david collins – Page 5 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 541: Creating a living human being

When Dark Shadows began in the summer of 1966, its most intelligent character was also its most dangerous, strange and troubled boy David Collins. David twice came within an inch of committing the perfect murder, first when he sabotaged his father Roger’s car, then when he trapped his governess Vicki in a room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood.

The only story that consistently worked in those days was the relationship between David and Vicki, and that was solely due to actors David Henesy and Alexandra Moltke Isles. While the writers gave them terrible dialogue- at one point having Vicki read aloud to David from a reference book on the geography of Maine- they used their faces, voices, and movements to show us what was going on inside the characters. Mr Henesy always looked like an angry boy who was grimly determined to keep hating his governess even though he couldn’t help but like her, while Mrs Isles always looked like a fearless young woman who was determined to befriend a boy who might make an attempt on her life at any moment. As David relented from his hatred, we could see a friendship budding between them, even if the words were still no good.

The story of Vicki and David had its climactic phase from December 1966 to March 1967, when his mother Laura Murdoch Collins was on the show. Laura was Dark Shadows’ first supernatural menace, an undead fire witch who planned to incinerate herself and David so that she could attain a new life. When David ran from the burning Laura into Vicki’s arms in #191, he chose her and life over Laura and death. She thus became his new mother, and their story was complete.

Since then, the show has found very little for David to do. Yesterday, he was wandering around the house with a tape recorder. He told his stepmother Cassandra that he couldn’t figure out how to play a tape. The preoccupied Cassandra sent him away, and he asked his cousin Carolyn to help him. Carolyn made it clear that all you do is press the button labeled “Play.” Two years ago, David could sabotage a brake cylinder to fail at precisely the spot on the road where it would be likeliest to lead to a fatal crash, but now he can’t grasp the concept of “Press play to listen to the tape”?

Longtime viewers will see a missed opportunity here. Cassandra is a wicked witch, also known as Angelique. In #492, Angelique/ Cassandra cast a spell that caused David to forget some incriminating information about her, so we know that he is subject to her power. Vicki knows a great deal about Angelique/ Cassandra; they could easily give us a series of scenes in which Vicki tries to warn David about his stepmother, but his mind is clouded. Instead, we never see Vicki and David alone together during this phase of the show, and Angelique/ Cassandra rarely does anything more with David than display irritation and order him to go away.

David eventually played the tape for Angelique/ Cassandra. She reacted with great excitement, since it included a message that explained why she failed in her attempt to restore the vampire curse she once placed on David’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins. She sends David away and keeps the tape recorder.

Angelique/ Cassandra won’t let David take the tape recorder back to his room. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Angelique/ Cassandra informs her supervisor, suave warlock Nicholas, that she can re-vamp Barnabas if she kills Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Fascinated by the idea of an artificially constructed human being, Nicholas loses interest in Barnabas and instructs Angelique/ Cassandra to find out more about Adam.

In #532/533, Nicholas met Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. Nicholas was obviously smitten with Maggie, putting the lie to his taunting of Angelique/ Cassandra for her ability to feel an emotional attachment to Barnabas and his own claim to be motivated solely by a devotion to evil for its own sake. After he gives Angelique/ Cassandra her orders, Nicholas goes to Maggie’s house. Ostensibly this is to find out if she knows where Adam might be, but she so obviously does not that it is clear he just wants to see her. He asks her about her hospitalized fiancé Joe, admires her late father’s paintings, and offers to buy one of them at a high price and lend it back to her. Maggie seems to be quite charmed by him. Nicholas’ “Evil, be thou my good” schtick can be fun to watch for short periods, but if he is going to be a major character for any length of time he will need a more complex inner life. His attraction to Maggie is a step towards giving him one.

David goes to Barnabas’ house. He tells Barnabas’ friend Julia that at least twice this evening he has listened to a message on a tape recorder that had something to do with Barnabas and Adam, but he can’t remember any of the details. He does remember that Angelique/ Cassandra got excited when he played it for her, but that’s it. If Angelique/ Cassandra had cast a spell on David, his forgetfulness would be understandable. If Vicki and Angelique/ Cassandra were locked in battle for David’s allegiance, it could be dramatic. But as it is, the show has chosen simply to present David as an abject moron, and that is infuriating.

Julia and David go back to the great house, where they find Nicholas and Angelique/ Cassandra with the tape recorder. Nicholas and Angelique/ Cassandra leave, and Julia and David play the tape. It no longer has the original message, but instead has the witches’ sabbath portion of Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique. David furrows his brow, then comes up with the bright suggestion that Angelique/ Cassandra, who has been in possession of the tape the entire time, may just possibly be the one who made the change. Again, since we have not seen Angelique/ Cassandra cast a spell to confuse David’s thinking, this incredible stupidity can do nothing but exasperate the audience.

They don’t even have the excuse that the current writing staff doesn’t know that David used to be interesting. The gimmick of replacing important information on a reel-to-reel tape with an audio signature suggestive of the culprit is a callback to #172, when Laura thwarted parapsychologist Dr Peter Guthrie by replacing an audio recording of a séance with the sound of fire crackling. If they can recall that bit, surely they can remember that David used to have a functioning brain.

In the early days of the show, Vicki was on a quest to find out who her parents were and why they left her at a foundling home when she was an infant. In #60, Vicki stumbled upon a portrait Maggie’s father Sam painted twenty years before of a woman who looked just like her. Vicki wondered if this woman, whose name was Betty Hanscombe, might have been her mother or aunt. Sam gave Vicki the painting then, but it is back in Maggie’s house today, and Nicholas picks it up at one point. We don’t get a very good look at it, but you can buy a reproduction of it on canvas for $25.99 plus shipping from someone on Etsy, it looks nice.

