’s night spot, The Blue Whale. Willie enrages Burke, and the two men are about to fight. Vicki urges Burke not to fight, leading him to pause. She shouts at Willie, demanding that he go away. He does. This leads me to wonder if the reason Vicki didn’t back Liz up is that she wants to fight her own battles.
Willie returns to Collinwood. He finds Carolyn alone in the drawing room. He blocks her exit from the room. He grabs at her hair, and tells her that she is, unknown to herself, attracted to him. When she says she wants to leave the room, he orders her to stay until he dismisses her. He closes the doors and approaches her, responding to her protests by saying that he can’t hear her. If they had cut away at this moment, it would have been a fully realized rape scene. There is nothing left to show by putting the actual assault on screen.
But they don’t end it there. Carolyn reaches into the desk drawer and pulls a loaded gun on Willie. Willie does stand there and keeps talking for a moment, but eventually he takes “If you don’t leave me alone I’ll blow your head off” for an answer. He backs out of the room and goes upstairs. Evidently Carolyn doesn’t need rescuing either.
The closing credits run over an image including the spot on the wall to the left of the main doors to Collinwood. That spot has alternately been decorated with a mirror and a metallic device resembling a miniature suit of armor. Lately it has been the mirror; when Jason first entered the house, that mirror reflected a portrait. Now, the spot is decorated with a portrait. It is one we haven’t seen before.
We also see something that hasn’t happened since episode #1. The production slate tells us that this episode went to a Take 3. Considering what they left in for broadcast, it always boggles the mind what might have led them to stop tape.
The first shot of the first episode of Dark Shadows featured well-meaning governess Vicki sitting on a train next to a window in which we saw the reflection of dashing action hero Burke Devlin. Vicki was on her way to the great estate of Collinwood, where she hoped to learn who her birth parents were. Burke was on his way to the village of Collinsport, where he hoped to exact revenge on high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins and other residents of Collinwood.
Vicki’s quest to learn her origins never took off, and hasn’t been mentioned for months. Burke’s pursuit of revenge drove a lot of action in the first twenty-one weeks of the show, but has been fading ever further into the background in the nineteen weeks since. Today, it fizzles out altogether.
In his original story bible for Dark Shadows, titled Shadows on the Wall, Art Wallace had proposed that Burke’s pressure on Roger would culminate in Roger’s death. Roger was to inadvertently reveal to Vicki that he was guilty of the crime that sent Burke to prison long ago. Roger would then try to push Vicki off the cliff at Widow’s Hill, but would miss her and go over the edge himself. The show discarded this resolution when Roger’s relationships with several other characters proved to be consistently interesting, particularly the Bossy Big Sister/ Bratty Little Brother dynamic between him and reclusive matriarch Liz. Besides, Louis Edmonds had such a gift for comic dialogue that he could get a laugh out of even the lines in which Malcolm Marmorstein attempted to be funny. So they couldn’t afford to kill Roger off.
Further, they have gone over Roger’s crime so frequently and made all the details so clear to everyone concerned that a trial wouldn’t give the audience any new information about what happened or show us any characters reacting to shocking news. It would be like a real trial, where all the evidence has gone through a discovery process and there are no surprise witnesses. No one is going to put that on commercial television in 1967.
So when Burke shows up at the great house of Collinwood with drunken artist Sam Evans, who has finally admitted that he saw what happened and took Roger’s bribe to keep quiet about it, the only real question is how Burke can leave the status quo in place.
Burke demands that Roger and Liz meet with him and Sam in the drawing room. Burke demonstrates his mastery by closing the drawing room doors, something that Liz, the mistress of Collinwood, usually does, and that Vicki did several times during the weeks when Liz was away and she was effectively in charge of the place.*
Roger of course tries out a series of lies in his attempts to deny Burke and Sam’s charges, but Liz is convinced. When she picks up the telephone and calls the sheriff, Burke reaches in and disconnects her. He says that she doesn’t have to turn Roger in- it is enough for him to know that she really would do it. She declares that she won’t let Burke keep coming back and using Roger’s guilt to blackmail the family, apparently intending to place another call. Burke says that he will never bring it up again, provided Roger confesses here and now in front of the three of them. He does. Burke tells Roger that he used to want to see him rot in jail but that now he realizes that “People like you rot wherever they are.” Burke and Sam leave, and that’s that as far as they are concerned.
