Well-meaning governess Vicki and vampire Barnabas are on the terrace of the great house of Collinwood. Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David, is missing, and she is upset. Vicki is weeping on Barnabas’ shoulder.
Heiress Carolyn and hardworking young fisherman Joe show up in the nick of time to prevent Barnabas biting Vicki and giving her a role in the main storyline. They report on their fruitless search for David. When they mention that David had been looking for mysterious girl Sarah, Barnabas becomes alarmed.
In recent episodes, many characters have been trying to find Sarah, in hopes that she will be able to tell them who abducted Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. In two conversations about Sarah, Vicki has kept quiet about the fact that she saw a girl matching her description in Barnabas’ house. She is sure her friend Barnabas is innocent of any wrongdoing, and does not want anyone to suspect him in connection with what happened to Maggie. But her concern for David drives that thought out of her mind, and she tells Joe and Carolyn what she saw.
Meanwhile, Barnabas goes home and tells his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie that they must find David. Barnabas knows that Sarah is the ghost of his little sister, and he is afraid she may have told David that he is a vampire. When Willie asks what Barnabas will do if he finds David, Barnabas makes it clear that he plans to kill him.
David is about ten years old, and he is the last bearer of the Collins name. Dark Shadows fans sometimes ask what would happen if any of Barnabas’ plans had ever succeeded. I think his fell design for David answers that question- he would annihilate the Collins family and turn their estate into a hellscape cut off from the world of the living. In July of 1970, the show will give us an extended vision of what would happen were another supernatural menace to achieve that result. We will also get a glimpse of an alternate version of Barnabas driving towards the same objective when House of Dark Shadows hits theaters in October of 1970.
That was a possible outcome for a feature film, but a continuing series could hardly go down that road. And lately, Barnabas has seemed too harmless to bring it about. Even first-time viewers have already seen him fail to bite someone who was actively pressing her neck towards his fangs. So it doesn’t really seem that David is in all that much danger. Indeed, Barnabas is well on his way to becoming a comic villain. We see the action through his eyes as he scrambles to keep his lies in place, and see him devise one cockamamie scheme after another, all of which fall apart. He is something like Wile E. Coyote operating in extreme slow motion.
Before Barnabas and Willie can leave in search of David, there comes a knock at the front door. It is Joe and the sheriff asking to go through the place looking for David and Sarah. The episode becomes pure comedy from that point on. On his Dark Shadows Daybook, Patrick McCray analyzes it as situation comedy; on Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn analyzes it as farce.
While Joe searches upstairs and the sheriff searches the main floor, Willie keeps jabbering about how awful it would be if they went into the basement, where they might discover Barnabas’ coffin. Barnabas keeps shushing him. Both Barnabas and Willie panic a little more visibly each time the rooster crows, reminding them that Barnabas is running out of time to get back into his coffin.
When Joe and the sheriff do ask Barnabas to unlock the basement door so they can search there, Barnabas is cornered into claiming that he lost the key. They are openly incredulous, and he squirms as he elaborates on his assertion. He gives even lamer excuses when Joe offers to break the door down and then repair it. Finally, Carolyn lets Barnabas off the hook when she comes running with word that a boy meeting David’s description has been seen on the beach. Joe and the sheriff rush out, just in time for Barnabas to find shelter from the sunrise.
Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, has come back to Collinsport. This is bad news for vampire Barnabas Collins, who kept Maggie prisoner and fears she will expose him. Barnabas’ new accomplice, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, has erased Maggie’s memory and assures him she is no longer a threat to him.
Barnabas is unconvinced that Maggie’s amnesia will last. As he grows more agitated, Julia grows calmer. This contrast reaches its climax when Julia blithely lights a cigarette from Barnabas’ candelabra and he reacts with stunned bewilderment.
Julia tells Barnabas he has no choice but to trust her and leave Maggie be. He says that it would seem so. It doesn’t seem so to the audience- we know all Barnabas has to do is bite Julia to bring her under his power.
Julia shows herself out, a spring in her step. Once Barnabas is alone, he hears a rooster announce the dawn. He mutters that Maggie is safe for the moment, but that he will kill her tonight.
By now, there are three groups of characters on Dark Shadows: those who know Barnabas is a vampire; those who do not know this, but do know that supernatural doings are afoot; and those who think the show is still the Gothic romance/ noir thriller it was in its first weeks. Those in category one can move the story along very quickly, those in category two can nudge it forward a bit, and those in category three are blocking figures who slow things down.
When she was Barnabas’ victim, Maggie was in category one. Now she’s fallen back into category three. She has even resumed her vocal habits of showing herself to be happy by starting every statement with a laugh in her voice and of exaggerating the stress on whatever words have a rising intonation. She had those classic Adult Child of an Alcoholic mannerisms in the early days of Dark Shadows, when her father’s drinking problem was a story element. Months ago they revised him as a social drinker, so it’s like she’s been spliced in from tapes of old episodes. The question of Maggie’s memory therefore generates suspense, not only because we don’t want Barnabas to kill her, but also because we don’t want her to end up in a narrative dead end and fade from the foreground of the show.
Vampire Barnabas Collins is giving a costume party in his home at the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. His distant relatives, the living members of the Collins family, are dressed as their ancestors from Barnabas’ own time as a living being. The whole thing was impossibly dull until the mischievous and witty Roger Collins suggested they have a séance. Now well-meaning governess Vicki is in a trance, channeling the spirit of Josette Collins.
The last time Josette took possession of Vicki at a séance was in #170 and #171. At that time, Josette delivered her message in French. Since Vicki could not speak French (but Alexandra Moltke speaks it fluently,) that was evidence enough to convince even the most skeptical that something was going on. Today Josette speaks English. The characters are all sure that she is the one speaking, but it doesn’t have the same effect on the audience as did that earlier irruption of a language we had not expected to hear.
