Blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins opens the front door of the great house of Collinwood. Housekeeper Mrs Johnson intercepts her. Laura wants to see her son, strange and troubled boy David Collins. Mrs Johnson tells her that David has gone to town with well-meaning governess Vicki to buy shoes. Laura objects that she was supposed to take David to get new shoes, and is quite upset that Vicki has taken this from her. She is even more upset when Mrs Johnson says she is under orders to keep David in the house unless he is with Vicki or flighty heiress Carolyn. Laura asked who gave those orders, and is shocked to hear that it was her estranged husband, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger.
Laura shouts for Roger, who comes downstairs to see her. In the drawing room, she demands to know why he is keeping David from her. At first he repeats Vicki’s old line that David is falling behind in his studies, but when Laura dismisses this he tells her that he is suspicious of her because of all the strange goings-on that started when she came back to town. They quarrel about this for some time, and Roger holds his ground.
Laura goes to the Collinsport Inn, where her ex-boyfriend, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, is in residence. Burke also refuses to help her. He tells her that she is not at all the same person he was in love with ten years before. She protests that everyone gets older, and he says it isn’t that. She has somehow become a stranger to him.
Yesterday, visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie had laid out the case against Laura to Roger, while Vicki presented the same facts to Burke. Roger resisted until the ghost of Josette Collins intervened to present him with some particularly hair-raising information. Today, we see that Josette and Guthrie have combined to carry their point, and have enlisted Roger in the fight against Laura.
After Vicki had told Burke why she regards Laura as a threat to David, Burke had said that he thought he ought to go along with her request that he stop urging David to leave with his mother. But he admitted that Laura has such a strong emotional effect on him that he couldn’t promise that he would be able to follow that resolution. In the scene between Burke and Laura, Burke alternately gives Laura hard stares and avoids eye contact altogether, turning his back on her and edging away whenever possible. Returning viewers will appreciate the effort he is making to keep his feelings from overwhelming him. By the time the scene ends, the two most important men in David’s life are both on the team opposing Laura.
Laura loses her last ally, Burke breaks his own heart
Back at Collinwood, Guthrie talks briefly with Roger. For the first time, Roger speaks respectfully to Guthrie, whom he has always before disdained as a quack. Roger leaves, and Guthrie has a few words with Mrs Johnson. Mrs Johnson mentions that when she was cleaning the cottage where Laura is staying, she made a move to extinguish the fire in the hearth. Laura responded with terror, frantically demanding that she leave the fire alone. At this news, Guthrie decides to pay a call on Laura.
In the cottage, Guthrie says that it is very warm and makes a move to put the fire out. He observes Laura’s panicked reaction. He asks her why fire is important to her; she says she merely dislikes cold rooms. He asks if she derives a power from fire; she says she doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Laura asks Guthrie if he is the one who talked Roger into keeping her from seeing David. Guthrie says yes. She asks why, and he tells her he thinks she is a danger to her son. She asks what danger she could be to David, and he asks her who she really is. When he says that she is not the woman Roger married, she ridicules the idea that an impostor could fool all the people who have identified her as Laura. He says that he doesn’t mean that she is an impostor. When she asks what he does mean, he asks if she really wants him to say the words. She says yes. He tells her “You, Laura Murdoch Collins, are the undead.”*
*If I recall correctly, that marks the first time the phrase “the undead” is spoken on Dark Shadows.
Like many children of divorce, strange and troubled boy David Collins finds himself having to decide which parent he will live with. He and his father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, have been living in the great house of Collinwood as guests of Roger’s sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, ever since Roger ran out of money some months ago. Now David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, has reappeared after an absence of many years, and she wants to take David. This idea delighted Roger from the first, but David had initially reacted to Laura with fear. He still has mixed feelings about her.
Today, well-meaning governess Vicki is trying to get David to focus on his studies. He tells her that he is thinking about his living situation. He likes Collinwood, especially since Vicki came. But he has just about decided to go away with his mother.
Vicki asks why David wants to do this. He reminds her of a vision he had yesterday that terrified him. He saw himself in the fireplace, immersed in flames and showing no sign of wanting to escape them. He interprets this as a warning from the supernatural realm that he is in great danger, and that the danger is to be found at Collinwood. He believes he will find safety if he goes far from the estate with his mother.
Vicki knows that David is partly correct. She has considerable evidence that the ghost of Josette Collins has been trying to warn David and her and several other people that David is in danger of being burned alive. She is also sure that the source of this danger is at Collinwood- it is Laura herself. She is an inhuman creature who will burn David alive. Vicki can’t tell David about this, but she does remind him of some of Josette’s previous warnings. David realizes that his mother featured prominently in those warnings, but does not see that she is the one Josette is warning him about. To Vicki’s dismay, David concludes that Laura is also in danger, and that it is urgent that the two of them go off together at once.
When her warnings to David backfire, Josette is running true to form. The first time she tried to rescue someone from imminent peril was in episode 122, when crazed handyman Matthew Morgan had kidnapped Vicki. Matthew’s response upon hearing a ghostly voice was to put a knife to Vicki’s throat. Eventually Josette enlisted some of her buddies from that land of ghosts which forms the back-world behind what we see, and together they would stop Matthew and save Vicki. Here again, Josette needs help getting her point across.
Of all the characters, David is the one who has had the easiest rapport with Josette. In #102, we saw him standing in front of her portrait in the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of Collinwood, chattering happily away to her. We couldn’t hear her, but he could. She had no need to manifest herself visibly or do anything else spectacular; she and David could just talk to each other.
Now, Laura is blocking Josette’s attempts to communicate. In #165, Josette manifested in a room with Laura and David; Laura ordered her to go away, and she did. In #170, Josette began speaking through Vicki at a séance; Laura silenced her, and in later episodes visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie said that Josette was battling against some power at least equal to her own. Strong as Josette’s connection to David has been, she cannot break through his mother’s interference.
Vicki confers with Guthrie. They decide to present their case to Roger, who alone has the legal right to oppose Laura’s wish to take David, and to dashing action hero Burke Devlin, who has a great influence over the boy. Guthrie meets with Roger in the drawing room, and Vicki goes to Burke’s suite at the Collinsport Inn.
