david collins – Page 8 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 256: Always choose the worst things to want

A mysterious little girl in eighteenth century garb shows up outside the dungeon cell where vampire Barnabas Collins is keeping his victim, Maggie Evans. The girl stands with her back to Maggie’s cell and sings a couple of verses of “London Bridge” over and over while tossing a ball. Maggie pleads with her to stop singing, to get away before Barnabas and his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie Loomis catch her, and to tell someone that she has seen her. The girl does not acknowledge Maggie in any way.

Seconds after the girl has strolled slowly away, Willie comes by the same path she had taken. Maggie is bewildered that Willie didn’t see her. She urges Willie to escape from Barnabas. Willie gives a big speech about how he thinks about escaping all the time, and that when he is in his car he has sometimes tried to keep driving. But Barnabas’ power keeps pulling him back. Regular viewers will be interested in this confirmation that Willie has a car.*

Willie’s big speech.
Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

At the great house of Collinwood, strange and troubled boy David Collins is impatient with the geography lesson his governess Vicki is trying to give him. In the first 39 weeks of the show, the only set which consistently saw interesting scenes was David’s room, where he and Vicki became friends during his lessons. They don’t have the studio space to build that set today, so this lesson is conducted in the drawing room. When flighty heiress Carolyn comes into the room, Vicki sends David to play outside. Since the interrupted lesson was about Australia, he hops away kangaroo-style.

Vicki and Carolyn talk about Carolyn’s boyfriend, motorcycle enthusiast Buzz. Buzz is a refugee from Beach Blanket Bingo, so broadly comic a figure that he might have been too silly even for the biker gang in that movie and its sequels. Unfortunately, Buzz doesn’t show up today, and Vicki and Carolyn’s conversation is a pure specimen of old-time soap opera earnestness. There is an odd moment when Vicki asks Carolyn “How far do you intend to go with Buzz?” and Carolyn answers “All the way!” At the end of the scene, Carolyn uses the phrase “all the way” again. She’s talking about her plan to marry Buzz, but “all the way” was such a familiar euphemism for sexual intercourse in the 1960s that it is hard to imagine it wasn’t intentional on some level. When Carolyn tells Vicki that she and Buzz will go “all the way” while Vicki watches, we wonder what weddings are like in Collinsport.**

David has gone to the yard around Barnabas’ house. We see a location insert of him on the swing set there. This footage is reused from #130, when we discovered that he was being watched by his mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Laura had died sometime previously, but it didn’t take.

Now, he is being watched again. The mysterious little girl from the dungeon has made her way up to the porch and calls to him as “Boy!” When he tells her his name is David, she says “I know.” She gives her name as Sarah, and asks him to play with her. They toss her ball back and forth, and he finds fault with her fondness for “London Bridge.” She says she used to go to school, a long time ago. She lives around there, but everyone she lives with went away and left her all alone. She excuses herself to go look for them. Willie then comes out of the house. David tells him about Sarah, and Willie shoos him away.

Playing catch as best you can when you’re on a tiny set, photographed in 4X3.
Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

That Sarah can come and go from the dungeon without being seen shows that she is one of the ghosts who haunt the house. David has seen several of these, but does not recognize her. Her behavior in the opening scenes leaves us wondering if she is aware of Maggie’s presence; if not, she may simply be an apparition, unable to interact with the living characters.

When Sarah meets David, not only is she able to converse with him, but her ability to play catch with him using the ball she brought with her shows that she has a physical body and that she can manipulate material objects. That makes it all the more puzzling that she did not answer Maggie. Was she ignoring her, or was she somehow less capable in the dungeon than she is on the porch?

When Sarah uses the words “a long time ago,” we suspect that she knows she is a ghost and she has been displaced to a future century. But then she becomes confused as to where her people are, and is filled with a terrible urgency to go look for them. Again it is ambiguous just what sort of being Sarah is and what she can do.

There is always a vagueness about the supernatural- if you could explain a phenomenon fully in words and measurements, it wouldn’t be in that category at all. The key to holding an audience’s attention with a story about ghosts and such is to intrigue them with questions that seem like they might have answers and to use them to lead to another, equally imponderable set of questions before the first set gets old. So it is a promising sign that Sarah is introduced while we are still asking what Barnabas can do, what he wants to accomplish, what he needs for survival, and how he got to be the way he is.

That we see David in a lesson with Vicki and then hear him talking with Sarah about how neither of them goes to school anymore is also interesting to regular viewers. Dark Shadows is just about a year old. It started with Vicki’s arrival at Collinwood, where reclusive matriarch Liz had summoned her to teach David. David and his father, Liz’ impecunious brother Roger Collins, had been living at Collinwood for about a month. Before then, they had lived in Augusta, Maine, where David went to school.