I do wonder if the decision not to use French came at the last moment. Even though Vicki/ Josette’s voice is loud and clear, the others make a show of struggling to understand what she is saying and seize on a word here and there (“Something about ‘run!'”,) as people do when they are listening to someone speak a language they don’t quite understand. Perhaps writer Joe Caldwell wasn’t quite up to writing in French, and the Writer’s Guild wouldn’t let Alexandra Moltke Isles or any other Francophones on set make a translation. Or maybe they thought that the switch to French wouldn’t be as effective the second time as it was the first.
Josette is telling the story of her death. A man was chasing her, and fleeing him she threw herself off the peak of Widow’s Hill to the rocks below. Barnabas interrupts and breaks Vicki’s trance.
When the others scold him for stopping Josette before she could reveal the name of the man who ran her off the cliff, Barnabas says that the name could not have been of any importance, since whoever it was who drove Josette to kill herself must have been dead for “almost 200 years.” The others do not suspect that he was that man. They do not know that he is a reanimated corpse; they think he’s just English.
When Dark Shadows started, the stories of the tragic death of Josette and of the building of the great house of Collinwood were set in the 1830s. In the weeks before Barnabas’ introduction in April of 1967, they implied that Josette’s dates were much earlier, sometime in the 18th century. Last week, they plumped for the 1830s again. But Barnabas’ line about “almost 200 years ago” puts us back to the 1700s.
After the séance ends, we have evidence that this bit of background continuity might start to matter. Vicki looks at the landing on top of the staircase and sees the ghost of Barnabas’ 9 year old sister Sarah watching the party.
It seems that when Barnabas was freed to prey upon the living, he unknowingly brought Sarah with him. Sarah has been popping in and out quite a bit the last few weeks, and she has already made some important plot points happen. We’re starting to wonder just how many more beings will emerge from the supernatural back-world into the main action of the show. The opening voiceover today tells us that “the mists that have protected the present from the past are lifting,” so perhaps they will have to nail these dates down sooner rather than later.
The whole party had accepted instantly that Vicki was channeling the spirit of Josette and none of them ever comes to doubt it. But when she says that she saw a little girl at the head of the stairs, they get all incredulous. By the end of the episode, Vicki will have encountered so much disbelief on this point that she herself will decide that she must have been hallucinating.
Back in the great house, Roger is still overjoyed that the séance turned out to be so exciting. His sister Liz and Liz’ daughter Carolyn consider this to be in terrible taste. But Roger won’t give an inch. He has some great lines, exiting with “I think that all of the unhappiness of all of my ancestors is my rightful heritage, and you shouldn’t try to keep it from me. Good night, ladies.” Both Patrick McCray, in his Dark Shadows Daybook post about this episode, and Danny Horn, in his Dark Shadows Every Day post, make insightful remarks as they analyze the fun Louis Edmonds has playing Roger.
Carolyn approaches Vicki to speak privately. She tells her that she isn’t bothered that fake Shemp Burke Devlin is dating Vicki. Vicki’s response to this is “What?” Carolyn reminds Vicki that she used to be interested in Burke and was initially jealous of Burke’s interest in her. But she assures her she doesn’t feel that way any longer. Vicki smiles, nods, and looks away. Carolyn then says “He’s really very nice!” Vicki answers “Who?” “Burke!” says Carolyn. Again, Vicki smiles, nods, and looks away.
This is probably supposed to tell us that Vicki is coming under some kind of spell associated with Barnabas, but in fact it is likely to suggest something quite different to the audience. Burke was originally a dashing action hero played by Mitch Ryan. Dark Shadows never really came up with very much for a dashing action hero to do, but Ryan’s skills as an actor and his charismatic personality always made it seem that he was about to do something interesting. Several weeks ago, Ryan was fired off the show after he came to the set too drunk to work.
Since then, the part of Burke has been played by Anthony George. George was a well-trained actor with an impressive resume, and by all accounts was a nice guy. But he cannot dig anything interesting out of the character of Burke as he stands at this point in the series. The only scene in which George has shown any energy so far was in #267, when Burke had lost a dime in a pay phone. The rest of the time, he has blended so completely into the scenery that it is no wonder Vicki can’t remember him from one line to the next.
Back in the Old House, Barnabas talks to Josette’s portrait. In the months from #70 to #192, it was established that Josette can hear you if you do this. Several times she manifested herself either as a light glowing from the surface of the portrait or as a figure emerging from it. In #102, we saw strange and troubled boy David Collins having a conversation with the portrait- we could hear only his side of it, but it was clear that Josette was answering him.
The first time we saw Barnabas in the Old House, in #212, he spoke to the portrait. At that point, Josette was not yet his lost love. It seemed that she was his grandmother, and that she had sided against him in some terrible fight with his father Joshua. He ordered Josette and Joshua to leave the house to him. The next time David tried to talk to the portrait, in #240, it seemed that they had complied- David could no longer sense Josette’s presence in it.
Barnabas had spoken briefly to the portrait the other day, but today he makes his first substantial address to it since banishing Josette and Joshua in #212. Again he entreats her to go, but for a very different reason. Now he says that she is lost to him forever, and must allow him to live in the present. Since he has been scheming to capture a woman, erase her personality, replace it with Josette’s, and then kill her so that she will rise from the grave as a vampiric Josette, this sounds like he has decided to make a big change in his relations to the other characters.
It turns out that he hasn’t, but the writers have decided to change their relationship to their source material. Barnabas’ original plan was identical to that which Imhotep, the title character in the 1932 film The Mummy, had pursued in his attempt to replicate his relationship with his long-dead love Princess Ankh-esen-amun. Imhotep met Helen Grosvenor, whom he regarded as the reincarnation of Ankh-esen-amun because they were both played by Zita Johanns, and subjected her to the same treatment Barnabas first inflicted on Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, and now plans to try on Vicki.