Roger despised Guthrie as a quack starting almost as soon as he met him, but in his most recent appearance, in #178, he started to suspect that there might be something to Guthrie’s ideas. He is quite rude to Guthrie throughout their conversation today, but does hear him out.
Burke respects Vicki, but finds it impossible to sit still when she starts talking about Josette. So she sticks to the demonstrable facts. The camera sticks to Alexandra Moltke Isles’ eyes, on which the light plays arrestingly.
Vicki looks at Burke
At length, Burke admits that something strange might be going on. Vicki asks Burke if he will stop encouraging David to go away with his mother. He says he believes that he ought to stop doing that, but that he doesn’t know what he will actually do after he next sees Laura. Vicki says she knows how he feels about Laura. Burke tells her that he himself doesn’t know how he feels about Laura, or about anyone else.
Mitch Ryan projects Burke’s bewilderment about his own behavior when he is with Laura. We haven’t seen any sign that Laura has cast a spell on Burke. So far, it is entirely possible that Burke is just smitten with Laura. She was the ex-girlfriend who left him for Roger and is now suggesting she wants to get back together with him. As such, she is the symbol of both his lost youth and his upcoming triumph over his bitter enemy. Also, she is beautiful, and can be hilariously funny. That combination would be enough to cloud anyone’s mind. But when Burke is telling Vicki how confused he is about his emotions, we wonder if there might be some witchcraft involved as well.
Back at Collinwood, Roger and David are in the drawing room. David tells Roger that he wants to go away with Laura, and when Roger asks why he has made that decision David tells him what he saw in the fire. David asks him if he still wants him to go away. In previous episodes, David had asked Roger about his hostility towards him. Sometimes Roger parried these questions with witty remarks, other times he simply dismissed David and walked away. Now Roger just chokes up. “We’ll see,” he keeps saying. “We’ll see.” What we the audience see in Louis Edmonds’ performance is a man who is starting to realize what he has thrown away by refusing to love his son. It makes a powerful moment.
Roger tries to connect with David
After David leaves him alone in the drawing room, Roger assumes his usual position in front of the brandy bottle and pours himself a glass. He lifts it to his lips, then looks around, as if he detects an unusual scent in the air. He sets the drink down. He turns, and sees an old book open itself.
Roger sees the book open itself
A book first did this in the drawing room in #52. That time the Collins family history opened to a picture of Josette. More recently, Josette’s signature jasmine perfume was in the air in the crypt at the old cemetery when a book opened itself there in #157. Regular viewers will therefore assume that when a book opens without visible aid of a cast member, it is Josette, the spectral research librarian, leading the characters to the information they need.
Roger hasn’t seen these previous occurrences, and he has chosen to disregard the evidence he has seen for the existence of supernatural influences around him. So the sight of the book opening itself comes as a great shock to him. When he looks at the page to which it has opened, he finds out something about the death of a woman named Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, whom Guthrie and Vicki believe to be an earlier incarnation of his wife. That Laura had died by fire in 1867, along with her young son David. Guthrie had told Roger that. A fact he had not mentioned, and which strikes Roger with particular terror, is that David Radcliffe had not wanted to be rescued from the fire. He had wanted to burn.
The idea of Laura the Phoenix is an interesting one, and the storyline gives Josette and the other vague, indefinable spirits of the supernatural back-world Dark Shadows has been hinting at since it began a suitable adversary to bring them into the action of the main continuity. But most of the individual episodes are so slow, so heavy with recapping, and so confused in their development that few of them can be recommended on their own merits. Indeed, this is only the second episode from the Laura arc, after #146, to which I apply the “Genuinely Good Episode” tag.
After we watched the episode, my wife, Mrs Acilius, shared her theory that the show is getting better because they’ve learned that it will be renewed for another 13 weeks. That makes sense- if it was going to be canceled after #195, the writers might not want to come up with any fresh stories and the producers certainly wouldn’t want to pay to build any new sets or hire actors to play new characters. Better just to run out the clock so that the Laura arc ends in #195 and everyone else lives spookily ever after. But if they know they can keep going until #260, they will have time to work out new ideas.
Strange and troubled boy David Collins is sleeping peacefully in his bed. His cousin, flighty heiress Carolyn, comes into his room to check on him. She tucks him in, waking him. He asks what she is doing in his room. When she says that she was making sure he was asleep, he points out that she woke him up. When she keeps showing concern for him, he reminds her that she has called him “a spoiled monster” and a “menace to the civilized world” among other endearments, and that if he showed up in her room there would be no end of hollering.
Carolyn goes on talking to David in a gentle voice about how important he is to her, and says that maybe she’s the one who is a spoiled monster and a menace to the civilized world. After Carolyn maintains an affectionate attitude towards him for a few unbroken minutes, David asks her if she is OK. She assures him that she is. As David Collins, David Henesy’s bewildered response to Carolyn’s friendliness brings the house down.
While we are still laughing, David presses Carolyn to explain why she is being nice to him. A look of fear comes over him, and he asks if something terrible has happened. Carolyn assures him that nothing has, but he just looks more and more alarmed. By the time she leaves him, his expression is little short of heartbreaking.
David alarmed
The next morning, well-meaning governess Vicki is sitting with David in the drawing room, going over his homework. He has written an essay about what it might be like to have an older sister. He wonders if such a sister would love him. Vicki says that she might, and that it is a waste when you don’t love the people who love you. When Vicki asks David where he got the idea of writing about an imaginary older sister who loves him, he doesn’t give a direct answer. He does start talking about Carolyn, making it clear that he is thinking of her.
Vicki leaves David alone in the drawing room for a short while. He looks into the fireplace and sees his own face wearing a placid expression and immersed in the flames. He flees the room in terror, bumping into visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie. Vicki comes running, and David holds onto her for dear life.
ReflectionsSafe with Vicki
David’s vision reminds me of a post of Wallace McBride’s on The Collinsport Historical Society from April of 2020. His point is summarized in his title, “In Dark Shadows, Your Reflection Always Tells the Truth.” David lives in 1967, so he doesn’t have access to that article. But he already knows the truth it tells- his terrified reaction shows that he knows it means there is an imminent danger that he will die by fire.