When Vicki showed up, Roger objected that he knew nothing about her, and Liz refused to tell him or Vicki how she knew that she existed or why she chose her to be David’s governess. The show has been hinting very heavily that Vicki is Liz’ biological daughter and that Liz is desperate to keep that relationship secret. It is also clear that Liz wants above all for David to grow into her idea of a male Collins, an idea to which her bratty little brother Roger does not in any way conform.

Barnabas’ plan for Maggie is a ghoulish parody of Liz’ for David. He wants to erase her personality and replace it with that of his long-lost love, Josette Collins. Over the generations since her death, Josette has become the patroness of the Collins family and the emblem of its perfect female member. And of course Barnabas is as anxious to hide the secrets in his basement as Liz is to hide those in hers. That Sarah appears to both Maggie and David emphasizes that Barnabas is a funhouse mirror reflection of Liz.

Back in the great house, David hears Buzz’ motorcycle and tells Carolyn that he is there for her. She can’t quite bring herself to tell David that she and Buzz are planning to get married, but does encourage his interest in going for a bike ride with Buzz. As she leaves, he brilliantly mimes motorcycle riding.

David gives Vicki a detailed account of his encounter with Sarah. She is disappointed he didn’t bring her home. Though it is her job to be David’s only friend, Vicki is no more enthusiastic about his isolation from playmates his own age than Willie is about Barnabas’ treatment of Maggie.

Back in the dungeon, Willie finds that Maggie has not eaten. They share a sad moment. He leaves, and Sarah reappears. Maggie talks to her. At first, she doesn’t respond. But then she turns to her and says “If you see my big brother, don’t tell him you saw me. He doesn’t like anybody to come down here.” Then she leaves, a spring in her step.

The last time a ghost spoke to an imprisoned woman was in the same house, in #126. That time, Vicki was bound and gagged and hidden in a secret room on the main floor by crazed handyman Matthew Morgan. When Matthew had gone to get an ax with which to decapitate Vicki, the ghost of Josette had appeared to her and said, in a perfectly cheerful voice,*** “Do not be afraid.” Josette didn’t untie Vicki or anything, she just told her that and vanished. Later in the episode, she and some other ghosts scare Matthew to death before he can kill Vicki. When Sarah goes away from the stunned Maggie and skips along the floor, regular viewers might remember that event and see a promise that Sarah has something up her sleeve.

Closing Miscellany

Sarah is identified in the closing credits as “Sarah Collins,” the name given in #211 for Barnabas’ sister who died in childhood. That rather blunts the surprise of her closing reference to her “big brother.”

Sarah’s identity raises a couple of other questions. Barnabas’ house was the original Collins family home, and he and Sarah would have lived there. The cell in which he keeps Maggie is covered with cobwebs, evidently a feature of the house from its beginning. When she tells Maggie that her big brother “doesn’t like anybody to come down here,” she is speaking from experience- the adults don’t like it when you go near the jail cell in the basement.

Slavery was a legal institution in Massachusetts**** until 1783, and indentured servitude under conditions not so far removed from those to which slaves were subject continued long after. The Old House has been described as a “huge mansion,” so presumably its owners would have held people under at least one of these statuses. As a Collins of the eighteenth century, Sarah’s blithe attitude towards someone held in the cell would seem to be chillingly appropriate.

Sarah’s address to David as “Boy!” when she knows his name is also interesting coming from her. To be sure, if she had called him by name before they met, he would have known right away that there was something very strange about her. Since he has seen many ghosts and knows that ghosts congregate in and around the Old House, he may have identified her as one right away.

On the other hand, during the “Revenge of Burke Devlin” storyline that ran from #1-#201, there was considerable doubt as to whether David was Roger’s natural son or Burke’s. That doubt came to a head when Laura was on the show. Laura only left 13 weeks ago, and Burke is still hanging around. As far as we know, the question may come back up, and David Collins may turn out to be David Devlin. In that case, Sarah may have chosen to call him “boy” because she is a Collins and therefore better than everyone who is not.

I posted a couple of long comments about this episode on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day. I won’t copy them here, because they contain spoilers for people who haven’t seen the whole series. But I’ll link to them- under the post about this episode, I argued that Sarah’s introduction was the most important plot development in the entire series; and under a post about a much later episode, I wish one of the words in her closing line had been different.

*Regular viewers are interested in some weird stuff, what can I say.

**My wife, Mrs Acilius, is very much taken with the actresses’ recollections of how Louis Edmonds, who played Roger, would make them laugh so hard during rehearsals that it was sometimes difficult for them to stay in character during filming. She says it is just as well that Roger wasn’t in this episode, because there is no way they could have got through this scene if he had been.

***Provided by Kathryn Leigh Scott, who also plays Maggie.

****Maine was part of Massachusetts until 1821.

Episode 241: What other name?