Maggie is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott. The audience in 1967 would not have known that Miss Scott also played the ghost of Josette in some of her most important appearances. However, they would have noticed when David saw Maggie dressed as Josette in #240 he assumed it was the ghost, because her face was “exactly the same” as it had been when she manifested herself to him previously. So we have the same reason to believe that Maggie is the reincarnation of Josette that Imhotep had to believe that Helen was the reincarnation of the princess, and we therefore assume that Barnabas, like Imhotep, was trying to take possession of both the ghost and the living woman.
But after Barnabas tells Josette to go away, he declares that if he is to have her, she must be someone from the present. This sequence of words is nonsensical in itself, but harks back to a theory he had laid out to his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie in #274: “Take the right individual, place her under the proper conditions and circumstances, apply the required pressure, and a new personality is created.” Jonathan Frid would always sound and move like Boris Karloff, but now his project of Josettery is inspired less by Imhotep than by the various “mad doctors” Karloff played in the 1940s. Of course, in the 1960s real-life mad scientists such as Stanley Milgram and John Money were performing experiments on human subjects for which Barnabas’ statement might have served as a motto. So Barnabas is coming to be less a merger of Dracula and Imhotep than of Dracula and Dr Frankenstein.
One of the devices by which Barnabas tries to place women “under the proper conditions and circumstances” for Josettification is a music box which he bought for the original Josette and may or may not have given her.* He gives this to Vicki. To his satisfaction, she is reduced to a complete stupor when she hears it play. She is in that state when the episode ends.
* In #236, he says he never had the chance to give it to her. In subsequent episodes, he implies the opposite.
For sixteen weeks, from March to June, seagoing con man Jason McGuire had lived the high life blackmailing reclusive matriarch Liz. Now the blackmail scheme has blown up in Jason’s face, and the police have given him until sundown to clear out of Collinsport. Looking for someone else to exploit, Jason has come to the Old House on Liz’ estate, where her distant cousin Barnabas lives with Jason’s onetime henchman Willie.
Jason lingers outside a window. He sees Willie bring Barnabas a chest full of jewelry. He hears Barnabas and Willie talking about Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, whom they abducted, held prisoner, and, they believe, killed. He is still listening when Barnabas and Willie start talking about well-meaning governess Vicki, to whom Barnabas plans to give the same treatment.
A bit later, Jason finds Willie in the woods outside the house. He demands Willie meet him in the Blue Whale tavern at noon the next day and give him a pile of jewels from the chest. He tells Willie that he knows what he and Barnabas did to Maggie and what they are planning to do to Vicki. Willie agrees to the meeting.
We cut to the tavern. Jason is waiting at the bar when Vicki comes in. She grimaces at the sight of Jason, then asks Bob the bartender if he has seen Liz’ daughter Carolyn. Bob shakes his head no.
Jason insists on talking to Vicki. We do not know what to expect from this conversation. Jason is a villain who has often taken pleasure in being cruel to Liz and other characters, and the scenes in which he threatened Liz were so repetitious as to constitute cruelty to the audience. He believes that Barnabas is a serial killer of women, and his plan to squeeze money out of Barnabas requires him to turn a blind eye while he continues in that career. On the other hand, Jason showed genuine and unselfish concern for Willie when he was ill, and actor Dennis Patrick has taken every opportunity to play him as a comedy villain, with whom we can empathize while he scrambles to keep his lies from being exposed. So we can easily imagine Jason wanting to give Vicki some kind of warning.
Jason begins their talk with a question about Carolyn. Vicki tells him that Carolyn left the house because she believed the false story that he had used to blackmail Liz, and expresses her intense disapproval of him. He makes some defensive and self-pitying remarks, and Vicki continues to tell him how bad he is. He tells her that she will soon suffer hardships while he is far away, laughing at her. She says she doesn’t know what he means, and he refuses to explain. She says “There is nothing as sad as a hollow threat.” At no point in any of this had it seemed that Jason was about to warn Vicki of Barnabas’ plans.
As Vicki is going, Jason says he wonders who she really is and where she comes from. He then says that she does not know the answers to those questions. He says that he was in Collinsport 18 years ago, and he might know them. That stops Vicki in her tracks. She turns, looks at Jason, and asks him what he knows. He says that whatever he knows, he will take with him. She says that he is only trying to hurt her. He asks if he is succeeding. She goes.
Vicki wonders if Jason knows something
It has been a while since we last heard about Vicki’s quest to solve the riddle of her origins. That story element never amounted to much, in part because, as Wallace McBride pointed out in a Collinsport Historical Society post in 2020, the very first episode of the show ended by showing us Liz and Vicki as each other’s mirror images. From that point on, everything has pointed to Liz as Vicki’s biological mother. Art Wallace’s original story bible for Dark Shadows had suggested that Liz’ ex-husband Paul Stoddard would be revealed as Vicki’s father and some other woman as her mother, but Art Wallace also said that the story might be better served by saying that Liz was her mother by another man, and that seems to be what they have tacitly done.
Art Wallace’s plan had also been that Vicki’s origins would be revealed at the climax of the blackmail story. It is not clear when they gave up on that. Since the actual episode, #271, runs drastically short, it is possible that they changed their minds only a few days before taping.
One of the possibilities was that Liz would admit that she was Vicki’s mother and Jason was her father. They haven’t done much to suggest that there ever was a sexual relationship between Liz and Jason, so this possibility lurks far in the background. If it were to turn out to be true, Jason’s indifference to Barnabas’ plans for Vicki becomes all the more chilling. Since Stoddard was also indifferent to Carolyn’s well-being, it would give Liz’ two daughters something miserable to have in common.
Jason was a friend of Stoddard, so he might have some information that would be meaningful if they are going for a twist in which all the hints that Liz is Vicki’s mother by another man were false and another woman were her mother by Stoddard. At any rate, when Jason says that whatever information he has will leave with him, it seems that he is telling the audience that the quest for Vicki’s origins will never be resolved.