Nicholas examines the Betty Hanscombe portrait. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 539: Child’s play

The wicked witch known variously as Angelique and Cassandra is standing in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood, thinking evil thoughts. The camera zooms out and we see that her stepson, strange and troubled boy David Collins, is standing next to her. She starts to speak her thoughts out loud, saying “You will pay!” David asks “Who will pay?” Angelique/ Cassandra is startled to discover that David is there, and is flustered when she tries to change the subject. She so often delivers incriminating soliloquys while standing out in the open that the comic effect of this scene must be intentional.

Angelique/ Cassandra oblivious to David’s presence.

David asks Angelique/ Cassandra to help him figure out the correct operation of a tape recorder he received some time ago as a present from permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman. After Angelique/ Cassandra refuses to help, he goes upstairs and finds his cousin, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, emerging from the long-deserted west wing of the house. He asks Carolyn what she was doing in the west wing. She asks him why he thinks she was in the west wing. When he says he saw her coming out of it, she drops her attempt to evade his question and tells him she was looking for some old family photos to show well-meaning governess Vicki. She has enough trouble remembering this story that it must be obvious to David that it is a lie, but he isn’t interested enough to follow it up. He just wants someone to help him figure out which buttons to push on the tape recorder.

On their Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri speak for longtime viewers of the show when they say that it is surprising David needs help with the tape recorder. When the show started, David was two years younger and had the mechanical skill to sabotage his father’s car in a very creditable attempt at patricide. All Carolyn has to do to get the tape going is read the label that identifies the play button. This apparent loss of cognitive function is of a piece with David’s massive loss of narrative function. For the first 39 weeks of Dark Shadows, David was the fulcrum on which every story turned, and actor David Henesy had abundant opportunities to show a level of professional skill that would be remarkable in a performer of any age. But he has been receding into the background for a long time now, and his extraordinary dim-wittedness today marks a low point for him.

Once the tape starts playing, Carolyn makes a hasty exit. David listens to a minute or so of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, hoping it will end and he will hear “something spooky.” His wish is granted when the music abruptly stops, giving way to a voice addressing itself to Julia. The voice rambles about David’s distant cousin Barnabas Collins, saying that if both he and “my creation” live, Barnabas will be all right, but that if “Adam” dies, “Barnabas will be as he was before.” The name “Adam” should mean something to David. He shared a confused and frightening moment with a mysterious man of that name in #495. That man subsequently abducted Carolyn, and is still the object of a police search.

What only Julia, Barnabas, and Barnabas’ servant Willie know is that Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster created in an experiment that freed Barnabas of the effects of the vampire curse that Angelique/ Cassandra placed on him in the 1790s. The voice on the tape is that of Eric Lang, the mad scientist who began the experiment. Minutes before he died of the effects of one of Angelique/ Cassandra’s spells, Lang recorded this message for Julia. The audience has heard this message approximately a gazillion bajillion times, but until now, the only character to have heard it was Adam, and he could make no sense of it.

Angelique/ Cassandra recently made an unsuccessful attempt to renew Barnabas’ curse, and is desperately searching for the obstacle that prevented it from working. Carolyn’s actual task in the west wing was showing Adam to a hiding place there. So Angelique/ Cassandra is now under the same roof with both the information she needs to identify her obstacle and the person she can remove that obstacle by killing. Things are looking bad for Barnabas and for Adam.

While David is upstairs with the tape recorder, Vicki is sobbing in the drawing room. Suave warlock Nicholas, who is staying in the house in the guise of Angelique/ Cassandra’s brother, enters and asks her what’s wrong. She says that she has just learned that Barnabas is dead. His back to her, Nicholas smiles brightly when he first hears this news, then puts on a sad face and turns to her with sympathetic words. In response, Vicki reveals that she knows all about Angelique/ Cassandra and that she has little patience for Nicholas’ pretensions. Carolyn enters and doubts Vicki’s news. Angelique/ Cassandra is the last to enter. She says that she saw Barnabas alive and well after the time when he is supposed to have been dead. Vicki and Carolyn look at each other, and do not see Nicholas’ look of disappointment. They go upstairs, and Nicholas and Angelique/ Cassandra go into the drawing room.

Nicholas scolds Angelique/ Cassandra for her failure. He addresses her as “dear sister.” He suggests she may not hate Barnabas sufficiently to impose a curse on him. When she denies this, he leans to her ear and teasingly asks if she loves him. He threatens to send her back where she came from if she doesn’t re-vamp Barnabas by midnight, and to focus her mind replaces her arm with a fleshless bone.

Director John Weaver was not much of a visual artist, and in his post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day Danny Horn analyzes the dismally inept blocking of the scene between Vicki and Nicholas. Danny also has some unkind words for writer Ron Sproat, but I think those are unfair. It’s true the opening scene between Adam and Carolyn goes on too long, David’s helplessness with the tape recorder is dismal, and Vicki and Carolyn’s reaction to Angelique/ Cassandra’s report that Barnabas is still alive doesn’t make sense. That’s a long enough list of flaws that we might fairly classify Weaver and Sproat as the B-team, not on a par with director Lela Swift and writers Sam Hall and Gordon Russell.

But it is genuinely funny when we first see David standing next to Angelique/ Cassandra, David’s questioning of Carolyn is intelligently written, Lang’s message is for once an actual source of suspense, Vicki’s lines to Nicholas as Alexandra Moltke Isles delivers them show the character’s strength, Nicholas’ teasing Angelique/ Cassandra with her alleged love of Barnabas raises a laugh as it makes them sound like a couple of kids, and the final gag with the arm bone is at once goofy enough to keep up the humor in the episode and startling enough to be effective as a touch of horror. All in all, it’s an enjoyable episode, if not one that fans would be tempted to use to turn their friends on to the show.

Episode 511: It’s not fair to come into someone’s house

In the first months of Dark Shadows, the audience’s point of view was represented by well-meaning governess Vicki, who needed to have explained to her everything we might want to know and who reacted to all the strange goings-on with the mixture of disquiet and curiosity that the makers of the show hope we will feel.