Much of the first 39 weeks of Dark Shadows consisted of characters telling each other that strange and troubled boy David Collins was a “very imaginative child.” In fact, David showed remarkably little imagination. He simply gave accurate reports concerning ghosts and other topics the adults around him didn’t want to think about.

Today, David Collins sneaks into the Old House on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. For a long time, the Old House was the stronghold of his friend, the ghost of Josette Collins, and he often went there to visit her. Now, his distant cousin Barnabas is residing there. Unknown to David and the rest of the family, Barnabas is a vampire. Barnabas has somehow stripped Josette of much of her power, and he is holding Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, and trying to brainwash her into thinking she is Josette.

David thinks he sees Josette’s ghost in the front parlor, but it is actually Maggie, wearing Josette’s dress and dazedly answering to her name. David hasn’t seen Maggie as often as he has seen Josette, but he’s met her several times and she’s been in the news since she disappeared from the hospital a number of days ago. Granted, he expects to see Josette, and Maggie is using a different voice than she used when she was slinging hash at the restaurant in the Collinsport Inn. But it is a bit odd that he doesn’t at least notice that Josette and Maggie look a lot alike. Perhaps he is finally showing the vivid imagination we heard about for so long, and is so carried away by the atmosphere that he overlooks the obvious.

David is delighted by the encounter, since he hasn’t sensed Josette’s presence since Barnabas moved in. After a few minutes, he remarks that it is the longest conversation they’ve ever had. He sees the portrait of Barnabas that Maggie’s father, artist Sam Evans, had been painting, and mentions Sam’s name. That triggers something in Maggie’s memory, and Barnabas’ name triggers something else.

Maggie’s reaction to the name “Evans” does not suggest anything to David

A knock comes at the door. David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, and his governess, the well-meaning Vicki, call his name. Maggie slips away. Roger and Vicki scold David for intruding in Barnabas’ house. Roger asks David if he went there looking for Josette. David denies it, and also denies that he did see her. Vicki knows Josette well, a fact which she apparently forgot for the duration of Friday’s episode, but her memory is restored today. She detects the scent of Josette’s perfume, and knows that David is lying.

The three of them are still there when Barnabas comes in. He is irked, and Roger is terribly embarrassed. They scurry back to the great house, where Roger tells Vicki to have David copy the word “honesty” and its definition fifty times in tomorrow’s lesson.

Before David goes to his room, Vicki asks him to tell her the truth about Josette. She listens carefully. He mentions that Josette had a music box, to which Vicki reacts visibly. She has seen the music box and the perfume jar in Josette’s restored bedroom upstairs at the Old House, and looks like she is trying to find the connection. She promises to keep the story between them. This glimpse of Smart Vicki, after Friday’s excruciating Dumb Vicki, revives our hope that someday, something will happen on the show.

Back in the Old House, Barnabas is sitting with Maggie and giving her instructions. She only repeats his words in a quizzical inflection, often just the last word he speaks. She hadn’t known who she was when she was talking to David, but she participated in the conversation so much more actively than this that we might wonder if she is putting on an act to keep distance between herself and Barnabas. At the end of the episode, she wanders back downstairs and calls “Little boy! I need you!”

Episode 223: She isn’t watching over us anymore

Strange and troubled boy David Collins is in the Old House on the estate of Collinwood with his aunt, reclusive matriarch Liz. David laments to Liz that he can no longer feel the tutelary presence of the ghost of their ancestor Josette Collins. For more than 24 weeks, from #70 when the Old House was introduced to #191 with the conclusion of the storyline centered on David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, the Old House had been Josette’s sanctuary. Now it is “a new house, a new place,” and she’s gone. David is particularly sad that the house’s new occupant, the newly arrived Barnabas Collins, has removed Josette’s portrait from its place above the mantle in the front parlor and plans to hang a portrait of himself there.

Back in the great house on the estate, David sees dashing action hero Burke Devlin. He sits on the stairs with Burke and talks about his feelings concerning Barnabas, Josette, the portrait, and the Old House. Burke suggests he ask Barnabas to give him the portrait. David is thrilled by this suggestion, and declares that he will go to the Old House at once to ask him. Burke points out that Barnabas probably isn’t home. That doesn’t make an impression on David, but he does stop before going out the door. Burke asks if he is afraid to go there alone, apparently preparing to volunteer to go with him. David says he isn’t afraid, but doesn’t explain what feeling he does have that is holding him back.

David goes to the Old House and calls to Barnabas. No one answers. The howling of dogs fills the air from every side, frightening David. He calls to Josette. He does not feel her presence. The doors slam shut on their own; when he runs to them, he cannot open them. We conclude with a closeup of his terrified face.

Those three scenes might have appeared in a good episode, but this is not that episode. In fact, it is a real stinker, very possibly the single worst we have seen so far. There is one funny line, when Liz remarks that Willie Loomis’ “illness appears to have caused him no end of convenience.” And the actors and director do what they can. But the script defeats them all.