Willie shows up at the tavern and gives Jason one piece of jewelry. Jason is loudly dissatisfied with this. Willie leaves him.
Later, Jason breaks into the Old House. As he enters, three notes ring out on the soundtrack. I sometimes laugh at this three note motif with my wife, Mrs Acilius. Not only because “dum, dum, DUMM!” is a corny way to end a show, but also because it often follows a three syllable closing line. So if the last words spoken before we hear it are “I want more!,” we will sing “I- want- MORE!” Since Barnabas is a far more dangerous person than Jason knows, this time Mrs Acilius sang “You- are- DEAD!”
Frustrated that her mother, reclusive matriarch Liz, has decided to marry seagoing con man Jason McGuire, flighty heiress Carolyn spends the day and night with motorcycle enthusiast Buzz Hackett.
Buzz is modeled on the biker dude villains of Beach Blanket Bingo. Some of his mannerisms, such as speaking in a Beatnik slang that was a decade and a half out of date by 1967 and wearing sunglasses when he rides his motorcycle at night, would have been a little too broadly comic even for that movie, and are ludicrously out of place on the rather solemn Dark Shadows. The very sight of Buzz therefore raises a laugh.
I mean really
Nancy Barrett’s acting style was to throw herself unreservedly into whatever the script had her character doing that day, and seeing her present Carolyn as a newly minted biker mama is hilarious from beginning to end. When Carolyn and Buzz show up at the Blue Whale tavern, she’s already sloppily drunk. They see well-meaning governess Vicki and hardworking young fisherman Joe at a table, and Carolyn insists they go over and greet them. Vicki and Joe give Buzz and Carolyn frosty stares, which are of course the main ingredients of drawing room comedy.
If Vicki put on a police uniform, Carolyn wore a big feathered headdress, and Joe were a construction worker, they could make beautiful music together
As Danny Horn points out in his post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, Buzz is actually pretty nice. That’s a good comic move- the obvious outsider is the one who knows enough to be uncomfortable, while the one who has been a central member of the cast from the first week is oblivious to the social awkwardness surrounding her. If it were the other way around, we might feel sorry for Buzz or be angry with him, but since we know that Carolyn’s place is essentially secure we can laugh at her uninhibited behavior, no matter how much it may make others squirm.
Buzz takes Carolyn home to the great house of Collinwood, parking his motorcycle a few feet from the front door. That isn’t a sign of inconsideration- there only are a few feet in front of the door, they’d be off the set if he parked any further away. It’s still pretty funny to see.
Buzz and Carolyn
Inside the house, Buzz jokes about riding his bike up the main staircase. Carolyn laughs, then urges him actually to do it. He refuses, clearly appalled that she would want such a thing.
Carolyn shocks Buzz
They go into the drawing room. Carolyn picks up a transistor radio and finds some dance music. Buzz is ready to dance, but takes a seat when Carolyn goes into the violent, rhythm-less jerks people in Collinsport do when music is playing. Buzz watches her, apparently ready to provide first aid.
As Carolyn’s performance of the Collinsport Convulsion ends with her falling face first, Liz comes downstairs. She protests against Carolyn and Buzz making so much noise at 3 AM. For the first time, Buzz is rude. He does not stand up when Liz comes into the room, and when Carolyn introduces her as “Mommy,” he greets her with “Hiya, Mommy!” Liz orders him to go.
Before Buzz has a chance to comply, Carolyn starts taunting her mother, yelling at her that her name will soon be “Mrs McGuire!” Liz retreats up the stairs as Carolyn taunts her with repetitions of this name. When Liz is on the landing, Carolyn and Buzz clench and kiss passionately. While they kiss, we see Liz above and behind them, trying to exit the scene. As it happens, the door she is supposed to go out is stuck, so she has to struggle with the knob until she’s out of the frame. Thus, the longest period of intentional comedy on the show ends, not with a break into angry melodrama, but with a huge unintended laugh. It is one of the few truly perfect things ever seen on television.
Door’s stuck
As Buzz, Michael Hadge really isn’t much of an actor- he shouts his lines and goes slack whenever he isn’t speaking. That doesn’t matter so much today. Nancy Barrett’s high-energy performance, the other cast members’ skill at comedy of manners, and the mere sight of Buzz combine to keep the audience in stitches throughout.
Still, I can’t help but wonder what might have been. Yesterday, vampire Barnabas Collins threatened to murder his blood thrall, the sorely bedraggled Willie Loomis. Viewers watching on first run might have wondered if Buzz was going to be his replacement. They might have, that is, if Buzz were played by an actor in the same league as John Karlen. With Mr Hadge in the role, that suspense never gets off the ground.
One of the little games I play in my head when the show gets boring is to ask who else might have taken a part and to imagine how it would have changed with that other actor in the cast. So, if Harvey Keitel was available to dance in the background at the Blue Whale in #33, then surely Mr Keitel’s friend Robert De Niro would have taken a speaking part in #252. Actors inspire screenwriters, and if Mr De Niro had played Buzz I would have wanted to write this line for him to speak to Liz: “Mrs Stoddard, you got me all wrong. You think I want to hurt you, or take something from you, but that’s not the way it is. Me and Carolyn, we’re just trying to have a good time.” Mr Hadge’s shouting wouldn’t have made much of a line like that, but delivered by Mr De Niro to Joan Bennett it could have started a scene between Buzz and Liz that would have expanded his role beyond comic relief and earned him a permanent place in the cast.
It may be for the best that it didn’t work out that way. A De Niro-Buzz might have been such a hit that Dark Shadows never would have got round to becoming the excursion into sheer lunacy that we know and love. And Martin Scorsese might never have been able to get soap opera star/ teen idol Robert De Niro to answer his phone calls.