We see hardworking young fisherman Joe poring over old newspapers in the Collinsport Public Library. He finds something that alarms him, and rushes to a public telephone to call Vicki. He tells her he is coming to the house to show something important to her and Guthrie.
Joe on the phone
When Vicki tells Joe and Guthrie that David had a vision of himself in flames, she connects it with a recurring nightmare that had plagued him several weeks ago. David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, had come back into his life after an absence of several years, and he kept dreaming that she was beckoning him to join her in flames. While he was suffering from this nightmare, drunken artist Sam Evans, miles away in town, inexplicably painted a couple of canvases depicting exactly the image that kept appearing in David’s dreams.
Joe and Guthrie become very animated when Vicki tells them what David saw and how he reacted. Joe declares that what David has seen is a vision of the past. Joe has already shown Guthrie what he found in the library, a newspaper article from one hundred years before. The article is about someone named Laura Murdoch Radcliffe. That Laura Murdoch died in 1867 in a fire along with her young son. His name was David.
Yesterday, we saw four men visiting a crypt. They are parapsychologist Dr Guthrie, hardworking young fisherman Joe, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank, and the unnamed Caretaker of the old cemetery. They witnessed an uncanny event when the ghost of Josette Collins opened the coffin of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge, who died (by fire!) in 1767.
The ghostly intervention was disturbing enough in itself, but when the four men saw that the coffin was absolutely empty they had to change their ideas. Before Josette took action, the Caretaker had vowed that he would die rather than let a grave be disturbed. After they have seen the empty interior of the coffin, Guthrie asks him about another grave he wants to dig up and the Caretaker gives him directions. Frank had shouted at Joe and Guthrie that they would go to jail if they didn’t immediately stop disturbing the crypt, but now he agrees to go to the other grave and help dig. Joe had joined Guthrie only with utmost reluctance and had wanted to stop when the Caretaker first showed up, but now he is the one who points out a toolshed from which he volunteers to grab some shovels.
The second grave is that of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe. In 1867, just one hundred years after the fire that killed Laura Murdoch Stockbridge, Laura Murdoch Radcliffe died the same way. What’s more, a woman initially identified as Laura Murdoch Collins died (by fire!) in Phoenix, Arizona earlier in 1967 and her body inexplicably disappeared from the morgue some weeks after her death. Evidently Guthrie’s hypothesis is that graves will both be empty, because the body of each Laura Murdoch disappeared after death. He also surmises an otherworldly connection between these three dead and vanished Laura Murdochs and the apparently alive Laura Murdoch Collins who has been hanging around the great estate of Collinwood for a couple of months.
Back in the crypt, the Caretaker is delivering a soliloquy. He thinks Guthrie, Joe, and Frank are wasting their time trying to learn secrets from the dead. He has information he could share if they would stay and listen to him. He remembers that there was something strange about the death of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, and that a book about the Radcliffes is on the shelves in the crypt. He looks through the book and finds the information. “The child!” he exclaims.
Laura Murdoch Collins materializes in a dark corner and strikes up a conversation with the Caretaker. As her talk grows more and more mystifying, the Caretaker looks confused, as if he has never before been the least weird person in any room.
Laura’s appearance gave us (Mrs Acilius and I) two grounds for fear. Our first fear was that Laura might kill the Caretaker. We could easily imagine Guthrie, Joe, and Frank coming back to the crypt to find it in flames, the records kept there in ashes, and the Caretaker dead (by fire!) We like the Caretaker, and want to see him in future episodes.
Our second fear was that Laura would go to the grave of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe and interrupt the exhumation. What we dreaded about that prospect was that it would slow the story down. Yesterday’s show moved at a nice clip, and while today does not match it, at least some things are happening to advance the plot. In the last several weeks, the pace has alternated between glacial and dead stop. So the idea of yet another delay is well worth a shudder.
Laura Murdoch Collins examines the coffin of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge
There is a moment when it seems that Laura will go to stop the men. The Caretaker tells her that they have gone to the grave of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, and starts to give her directions. She tells him not to bother explaining where it is. Laura doesn’t speak the line “I’ve been there before,” but Diana Millay’s eyes communicate the thought to the audience. Having already seen her inspecting the inside of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge’s empty coffin, we know that she is on a tour of her old neighborhood.
Laura Murdoch Collins doesn’t need directions to the grave of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe
For whatever reason, Laura does not interfere with Guthrie, Joe, and Frank. They dig up the coffin of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe. They open it and look inside. Guthrie asks “What do you see?” Frank replies “What you thought we’d see.” There it is, a bullfrog in a top hat singing “Hello, My Baby.” Oh no wait, I changed the channel there for a second. On Dark Shadows, the answer is “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. An empty box. It’s almost like it’s always been empty.” No wonder we’re still watching the show after all these years, where else can you find thrills like that.
Hello, my ragtime gal
The Caretaker is talking to Laura and looks down for a second. When he looks up, he is baffled. We cut back to the spot where she had been standing, and it is vacant.
Guthrie, Joe, and Frank return to the crypt. They apologize for having been away for so long. The Caretaker tells them they have only been gone for a minute or two. They are puzzled. They find the book about the Radcliffes, and discover that a portion of a newspaper clipping containing an account of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe’s death has been erased, as by an intense light generated by a fire. This leaves us wondering why Laura erased only that section of the clipping, calling attention to it, when she could just as easily have set fire to the book and destroyed the whole thing.
It’s a relief that the Caretaker survives to dodder another day, and a relief that Guthrie, Joe, and Frank complete their business in the cemetery and free us to move on to the next story point. As Guthrie, John Lasell was visibly bored yesterday; today his part is smaller, but he is back on his game, and the others are good too.