Vicki has long since been replaced as our representative by mad scientist Julia. We no longer want characters to tell us what has been going on, nor are we making up our minds about our moral evaluation of the events in the stories. We find ourselves in the middle of a whole clutch of fast-moving plots, trying to keep up with them all and hoping that nothing will stop the thrills. Julia’s loyalty to her best friend, sometime vampire Barnabas, and her supremely well-developed capacity for lying put her in the same position, and her vestigial conscience is no obstacle to any juicy storyline.

When Vicki was our on-screen counterpart, her charge, strange and troubled boy David, was the show’s most powerful chaos agent. David precipitated a series of crises that seemed likely to expose the secrets of the ancient and esteemed Collins family, to kill one or more of the major characters, or both. In #70, David led Vicki to his favorite playground, the long-vacant Old House on the estate of Collinwood. David would keep sneaking into the Old House even after Barnabas took up residence there in #218.

Today, David again lets himself into the Old House. He is caught there by Julia and a man he has not seen before. Julia is stern with him for entering the house without Barnabas’ permission; he defends his presence there, reminding Julia that she promised him he could play with the tape recorder on Barnabas’ desk. He asks who the man is.

The man introduces himself to David as “Timothy Eliot Stokes.” This is the first time time we have heard his middle name. Soon, the show will phase “Timothy” out, and his friends will address Stokes as “Eliot.” I suppose that’s because he’s a professor, and “Eliot” suggests Harvard.

In 1966, Thayer David played crazed groundskeeper Matthew. Suspected of murder, Matthew hid out in the Old House and kept Vicki prisoner there until some ghosts scared him to death in #126. David didn’t believe Matthew was a killer and didn’t know he was holding Vicki, so when he stumbled upon him in the Old House he brought him food and cigarettes. Even after he found Vicki bound and gagged behind a hidden panel, he kept Matthew’s secret. When David meets another character played by the same actor on the same set, longtime viewers can see that Stokes is as genteel and urbane as Matthew was rough-hewn and paranoid. For her part, Julia recalls Vicki when she scolds David for sneaking into the Old House, but where Vicki was doing her job as David’s governess and trying to enforce the rules of the household as a governess might, Julia is scrambling to keep David from finding out about her own secret activities.

Julia tells David to take the tape recorder and go home to the great house on the estate. As he makes his way to the front door, Stokes takes Julia aside and tells her that it will not be well if it is known in the great house that David has seen him. Julia hurries to David and tells him to keep quiet about the fact that he has seen Stokes. She says that she hates to ask him to lie; at this, I mimicked Julia and said “I know you share my devotion to the truth,” prompting Mrs Acilius to laugh out loud. Later, Julia will go to the great house, where she lives as a permanent guest, and David will cheerfully assure her that he kept her secret. The two of them seem quite relaxed together, leading us to believe that he will continue to do so.

There is a bit of irony in Julia’s harshness with David for entering Barnabas’ house without his permission. She and Stokes didn’t have Barnabas’ permission to be there, either. Indeed, if he had known what they were up to he would likely have objected most strenuously. Along with a man named Tony, they held a séance in the part of the basement where Barnabas kept his coffin when he was under the full effect of the vampire curse. They were trying to contact the Rev’d Mr Trask, a Puritan divine whom Barnabas bricked up to die in the eighteenth century. The séance was so successful that the bricks crumbled, exposing Trask’s bones, still held together somehow in the shape of a skeleton hanging from the ceiling. At the end of the episode, Trask has resumed his corporeal form and set about taking revenge on Barnabas by walling him up in the same spot.

Odd that Trask’s skeleton holds together after all the ligaments and tendons have rotted away, odder that there is a straight cleavage separating the top of the skull from the rest, oddest of all that the section is attached to the rest of the skull by a piece of Scotch tape.

Episode 497: Acting like ourselves

Mrs Johnson, housekeeper in the principal mansion on the great estate of Collinwood, isn’t herself. She had a nightmare a week ago, and ever since has been plagued with a compulsion to tell its details to strange and troubled boy David Collins. She knows that if she does, David will have the same nightmare, the same compulsion to tell it to some third person, and that if he does that person will suffer the same complex. She doesn’t know that the nightmare is part of a curse sent by wicked witch Angelique, or that at the climax of the curse old world gentleman Barnabas Collins is supposed to revert to the vampirism that afflicted him from the 1790s until last month. But she does know that it is part of something horrible, and she has tried desperately to keep it from continuing.

Mrs Johnson spent a couple of days with her sister in Boston to stay far from David, but she kept having the nightmare there. She has given up, and has come back to Collinwood. She does not go straight home to the great house, but stops first at the Old House in the estate. Barnabas lives there, but it is Barnabas’ friend Julia Hoffman she sees. Julia had passed the dream to her. Julia urges Mrs Johnson not to tell David about it. She replies that she knows she should not tell him, but that she has no more choice in the matter than Julia had in telling her.

This scene will raise a question in the minds of regular viewers. Julia is a medical doctor doubly qualified in hematology and psychiatry; she also has developed a method of hypnosis so powerful that she can virtually rewrite a subject’s memory, confining even very intense recollections to the depths of the unconscious mind, sometimes after an acquaintance of only a few minutes. Why doesn’t she try to hypnotize Mrs Johnson into forgetting the dream? All she actually does is slap her and repeat her command to avoid David.

David turns up. His father has sent him to ask Julia to come to the great house at her convenience. Julia tries to manage the situation by sending Mrs Johnson home first and keeping David in the house for a while. After Mrs Johnson leaves, Barnabas’ servant Willie enters and tells Julia there is an emergency in the basement. David agrees to wait for her to come back, but once she is gone he shouts that he will be playing outside.