Closing Miscellany
There are some other notable moments today. We might wonder why Vicki and Joe are sitting together in the Blue Whale, when Vicki has been dating dashing action hero Burke. In fact, the script originally called for Vicki to be out with Burke, but actor Mitch Ryan showed up too drunk to work the day they taped this one and was fired off the show. Burke gave up on his big storyline over ten weeks ago and there hasn’t been a reason for him to be on the show since. Besides, the same cast of characters cannot indefinitely include one whose type is “dashing action hero” and another whose type is “vampire.” The vampire is already pulling in bigger audiences than anything else they’ve done, so Burke has to go. Still, Ryan was such a charismatic screen presence that he was a high point in every episode he appeared in, so it’s sad we’ve seen him for the last time.
The bartender brings drinks to Vicki and Joe’s table and Joe calls him “Bob.” They have settled on this name by now. The same performer, Bob O’Connell, has been playing the bartender since the first week, but in the opening months of the show he had a long list of names. My favorite was “Punchy.”
There is some new music in the jukebox at the tavern and more new music while Carolyn and Buzz are outside the front doors of Collinwood. In the tavern we hear something with brass, and at the doors we hear a low-key saxophone solo.
The closing credits give Buzz’ last name as “Hackett.” We heard about a businessman named Hackett in #223, but Buzz doesn’t seem to be related to him. In the Blue Whale, Carolyn says that her mother has more money than Buzz will ever see, to which Buzz laughingly replies “That isn’t much!”
Two of the best blogs about Dark Shadows share the same web address. One is Dark Shadows Every Day, a series of more than a thousand well-crafted, insightful, often hilarious essays by Danny Horn about episodes #210 through #1245 and related topics. The other is the group blog that Danny’s readers maintain in the comment threads under each of his posts. The commenters outdid themselves in their remarks on Danny’s post about this episode.
At the beginning of the episode, addled quack Dr Woodard has figured out that the two victims of vampire Barnabas Collins, sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie Loomis and missing local girl Maggie Evans, have something in common. He hopes that if he can compare a sample of Willie’s blood with Maggie’s he will figure out what that is. Willie is terrified that this will lead to the exposure of Barnabas. Puzzlingly, Barnabas is unworried and orders Willie to cooperate. Only after Willie has given the blood and the doctor has left do we learn that Barnabas switched Willie’s sample with a normal one. “DS Willie” comments:
Barnabas is seriously messing with Willie’s mind in this one. So much of what Barnabas says has double meanings, even triple. Of course he’s playing with Woodard too, but Woodard never realizes it.
For one thing, just after Willie’s blood is taken, Barnabas makes creepy blood comments, ending with “…surrendering your utmost self” and his next line “Now, you had no choice.” I suspect this is all meant more for Willie than for the doctor. Willie had no choice but to surrender his utmost self.
Barnabas delights in repeatedly demonstrating his control over Willie, all to the doctor’s approval. When Willie flares up momentarily at Dr. Woodard’s remark about understanding being frightened, Barnabas immediately brings Willie to heel with a harsh word and harsher look.
Later Barnabas jerks Willie’s chain some more, just because he can, and to tighten his control even more. It’s classic Stockholm syndrome type stuff. The victim is abused and in absolute fear for his life, and yet any lessening of the captor’s threats or violence can be perceived as mercy, bonding the victim to his captor.
His shirt in Barnabas’ menacing grasp, Willie swears he would never, never betray Barnabas. He is only thrown to the ground instead of being choked or beaten. Barnabas proceeds to make Willie feel stupid and disloyal and dishonorable and undeserving of future protection. Add enthrallment on top of that. Oh, and the police having Willie as their top suspect, and Jason having beaten and threatened to kill Willie, even though Willie was trying to protect him.
It is actually pretty amazing that Willie has held up under the strain. He is in full-on survival mode, and yet still has the decency to try to shield Maggie and others insofar as he can, given his powerlessness.
Hey, what was up with Barnabas saying Willie’s blood is a “delicate little flower painted on glass”? He says it twice (once to Woodard and once to Willie) while looking directly at the slide. That doesn’t come across as a remark about blood in general.
Oh. Barnabas was using yet another method to get Willie under his thumb: verbally emasculating him with the “delicate little flower” reference to Willie’s blood on the slide. But I think Willie was so relieved that he missed the diss.
I made a contribution of my own to the thread. In response to Danny’s unfavorable comparison of Dr Woodard with Bram Stoker’s Professor Van Helsing, I commented:
I don’t think Woodard is Van Helsing at all. He’s Dr John Seward, treating Lucy and Renfield and baffled by the whole thing until he calls in his brilliant old professor. The mysterious Hoffman, one of the best men in the field, that’s the expert who is going to shake things up.
Seward is young, dynamic, and ready for adventure, while Woodard is middle aged, pudgy, and ready for an afternoon tee-time at the local country club. But that change is necessary. Readers of the novel have plenty of time to think about the sort of group that might go on the expedition Van Helsing organizes, and will expect a bunch of high-spirited youths. On a soap, a character like Seward would be the heroine’s new love interest, and Dark Shadows is flailing about trying to figure out what to do with the love interests Vicki and Maggie have now. The last thing they want right now is another bold, handsome young man who is apparently under a vow of celibacy.
In response to Danny’s remark that Jonathan Frid’s bobbles make it hard to guess what lines the script originally gave vampire Barnabas Collins, commenter “TD” replies:
#1. “Now, in a way, isn’t that understandable?
#2. “After all, blood is the life force.
#3. “It reaches into the deepest recesses of both the heart, and the brain.
#4. “It is the familiar of our complete being.
#5. “To surrender even one drop of it is to suggest a partial surrender of one’s utmost self.”