During a few scenes scattered throughout the first forty weeks of Dark Shadows, Burke had considered relenting from his quest for vengeance. Those scenes hadn’t been developed in any great depth, and hadn’t been connected to each other. Only in the climactic week of the “Phoenix” storyline, when Burke and Roger briefly joined forces to save Roger’s young son David from death at the hands of his mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, did we have a sustained glimpse of something other than all-consuming enmity between the two men. That was such an extreme situation, and was followed so quickly by a renewal of their hostilities, that Burke’s decision to peace out cannot be said to have any foundation in what we have seen the characters do so far. It is simply a convenient way of discarding a story element that has outlived its usefulness.
Most episodes of Dark Shadows have a cast of five actors. The rest are almost evenly divided between casts of six and casts of four. Today is a rarity with eight on screen. Six of these eight have been deeply involved in the Revenge of Burke Devlin storyline, and are at loose ends now that it has reached its abrupt conclusion. Burke, Roger, and Sam suddenly find themselves with nothing in particular to do. Also, flighty heiress Carolyn had a mad crush on Burke that alarmed her mother Liz and terrified her uncle Roger; that ended months ago, and she’s been a utility player ever since. Vicki is starting to date Burke; if Burke is no longer a threat to the family, there’s no obvious drama in that relationship, and she doesn’t have much else going on. David was as fascinated by Burke as Carolyn was; now that Laura is gone and he is happy with Vicki as his substitute mother, he’s pretty well settled in too.
We don’t see wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson today. She had come to Collinwood as Burke’s secret agent. Now that Burke is satisfied, presumably that’s over. Nor does Sam’s daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town, appear. She’s been dating hardworking young fisherman Joe, rebuffing his suggestions that they think about marriage because she is worried about what is going on with her Pop. Now that Sam’s conflict with Roger has come to its conclusion, there isn’t any reason the two of them shouldn’t get married, or stay unmarried, or whatever. So today’s episode leaves nine of the eleven major characters with no specific connection to any unresolved storyline.
Indeed, there is only one ongoing narrative arc. Long before he wrote Shadows on the Wall, Art Wallace wrote “The House,” a 1954 episode of The Web, an anthology series produced for CBS by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman.** Wallace recycled the story of “The House” for a 1957 installment of an hourlong anthology, Goodyear Playhouse, on NBC. Alternating with Alcoa Theatre in a window known collectively as A Turn of Fate, Goodyear Playhouse featured many pilots. The only one that seems to have been picked up was My World and Welcome to It, which went to series after an interval of more than a decade. I haven’t seen Wallace’s Goodyear Playhouse episode, but the 1954 version is too thin to fill a half hour, so I can’t see that an hourlong reworking would have been likely to catch the eyes of networks that passed on so many other pilots presented in that series, including teleplays by Rod Serling and Paddy Chayefsky. Wallace incorporated the story of “The House” in Shadows on the Wall, and a couple of weeks ago Dark Shadows dredged it up.
Seagoing con man Jason McGuire presented himself at Collinwood, to Liz’ great dismay. So far, they have had five conversations, two of them in Friday’s episode. All have followed the same pattern. Jason and Liz meet in the drawing room; he makes a demand of her; she resists; he threatens to expose her terrible secret; she capitulates. It’s true that on Friday they varied this a bit. Roger was with them during the first session, so that they had to veil their meanings, and in the second session Jason finds that Liz is unable to meet his initial demand, so that he shifts to a second one. In the first scene, they have a lot to show us as Liz and Jason manage to communicate their usual messages without letting Roger in on anything, and in the second they show us that Jason puts a higher priority on keeping Liz under his control than on any particular item he might want her to give him, so they managed to be interesting that day.
Today, Jason and Liz have their sixth conversation. It isn’t in the drawing room this time, but in the basement. While looking for David, Vicki had caught Jason listening at the doors of the drawing room at the moment when Liz was talking about going to the police, and he had rushed up to his room and telephoned*** his associate Willie, telling him they should be ready to get out of town fast. This conversation lets the audience know that Jason’s threat to Liz is a bluff. David had then caught Jason trying to get into the locked room in the basement. David told Liz what he saw Jason doing. Liz then goes down to the basement herself and shines a flashlight directly into the camera. We can see her in the halo, but Jason cannot. He seems helpless while she shines the light at him.
