dream sequence – Page 6 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 224: Alone in the growing darkness

We begin with a chat between strange and troubled boy David Collins and his (vastly) older cousin, vampire Barnabas Collins. David has questions about the portrait of his ancestor Josette that long hung in the house Barnabas is now occupying. Barnabas assures him that he will hang it prominently once the house has been refurbished.

Yesterday, David was wandering from set to set moaning that he couldn’t feel the presence of Josette’s ghost. This was a clumsy way of addressing a question that is at the top of the minds of regular viewers. Josette’s ghost has been decisive in all the storylines on Dark Shadows for the six months prior to Barnabas’ arrival, and the house Barnabas has taken over is her stronghold. Though she can at moments erupt into the foreground with awesome power, as when she and the other ghosts scared crazed handyman Matthew Morgan to death in #126, she is usually a vague, wispy presence. It is unclear how or if she can survive contact with a menace as dynamic as a vampire.

Josette communicates with David through her portrait, and when she was recruiting a team to thwart the plans David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, had to burn him alive, she took possession of artist Sam Evans and made him paint pictures warning what Laura was up to. Now Barnabas has hired Sam and is sitting for a portrait that he will hang where Josette’s was long displayed. In #212, Barnabas looked at Josette’s portrait and said that the power it represented was ended, and David’s reactions yesterday suggested he was right.

Portraits are not Josette’s only means of communication. During the Laura storyline, David had a recurring nightmare that may have been in part the product of Josette’s intervention. Someone else has a nightmare today, and it is clearly a warning about Barnabas.

While Barnabas is sitting for Sam, he makes a series of remarks about Sam’s daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. To those who know that he is a vampire, everything about Barnabas is creepy, but he lays such heavy emphasis on lines like “I believe her future is already assured” that it is hard to believe Sam isn’t alarmed. We dissolve from that sequence to Maggie in her bedroom* trying to get some sleep. That in turn dissolves to a dream sequence** in which Maggie sees herself in a coffin and screams. She then wakes up, still screaming.

Josette was able to use Sam as a medium, and to do so while he was in the front room of the same house where Maggie is sleeping. So those who remember the Laura storyline will see the nightmare as the opening gambit in Josette’s effort to oppose Barnabas, and will be anticipating her next move.

Between these two segments, we spend some time with seagoing con man Jason McGuire and his former associate, Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie Loomis. Reclusive matriarch Liz informs Jason that Willie has been living with and working for Barnabas. Jason had believed that Willie left town permanently several days earlier, and has no idea he is in any way connected with Barnabas. Liz wants to be rid of Willie. Jason likes to boast that he can control Willie, something we have never seen him succeed in doing, and assures her that he will be able to handle the situation.

Jason goes to the Old House and confronts Willie. He makes a number of sarcastic remarks questioning Willie’s masculinity, demands to know what kind of scam he is running on Barnabas, and grabs him by the lapels when Willie can tell him only that he is trying to lead a different sort of life. Jason is holding Willie and snarling at him when Barnabas shows up. Jason unhands Willie and is surprised at how meekly Willie complies with Barnabas’ command that he run an errand.

Barnabas catches Jason with his hands on his Willie

Barnabas tells Jason that he has spoken with Liz and that she has agreed to let him keep Willie. Jason tries to tell Barnabas about Willie’s past and boasts once more of his ability to control Willie. Barnabas cuts him off with “I can deal with him far more effectively than anyone.” That leaves Jason speechless.

In his post about this episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn tells us that the scene between Jason and Willie brought a memo from ABC’s Standards and Practices office. A censor named Bernardine McKenna was concerned that Jason’s lines might suggest a sexual relationship between Willie and Barnabas.***

McKenna’s memo raises some questions about Jason’s whole relationship with Willie. When Jason was first introduced, we occasionally saw him on the telephone talking to someone who was evidently important to his plans. Eventually he started calling this person “Willie.” After Willie appeared in person, we kept waiting to see what Jason wanted him to do. Jason’s only project is to blackmail Liz, and he doesn’t need any help with that. Not only did we never see Jason give Willie anything to do, but Willie continually caused him troubles that made life so unpleasant for Liz that she considered calling the police, a move that would would have brought Jason’s whole plan crashing down around his ears. So Jason’s decisions to bring Willie along and to keep him around were not motivated by any immediate need for his assistance.

A couple of times, Willie threatened to expose Jason’s own terrible secrets. But by the time Willie was recovering from Barnabas’ initial attacks on him, those threats didn’t seem to have much substance, and yet Jason insisted on keeping Willie around Collinwood and nursing him back to health. Jason’s scenes with Willie in his sickroom show enough traces of tenderness and genuine concern that there must be some depth to their relationship.