As David Collins, David Henesy appears to be delivering the lines Ron Sproat actually wrote when he says things like “If I blame [Barnabas] for anything, it’s for changing things around [at the Old House]… I just hope he hasn’t changed [the Old House.]” Some of the words that come out of his mouth may be flubs, but most of it is of a piece with what the adult actors are saying in response to him, and nothing anyone says is close to intelligible. This is one of the rare episodes when Henesy winds up roaming about the sets declaiming like some kid actor in a 60s TV show.

As well-meaning governess Vicki, Alexandra Moltke Isles is trying so hard to remember her own pointless lines that she stands stiff as a board every time she is on camera. Vicki and David’s scenes were the heart of the first 39 weeks of the show, often in spite of writing nearly as bad as what the cast is stuck with today, but their conversation on the stairs today is terribly dull to watch.

Joan Bennett and Mitch Ryan each had star quality in abundance, and so they manage to hold their scenes together. The opening scene between Liz and Vicki has some snap to it, David’s conversation with Burke is appealing, and when Liz and Burke have a scene in the study arguing about a business deal she made with a man called Hackett* things start to crackle. But even in that scene Bennett and Ryan stumble over Sproat’s awful dialogue and wind up in the ditch more than once. Her frequent glances at the teleprompter and a couple of alarmingly long pauses from him turn the crackle to a fizzle well before it is over.

Burke and Liz argue about the Hackett deal

The scene between David and Liz in the Old House is another defeat for Joan Bennett. David Collins’ nonsensical lines and David Henesy’s flailing attempts to find some kind of through line in them leave her standing in mid-air, and the scene goes on so long they repeat every point they have to make at least twice. By the third time through the sparse material they have to work with, not even she could make it interesting.

Moreover, regular viewers will be puzzled when Liz tells David over and over that the Old House and its contents belong to Barnabas. On Monday, in #220, Barnabas and Vicki had a conversation in the foyer of the great house about the fact that he was not going to own the Old House. There hasn’t been any indication of a change in that plan, but Liz goes out of her way to say three times, not that Barnabas is staying in the house, but that it is his. We are left wondering what she is talking about.

Burke and Vicki spend some time together. They stand in front of the portrait of Barnabas Collins in the foyer of the great house talking about Barnabas’ decision to hire Willie as his servant. Burke remarks that “Cousin Barnabas doesn’t seem too bright.” That’s a fun moment, but then Vicki sticks up for Barnabas and they have nowhere to go with it. The scene doesn’t end until they’ve spent a few more moments standing there jabbering.

Burke and Vicki sit on the sofa together in the drawing room. The nonverbal communication between them raises the question the show has been teasing for some time, whether Burke and Vicki are dating. As with Burke’s paternal moment with David, it shows that the actors and directors can create little stories to keep us interested when they can keep the dialogue out of the way.

Burke says he’s going to talk with Liz about a business matter that he can’t tell Vicki about. He then tells Vicki why he is concerned about the matter. These mutually contradictory lines are no better than David being upset that Barnabas has changed the Old House, and just hoping that he hasn’t changed the Old House. For a moment, friend Burke doesn’t seem too bright.

*A name we have never heard before on Dark Shadows.

Episode 205: Barnabas Collins was rich, too

Flighty heiress Carolyn tells her mother, reclusive matriarch Liz, that she has had a problem with one of Liz’ houseguests. Last night, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis was about to rape Carolyn, who fended him off only by pointing a loaded pistol and telling him she would blow his brains out.

Liz confronts the person who insisted she take Willie into the house, seagoing con man Jason McGuire. She demands that Jason send Willie away at once. This leads to the eighth iteration of the only conversation Liz and Jason have. He makes a demand, she resists, he threatens to expose her terrible secret, she capitulates.

The script varies the ritual slightly this time. It is prefaced with Liz’ demand that Jason evict Willie, and Liz’ final capitulation is delayed by having her stand her ground until Jason says he will get Willie out soon. Later in the episode, Liz walks in on Willie grabbing at Carolyn, and even then settles for Jason’s promise that he will get his henchman out within the week.

The show has given us some scenes of friction between Carolyn and Liz, but has spent a lot more time on Carolyn talking about how strong her mother is. Now that Carolyn realizes that her mother will let an explosively violent hoodlum stay in their house indefinitely after he has twice assaulted her, we are primed to expect that sharper conflicts between Carolyn and Liz will feature in upcoming storylines.

We get another preview at the end of the episode. Strange and troubled boy David Collins shows Willie a couple of portraits of Collins ancestors and talks about the history of the family. One of these portraits is new to us, having made its debut during the closing credits of yesterday’s episode. David identifies it as someone called Barnabas Collins. David has been pivotal to each of the major plot developments on Dark Shadows so far, so when he is the first character to speak a name on screen, we might expect to hear that name again.