Jason blinded by the light
Jason scrambles a bit to regain control of the situation. Liz tells him he must leave the house immediately. He finally puts into words what the audience has long since figured out is on Liz’ mind, that she killed her husband Paul Stoddard eighteen years ago, that Jason buried him in the room, and that Jason will take this information to the police if she does not comply with his demands. She yields.
Liz’ reaction is interesting in the light of her scenes with Roger. When Burke was in the room, she explained her determination to call the police by saying that blackmail is no life for anyone to live. After Burke and Sam have gone, Roger starts begging Liz to let him and David keep living in her house. She doesn’t seem to know what he is talking about. She says that “Everyone does terrible things,” a remark she had also made to Burke and that is certainly true of characters who last on soap operas. He wants to go on pleading with her, but she just walks off, deep in thought about something else.
Remembering those scenes, we see Liz not simply giving in to Jason, but making a decision to keep going along with him. That makes today’s iteration of Jason Threatens Liz a bit more worthwhile than were the first three, if not quite as lively as the two we saw Friday. We can see something going on in her mind that raises the possibility she might do something different next time.
Two actors have bad trouble with lines today. When Burke is supposed to be saying something very dramatic and powerful about “hypocrites,” Mitch Ryan is actually blabbering about “hippie-crippie… er… hippie-crizz.” And when David Collins meets his Aunt Liz on the stairs and tells her he saw Jason in the basement, David Henesy stumbles over so many lines he falls out of character. Eventually he gets enough of the words out that you can tell what he’s trying to say, but he never really recaptures David Collins’ rhythm and intonations.
This latter slip-up leads to a reminder that there are always people in the audience checking in to a series for the first time with any given episode, so that actors are subject to judgments that don’t take into account what they have done before. At the bottom of their post on this episode, John and Christine Scoleri transcribe a conversation with a friend of theirs who hadn’t seen any of the episodes before this one. He says “Those who think the kid playing David went to any kind of acting school, raise your hand. Now leave the auditorium, please.”
In fact, David Henesy had been working steadily as a professional actor for four years before joining the cast of Dark Shadows at the age of nine. During that time, he had studied under many teachers, among them Uta Hagen. Usually, that background shows through, even when a particular script gives him problems. For example, he had a lot of difficulty with his lines in #191, and I rated that one as one of his weaker efforts. But here’s what Patrick McCray said about it on his Dark Shadows Daybook:
The success of this installment rests on the narrow shoulders of David Henesy. At the end of a big Henesy episode or scene, it’s common to announce that the kid nailed it, and this episode is no exception. His scene partners have it easy. They have straightforward, high stakes objectives to pursue. Either David goes into the fire or he doesn’t. There are only so many ways that people can implore the kid to come to them. On the other hand, Henesy has to stretch out indecision and keep it fresh for twenty minutes… with the help of an “ancient legend” that he recites. Not only does he succeed like a champ, but he concludes one of his better Hagen Days with a tearful catharsis that reads as properly-uncomfortably authentic.
Patrick McCray, Dark Shadows Daybook, 7 March 2018
I disagree with McCray overall about #191- I think Henesy’s line troubles in that one are bad enough that he doesn’t “succeed like a champ,” but I do agree that there are also some good things in his performance, particularly the way he uses his eyes and his posture. And there is no doubt that the last two minutes are very good.
Not even McCray comes to Henesy’s defense regarding #201, though the scene in the basement is all right. David Collins has a pleasant little conversation with Jason, and David Henesy gives sufficient support to Dennis Patrick that we can see just how badly wasted that talented actor is in all of those scenes where Jason repeats his threat to Liz.
*When we were watching the episode, my wife, Mrs Acilius, noticed the significance of Burke’s closing the drawing room doors. She had a lot to say about it, I wish she could remember her WordPress password and write her observations here.
**Later to become game show specialists, Goodson and Todman would be the producers of Match Game, which in the 1960s was on CBS 4:00-4:30 PM Monday through Friday opposite Dark Shadows, and of Password, a version of which would replace Dark Shadows on ABC in that timeslot when the show was canceled in April 1971.
***Just a few weeks ago, Laura nearly succeeded in killing David because there were no telephones upstairs. Apparently that has led Liz to have some new lines installed.