Daniel F. Keyes has some particularly good moments as the Caretaker. Yesterday he struck the heroic note when he told Guthrie and Joe that they would have to kill him before they could open the graves, and he made that a powerful moment. Today, he shows us both how lonely the Caretaker is, and why he cannot escape that loneliness. The feeling is painfully raw in his soliloquy about the information he could give if only the others would listen, and his exaggeratedly careful movements and other mimicries of a fragile old age give that rendition of helpless, desperate loneliness an extra punch. His interaction with Laura is even more interesting- while he lives too much in the world of ghosts and taboos to be at home with the living, he is too much a part of the this-world institution of the cemetery and of its rational, bureaucratic routines to know what to do when he encounters an otherworldly being face to face. He is entirely alone, caught in the interstices between the natural and the supernatural, unable to communicate with the denizens of either realm.
Today is the last time we will see actor Conard Fowkes and his character, Frank. I call him “instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank” because, while Fowkes consistently does an excellent job of embodying whatever Frank supposed to be at any given moment, he never gives the feeling that there is anything else under the surface. I keep wishing Frederic Forrest, who danced at the Blue Whale in #137, had been cast as Frank. Forrest could have created a convincing character while also giving a sense of a goofy, engaging personality inside whatever Frank is in any given scene, so that you not only appreciate each turn but also wonder what is coming next. Each time you see Fowkes, you can recognize that he presented exactly what he was supposed to present, but he never drops a hint that anything different might be coming. Still less does he leave you wanting more.
Today, Frank is supposed to be chastened by the sight of what Josette did and willing to join Guthrie and Joe in their exhumation. He is the very image of “Chastened.” Yesterday, he was indignant about Guthrie and Joe’s lawless behavior. A still of him from that episode would have been a fine illustration for a dictionary definition of “Indignant.” In #169, he was haggard and concerned about the mysterious illness gripping reclusive matriarch Liz. Again, he was a faultless model for “Haggard and Concerned.” When we first saw him in the offices of his firm in #92, he was so much the fellow you would expect to meet in a law office in Bangor, Maine in 1966 that you felt like you were reading a writ of replevin.
In a way, Fowkes was an excellent actor. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the way in which a regular member of the cast of a scripted television series ought to excel. The proper medium for him would be something more static, such as filmstrips or View Master reels, in which we could stop and look at him as he demonstrated various moods and personality types. I suppose he might also have been an outstanding mime. Fowkes was always pleasant, and in her scenes with him Alexandra Moltke Isles has a chance to show aspects of the personality of well-meaning governess Vicki that we never see in any other setting. So I’ll miss him, but I’d have missed Forrest a whole lot more.
John Lasell is a tremendous actor, and was electrifying when he first appeared on Dark Shadows as parapsychologist Peter Guthrie in episode 160. But four weeks of endless recapping has taken its toll on him. In today’s pre-credits sequence, recreating yesterday’s final scene, we see what it looks like when John Lasell is bored.
Dr Guthrie and hardworking young fisherman Joe have arrived at the door to a mausoleum which houses a grave they plan to break into. Finding that he cannot turn the knob to the building’s front door, Guthrie says “It’s locked.” More precisely, he whines “It’s laaaakt.” The character has several sides, but this is the first time we’ve seen him as a cranky five-year old. As the two of them fumble about, Guthrie at one point lifts Joe’s tool box, gestures towards the inside of it, and says “Try this.” Try what, all of his tools simultaneously? When the door mysteriously opens, Guthrie takes a beat before he turns to look at it, and he never does get around to looking surprised.
They enter the crypt. Guthrie shines a flashlight directly into the camera. Characters on Dark Shadows do this so often that it must be intentional, at least to the extent that the directors resigned themselves to letting actors get away with it, but it always looks like a mistake. It’s especially jarring here, when John Lasell is himself looking into the camera when he shines the light in our eyes.
Hey Guthrie, are you a doctor of optometry?
Once Guthrie and Joe have found the vault housing the coffin of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge, they quarrel about whether to go through with their plan. They go through the same arguments they used in their scene in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood yesterday. As yesterday, Joel Crothers manages to put enough verve into Joe’s mixed emotions that he is interesting to watch, but Lasell simply cannot bring himself to commit to another tired rehash. The only thought his performance in this scene brings to mind is puzzlement as to what happened to Guthrie’s glasses.
Back at Collinwood, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank charges into the drawing room and demands that flighty heiress Carolyn tell him where Guthrie is. She replies that Guthrie swore her to secrecy. Frank says that Guthrie had called him shortly before to ask about a plan that might get him sent to jail. Frank asks Carolyn if Guthrie has gone to the crypt at the old cemetery. Faced with the prospect that Guthrie and Joe might land in jail, Carolyn admits that they are both there.
Guthrie and Joe try to pry Laura Murdoch Stockbridge’s nameplate off the wall of the crypt. They keep talking about how the whole thing might as well be a single block of stone. The actual wall keeps springing back in a way that only cheap grades of plywood do, undercutting this dialogue and requiring the actors to put more and more effort into keeping it from falling down. By the end of the sequence, both of Joel Crothers’ arms and one of John Lasell’s are holding the wall up, so that Dr Guthrie has to remove the supposedly massive nameplate with one hand. Even the blocking isn’t up to director Lela Swift’s usual standards- most of what we see in this sequence is the back of John Lasell’s coat. Considering what’s going on with the set, that may not be such a bad thing.
After Joe and Guthrie get the nameplate off the wall, Crothers flashes a look at Lasell that shows he is struggling to keep a straight face. Lasell’s boredom saves the take- if he had been intellectually available enough to notice Crothers’ twitching lips, he would have burst out laughing:
Straight face
The coffin is quite large and apparently very heavy. Guthrie and Joe put all their strength into carrying it a few feet. They then place it on a miniature tea stand.
Sure, that’ll hold, why not.
Guthrie fits a wedge under the lid and holds it while Joe swings a hammer. The elderly Caretaker enters and orders them to stop. If only for the sake of the tea stand, this command comes as a great relief.
The Caretaker tells Guthrie and Joe that they won’t open the coffin unless they kill him first. That doesn’t stop Guthrie’s efforts to win him over, but it is enough for Joe. Frank shows up. He apologizes to the Caretaker and yells at Guthrie.