I’m not so sure this is actual Fridspeak. Yes, it’s kind of gibberishy, but it does make grammatical sense and some sort of syntactical sense. Frid delivers it smoothly and with confidence, unlike his halting fumblings when he can’t remember his lines. When he says this, it’s in a close-up shot, and he’s looking down. My guess is that he is reading it directly from a script. Also, this is Joe Caldwell’s first script (or first credited script–he did some writing on earlier Ron Sproat scripts, if another website is accurate). Maybe this is Caldwell exhibiting the enthusiasm of a first solo outing. Dr. Woodard has a couple of hi-falutin’ and rhetorically “poetic” (and gibberishy) speeches of his own in this episode.
Also, might this episode be marked as the first one to demonstrate the “reluctant” or “sympathetic” vampire in Barnabas’s character? In this episode (in another speechy series of lines), when Dr. Woodard and Barnabas are discussing the “madman” who broke into Woodard’s office and stole the blood sample, we get this exchange:
Dr. Woodard: You know, it’s the peculiar magnificence of the human spirit that’s required to provide the potential for such corruption. [See? This is like the Barnabas “blood is the life force” speech–who talks like this???] Barnabas: Yes, I know what you mean. Whoever he is, he must certainly be, at one and the same time, more than a man…and less than a man. Dr. Woodard: You seem almost sorry for him. Barnabas: Sorry? No, I’m not sorry. The truth is, I loathe him. I loathe him very, very deeply.
I agree with “TD” that today’s dialogue is marred by purple passages; I would go so far as to say that none of the lines would have survived a rewrite. Not among the lines delivered by the human actors, anyway- our beagle was fascinated when the hound howled on the soundtrack.
I should mention that at least one perceptive critic of Dark Shadows disagrees with me and “TD” about the script. Patrick McCray’s Dark Shadows Daybook is in its own way the equal of the two blogs at Dark Shadows Every Day. Patrick wrote two posts about this episode. In one from 2016, he wrote that “The language is poetic and evocative. Barnabas has moments of self-loathing and ambiguity that are gorgeously, hauntingly phrased, and the same can be said for Woodard’s exploration of science and mystery.” In 2019, he went so far as to call it “the best written episode of the series.”
John and Christine Scoleri also include some interesting material in the post about this episode on their recap-heavy blog Dark Shadows Before I Die. I particularly liked the series of screenshots at the end of the post captioned with some of the purple prose from today’s dialogue.
Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, has vanished from her hospital bed. We start with a long succession of characters talking about this fact with Maggie’s father Sam. Had David Ford played Sam as effectively as he did in his first weeks on the show, one such exchange might have made for a good scene. But Ford is overacting today, and the first part of the episode drags on and on.
We cut to the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, where Maggie’s boyfriend Joe and dashing action hero Burke Devlin have gone. Vampire Barnabas Collins resides in the Old House along with his sorely bedraggled blood thrall, Willie Loomis. Joe and Burke have no clue there is anything odd about Barnabas, but they don’t like Willie and suspect he may know what happened to Maggie.
Barnabas lets Joe and Burke in the house and explains that he sent Willie to run some errands for him out of town. When they tell him about the evidence that has led them to think Willie might be connected with Maggie’s disappearance, he persuades them that there is nothing to their suspicions. Once they are gone, he calls out “It’s all right, they’ve gone. You’re safe here- safe here with me.” Maggie walks into the room.
Barnabas talking to Burke
This scene is very good. Barnabas is made up to look much more like The Vampire than he has been in previous encounters with characters he was trying to fool into thinking he was a harmless eccentric recently arrived from overseas. He is polite enough to Joe and Burke that they can chalk his appearance up to the lateness of the hour, but as the audience watches him extract information from them point by point, until he knows exactly what they do and don’t know, we can see him calculating when and how he will have to kill them. It is as good a scene as Jonathan Frid has had since he debuted as Barnabas.
Frid’s performance in this scene benefits from his flawless line delivery. Not so, unfortunately, the scene that follows. His bobbles are not especially bad by Dark Shadows standards, but his task is far more fragile than any he has taken on before. We’ve seen him pretending to be the Collins family’s mild-mannered cousin from England; in those moments, Barnabas himself is taking on a challenging acting job, and Frid’s difficulties sometimes dovetail with troubles we might expect Barnabas to have in his performance. We’ve seen him abusing Willie; in those moments, we might expect him to sputter a bit, and Frid can hide some of his memory lapses in that mannerism. But now, he is telling Maggie what his plans are for her. As he does so, we realize he is a crazy man spilling out his deepest and sickest obsession. That context leaves nowhere to conceal even the slightest flub. As a sign of triumphant psychosis, the lines have to flow without interruption. Every time Frid stumbles for a fraction of a second, he breaks character.
Nor can Kathryn Leigh Scott bail him out. As Maggie, her part is to wander around in a stupor and occasionally repeat the last word or two of whatever is said to her. She makes that a lot more interesting to watch than you might expect, but there’s only so far it can take you.
Barnabas’ plan takes us outside the themes we are familiar with from vampire fiction. He wants to brainwash Maggie into thinking that she is Josette Collins, who has now been retconned into the woman Barnabas loved in his human days. His goal is that Maggie Evans will cease to exist, and that in her body Josette will live again.
Dracula never wanted to do anything like that, though after Dark Shadows has a hit with this storyline it will become part of vampire lore. Prince Mamuwalde, the menace in the 1972 film Blacula, kidnapped the heroine and tried to turn her into his long-dead love. Another undead fictional man from Africa had tried the same thing in 1932, when Imhotep, played by Boris Karloff, had spent the bulk of The Mummytrying to turn the heroine into a revived form of his adored Princess Ankh-esen-amun. Frid’s face and coloring were somewhat similar to those of Bela Lugosi, a fact often remarked in connection with his casting as a vampire. But his voice and movements are strongly reminiscent of Boris Karloff, and as a mashup of Dracula and Imhotep he is a synthesis of these two actors.