In the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood, seagoing con man Jason McGuire has his third conversation with reclusive matriarch Liz. It is identical in form and content to their first two conversations. He makes a demand, she resists, he threatens to expose her one and only secret, and she gives in.
Liz’ brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, is also being blackmailed. His blackmailer is drunken artist Sam Evans. Unlike Jason, Sam is someone we know and have reason to like. And unlike Jason and Liz, Sam and Roger do not repeat the same conversation every time we see them.
Moreover, Jason is acting against the interests of the audience, while Sam is trying to achieve something we might like. Jason is working to isolate Liz and to drain her funds. Those goals reduce the range of stories the show can tell, limiting a major character’s interactions with the rest of the cast and cutting back on the power of the family at the center of the series from making things happen in town. Sam wants to get hold of some old paintings of his, which will give him a chance at making a big splash in New York. If Sam succeeds, future episodes will be set at least partly in the midtown Manhattan art world. That would be a radical departure from the show we’ve been watching, but a radical departure of some kind is inevitable if Dark Shadows is to keep going at all. Dark Shadows 1.0 finished its liveliest stories when blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins vanished two weeks ago, and if Dark Shadows 2.0 is going to hold our attention it is going to have to come up with something very fresh.
Ten years ago, Roger paid Sam $15,000 and received from him ten paintings. These paintings have suddenly become fashionable, and a prominent art dealer has come to Sam asking about them. The real reason Roger gave Sam the money was nothing to do with the paintings, but to bribe him. The paintings changed hands only to cover the bribe.
Sam had seen a fatal hit and run accident, and knew that Roger, not dashing action hero Burke Devlin, was the driver. Burke went to prison for the crime, and has been trying ever since to prove that Roger was responsible. Now Sam threatens to go to Burke unless Roger produces the paintings. Roger has been searching Collinwood for the paintings, but he cannot find them.
The highlights of the episode are two scenes between Sam and his daughter Maggie. In the first, we see Sam drinking and talking to himself while Maggie is in the room getting ready to go to work. Maggie knows that her father has a great opportunity and that the man who has the paintings is keeping him from realizing it. She doesn’t know who that man is. She keeps asking questions, and he keeps getting upset. He shouts “Are you going to work or aren’t you!?” Then he apologizes and tells her he didn’t mean to raise his voice. She says bitterly that she should be used to it by now. He tells her that what he’s doing, he’s doing for her, that if he succeeds she will get everything she has coming to her. She isn’t impressed, and doesn’t have much to say.
As Maggie, Kathryn Leigh Scott does a fine job of showing an Adult Child of an Alcoholic trying to distinguish between the challenges the outside world is presenting to her father and those he has brought on himself. She’s looking for a way to simultaneously be Sam’s ally against the man who is keeping the paintings from him and to stand firm as an opponent of his drinking. Above all, she is trying not to let her pity for him harden into contempt. As Sam, David Ford is alternately so self-absorbed he apparently forgets Maggie is in the room, so angry he doesn’t care what he says to her, and so hopelessly dependent on her that he all but transforms into a baby. When he is looking up at Maggie and telling her all he hopes to do for her, Sam looks for all the world like a toddler trying to keep his mommy from being angry with him. It’s a heartbreaking finish.
Their second scene is even more powerful. Maggie comes home from work to find a groggy Sam slumped in a low chair. Once he has come back to life, Sam tells her that the man was in the house while she was at work, and that he can’t find the paintings. He lets slip that the man lives in Collinwood. Maggie realizes that it must be Roger. Sam tries to deny it, but since Roger is the only man who lives there he is stuck. He can hardly claim that well-meaning governess Vicki, a 20 year old woman, was a man ten years ago, or that she paid $15,000 for ten paintings to put on display in her cubicle at the Hammond Foundling Home. He briefly claims that “Collinwood” was a slip of the tongue, but can’t keep that lie up.
Sam finally admits that Roger is the man. Maggie asks why Roger bought the paintings. Sam asks if she really wants to hear him say it. When she says she does, he starts to speak, but falls abruptly silent in the middle of a sentence. While he looks down in shame, she blurts out that he took the money as a bribe to keep silent about Roger’s crime and to consign Burke to prison. She has suspected this for some time, but is devastated to say the words and see her father’s face.