David shows Willie the portrait of Barnabas Collins. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

The portrait of Barnabas has such a strong effect on Willie that he adds an element to the show’s format. For the first time on Dark Shadows, a character’s internal monologue plays as a voiceover. While we watch Willie study the portrait, we hear his recorded voice going on about the wealth it suggests. Willie walks off. The portrait fills the screen, its eyes start to glow, and we hear a heartbeat.

Glowing eyes. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

The portrait of Josette Collins that hangs at the long-abandoned Old House glows when Josette’s ghost is active, and the eyes of a portrait of Laura Murdoch Collins glowed on several occasions when Laura was on the show. So regular viewers are used to seeing the visual effects that accompany Barnabas’ portrait. But the heartbeat is new. Josette’s portrait and Laura’s are silent pictures, Barnabas’ is the first talkie.

This is the last episode in which we will see James Hall as Willie. These episodes were shot out of sequence, so this one was made on 23 March 1967 and yesterday’s was made on 24 March. Most episodes were shot in a single take, as is obvious from the bloopers and production faults that run through them. Yesterday’s- the one produced on Friday, 24 March- was the first since #1 that went to three takes. That evening they called actor John Karlen and asked him to come in on Monday the 27th and take over the part of Willie. So, while Hall may never have been told why he was let go and to this day doesn’t seem to know what happened, it’s hard not to suspect that the producers blamed him for that third take.

Karlen would bring so much to the show that I can’t really regret losing Hall, excellent as he was. Years ago, I was chatting with an old friend of mine about ways that the original Star Trek might have been improved. We agreed that we couldn’t give up the actual show, and that what we were really wishing for was access to an alternate universe where they had made those changes. So that’s how I feel about Dark Shadows. I still want all of John Karlen’s performances, but would like an antenna that I could tune to receive broadcasts from a parallel timeband where he and James Hall swapped careers.

Episode 192: Can we stop being afraid?

Yesterday, the “Phoenix” story had its climax. Today is taken up with the denouement of that story. Throughout the thirteen weeks of this arc, there has been so much recapping and re-recapping that a denouement may not seem necessary, but this is a satisfying episode.

We open in the woods, where well-meaning governess Vicki and strange and troubled boy David are running from the flames engulfing an old fishing shack in which David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura, has tried to lure him to a fiery death. Laura did not burn, but disappeared amid the flames.

Vicki holds David by the hand. He is no longer under the trance in which his mother held him while they were in the shack, but neither is he clear in his mind. When Vicki tells him she is taking him home, he looks at the fire and exclaims “That is my home!”

Dashing action hero Burke comes tumbling out of the woods. Vicki tells him what happened. He wants to rescue Laura from the fire, and leaves Vicki no choice but to explain that she saw Laura simply vanish. David is standing by them when they have this conversation, but evidently does not hear it. He is quiet for a while, then looks at Burke and asks if what he sees burning is the fishing shack.

Back home in the great house of Collinwood, Vicki tucks David into bed. He asks her if the fishing shack burned. She says yes. He is dismayed- he had a lot of fishing equipment there. He then asks if his mother left. Vicki says yes. He talks about the situation with her for a while, finally saying that he might visit her sometime. Vicki tells him that he should know that his mother loves him.

Downstairs in the drawing room, Vicki tells Burke that David doesn’t seem to remember anything of his terrible experience. She hopes he never will.

David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, comes home. He reacts to the sight of Burke with distaste, indicating that the hiatus in their feud while they were working together to protect David is now over. Roger is complaining that he was having a pleasant evening in town until he had to come home because of some foolish talk about a fire at Collinwood. Vicki asks Burke to leave the room so that she can talk to Roger privately.

Roger is thunderstruck by the news that Laura is no more. He is even more shocked to learn that Vicki had to struggle to keep David from joining Laura in the flames. “She wanted to kill him? She wanted him to burn?” “You saved him?” “What can I say?” For the whole of the series until the last few days, Roger has openly hated his son and wanted to be rid of him. Now that David has come so close to death, Roger has begun to understand what he has thrown away by refusing to love his son.

Roger goes up to David’s room. David wakes up. Roger says he didn’t mean to wake him. David is bright, cheerful, polite. He makes a comment about Roger’s grammar, then apologizes for correcting his elders. He asks Roger if he heard about the shack, and says he will miss his fishing gear. He mentions a particular pole that groundskeeper Matthew Morgan made for him a long time ago; David’s acquaintance with Matthew ended under circumstances scarcely less traumatic than what he went through in the fishing shack in yesterday’s episode, but his reference to Matthew is as chirpy and upbeat as is everything else he says. David keeps asking Roger why he came and what he wanted. Roger, who is supremely fluent when the conversation consists of sarcastic, belittling remarks, can barely complete a sentence. He can’t even maintain eye contact with David. He finally stumbles through something about how there are things that are hard to understand. It is a beautiful, terrible, wonderful little scene.