Barnabas gives Maggie a music box that he had intended to give Josette. He says that he bought it for Josette in his travels in “the Orient,” intending to give it to her “on a very special day,” and “this is that day.” This leaves us wondering why the day never came when he could give it to Josette. Did he become a vampire before he returned from his travels? Did he come back from his travels to find that she was no longer available to him? Or was it supposed to be a present at their wedding, a wedding that never occurred?
Barnabas also produces Josette’s wedding dress and tells Maggie that she, as the new Josette, will wear it. When Imhotep produces Ankh-esen-amun’s clothing and jewelry, we remember that royal personages in ancient Egypt were buried with their possessions and assume that he has retrieved them from her tomb. The show did lead us to wonder if the Collinses once had a similar practice. Willie released Barnabas because he had heard a story that some of the Collinses were buried with expensive jewelry and so was trying to rob a grave. The story of the buried jewels was framed as an echo of the Gothic romances that inspired the first weeks of Dark Shadows, but has now become an anticipation of the show’s journey into Universal Pictures’ back catalogue of horror movies.
If Barnabas does manage to somehow erase Maggie and bring Josette back to life in her body, it won’t be the first time Miss Scott has played Josette. In #70, Miss Scott was the ghost who emerged from Josette’s portrait and danced outside the Old House. Miss Scott put Josette’s veil on again in #126 when she led the ghosts who scared maniacal handyman Matthew Morgan to death before he could murder well-meaning governess Vicki. In that one, she delivered a few lines as Josette. Miss Scott’s name did not appear in the credits as Josette in either of those episodes, and the only time we caught a glimpse of Josette’s face was in #149, when she was played by stand-in Rosemary McNamara. But if by any odd chance a viewer does know that Miss Scott has played Josette before, the final dissolve from a closeup of Miss Scott to one of Josette’s portrait suggests a definite possibility that Barnabas’ plan, nonsensical though it seems, will somehow succeed.
Danny Horn’s post about this episode on his Dark Shadows Every Dayis particularly good. He compares its visual strategy to that of the one surviving contemporary segment of General Hospital, and praises the ambitious approach director Lela Swift took to composing images. I should also mention Patrick McCray’s Dark Shadows Daybook post, in which he analyzes the way the story alienates us from our rooting interest in Maggie’s safety by promising a more exciting story if Barnabas has his way with her for an extended period.
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.
The opening voiceover complains about “a frightening and violent man.” We then see a fellow with a crazed look on his face trying to break into a coffin. Assuming that he is the frightening and violent man, a first time viewer might not be especially upset when a hand darts from the coffin and chokes him, even though something like that can’t be altogether a good sign.
At a mansion identified as the great house of Collinwood, an aristocratic lady is demanding that a man in a captain’s hat account for the whereabouts of someone called Willie. The man answers to the name of Jason and calls the lady Liz. Liz has had all she can take of Willie, whoever he might be, and is not at all happy that Willie’s things are still in her house. Jason does a lot of fast talking, but cannot satisfy Liz either that Willie is really leaving or that he himself does not know where Willie is.
Jason talks with the housekeeper, a woman named Mrs Johnson. He asks her a series of questions about what she knows about Willie and she asks why he wants to know. Even though Mrs Johnson was in the room when Liz was insisting that Jason find Willie and get rid of him, for some unaccountable reason he will not tell her that he is looking for Willie.
Despite Jason’s inexplicable reticence, Mrs Johnson does tell him that Willie was preoccupied with the portrait of an eighteenth century figure named Barnabas Collins, that he was also interested in a legend that another eighteenth century personage, someone named Naomi Collins, was buried with a fortune in jewels, that Naomi Collins is buried in a tomb in a cemetery five miles north of town, and that the night before she saw Willie hanging around the toolshed. Returning viewers will recall that in yesterday’s episode, well-meaning governess Vicki had also told Jason that she had seen Willie in the vicinity of the toolshed, carrying a bag. There doesn’t seem to be a television set in the house, so everyone spends the evenings looking out the windows at the toolshed.
We see a cemetery. It soon becomes clear that it is the same cemetery we saw in the opening teaser. The gate of the tomb in which the frightening and violent man did his sinister work is swinging in the breeze. An old man in a three piece suit and celluloid collar comes upon it. He shows alarm and mutters that he can feel evil in the air.
Jason arrives at the cemetery and meets the old man. Jason says that he is looking for a friend of his, a young man. The old man identifies himself as the caretaker of the cemetery and laments the fact that a young man meeting the description Jason gives was there last night and broke the lock on the gate to the tomb. A first-time viewer’s suspicion that Willie and the frightening and violent man from the teaser are one and the same finds confirmation.
The caretaker can’t believe that Jason is unable to sense the palpable evil that emanates from the tomb. Jason overcomes the caretaker’s attempts to keep him out and makes his way into the tomb. The caretaker keeps warning Jason of the perceptible evil and Jason keeps failing to perceive it. Jason does find a cigarette on the edge of a casket in the tomb, and in closeup gives a look that can only be his recognition of a trace of Willie’s presence.
Jason finds Willie’s cigarette
Jason returns to the great house. Liz is exasperated that he still can’t tell her where Willie is, and Mrs Johnson is irritated he doesn’t put his hat and coat where they belong. After Jason and Liz have left her alone in the foyer, Mrs Johnson takes Jason’s things to the coat closet.
We see Mrs Johnson fussing with the hat and coat from inside the coat closet, an unusual perspective that has in the past been used during shots when characters have stumbled onto important evidence about whatever mystery they were puzzling over at the moment. The shot goes on long enough to lead us to wonder if Mrs Johnson is about to find something important. My wife, Mrs Acilius, mentions that each time she has seen this shot she expected Mrs Johnson to find Willie’s cigarette in Jason’s pocket and to recognize it.
Mrs Johnson fussing with Jason’s coat
That expectation is thwarted when there comes a knock at the door. Mrs Johnson answers and greets the visitor.