We follow David out the front door, and find that Mrs Johnson is there waiting for him. She comes up on him from behind and says she has something to tell him. This scene will startle regular viewers. For nineteen weeks, from #365 to #461, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. In that period, Clarice Blackburn played repressed spinster Abigail Collins and David Henesy played Daniel Collins, heir to the Collins fortune. We first saw Daniel in #431, when his Aunt Abigail intercepted him on this very spot and scolded him for playing at the Old House. Abigail was enforcing rules and believed she was acting in Daniel’s best interests; now the same actors invert the scene, showing us Mrs Johnson doing something she knows to be wrong and harmful to David.

Mrs Johnson sneaks up on David. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, isn’t herself. Some emerald earrings mysteriously appeared in her purse the other day, and when she tried them on she got a faraway look on her face, began speaking in a voice different from her own, and a tinkling music played on the soundtrack. Today her boyfriend Joe tells her that he took the earrings and showed them to a jeweler and to the police. The jeweler valued them at $15,000* and the police said that they didn’t match the description of any jewelry that had been reported missing. Maggie was not only irked that Joe had taken the earrings without her permission, as anyone might be, but when he tries to get her to agree that such expensive things don’t just materialize out of thin air her usual level-headedness and cheerful disposition vanish and she becomes childishly defensive. Maggie does not know that Barnabas’ servant Willie placed the earrings in her purse as an attempt to reestablish the connection the two of them had when she was Barnabas’ prisoner in the Old House. As a result of Julia’s hypnosis, she does not even remember what Barnabas did to her. But after she runs Joe off, she is compelled to go to the Old House.

Again, regular viewers will recognize an echo of an earlier episode, in this case one that aired a year ago. When Maggie was Barnabas’ victim in May 1967, she snapped at Joe and drove him out of her house as she does today. Then too, she headed for Barnabas once Joe was gone.

Maggie doesn’t find Barnabas at the Old House. Instead, she sees Willie. Barnabas had framed Willie for his crimes against Maggie, and Willie was confined to the mental hospital Julia runs. Barnabas and Julia have brought him back to the Old House to help with their latest nefarious scheme. Willie had been Barnabas’ blood thrall; it is not clear to the audience just what effect it had on Willie when Barnabas’ vampirism went into remission. When we first see him today, he is playing with an unloaded rifle and grinning maniacally, reminding us of the dangerously unstable ruffian he was before Barnabas first bit him.

Maggie knocks on the door and asks Willie if she can come in. He falls over himself inviting her. He becomes the friend he tried to be to her during her imprisonment. She says she knows that he wasn’t the one who hurt her, and he is overjoyed. She seems blissful. He asks her out on a date; she says that Joe wouldn’t like it. Before Barnabas, Willie propositioned all the young women and threatened all their boyfriends, and at first this approach, like his gleeful handling of the rifle, suggests that dangerously unstable ruffian is back. He assures Maggie that he only wants friendship, but after she leaves he picks the rifle up again and says that Joe will be out of the way soon.

Maggie finds herself strangely at home. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

For her part, Maggie’s behavior does not represent a reversion to her time as Barnabas’ prisoner. Rather, the earrings seem to have done what Barnabas tried to do when he bit her, imprisoned her, and subjected her to a series of role-playing exercises. Her personality is showing signs of giving way to that of Barnabas’ lost love, gracious lady Josette. In #260, Barnabas told Maggie “You are Josette!”; in #370, we saw that he was right, inasmuch as Kathryn Leigh Scott played both characters, as Zita Johanns had played both Helen Grosvenor and Princess Ankh-Esen-Amun in the 1932 film The Mummy, from which Barnabas’ Josettification project was borrowed. The tinkling melody that plays on the soundtrack when Maggie wears the earrings is that of Josette’s music box; this could be a sign that her memory of what Barnabas did to her is coming back, since he forced her to listen to the music box for hours on end. But the voice she speaks in at those times is the voice Miss Scott used as Josette, and her blissfulness reminds us of Josette’s first scenes with her beloved Barnabas, not of Maggie’s captivity in the ghoul’s dungeon.

Back at Collinwood, Mrs Johnson watches David sleep. She tells him she is sorry for what she has done and for what he will suffer. Clarice Blackburn was always good, but she outdoes herself with this speech. It is a beautiful performance.

David has the nightmare. The first several dream sequences in the Dream Curse storyline ended with the dreamer opening a door, seeing something scary, and screaming. David’s goes a step further. There is a gigantic spider web behind the last door he opens. He not only sees it, but is tangled in it when he starts screaming. He awakes, still screaming, and Mrs Johnson holds him.

*Equivalent to $135,796.52 in 2024’s money, according to the CPI Inflation Calculator.

Episode 495: A nice boy

In #134, strange and troubled boy David saw his mother Laura Murdoch Collins for the first time in years. To everyone’s surprise, not least his own, David reacted to Laura with terror. It turned out that he had good reason for this reaction, as Laura was actually an undead blonde fire witch come to lure him to his own death.

In #489, David learned that his father Roger had remarried. Like everyone else in the great house of Collinwood, David was stunned to learn that Roger had known his new wife for less than a day before he married her. Unlike the others, his speechless reaction prompted Roger to jump to the conclusion that he disliked his new stepmother. Roger scolded David and sent him to play outside until he could come back and be charming.

While outside, David had stumbled upon the new Mrs Collins kissing a man other than her husband. Later, he found her alone in the drawing room, told her what he had seen, and informed her that he would tell his father about it.

Roger’s new wife wears a black wig and calls herself Cassandra. What the audience knows, but neither Roger nor David do, is that she is actually an undead blonde witch. Roger does have a type.