Guthrie tries to explain himself to Frank. When Frank tells him that a court would likely respond to his hypotheses by committing him to a psych ward, Guthrie responds “Well, doesn’t that prove my point halfway?” When Frank asks how, Guthrie says “Wouldn’t a court… um… would a court be more sympathetic… uh… before the point? My reasons? Than after?” I’m sure that was not how it was phrased in the script, but I can’t imagine that whatever was written there made any more sense. Guthrie’s behavior is so preposterous today that it is understandable John Lasell didn’t bother to put in much of a performance. Still terribly disappointing, and quite unusual to see him as the weakest member of the cast. The rest of them all do very well in this well-paced, if not particularly well-mounted, episode.
The three men are about to leave the crypt when Joe says he detects a flowery scent. Guthrie asks if it is the scent of jasmine- the sign that the ghost of Josette Collins is near. Joe doesn’t know what jasmine smells like. The Caretaker can just about make out the scent of jasmine, far away, as if it were wafting in from the sea. In a reprise of a moment from #154, when the Caretaker told Vicki the same thing, Joe protests that the scent is not far away at all. It is flooding the room, is overpowering, is coming from behind an obstacle in the crypt.
The coffin opens itself, evidently the result of Josette’s action. The men gather round and look inside. It is empty- no bones, no dust, no sign that there ever was a body inside. Guthrie’s hypothesis, that the body of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge vanished after burial, is confirmed.
We open in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. Visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie is trying to talk hardworking young fisherman Joe into helping him open a grave. Joe’s ex-girlfriend, flighty heiress Carolyn, is alarmed by the idea, but is on Guthrie’s side. Guthrie recaps the current storyline until he bores Joe into submission. Joe goes off to get his tools.
Guthrie, Carolyn, and Joe make their plans
As Joe, Joel Crothers does manage to hold the audience’s attention. While the other actors are starting to seem bored with the endless repetitions, his shocked interjections make him seem like someone learning these bizarre facts for the first time. With so much time spent selling old rope, it is genuinely surprising to find oneself taking an interest in anything about the dialogue.
We cut to stock footage of the Moon behind clouds, then see blonde fire witch Laura staring out the window of the cottage on the estate. This is the first time we see that footage coupled with the sight of a supernatural villain staring out a window, but it won’t be the last.
The MoonLaura
Laura’s estranged husband, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger drops in on her. They recap the same material Guthrie has been going over.
When we were watching the episode, Mrs Acilius became frustrated. Laura tells Roger that Guthrie is not simply a psychologist- he is a parapsychologist. Roger is appalled by this news. Mrs Acilius was appalled that Roger, who has always been presented as a reasonably intelligent person, is suddenly so dumb that he hadn’t figured it out yet. After all, Roger and Laura had both participated in a séance Guthrie had organized- wasn’t that enough of a clue for him?
My interpretation is that Roger isn’t being dumb. He has said time and again that he regards Guthrie as a quack. I think that up to this point, he has assumed that Guthrie was just making stuff up as he went along. When Laura tells him that Guthrie is a researcher specializing in psychic phenomena, he is stunned to realize Guthrie isn’t improvising- he is a committed to a systematic plan of quackery. The missus seemed to find that interpretation intriguing.
Roger is stunned deeply enough, in fact, that his resistance to the idea that there might be something seriously weird about Laura starts to break down. Roger runs through all the unexplainable occurrences that have taken place since Laura has come back to town, and insists she tell him anything she might be holding back. Roger usually responds to information that inconveniences him by declaring that he will erase it from his memory as soon as possible, but it seems that he can no longer seal off the warning signs about Laura.
As Roger talks to Laura, she realizes that he might be about to become a lot less manageable. Her look changes from irritation to worry to a brief, beautiful moment when she is clearly thinking of casting a spell on him. I missed that bit when we were watching the episode, and Mrs Acilius had to point it out to me. I must have been looking away- as Diana Millay plays the scene, the flickering thought is easily legible on her face.
Laura thinks of hexing Roger
Roger goes to the great house and acts like he owns the place. Carolyn and Guthrie play along with him. He orders Guthrie out. Guthrie goes quietly; it’s time for him to meet up with Joe anyway. Carolyn pleads with him to give Guthrie a chance. After yet more recapping, he breaks down and admits that it is possible that something supernatural might be going on.
We see Guthrie and Joe at the door of the building in which the crypt they want to open is located. They try vainly to open the door. They knock and get no answer. They are about to give up when the doorknob starts to turn. The door opens, and they peer inside with startled looks. This is a reprise of the ending of #153, when well-meaning governess Vicki and her boyfriend, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank, came to the same door with the same result. Vicki and Frank had been led to the building by the ghost of Josette Collins, and did not know what they were to do there. Guthrie and Joe have decided to go there because Guthrie’s analysis has led him to the conclusion that they have to open the tomb of L. Murdoch Stockbridge. That difference in context doesn’t make today’s conclusion any more exciting than that one was, but at least it marks a certain measure of progress in the development of the plot.
Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is at her job running the restaurant in the Collinsport Inn. Not that she’s working, exactly. There are no customers; the only other person there is her boyfriend, hardworking young fisherman Joe.
They’re hugging and kissing, and Joe is bringing up the idea of marriage. Maggie doesn’t think they can get married, since she has to look after her father, drunken artist Sam. Joe doesn’t think that is much of a problem. In previous episodes, we’ve seen that Joe likes Sam and doesn’t mind helping Maggie with him. He does say that he would rather Sam not come along on their honeymoon, and suggests that Sam might be ready to cut back on his drinking. Maggie isn’t getting her hopes up.
Flighty heiress Carolyn comes into the restaurant and asks to speak with Joe privately. Carolyn is Joe’s ex and Maggie is worried the two of them will get back together, but since she only wants to go to a table where they will be in Maggie’s line of sight she goes along with the idea. We do see Maggie looking vigilantly at them while they talk.
Maggie watching Joe and Carolyn
As it happens, Carolyn isn’t trying to win Joe back. She wants him to help Dr Peter Guthrie, visiting parapsychologist, in his efforts to determine whether her aunt, Laura Murdoch Collins, is the reincarnation of two women who died by fire in 1767 and 1867. Guthrie hasn’t told Carolyn what exactly he is planning to do, but he has said he needs the help of a strong young man and that what he is going to do is “not strictly legal.”