The original plan had been to name the character, not “Willie,” but “Chris.” I wonder if that would have given Bernadine McKenna more to worry about. If we’d listened to Jason on the telephone with a mysterious “Chris” who was in some kind of partnership with him, we might assume that “Chris” was his girlfriend. When Chris turned out to be Christopher, we would set that thought aside. But we might not have forgotten it entirely. When we were wondering what the connection is between the men, one of the possibilities we couldn’t quite exclude might have been that they had been lovers.

*This is the first time we see Maggie’s bedroom. The living room of the Evans cottage has been a frequent set from the earliest days of the show, but this addition of a second room augments its importance and confirms that Maggie will be a major character in the current storyline.

**We’ve heard characters talk about their dreams before, but this is the first time a dream is shown to us.

***Danny read McKenna’s memo in Jim Pierson’s 1988 book The Introduction of Barnabas.

Episode 150: Time isn’t easy to give

Yesterday, several characters saw clear evidence that supernatural forces are intervening to warn that the mysterious and long-absent Laura poses a grave danger to her son, strange and troubled boy David Collins.

High-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins was one of those characters. In keeping with his family’s traditions, Roger habitually responds to signs of the supernatural by going into denial. He has an especially strong motive for denying that there is anything alarming about the relationship between David and Laura. David is his son, Laura is his wife, and he wants to be rid of them both. Laura wants to divorce him and leave with David, a prospect he finds most attractive.

At the insistence of well-meaning governess Vicki, Roger tells reclusive matriarch Liz some of the signs that uncanny beings are at work. In response, Liz decides to go to Laura and tell her that she may no longer see her son.

The confrontation between Laura and Liz takes place in the cottage where Laura is staying now that she has returned from her long absence. Laura points out that it is absurd for a child’s paternal aunt to forbid his mother from seeing him. The only case Liz could make in answer to this objection would rest on yesterday’s supernatural manifestations, but even if she had seen those events first-hand that isn’t something you can really bring up while conducting an argument in the modern world. So the two women just make assertions about their respective strength of personality.

Upstairs at Collinwood, David was crying before Vicki managed to calm him by telling him his mother’s favorite story, the legend of the Phoenix. In his sleep, he is crying again. Laura appears as a glowing figure in the corner of the room. She awakens him and stands at the foot of his bed.

The oldest surviving version of the legend of the Phoenix appears in the Histories of Herodotus. Many passages in Herodotus describe dreams, and they all represent the dream as a figure standing at the foot of the dreamer’s bed, making a speech to him. That’s the usual form dreams take in ancient Greek literature generally, in fact, and that Greek image of the dream has had its influence in later writing. So I suppose it could be that Laura’s visit to David is a nod to the sources of the Phoenix legend, and it certainly could be meant to suggest a familiar way dreams are depicted in literature.

Diana Millay usually plays Laura as a dreamlike figure, rather vague in manner and stilted in speech, and this scene is no exception. David Henesy plays David Collins here in the wide-awake style of an uncomfortable character in a comedy of manners. Laura makes cryptic promises of being forever united to David, to which he gives polite but nervous responses such as “That’s nice!” and “I’m sure we will!” David doesn’t seem to be asleep, suggesting that Laura’s otherworldly manner signifies nothing so familiar as a dream.

Laura notices David’s tears. She gives him a handkerchief to dry them. At the end of their conversation, she vanishes into thin air and David falls asleep. The handkerchief is still there, however, proving it was no ordinary dream.

At this stage of her existence, Laura seems to be divided into at least three entities. There is the woman who lives in the cottage, visits the great house, and talks to the other characters. There is a ghostly image David has seen flickering on the lawn. And there is a charred corpse in the morgue in Phoenix, Arizona. There is no assurance that these are the only three components of Laura, and no explanation of how they relate to each other. Does the speaking character know about the ghost? Does one control the other? If they operate independently, do they have the same goals? If they have different goals, might they come into conflict with each other? A scene like this one raises all of those questions, because we don’t know which Laura we’re dealing with.

It is also possible that she isn’t Laura at all. A couple of weeks ago, we thought it was Laura who compelled drunken artist Sam Evans to paint pictures of her naked and in flames. Yesterday, we learned that the spirit possessing Sam was actually the ghost of Josette Collins, and that she was doing it to oppose Laura’s plans. So maybe Josette has disguised herself as Laura in order to unsettle David and keep him from following his mother to his doom.

There is an unusual blooper just short of the 3 minute mark. From 2:51 to 2:57, Alexandra Moltke Isles has a fit of the giggles. This starts when Joan Bennett enters and flares up again as she walks past Mrs Isles. It’s true that Miss Bennett’s dress betrayed a good deal more of the outlines of the garments underneath it than one would expect. That may have had something to do with the laughing attack, but Mrs Isles was usually so professional that it is difficult to believe she wouldn’t have gotten that under control after dress rehearsal. Some of the actresses have talked about how Louis Edmonds would make remarks to them before shots that made it extremely difficult for them not to laugh on camera during serious scenes, perhaps he was the culprit here.