The new Mrs Collins’ real name is Angelique. She has come to 1968 from the late eighteenth century to resume her punishment of Barnabas Collins, whom she turned into a vampire in their time, but who has now been freed from the symptoms of the curse. When David told Angelique/ Cassandra that he would report her misconduct to Roger, she used her magic powers to strike him dumb. When his muteness became inconvenient for her in #492, she cast another spell to erase his memory and restore his speech. To execute this spell, she took fire from the hearth and spoke words to David that caused him to drift into a trance. We remember #140, when Laura urged David to stare into the flames of this same hearth while she told the story of the Phoenix, causing him to drift into a trance. From that point on, he liked his mother very much.

Today, David meets Roger in the foyer of Collinwood. He tells his father that Angelique/ Cassandra took him into town, where she bought him a Swiss army knife. He says she would have bought him anything he wanted. Thus we learn that, though she is a wicked witch (as well as a wigged one,) Angelique/ Cassandra is in some ways a typical step-parent. When Roger says he is glad to see that David now likes Angelique/ Cassandra, David is mystified. As far as he can recall, he always liked her.

Roger sends David to answer a knock at the door. It is their distant cousin Barnabas. This is the first time we have seen David and Barnabas together since #333, when David barely escaped with his life after Barnabas caught him looking at his coffin. David now greets him quite calmly.

David leaves. In the foyer, Roger scolds Barnabas for his rudeness to Angelique/ Cassandra. Barnabas could hardly be expected to fail to recognize his old nemesis, but he has indeed shown an extreme lack of prudence in his uninhibited talks with her. Not only has he created unpleasant scenes to which Roger is bound to object, but he has also let Angelique/ Cassandra know exactly what he does and does not know about her.

Roger says that if Barnabas cannot be friendly to Angelique/ Cassandra, he shouldn’t come to the great house anymore. Barnabas asks if Roger shouldn’t ask his sister Liz, who after all owns the house, what she thinks. Roger says that will be unnecessary, since Liz has even less tolerance for rude behavior than he does. Barnabas is promising to do better when Liz runs in, frightened by a tall man she met on the grounds. Liz told the man he was on private property and directed him to leave. The man said nothing at all in response to this challenge or to her subsequent questions. He stood still and appeared to be mute until he spoke Barnabas’ name. Liz ran from him when she saw that he had a shackle attached to his leg. Roger flies into a panic, assuming that a shackled man must be dangerous and remembering that David is alone in the woods. He gets his gun, and rushes out. Barnabas accompanies him.

In the woods, David is playing Mumblety-Peg with his new knife. The tall man shows up; when David finds that the man cannot talk, he says that he is glad. He says that he often wishes no one could talk. He goes on at considerable length about the disadvantages that come with the ability to speak. He then explains to the man that you play Mumblety-Peg by dropping the knife into the ground so that it sticks there. The man becomes excited and grabs the knife. David objects and demands he return it. They struggle; David falls and hurts his ankle. David grumbles that all the man had to do was give him his knife back. The man looks alarmed and picks David up. David doesn’t like that one bit, and insists he be put down.

David’s shouting brings Roger and Barnabas. Roger points his gun at the man and orders him to put David down. When the man does not move, Barnabas tells Roger not to shoot. David, in the line of fire, seconds this recommendation. Barnabas talks to the man in a soothing voice, gesturing towards the ground, and the man does set David down. David runs to Barnabas and gives him a hug.

This is the second time David has run into Barnabas’ arms. The first was in #315. David had been trapped in the hidden chamber in the old Collins family mausoleum, where Barnabas was confined in his coffin from the 1790s until 1967. Barnabas learned that David was there, suspected he might have deduced his secret, and decided to kill him. David got out of the chamber just as Barnabas was approaching it, and ran from it directly to him. He had not in fact figured out Barnabas’ secret while in the hidden chamber, but Barnabas’ behavior in the minute before someone else came along was menacing enough that David caught on that he had sinister plans for him. For the next ten weeks, his fear of Barnabas would deepen, leading him to discover the whole horrible truth about his distant relative. All that is forgotten now, evidently.

Roger jumps to the conclusion that the tall man had “tried to kill David!” He shoots him in the shoulder and runs after him with his gun, over Barnabas’ objections. Roger had been quite unconcerned with David’s well-being throughout the first year of the show. In the first months, he openly hated the boy and continually tried to persuade Liz to send him off to an institution; in #83, he coldly manipulated David into attempting to murder someone who posed a problem for him; even after other characters had begun to realize that Laura was a deadly threat to David, Roger continued to press eagerly for her to get full custody of him and take him away; and in #313, when David was trapped in the mausoleum, Roger could barely be bothered to take part in the search. Roger’s behavior will therefore be less likely to suggest to regular viewers that he is overcome with paternal feeling than that he is a panicky fool who is much too excited about an opportunity to shoot someone.

The tall man is Adam, a Frankenstein’s monster created in the procedure that caused Barnabas’ vampirism to go into remission. Though he is 6’6″, Adam is only a couple of weeks old, effectively a baby. Barnabas has been keeping him in his basement, chained to the wall in the prison cell he maintains for those times when he has abducted a pretty girl and has to keep her from running away. The opening voiceover tells us that “no man has suffered more” than Barnabas, just as we cut to Adam, despondent in his shackles. Barnabas comes in to give Adam a cup of broth and a couple of minutes of rigidly formal social interaction, then leaves him alone again. Somehow this sequence makes it difficult to sympathize as deeply with Barnabas as the narration would have us do.

Episode 492: Think of a worse place

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman and recovering vampire Barnabas Collins have created a Frankenstein’s monster and named him Adam. Adam is 6’6″ and brawny, he can walk, and he seems to have some degree of understanding of speech. Still, he is only a few hours old, and he knows nothing about the world in which he finds himself. When he throws a tantrum and smashes up lab equipment, Barnabas gets a gun and prepares to shoot him to death. Julia stops him. She injects Adam with a powerful sedative and says they should take him to the basement of Barnabas’ house and lock him up in the prison cell where Barnabas sometimes confines his victims.