Roger realizes that his gigantic belt buckle is no compensation for what he and David have missed

In a hospital room in Boston, reclusive matriarch Liz has emerged from the catatonic trance in which Laura trapped her five weeks ago. Liz’ daughter, flighty heiress Carolyn, is overjoyed at her mother’s apparently complete recovery.

Carolyn telephones Collinwood with the good news. Vicki tells her what happened in the fishing shack. It dawns on them that Liz emerged from her trance as the flames were surrounding Laura. They don’t know what we saw yesterday, that David began to break from the trance in which Laura held him when he heard the sound of Liz shouting in her hospital room almost 300 miles away. They do realize that Laura’s power was at the root of Liz’ troubles, even if they never find out that Liz was able to exercise some power of her own. Carolyn wonders if all the strange goings-on have really finished going on, if the residents of Collinwood are now free to live quiet, uneventful lives.

Disturbingly for fans of the show, they really are free, at least for the time being. Liz is antsy today when she asks if a stranger has gone through the basement of the house. Carolyn is at one with the audience in finding this question completely uninteresting, but Liz was obsessed with keeping people out of the basement in the early weeks of the show, and the unexplained reason for that obsession is the closest thing they have to an unresolved storyline. Roger and Burke’s mutual dislike also ties into some unanswered questions that no one who isn’t desperate for a cure to insomnia really wants to ask again. So it is not at all clear where the show is heading. They could just stop here, say “They all lived happily ever after,” and that would be fine. But they’ve sold ABC another 65 episodes, so some misfortunes have to turn up in the next couple of days.

Episode 182: That spook bit

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.

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.

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.

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.

Whatever was going on among the writers, the actors seem to have been in a good mood today. David Henesy and Mrs Isles horse around a bit with the opening slate. He strikes a goofy pose to hold it, and she creeps up on him and puts her hand over his mouth.

Episode 181: People can change

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.

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.

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.

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.

Episode 159: No absolute values

Strange and troubled boy David has tried to murder his father, is in danger because of his fascination with his mother, and has dreams which, if interpreted correctly, will explain his problems. Today, his mother tells him with coquettish gestures and a purring voice that a man should know how to tend a fire, and tells him he can put a log in her fireplace any time he wants. There is something somehow familiar about this storyline, as if it were making a reference to a theory that was influential among highly literate New Yorkers in 1967.

The episode begins with well-meaning governess Vicki and her boyfriend, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank, recapping recent events that suggest to them that David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura, is a creature of the supernatural. Frank thinks of Dr Peter Guthrie, a professor at Dartmouth College who specializes in the paranormal. He identifies Dr Guthrie as a parapsychologist, suggesting that he would be housed in Dartmouth’s Department of Psychology and Brain Science. Evidently that department was known in those days for its faculty members’ adherence to the thought of someone called Sigmund Freud. I suppose I should look that Freud fellow up and see what his ideas were.

As Conard Fowkes plays him, Frank is utterly believable as someone you would meet in a lawyers’ office in central Maine in the mid-1960s. He is so much a citizen of the daylight world of facts and logic and the recognized laws both of nature and of the state that it is surprising that he is willing to acknowledge evidence suggesting that he is in the presence of supernatural forces. Surprising, but not interesting- Fowkes shows us Frank simply accepting the facts once he has seen them and agreeing with Vicki’s interpretations once he has heard them. He does nothing to suggest that any particular emotional process is making it difficult for Frank to take a place in a world with ghosts and witches, still less that there is any unknown side of his personality that has prepared him for this information. In the hands of a livelier actor, the fact that Frank has the name and phone number of a parapsychologist at his fingertips would be a revelation that would leave us wanting to know just what else Frank knows that Vicki might find exciting. As it is, Frank generates all the dramatic interest of a search through the Yellow Pages.

Episode 151: Finishing my puzzle

There isn’t really any structure to this episode, certainly no suspense. It’s a collection of scenes in various moods, each exploring some familiar themes, all taking place in the great house of Collinwood.

Reclusive matriarch Liz wakes her nephew, strange and troubled boy David. She is glad to find that David is cheerful, but disturbed to hear that his mother, the mysterious and long-absent Laura, visited him in his room last night. Liz says that Laura couldn’t have been in the house last night. David proves that she was there by showing Liz the handkerchief she gave him.

Liz is puzzled how Laura got in and out of the house without being seen. Friday, she learned that there had been strong evidence of supernatural activity in the house yesterday. As she questions David about the details of Laura’s visit, it looks like she might be trying to rule out a supernatural explanation of Laura’s visit. That’s a bit of a dead end- Liz is committed to covering up anything that will make the family look weird, so if she is thinking along those lines she certainly won’t be talking about it with anyone. But she had a confrontation yesterday with Laura, in the course of which each implied that she had sufficient willpower to defeat the other. So Liz’ unsettled reaction might explain why Laura left the handkerchief. She wants Liz to know that she is not dealing with any ordinary antagonist.