The next shot is from the perspective of the visitor. We see a look of astonishment on Mrs Johnson’s face as a man in a fedora and an overcoat asks to be announced to “the mistress of this house, Mrs Elizabeth Collins Stoddard.” He identifies himself as Mrs Stoddard’s cousin from England. Mrs Johnson invites the man in. He hastens across the threshold.
We cut back to the interior, and see the man and Mrs Johnson facing each other. As she bustles up the stairs, the camera tracks around to show him standing next to the portrait of Barnabas Collins, a portrait he resembles strongly. He says, “Oh, madam! If you would, you may tell her that it is Barnabas Collins.”
For regular viewers, it is refreshing to see Jason on the defensive. Ten times in the first eight episodes where they appeared together, he and Liz had a conversation in which he made a demand of her, she resisted, he threatened to expose her terrible secret, and she capitulated. Today is the second episode in which they have interacted without reenacting this drab ritual. Liz is driving the action, Jason is thinking fast, and they are each in their element. For a first time viewer wondering about the hand that came out of the coffin, it’s a lot of filler, but for those of us who have been suffering through the tedium of the blackmail plot it is a fun change of pace.
Regular viewers will also be glad to see the return of the caretaker. He appeared four times* in the storyline of Laura Murdoch Collins, the humanoid Phoenix, and managed to be simultaneously eerie and funny. His catchphrases “Died by fire!” and “The dead must rest!” are all it takes to make Mrs Acilius laugh out loud. His return in #209 moved Patrick McCray to label him a refugee from the EC comics universe, and in my post about that episode I pointed to a shot that looks so much like a panel from an EC comic book that I wonder if the similarity might have been intentional.
While first time viewers may be confused or impatient with the caretaker’s oft-repeated attempts to alert Jason to the nimbus of evil that hangs in the air around him, regular viewers know that the caretaker is the one who understands the show he is on. Jason thinks that he’s on a noir crime drama, and indeed there had been a period when Dark Shadows just about met that description.
But for months now, all the action has been pointing towards the supernatural back-world behind the visible setting. Jason’s own storyline was introduced the very day Laura’s ended, and it is a means for wrapping up all the non-supernatural narrative elements still lying around. Jason’s insensibility to the evil in the tomb is not only a sign that he is himself too corrupt to tell the difference between a wholesome space and a cursed one, but also that he doesn’t fit into the genre where Dark Shadows will be from now on. The audience in 1967 wouldn’t have known that actor Dennis Patrick always insisted on fixing a date for his departure when he joined the cast of a daytime soap, but this scene should give them a strong indication that Jason McGuire is not to be with us indefinitely.
Patrick McCray’s commentary on this episode includes an analysis of director John Sedwick’s visual strategy in the last two shots, those in which Jonathan Frid first appears as Barnabas Collins. McCray confines himself to the first thing photography students are usually taught, the “Rule of Thirds.” But that’s all it takes to get us to look closely at the imagery and to see how Sedwick tells his story with pictures:
Two clear and subtly clever images with a bridge. His introduction comes from his own perspective, rather than Mrs. Johnson’s. It’s an exterior shot of the entrance, looking in.
The grid helps us divide the image. People in the west read from left to right, and tend to circle in our gaze back to the left. Sedwick uses this model of composition in all three shots. In image 1, we see someone — him? — through the eyes of Mrs. Johnson as the camera hangs over his shoulder, minimizing her (1.1). Why is she so transfixed? We follow her gaze up to the towering figure (1.2). Following the slope of his collar, we come back to Mrs. Johnson… specifically, her throat (1.3). After that, we circle back up to her gaze, even more worried. For what reason?
Then he enters with purpose, and we next see him again from the back, divesting himself of his cane and hat, getting a glimpse of his strangely antique cloak. His voice is rich with a uniquely tentative sense of authority. We still don’t see his face, just bits of his profile. These moments tease us, and yet they put us in the position of a confidant of the vampire’s. The composition mirrors what we saw outside. Within, Mrs. Johnson (2.1) is minimized, and the turn in the figure shows him looming, ready to pounce. Again, we begin with her, following her gaze from left to right. The mystery of what bedevils her, bedevils us, as well. The man towers (2.2) in the right, blocking the exit. Instead of following a sloping collar, we follow its larger, expanding offspring in the cape, which takes us circling to the left again where we stop on the poor, miniscule shield of his hat and then, like a wolf pulling her away, his feral looking cane (2.3).
Situated so close to the predator, with his gaze elsewhere, we have a strange safety. We don’t see him from the eyes of his prey. Instead, we are a quietly unacknowledged friend. Finally, as Mrs. Johnson goes to summon Elizabeth, the figure turns to face the portrait, rotating upstage to let us see him from profile to profile. As she exits, and we are alone with him, the chiseled face comes into focus from the side. It is alien. It is familiar. We think we know why, but then we see why. They are only face to face for a moment before the camera takes us away from him and uncomfortably close to the painting from 1795, cold and haughty and haggard and sad. He then steps even uncomfortably closer to it and spins to give his inevitable name. We see the two men in mutual relief.
The painting of Barnabas is a prisoner in a four-sided frame on the wall, disapproving and distant as the first thing our eyes rest on (3.1). Is the painting gazing at the man? No. The more we look, the more the painting is gazing at us, as if we’ve been caught looking. It’s natural to avert our eyes from this, and by comparison, section 3.2 is practically benevolent. His impossible doppelganger is standing before it in three dimensions on our 2D screen. Liberated, he smiles, and there is something optimistic about it. He’s gazing upward to the landing, yes, but it’s also to the future. Gazing left, he’s anticipating the next image rather than look for one that has passed. Subtly, our eyes wander down to 3.3, his medal, a subtle reminder that, despite his strange warmth, he’s a soldier as well, and a force to be reckoned with.
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.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 