Returning viewers will be puzzled by this idea. Julia is in charge of a mental hospital a hundred miles away, and has twice stashed victims of Barnabas’ there and used her powers of hypnosis to mutilate their memories so that they cannot tell the authorities about him. Adam has no memories that would threaten Barnabas’ position; all he needs is care and supervision. Of course, sending him away would stop the story, so if Barnabas suggested it the writers would have to give Julia a line to explain why it wouldn’t be possible. That would be so easy to do that it is very odd they don’t bother to do it.

At one point, Julia says “We must make him trust us.” When Barnabas asks how, she admits that she doesn’t know. I suppose the first step would be to ensure that he never learns anything at all about either of them.

Meanwhile, Barnabas’ old nemesis, wicked witch Angelique, has come back to life. Wearing a black wig and calling herself Cassandra, she has married sarcastic dandy Roger Collins, establishing herself as a resident of the great house of Collinwood and as stepmother to strange and troubled boy David. The other day, David caught Angelique/ Cassandra kissing her cat’s paw Tony. Before he could tell his father what he had seen, Angelique/ Cassandra cast a spell on David leaving him unable to speak or write. Now David’s muteness has become an inconvenience to her, so she casts another spell on him, making him forget everything from the moment before he came upon her and Tony, then restoring his power of speech.

For the first several months of Dark Shadows, David had emotional problems resulting from the hostile atmosphere in which he spent the first years of his life. Roger openly hated David, and in #83 deliberately manipulated him into making an attempt on the life of well-meaning governess Vicki. David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, was no better, trying to lure David to his death in the flames which would consume her current form and give her new life.

The only other children on the show until now were Daniel Collins, who like David was played by David Henesy and who was the object of a murder plot by his legal guardian, and Sarah Collins. Sarah was a ghost from #255 to #364, and a living being from #366 to #415. When Sarah was alive, Angelique had abused her very cruelly. Sarah’s big brother Barnabas spurned Angelique’s advances, and Angelique published him by afflicting Sarah with a grave illness. When Angelique placed the curse that made Barnabas a vampire, she declared that it would mean the death of everyone who loved him, and she should have known that as one of those who loved him most dearly Sarah would be among the first to die.

Roger and Angelique/ Cassandra, therefore, are hardly more promising as parents than are Barnabas and Julia. David and Adam might wind up in therapy together some day.

The episode ends with a dream sequence, part of the “Dream Curse” that Angelique decreed would fill time when the writers get stuck. One character after another has the same dream, each time ending with an image that is supposed to suggest some hidden fear that character has. Today’s dreamer is housekeeper Mrs Johnson. Evidently she is afraid of video inserts, because she sees a clip from an educational film about bats. It’s an interesting image, not at all in the thoroughly stagey, vaguely stately visual style director Lela Swift established for Dark Shadows.

And behind Door #3, a Zonk! Thank you for playing “Let’s Make a Nightmare,” we hope you had a good time. Screenshot by *Dark Shadows Before I Die.*

Episode 489: Ga-ZAY-bo

Wicked witch Angelique has cast a spell on lawyer Tony, compelling him to do her bidding. Today he calls on her at the great house of Collinwood. He is starting to remember some of the things he did for her. He can’t remember why he did them, and is troubled. She commands him to meet her at the gazebo on the estate. Up to this point in the series, Angelique and all other characters referring to this structure have spoken the word “gazebo” in its usual North American pronunciation, as /gəzɪ́jbəw/ (“ga-ZEE-bo.”) When Angelique tells Tony to meet her, she directs him to the /gəzējbəw/ (“ga-ZAY-bo.”)

In the gazebo, Tony shares his vague recollections with Angelique. He says that he does not understand why he would obey her commands. She tells him to look at her. When we heard this line, Mrs Acilius and I both laughed. Lara Parker delivers it with a little smile and a relaxed voice that made it sound like she was about to say “Of course you can’t resist me, I’m gorgeous!” Instead, she puts the zap on him and gives him more orders. But after she releases him from his trance, he again says that he doesn’t understand why he keeps coming to her, and she does in fact say that he’s falling in love with her. They kiss.

Angelique took up residence at Collinwood just a couple of weeks ago. She had cast a spell on sarcastic dandy Roger Collins and married him. Roger’s son, strange and troubled boy David, has been on a trip to Boston the whole time. David is about ten, but evidently he’s been incommunicado. He comes back today, and is surprised to find that he has a new stepmother. His surprise turns to alarm when he walks in on Tony and Angelique kissing. Later, he announces to Angelique that he will tell his father what he saw in the gazebo. He too pronounces it /gəzējbəw/. Evidently this bit of Collinsport English is taking root.

Angelique makes a bad impression at the ga-zay-bo. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Angelique strikes David mute. The last time we saw her use her powers to silence a potential witness against her, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and her victim was indentured servant Ben. Ben was barely literate, but was able in #401 to write the letter A to indicate that she was the witch. Angelique has learned since then, and also prevents David from writing.

There are also two scenes where Angelique tries to find out if housekeeper Mrs Johnson has had a nightmare. Her motivation is to do with the Dream Curse, a dismal storyline I won’t explain, but the scenes are hilarious. Mrs Johnson is as commonsensical and down-to-earth as can be, while Angelique is as intense and melodramatic as can be. The two of them are naturally funny together, and these scenes leverage Clarice Blackburn’s gift for comedy of manners.

Episode 473: And that’s all I want to say.

Dark Shadows‘ first supernatural menace was undead blonde witch Laura Murdoch Collins, estranged wife of sarcastic dandy Roger. Laura was on the show from December 1966 to March of 1967. During that time, Laura tried to rebuild her relationship with her son by Roger, strange and troubled boy David. David’s well-meaning governess Vicki at first encouraged her charge to go to his mother, but eventually figured out that Laura posed a deadly threat to him. Vicki formed a coalition of characters to help her fight Laura, and eventually rescued David from his mother’s clutches at the last minute.