We then see Liz and her brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, having breakfast in the kitchen. Roger is delighted by the prospect that his wife Laura will divorce him and go away with their son David. He promises Liz he will think fondly of David when David is a distant memory. Liz is exasperated with Roger’s narcissism. She reminds him that he lives as a guest in her house, and that it was for David’s sake she took him in. He studiously ignores the implication that if David goes away, he will have to find a place to live and pay his own bills.

Liz and Roger in the kitchen. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Liz’ daughter, flighty heiress Carolyn, comes into the kitchen as Roger is leaving. She informs Liz that Laura has been seeing the family’s arch-nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin. Before Laura came back, Burke had been leading Carolyn on, and she has been bitterly disappointed that no romance will be blossoming between them. She leads Liz to the idea that after Roger and Laura are divorced, Laura will deliver David to Burke. “The last of the Collins! The only hope our name will continue!” exclaims Liz. Fearing Burke’s intentions, she vows to keep Laura away from David.

While she may not have forgotten what she heard Friday about the indications of supernatural doings, Liz has not grasped the message the ghosts are trying to send. While Burke may want David to forget Roger, think of him as his father, and change his name from Collins to Devlin, the ghosts have been telling anyone they can reach that he won’t get the chance. If David goes to Laura, she will change far more about him than his last name. Perhaps she will kill him, perhaps she will turn him into some kind of otherworldly creature, but whatever her plans are, Burke should be the least of Liz’ worries.

Roger was among those who saw and heard the signs of the ghosts on Thursday. On Friday, he flatly declared to well-meaning governess Vicki that he refused to think about them any more. While Carolyn is in the kitchen giving Liz the news about Burke and Laura, Roger goes to David’s room to try to talk him into spending more time with his mother.

When he hears Roger at the door, David is sitting on his bed, playing with toy soldiers on a chessboard. He hastily shoves the soldiers and the edge of the board under his pillow and picks up a textbook.

Everything Roger says seems to bewilder David. When Roger tells David that he has done something to please him, David replies “I have?” David continues to answer all of Roger’s statements in that wise until Roger protests that David is using “two-word questions” only to annoy him. He talks about how important it is for a boy to spend time with his mother, that he ought to ask Liz if he can go on a long trip with his mother, etc. At the end of their talk, Roger tells David “You can be a very intelligent little fella when you want to be.” David continues to give him a mystified look.

Since David has already had several scenes where he angrily told Roger that he knew Roger was trying to send him away with his mother because he wants to get rid of him, regular viewers are likely to take this scene as an indication that David is changing his approach to Roger. He’s tried confronting his father with the ugly truth, screaming at him, and threatening him. Last summer, when Laura was still an unseen, half-remembered figure David would call to while standing at the window, he tried murdering him. None of those tactics got him anywhere, so now he is just deflecting him with a show of incomprehension.

There is another possible explanation for David’s change. The most shocking of David’s recent behavior came when the ghost of Josette Collins was making her most intense efforts to get through to him about the danger his mother represented. That process manifested itself in nightmares and a frightening painting that threw David’s mind into an uproar. Now, Laura has appeared to him in the night, blocking the nightmares, and Roger has burned the painting. Josette is temporarily silenced. David is not afraid of his mother, and may not be enraged with his father.

Those who have been watching closely all along will find another interesting note in Roger’s attempt to manipulate David. In #68, Roger had been eager to get rid of well-meaning governess Vicki. In those days, David saw Vicki as an enemy. Roger sits with David in the drawing room and talks very calmly about the fact that David hates him. He asks if he doesn’t hate Vicki even more. David doesn’t deny it, and expresses extreme hostility. This was only a few weeks after Roger found out that David had tried to kill him, so it is rather chilling when he tells David that he will leave it entirely up to him to solve the problem of Vicki.

In that scene of horrifying child abuse, David was helpless as his father deliberately set about warping his mind so that he would attempt a murder. By contrast, this scene is a comedy in which David Henesy and Louis Edmonds get real laughs, and David Collins is certainly no worse off at the end than he was a the beginning.

David is playing with his toy soldiers again when he hears someone else at the door. Again, he stuffs the soldiers under his pillow. It is his cousin Carolyn. He tells her that with so many visitors to his room, he is having trouble studying. Carolyn takes the soldiers from under the pillow and says she can see how hard he’s been studying. He asks “Secret?” She replies “Secret!”

As far as I can recall, this is the first time we’ve seen Carolyn in David’s room. The “Secret?” “Secret!” exchange is certainly the first time we’ve seen them so friendly. It’s a relief- Carolyn’s over-the-top denunciations of David as a “little monster” were getting monotonous, and each of these characters needs more people to talk to.