Carolyn leads off by telling Joe that she is going to ask him to do something to help her mother, reclusive matriarch Liz, who is in the hospital with a mysterious ailment. Joe immediately agrees to do anything that will help Liz. When she starts explaining that she wants him to work with Guthrie, and that Guthrie is a parapsychologist, Joe is incredulous. At length, he reluctantly agrees to go, and to keep what he will do secret from everyone, even Maggie.
When he tells Maggie that they have to cancel their date so that he can go to Carolyn’s house, she is dismayed. He assures her that he is not getting back together with Carolyn, but that Carolyn made him promise to keep it a secret just what he will be doing. Maggie vows to fight if Carolyn does try to take him back.
This scene is the current phase of Dark Shadows in a nutshell. It appears to be a more-or-less typical daytime soap opera of the sort you would see on American television in February of 1967, where good-looking young people in wholesome, everyday settings struggle about who will have a conspicuously chaste romance with whom. That’s what Maggie thinks she is watching when she keeps her eyes on Joe and Carolyn.
But in fact the series is heading towards becoming a full-time supernatural thriller, and stories like those are going to be tossed out and left by the roadside before long. That development doesn’t bode well for Joe and Maggie. Joe tells her today that their relationship is “the simplest thing in the world”- he loves her, she loves him, that’s all you need. Of course, a couple is only allowed to be on screen in a soap opera if they are participants in a conflict of some kind, and are only the main figures in a storyline if they are in conflict with each other. But the show Maggie thinks she’s on might supply them with conflicts that would make sense to the sensible, practical-minded people she and Joe are written to be.
When they start dealing with ghosts and fire witches and who knows what else, Maggie and Joe will have a limited amount of time to show us how level-headed real-world people might react to supernatural crises. Once they’ve exhausted that theme, they will have either to adapt to their new surroundings and become different sorts of people or to leave the show. The prospect of reconceiving the characters might be good news to the actors Kathryn Leigh Scott and Joel Crothers. But Maggie and Joe would be appalled to hear that they will have to discard their personalities and invent new ones, and Joe’s alarmed reaction when Carolyn starts talking about parapsychology is a foretaste of what the characters will be going through as this comes upon them.
As the show’s representatives of Collinsport’s working class, Joe and Maggie are the designated representatives of daylight sanity. From the first week of Dark Shadows, we’ve known that Carolyn and the other residents of the great house of Collinwood are in too close proximity to the supernatural back-world of ghosts and ghoulies for that kind of attitude to be possible.
That contrast is dramatized in three moments in today’s show. In the opening portion, Carolyn and Dr Guthrie spend approximately 500 hours* in the drawing room of the great house recapping all the uncanny elements of the current storyline. When Guthrie asks Carolyn if she has considered the idea of reincarnation, she says that she has considered it and dismissed it. When he starts in with an explanation of how the idea of reincarnation connects to their conflict with Laura, Carolyn is all in.
When Carolyn is in the restaurant telling Joe about Guthrie the parapsychologist, Joe says he is surprised she is taking this sort of thing seriously. “I always thought you were a level-headed girl.” Regular viewers may be startled by this comment. In the last few weeks, Carolyn has had to take over her mother’s duties as head of the household and of the family business, and has shown some maturity in discharging them. But the whole time Joe and Carolyn were a couple, she was fickle and irresponsible to the point of madness. In this context, where Joe is conscious of Maggie’s eyes on him and is trying to project a particular image of himself, he rewrites the history of his relationship with Carolyn. He isn’t the sort of fellow who would spend years chasing after a flighty heiress- he is a sensible man who would only ever be involved with an equally sensible woman. That self-image is going to take a beating as he participates in the kinds of stories we’re going to see from now on.
In the last scene, Joe is in the drawing room and Guthrie puts the same question to him that he had earlier put to Carolyn- has he thought about the idea of reincarnation? Joe says he’s never thought about it, and flatly refuses to entertain the notion. Finally he absorbs Guthrie’s request that he help open the graves of the previous Laura Murdochs, but he never says he believes in reincarnation, and he never shows the enthusiasm that Carolyn has for Guthrie’s theories. Carolyn can afford to be enthusiastic- she’s lived in the great house all her life, and so has never been more than one step away from the unearthly. But Joe is giving up a substantial part of his identity by even being in the same shot as Guthrie, and once he shows up with a shovel in a graveyard at night, the Joe we’ve known will be on his way out.
*The counter on my computer says the scene between Carolyn and Guthrie in the drawing room lasts only 6 minutes and 44 seconds, but I’m sticking with my estimate of 500 hours.
He could not help laughing now and then over the Scientist’s defeat. But whenever this came up, the Phoenix would shake its head with a kind of sad wisdom.
“My boy, there are certain things, such as head colds and forgetting where you have left your keys, which are inevitable—and I am afraid that the Scientist is, too.”
“Oh, Phoenix, you don’t think he’ll come back, do you?”
“Yes, my boy, I do. I can see the whole train of events: He will recover from his fright. He will be curious about the Wail, and will return to investigate it. Once here, he will remember us, and we shall have to take him into account once more.”
“Oh. Do you think it’ll happen soon?”
“Oh, no, my boy, nothing to worry about for the time being. But we must remember that it will happen some day.”
“Yes, I guess you’re right. I think he’s hateful!”
“I cannot disagree with you there, my boy. Of course, I have no doubt that, in general, the advancement of science is all to the good. Knowledge is power. But on days like this I sometimes wonder…. Does it not seem to you that the highest aim in life at the moment is to enjoy the sunlight and allow others to do the same?”
“You’re right, Phoenix—but then, you always are. I was just thinking the same thing. It’s funny … I mean … well, you know. Why can’t people leave other people alone—and—and—well, just enjoy themselves and lie in the sun and listen to the wind?”
“That is the way of the world, my boy. Getting and spending, and all that sort of thing. But come! Why should we worry over the follies of the rest of the world? A day like this was made for living, not thinking. Begone, dull care!”
And they would forget the Scientist and watch a pair of butterflies chase each other instead.