Now, Roger has come home to the great house of Collinwood after an unexplained absence that had Vicki, his sister Liz, and his distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas, terribly worried. Roger happily announces that he has taken a new wife, and presents her to the family.

As it turns out, Roger has a definite type. His new bride is also an undead blonde witch, though at the moment she is wearing a black wig that doubles as a physical representation of the concept “1968.” Her name is Angelique, although she pretends it is Cassandra.

Some critics say that the film 2001: A Space Odyssey would more aptly have been titled 1968: A Bad Year for Hats. As you can see, however, headwear in general was passing through a time of trial in that period. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Vicki and Barnabas recognize Angelique immediately. Vicki came unstuck in time in #365, finding herself in the year 1795, and didn’t make it back to the 1960s until #461. During her nineteen weeks in the late 1790s, Vicki got to know the people who lived at Collinwood in those days, among them Barnabas and Angelique. She saw many horrible things happen to them, and only after being blamed for those catastrophes herself would she realize that they were the consequences of spells cast by Angelique. Due to Angelique’s curse, Barnabas would be a vampire from 1796 until the week after Vicki came back to 1968. Vicki has decided to believe that Barnabas is not the same person she knew in that period, but rather that he is the descendant of that Barnabas Collins. He does not want her to know that he ever was a vampire, and she has resolved not to know that either, even though he used to bite her on the neck and suck her blood.

The battle against Laura was a fairly exciting story, at least in its latter stages. Angelique is a far more dynamic adversary than Laura, and Dark Shadows is much faster-paced and better written than it was then, so a reprise of the structure of that conflict in this new setting would likely be very exciting indeed.

To wage such a battle, Vicki and Barnabas can have no secrets from each other. Many who have been with Dark Shadows from the beginning have been hoping that its original protagonist will eventually become aware of the principal storylines, and this is one of the obvious ways to do it. Vicki can learn that Barnabas was a vampire, can find out that he was the one responsible for all the terrible crimes committed against the women and men and cows of Collinsport in 1967, and can still align herself with him, because she needs his support against Angelique, a more urgent threat. By the time they have vanquished her, not only will the idea of handing Barnabas over to the authorities have lost its salience, but Vicki will doubtless be facing another urgent threat requiring Barnabas’ assistance.

Nothing we see today suggests that such a development is on the horizon. The episode began with Vicki, Barnabas, and Liz worrying about Roger. A couple of weeks ago, Vicki brought a portrait home from an antique store and it had bizarre effects on Roger. The other day, he took the portrait and disappeared.

We can tell that today is not going to be a win for the female characters when Barnabas reacts to Liz’ expression of concern by dismissing her from his presence and she leaves, even though he is in her house. Vicki can tell Barnabas knows more about the situation than she does, and each time he condescends to mete out a little information in response to one of her questions he ends by turning his back to her and explicitly refusing to share anything more.

When Liz first leaves him alone with Vicki, Barnabas sourly remarks “I try to remember… that I must not reproach you for the reasons you’ve given not to marry me.” As Danny Horn shows in a series of screenshots in his post on Dark Shadows Every Day, their body language does not at any point support the idea that Barnabas wants to be with Vicki and she does not want to be with him. Quite the contrary; he withdraws from her, turns from her, and puts physical objects as barriers before her, while she looks at him, follows him, and leans towards him.

This has been Barnabas and Vicki’s dynamic for a long time. By #285, she went so far as to invite herself to a sleepover at his house. Barnabas was a vampire then; he entered the bedroom while she slept and bared his fangs, but couldn’t bring himself to bite her. Time and again, Vicki would all but draw a circle on her neck with the words “Mr Vampire, Bite Here!,” and Barnabas would tremblingly open his mouth, then recoil at the last moment. In #462, he finally sampled her bloodstream. By the end of #466, Barnabas’ vampirism had gone into remission, and that little storyline had evaporated. Now Vicki is vague and confused about what happened between her and Barnabas, and he is afraid he will relapse and bite her again.

Vicki is trapped between two blank walls. On one side Barnabas is excluding her from his life and therefore from active participation in the A story. On the other, she keeps having scenes with her old boyfriend from the 1790s, an unpleasant man named Peter who keeps demanding, for no apparent reason, that she call him Jeff. That habit of his was dead on arrival as a story point, and now that Angelique will be trying our patience by insisting her name is Cassandra, it will become impossibly tedious to have a second character doing the same pointless schtick. As long as she is in this position, Vicki’s prospects for contributing interesting material to Dark Shadows belong to a very low order of probability.

Episode 455: Old enough now

In Dark Shadows #316, broadcast and set in September 1967, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy) escaped from the hidden chamber in the Collins family mausoleum, only to find himself in the clutches of his distant cousin, Barnabas the vampire. He was spared from Barnabas’ murderous intentions when local man Burke Devlin happened by.

Today’s episode was broadcast in March 1968 and set in the 1790s. Young Daniel Collins (David Henesy) leaves the hidden chamber in the Collins family mausoleum, only to find himself in the clutches of a criminal named Noah Gifford. Daniel is spared from Noah’s murderous intentions when bewildered time-traveler Vicki, who was once Daniel’s governess, emerges from the hidden chamber and shoots Noah dead.

Vicki and David inside the hidden chamber. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The contrast between the two scenes shows how much thicker the narrative texture of the show is in the 1790s flashback than it was before. In #316, David had accidentally got himself trapped in the hidden chamber. That led to a whole week of episodes where he was helpless and people looked for him, Barnabas with the intention of killing him because he overestimated how much David knew about him. Burke just chanced to be there at the right moment to rescue David. That was all there was to it, really, and once it was over it didn’t change the story very much.