After she and David have talked about Laura for a while, Carolyn goes back downstairs to talk to her Uncle Roger. Roger is lounging on the couch doing the crossword puzzle. He is quite annoyed that Carolyn is interrupting him in this most important task of his day. This is a bit of mirroring- as David is more concerned with his toy soldiers than with his studies, so Roger is more concerned with his puzzle than with any of the responsibilities you might suppose would attach themselves to a grown man who is nominally employed as an executive at his sister’s business.

Carolyn brings up Burke and Laura. Roger says that she needn’t worry about that- until their divorce is final, Laura won’t dare do anything to alienate the Collinses. Carolyn asks what will happen after the divorce, when David is living with Laura and Laura is available to Burke. It seems to dawn on Roger that it might be bad for the Collinses if the family’s only male heir is the stepson of their deadliest enemy, and so he says he’ll do something about it. Carolyn so adores her uncle and so resents Laura and Burke’s relationship that not even his crossword puzzle can keep her from blinding herself to his complete ineffectiveness. She is gleeful at the thought that Burke and Laura will now get their comeuppance at his hands.

Carolyn and Roger on the couch. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Like Roger, Carolyn was among those who saw and heard the signs of Josette’s presence Thursday. She knows all about David’s nightmare and about the painting in which she warned that Laura would set fire to herself and David. Yet she has inherited the family’s tradition of denial. She will not see what is in front of her, and cannot shift her focus from her thwarted desire for Burke to the grave danger impending over David.

Episode 135: No one is being kind

Mysterious and long-absent Laura Collins has returned to the great house of Collinwood, seeking custody of her son, strange and troubled boy David, and a divorce from her husband, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger. Roger is enthusiastic about this plan, but David’s attitude has shifted from eagerness to see his mother to the terrified belief that the person who has come to the house is not his mother, and that if he becomes close to her something terrible will happen.

These episodes are loaded with hints that there is something very strange about Laura. When Laura was due to visit the house yesterday, David thought he saw her appear on the lawn and then vanish, an idea Liz dismissed instantly and Roger took as evidence of his great desire to see her. David did indeed want to see Laura at that time; when she came into the house, he was afraid of her. Coupled with other indications that there is something supernatural about Laura and with David’s history of sensitivity to eerie happenings, these disparate reactions might lead us to wonder if there are two of her- a ghost who flickers on the lawn, and a corporeal being who comes inside and carries on conversations.

We have seen Laura at the restaurant in the Collinsport Inn several times; the restaurant’s keeper, Maggie Evans, mentions that Laura never eats or drinks. On Wednesday, Laura’s ex-boyfriend, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, tells her that she seems profoundly different than she had been when they knew each other before. Yesterday, reclusive matriarch Liz told her that her personality had undergone a radical change. She is obsessed with fire* and with the legend of the Phoenix, suggesting that her radical change may have something to do with that myth. Maggie’s father, drunken artist Sam Evans, is possessed by an otherworldly power marked by theremin music on the soundtrack and paints a woman in flames, apparently a consequence of something Laura’s presence has stirred up in town.

Today, we have further suggestions that Laura is not simply a physical entity. She tells flighty heiress Carolyn that although she has been staying at the inn for several days, she has not unpacked her bags. Carolyn looks at Laura’s crisp outfit and flawless makeup and is bewildered by this remark. Laura also explains that a taxi brought her to the house from the Inn and that it is scheduled to return. When she decides not to leave, she tells Carolyn that she will call to cancel the return trip, but when Carolyn leaves her alone Laura turns away from the telephone- evidently there never was a taxi. When well-meaning governess Vicki takes the several mile walk between town and the house, she is wearing the soap opera version of a sensible walking outfit. The style-conscious Carolyn is the perfect person to highlight the improbability that Laura took such a hike looking the way she does.

Laura and Carolyn in the cottage. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Laura will be staying at the cottage at Collinwood. This has been established as an important location, and we’ve been waiting for someone to move into it since its previous occupant, gruff caretaker Matthew, confessed to Vicki that he had killed beloved local man Bill Malloy, had then tried to kill Vicki, and had become a fugitive. Carolyn mentions that Collinwood’s housekeeper, Mrs Johnson, had cleaned the cottage up when Matthew died, but that it needs another cleaning. I found this to be rather a poignant touch. Mrs Johnson had for many years been Bill Malloy’s housekeeper, and was intensely devoted to him. It was quite insensitive to ask her to clean the home of Bill’s killer, and it is quite reasonable that she did not do a particularly thorough job.

*I can’t resist mentioning that Mrs Acilius and I watched this episode while staying in a hotel. I don’t know if this was a consequence of Diana Millay’s performance as Laura, but we had to pause it about halfway in when a fire alarm went off in the building.