Of all the questions the two blackmail plots might prompt the show to answer, how Maggie and Sam’s relationship will change as the result of the disclosure of his secrets is the most interesting. So it should be no surprise these two scenes are among the strongest we’ve seen in months.
Closing miscellany:
At one point in the episode, we see Jason talking on the telephone to someone named “Willie.” This marks the first time we hear this name on Dark Shadows.
During a conversation with Roger, Jason sits at the piano and pokes at a few keys. This is the first time since flighty heiress Carolyn tried her hand at “Chopsticks” in #119 that a member of the cast makes use of the instrument.
Roger and Liz have a scene in the basement of Collinwood. Roger’s fear of blackmail leads him to hope that he might find Sam’s paintings in a locked room there, while Liz’ fear of blackmail leads her to forbid that anyone ever go into that room. When Roger asks Liz what is in there, she refers to her long-absent husband, Paul Stoddard: “They are… ah… old things of Paul’s. Yes, that’s it! I put his things in there.” This is so obviously a lie she is making up on the spot that we laughed out loud. Joan Bennett must have meant to elicit this reaction.
The residents of the great house of Collinwood stand around recapping the series so far. The only unanswered question that comes up is matriarch Liz’ extreme reluctance to leave the house.
Regular viewers could probably explain that to the characters. She has nowhere to go. She conducts the family’s enterprises from the drawing room, doing paperwork on a coffee table and holding meetings on the couch. The only room we’ve seen in the headquarters of the company is the office assigned to her brother Roger, and no work is done there. Since dashing action hero Burke Devlin is supposed to be a major corporate raider and he runs his business from his hotel room, the show takes a firm stand in favor of remote work.
The only spaces for socializing that we’ve seen are the Blue Whale tavern, a downscale hangout which wouldn’t have much to attract Liz, who is such a grand lady that she is played by Joan Bennett, and the restaurant at the Collinsport Inn, which is part of her adversary Burke’s territory. The only private home that has appeared is the cottage occupied by drunken artist Sam Evans and his daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town, who represent the working class in Collinsport and upon whom the head of the Collins family decidedly does not call. We’ve also paid two visits to the Pine Hotel in Bangor, Maine, whence hapless fountain pens are launched on endless journeys. That leaves the sheriff’s office, the crypt at the old cemetery, and the waterfront as the only places not on the grounds of the estate we’ve seen more than once. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why Liz, or anyone like her, would ever want to go to any of those places.
So if they are going to launch a storyline built around the question of why Liz is a recluse, they are going to have to show us someplace she might like to go. If we know that she doesn’t have anywhere to go, we won’t be in suspense as to why she isn’t going there.
Related to Liz’ reclusiveness is her concern that no one go into certain parts of the house. This is such a dead end that not even the other characters take an interest in it. When she asks if, during her recent absence in the hospital, the late and much-missed parapsychologist Dr Guthrie went into the basement, well-meaning governess Vicki almost yawns while responding “Oh, sure, he went down there.” The show didn’t bother putting Guthrie’s explorations of the house on screen, and the audience never heard him talk about anything he found there. Vicki makes it clear to Liz that he never talked about it to her, and regular viewers will remember that she was his chief contact.
Today, we learn that Liz has been wearing a chain around her neck with a key at the end for years, and that it hasn’t occurred to anyone to ask what the key unlocks. When Roger casually puts that question to her today, she angrily tells him that they shouldn’t question each other. Later, we see her use the key to open the door to a locked room in the basement. When Vicki finds Liz coming out of that room at 2:40 AM, Liz explains that she went there because she was having trouble sleeping. Evidently it is such a dull place that going there can cure insomnia. With scenes like these, they are signaling that only Liz ever thinks about the basement, and that when she takes note of the attitudes of the people around her not even she believes that there is anything there worth paying attention to. Since Liz’ interest in the basement is the only plot point we get all day, that is not a recipe for excitement.
Vicki finds Liz trying to cure her insomnia
In their post about this episode, John and Christine Scoleri pick up on Vicki’s remark that Guthrie explored the great house of Collinwood very thoroughly. John mentions that the show didn’t put any of that exploration on screen, and Christine responds with a series of images with Guthrie inserted into various rooms of the house. It’s hilarious, you should take a look.
Dark Shadows Commentary 