But Daniel deliberately went to the hidden chamber because he was fleeing from Noah, who was working as an agent of naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes. Nathan is married to Daniel’s sister, fluttery heiress Millicent Collins, and is scheming to get control of her money. Murdering Daniel is one part of that plan. Vicki is in hiding because she has been convicted of witchcraft, sentenced to die, and has escaped from gaol. She chooses to rescue Daniel at the risk of her own life because she loves him, and also because he will grow up to be the ancestor of the Collinses whom she knew in the 1960s. All of the characters involved in Daniel’s encounter with Noah know what they are doing, have chosen to pursue important goals, are brought together by the convergence of ongoing plot-lines, and take actions that propel the flashback segment towards its conclusion.

One of the themes Danny Horn developed on his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day was that the actors didn’t know how to handle firearms. Alexandra Moltke Isles provides several spectacular examples in today’s episode. Danny’s post about it includes several screenshots of Vicki pointing her loaded gun at Daniel, including one of her aiming it directly at his crotch. Since one of Vicki’s chief goals is safeguarding Daniel’s ability to someday produce offspring, this would seem to be a particularly maladroit gesture.

Episode 453: Legal guardian

In December 1966, crazed handyman Matthew Morgan (Thayer David) abducted well-meaning governess Vicki and held her prisoner in a secret room behind the bookcase in the front parlor of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Vicki had run into Matthew there when she saw his dusty footprints leading up to the bookcase in #115. Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy,) did not know that Matthew had abducted Vicki, and was convinced that he had gone into hiding because he was unjustly accused of murdering local man Bill Malloy. So when David found out Matthew was in the Old House, he brought him food and water. In #120, David heard Vicki’s muffled voice behind the bookcase; in #123, he pulled the bookcase back and found her; in #124, he was too frightened to help her escape.

Now, Vicki has come unstuck in time, and found herself in the late eighteenth century. She made a promising start, landing a position as governess to the children at Collinwood, among them Daniel (David Henesy.) But she has adapted poorly to her new surroundings, so poorly that she has been convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death. Accompanied by her boyfriend, an unpleasant young man named Peter, she has escaped from gaol. Vicki was shot in the arm while escaping, and is still bleeding. She and Peter have made their way to the Old House. There, much put-upon servant Ben (Thayer David) at once gives Vicki and Peter such help as he can.

When a knock comes at the door, Ben tells Vicki and Peter he will hide them. He goes to the bookcase, and Vicki whispers “The secret room.” When Vicki first saw Ben, they were in this parlor, and she was frightened because she mistook him for Matthew. In her hushed voice and the look of awe on her face when she sees Ben trying to save her life by putting her in the room where his Doppelgänger will try to kill her in 1966, Alexandra Moltke Isles’ Vicki conveys the thought that Ben and Matthew really are two versions of the same guy. Ben is a kind-hearted sort whose fierce loyalties sometimes overcome his good sense; Matthew a paranoid ogre whose single-minded devotion to matriarch Liz leads him to kill and menace those dearest to Liz. The difference between the two men begins in the events that have been taking place around Vicki in the 1790s. Ben grew up in the ordinary world of day and night, where natural laws apply and there is hope for goodness. Matthew has spent his whole life in a town laboring under an ancient curse. Matthew’s crimes would be the fruit of Ben’s virtues, had Ben been warped by the evil of centuries that hangs over the Collinsport of the 1960s.

While Vicki and Peter huddle in the secret room, Daniel bursts into the parlor. Ben tries to hurry him out, but the lad notices a trail of bloodstains leading to the bookcase. Before Ben can stop him, Daniel opens the bookcase and finds the fugitives.

Daniel discovers the fugitives. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Daniel is as convinced of Vicki’s innocence as David will be of Matthew’s, and he is eager to help her and her friend. Ben says he will take the fugitives to a safer hiding place, and forbids Daniel to follow them. Of course Daniel does follow them, and sees them enter the Collins family mausoleum in the old cemetery north of town. He cannot see inside, where Ben opens a secret panel and ushers Vicki and Peter into the hidden chamber behind. This chamber will be hugely important in 1967. Vicki will hear about it in that year after David, who spent a week trapped there ending in #315, tells people about it in #334. But David will be unable to show the chamber to Vicki or anyone else, and most adults assumed it was just something he had imagined. Vicki is astonished to see it today.

Daniel goes home to the great house of Collinwood, where his brother-in-law, naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes, handles him roughly and demands to know where he saw Vicki. When Daniel denies having seen Vicki, Nathan asks him how he came to have a bloodstain on his sleeve. He tells Daniel that Vicki was wounded when she escaped from gaol, and declares that it is her blood on Daniel. He warns Daniel that it is a crime to withhold information about a fugitive. Daniel keeps denying everything.

Back in the hidden chamber, Vicki is asleep. She dreams that Nathan is trying to kill Daniel. Returning viewers know that this is in fact true. Nathan married Daniel’s sister, fluttery heiress Millicent, because wanted her vast fortune. He found out on their wedding day that she had signed everything over to Daniel. It has occurred to him that if Daniel should die, it will all revert to Millicent, so he is scheming to bring that death about. Vicki has been in gaol since all of this started; nothing she has seen or heard could have led her to conclude that Nathan was a threat to Daniel. We must take it as a message from the supernatural world. This is not the first time we have seen Vicki receive such a message while in a concealed place. In #126, when Matthew was bringing an ax to decapitate her, Vicki was visited in the secret room behind the bookcase in the Old House by the ghost of gracious lady Josette bringing her good news.

The segment of Dark Shadows set in the 1790s is nearing its end. They have killed off most of the characters, have stopped introducing new ones, and those who remain are all facing crises that can be resolved only by further reducing the number of people available to participate in the action. The echoes of #123 and #124 will underline that point for viewers who have been with Dark Shadows from the start. Not only did those episodes tip Matthew into the final part of his storyline, they introduced David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, marking a new phase of the show. Calling back to those installments, and condensing the action of #115 through #126 into a few minutes, they are telling us that the end of the 1790s segment is near, and that when it comes it will come fast.