Dark Shadows’ Phoenix is the none-too-benevolent Laura Murdoch Collins, and its David is her son. Laura has not told her David of her true nature. She desperately needs to persuade him to leave his home and to follow her into the flames of her next pyre. Evidently she has to be sparing about the details of what she has in store for him if she is to win him over. So in our story, David will not help the Phoenix do battle with The Scientist.
We open today with Laura staring hard into the flames of the hearth in her cottage on the great estate of Collinwood, casting a spell on her enemy. This enemy, like the one Ormondroyd’s Phoenix confronted, is a scientist, but he has a name. He is Dr Peter Guthrie of the psychology department at Dartmouth College, of all places.
Guthrie is in the drawing room of the great house, some distance away, stumbling about and gasping under the pressure of Laura’s spell. Well-meaning governess Vicki enters and urges Guthrie to “snap out of it!” He tells her that he can’t, and continues writhing about while Laura’s staring eyes are superimposed above his image.
All seems lost for Guthrie, when David strolls into Laura’s cottage and calls to her. She doesn’t react. David finally puts his hand on his mother’s shoulder and shakes her, breaking her concentration. At first she wants him to go away so that she can resume casting her spell on Guthrie, but when he becomes angry she asks him to stay. She has been saying that she has very little time to complete the task that brought her to Collinwood- evidently she is not sure she will have time to repair even one quarrel with David.
In the great house, Guthrie is recovering. Vicki tells him that his symptoms are those which reclusive matriarch Liz exhibited shortly before she lapsed into a catatonic state from which she has yet to recover. They are sure that Laura is responsible. David returns and they talk with him. They realize that he interrupted Laura while she was casting a spell. David goes off to have a dinner which will be followed with two desserts- cake and ice cream. Vicki and Dr Guthrie are starting to make a plan to oppose Laura when the front doors of the house fly open and reveal her standing there.
Laura appears in the doorway
Laura’s appearance in the doorway is a very effective moment. It seems that Laura has come to the house to intimidate Vicki and Dr Guthrie, to show that while he may have escaped her spell and they may have learned something about her methods, she can move so much more quickly than they can that they are after all helpless against her. Once that point has been made, there isn’t much reason for the episode to go on.
Diana Millay and John Lasell do what they can with the scene between Laura and Guthrie in the drawing room, which is a lot- Millay was superb at blitheness, John Lasell at conscientiousness, and those are the notes their characters strike throughout the exchange. But the lines don’t make any sense. Guthrie asks Laura if she isn’t surprised to see him up and around- why would she be? He knows that she was interrupted before her spell could be completed. He tells her what he does and doesn’t know about her supernatural powers. Why would he tip his hand that way? He tells her that once he has figured her out, he plans to reveal his knowledge to the world. So he is letting her know that he hasn’t revealed anything yet, and won’t reveal anything or recruit any allies if she can stop him before he gets all the answers. Guthrie has been represented as a shrewd operator up to this point- apparently the spell Laura started casting on him has knocked his IQ down by three or four standard deviations.
Another question that comes up when we see Laura confronting Vicki and Dr Guthrie in the foyer is why she doesn’t attack Vicki. It was Vicki, through her boyfriend Frank, who brought Guthrie to Collinwood. Flighty heiress Carolyn is temporarily in charge at Collinwood in the absence of her mother Liz, and Carolyn is dependent on Vicki for a hundred things. Carolyn is an opponent of Laura’s and would likely be immobilized if Vicki were out of action. Laura’s estranged husband, Roger, relies on Vicki to look after David, and would be even more eager than he already is to get rid of David if he had to take care of the boy himself. Laura’s sometime boyfriend, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, is the closest thing she has to an ally. Vicki has some influence over Burke, and has used it to bring him to question whether he ought to trust Laura. In every connection, Vicki is Laura’s chief adversary. Yet Laura has not attacked her directly, and the show has not explained why she hasn’t.
It isn’t like they don’t have time to develop a story point that would explain this. They have had as many as three episodes in a row (for example, #161, #162, and #163) which consisted entirely of conversations in which characters recapped conversations from previous episodes, conversations which themselves were nothing but recap of still earlier episodes. They could have dumped some of that recap and shown us some kind of event that would have explained why Vicki hasn’t yet been a target of Laura’s power.
Parapsychologist Peter Guthrie calls on blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins at the cottage where she is staying. He tells her that the charred remains of an unknown woman found in the burned ruins of her apartment in Phoenix, Arizona have inexplicably vanished from the morgue where they were being kept. Laura reacts to this news with shock. Guthrie asks her why the news means so much to her. She denies that it means anything to her, and demands he leave. She warns him that something will happen to him if he doesn’t leave her alone. He asks what she means by this warning, and she refuses to answer.
Laura sizes up Guthrie
Guthrie was usually rather quiet and retiring from his second appearance, in #161, until yesterday. He first showed anger then. He’s agitated again at the beginning of today’s episode, and he holds his ground with Laura. Evidently he is ready for a confrontation.
Dashing action hero Burke Devlin charges into the cottage. He is rude to Guthrie, who makes a few pointed remarks and then leaves. Burke takes over asking Laura questions she won’t answer. When he too leaves, she looks exhausted. She hastens back to the hearth and sits by the fire, which seems to be the source of her energy.
Guthrie returns to the great house of Collinwood. He calls for well-meaning governess Vicki. Then Laura’s face is superimposed on the screen. Guthrie wobbles, takes his glasses off, and falls down.
Yesterday, we saw that Guthrie was considering the same three explanations of Laura’s relationship to the supernatural that the audience had in mind when we had the same information he has now. Perhaps a supernatural force has followed her to Collinwood and is doing things she knows nothing about. Perhaps a supernatural force is attached to her and acts on her unconscious impulses without her knowledge. Or perhaps she herself is the force, and is actively making the strange goings-on go on.
Today, Guthrie takes an interest in Laura’s reaction to the news of the vanishing corpse. A focus on this reaction makes us wonder just how Laura works. We have gathered that she is a humanoid Phoenix, who achieves a cyclical immortality by periodically incinerating herself at some point before reappearing as a living being. We also know that the charred remains of two other Laura Murdochs who died by fire were buried in the town of Collinsport in previous centuries- the body of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge in 1767 and of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe in 1867.
Now it is 1967. The corpse in Phoenix had been identified as Laura Murdoch Collins, and has disappeared. Perhaps we are to gather that when the humanoid Phoenix incinerates herself, she initiates a multi-stage process. The fire separates the woman into a dead body and a living Doppelgänger. The Doppelgänger is surrounded by magical occurrences, and as she gathers strength she is able to direct these magical occurrences to bring the process to its climax. Laura’s shocked reaction to the news that the body has disappeared, coupled with her signs of tiredness and her repeated assertions that she is running out of time, suggests that the disappearance of the body is an event outside her control. It marks the end of one stage of the process and the beginning of another. Evidently it means that Laura has even less time to complete her task than she had thought. If that is how it works, then we would expect that the charred remains deposited in the grave of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe and in the tomb of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge would also have vanished, and that the coffins in those places would also be empty.
Parapsychologist Peter Guthrie has been doing a lot in the three weeks since he first appeared on Dark Shadows, but today is the first time we see him upset. He made an audio recording of the séance that he organized in the great house of Collinwood last week, and now blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins has erased the tape and replaced it with the sound of fire crackling.
Dr Guthrie tells his friend, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank Garner, that he isn’t sure exactly what it means to say that Laura erased the tape. Maybe there is some supernatural force that accompanies Laura but acts independently of her. Or maybe the force is one that grants her wishes, perhaps without her knowing it. Or maybe she herself is actively doing the strange things that everyone has been puzzling over lately.
When Laura first came on the show, the audience was invited to weigh these same three alternatives. She was mysterious in speech, vague in manner, and ethereal in appearance. She seemed to be in more than one place at a time, and to conduct herself very differently in each place. She ate nothing, drank nothing, had no material possessions, and spent most of her time sitting motionless, staring into the fire.
Recently, Laura has become a more substantial being. We’ve heard her make threats and seen her cast spells to carry them out. She has materialized in rooms, but then gone on to join conversations in other rooms. She has met with other characters and planned strategies. We still haven’t seen her eat or drink, and it is still hard to get her attention when she’s by the fire. But she gets so agitated when she talks about how little time she has to achieve what she must do that she seems to be quite corporeal. So we are leaning pretty heavily towards Option 3, but it is interesting to see that Dr Guthrie’s view of Laura today is what ours was a month ago. That does make sense- his knowledge of her now is about what ours was then.
The idea of Laura is an interesting one, but her story is developed at the slowest possible pace. They’ve been filling time lately by harking back to story points from the early weeks of the show that didn’t lead anywhere when they were first introduced, and then giving us a scene or two in which they still don’t lead anywhere. Today, I was afraid this was about to happen again. Hardworking young fisherman Joe comes to the house to deliver some papers, and has a conversation with flighty heiress Carolyn. When Dark Shadows started, these two characters had been dating for a long time. They were bored with each other, and the audience was bored whenever the camera was pointed at them. They gradually broke up, and now Joe is seeing Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. For a couple of minutes, it looks like we are about to have another scene in which Carolyn tries to start their relationship back up, leading to an endless recap of what happened between them to end it.
But that isn’t what happens at all. Instead, we have a sequence in which Carolyn and Joe talk about what is going on in their lives now and how they feel about it. Their attitudes towards their past influence that, but the main point is that Carolyn is more mature than she has ever been and Joe is more independent than he has ever been. If you were to analyze it in terms of plot points, you’d have something like “Joe offers to be Carolyn’s friend. She considers this offer from several points of view. He tells her that don’t have to be friends if she doesn’t want to be. She seems to want to be.” Hardly the stuff of a stirring adventure tale, but as they play it, the exchange goes a long way towards explaining why we care about these people. Carolyn was often exasperatingly selfish and impulsive in the early months of Dark Shadows, and Joe was such a one-dimensional Mr Nice Guy that you couldn’t imagine him doing anything to surprise an audience. But the woman and man we see today have real feelings and real problems, and a story about them could be exciting.
In the first week of Dark Shadows, we had a couple of brief glimpses of the administrative offices of the Hammond Foundling Home, a fictional institution in New York City where well-meaning governess Vicki lived before she came to Collinwood. A few times since, there have been scenes set in the town of Bangor, Maine. Today, we leave the northeastern USA for the first and only time in the entire series. They take us to Phoenix, Arizona.
Phoenix, Arizona: A cactus-eye viewA street in Phoenix, Arizona, where each car is driven by an office worker carrying money she has embezzled from an obnoxious guy in a cowboy hat.The Phoenix police got their sign from the same place as the Collinsport sheriff’s office
Two policemen are filling out papers in an office there. One we have seen before. He is Lieutenant Dan Riley of the Maine State Police, and he has been hanging around asking Laura what if anything she knows about a woman whose charred corpse was found in what was left of her apartment in that city after it burned to the ground. The other is Lieutenant Costa of the Phoenix police.
Lieutenant Costa had been convinced that the woman who died in the fire was Laura Murdoch Collins, and all the scientific evidence his department has been able to gather has confirmed that identification. But of course there is a woman living in Maine who can also be proved to be Laura Murdoch Collins, so the authorities have decided to bury the remains as a Jane Doe.
Regular viewers might be puzzled as to why Lieutenant Riley had to go all the way to Arizona. The Phoenix police had a body to identify, and Riley asked Laura some questions on their behalf. But he never had an investigation of his own to conduct. Seeing him here, we might jump to the conclusion that there was more to Riley’s task than we saw on screen, though we can’t really imagine what it might have been. The performance of John Harkins as Lieutenant Costa goes a long way towards selling this idea; Harkins’ guest spots would become a staple of prime time network television in the 1970s and 1980s, and it’s easy to see why. His embodiment of a weary cop having to give up on an important case he’s been working on for a long time lets us believe that the premise makes sense. His scene partner, Vince O’Brien, doesn’t undercut Harkins. Riley seems as weary as Costa, though he doesn’t do anything special to express his weariness
Riley and Costa go to the morgue. This is a large set, well realized visually and even more so acoustically. The actors’ voices echo musically while the camera zooms steadily in on them. They open the vault in which the unidentified body was deposited, and find that it is empty.
Dark Shadows Commentary 
