Tag: edward collins

Episode 708: The merry chase begins

Matriarch Edith Collins has died. Her grandson Edward stands with recently arrived distant cousin Barnabas in the study of the great house of Collinwood, viewing Edith’s body. Edward asks Barnabas if Edith told him the family’s celebrated secret. Barnabas assures him she did not. Edward claims that the oldest son of the family has known the secret in every generation for a century. This does not appear to be true- Edward is the oldest son in his generation, and he has never known it. We have learned that the family has many false ideas about the secret. That it has been passed from father to son may well be one of these.

We cut to the foyer. Edward’s brother, libertine Quentin, enters with a character we have not seen before. He is lawyer Evan Hanley. Evan and Quentin conspire to replace Edith’s will with a forgery that will leave her money to Quentin. Quentin inveigles Evan into this plot by talking about their “meetings” and intimating that they may become known if he doesn’t get his way. Since Evan is played by Humbert Allen Astredo, whom longtime viewers know as warlock Nicholas Blair, and since Quentin was first introduced as the malevolent ghost of a man who may have been involved with black magic, we might assume that these “meetings” have something to do with the occult.

Quentin exits, and Barnabas and Edward enter. Edward introduces Barnabas to Evan, then he and Evan leave to attend to business. Barnabas gives them a hard look as they go. Barnabas’ conversation with Edward about the secret had grown quite heated, and returning viewers know that he has reason to be uncomfortable about the topic. He knows that the secret in fact concerns him, and that if the family learns it he will be in big trouble. So his expression may be entirely due to the apprehension he still feels as the result of that discussion. On the other hand, Barnabas did know Nicholas and do battle with him, and it is possible that he recognizes a trace of Nicholas in Evan. Astredo plays Evan as a subdued version of Nicholas, with no noticeable difference of posture or manner or cadence. Even if Barnabas can’t see that the two are played by the same actor, he may well have observed the similarity.

Barnabas hears laughter from the walkway at the top of the foyer stairs. He looks up to see twelve year old Jamison. Jamison says that Evan is lying when he says that he had a deep regard for Edith- they hated each other, since Evan knew that Edith believed he was a “shyster.” I’m sure it was possible in central Maine in 1897 for a rich Protestant kid with red hair and an Irish name to drop a shmekndik of Yiddish here and there, but it does get your attention.

Jamison tells Barnabas he is reluctant to view Edith’s body, as he has never seen a dead person. That’s what he thinks- Barnabas is a vampire, so he’s talking with a dead person right now. Barnabas asks Jamison if he likes Quentin. Something about his tone reveals to Jamison that Barnabas is hostile to Quentin, and so Jamison yells at him that he is “just like the others” who disapprove of his favorite uncle. He storms out.

Jamison yells at Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Edith’s grandchildren are scrambling to find her will. Quentin suggests they make a game of the search; stuffy Edward objects that they most certainly will not make a game of it. Of course they will, since the search for a secret will is obviously a comedy plot.

Blackmailing Evan into joining his plot to forge a will in Edith’s name is not Quentin’s only crime today. He also assaults Edith’s friend Magda Rákóczi. Magda and her husband Sandor have been living in the Old House on the estate as Edith’s guests; now Barnabas is staying there. He has bitten Sandor and made him his slave, and bribed Magda into going along with his plans. Quentin calls at the Old House, where he chokes Magda and threatens her with a knife until she tells him where the will is. He then goes back to the great house and exploits Jamison’s trust to manipulate him into stealing the will and giving it to him. Quentin is such a horrible stinker that if he were played by any actor less charming than David Selby he would be intolerable to watch. As it is, we just keep wishing that Quentin would straighten up and fly right.

At the end of the episode, Barnabas accuses Quentin of having the will and threatens to do something “drastic” if he does not give it up. As a matter of fact, Jamison has not yet handed the will over to Quentin at this point, so what Barnabas says is not true. Worse, there is no tactical advantage for Barnabas in openly declaring himself to Quentin as an enemy at this point. Quite the contrary; he has traveled back in time to 1897 to prevent Quentin’s ghost haunting the great house in 1969 and making it uninhabitable, and has no idea what will be involved in doing that. He needs to be on friendly terms with as many people as possible to get the information he needs, and he particularly needs to get as close to Quentin as he can if he is to have any hope of thwarting whatever disaster is in store for him.

This isn’t the first time Barnabas has rashly shown his enemies what he thinks of them. When wicked witch Angelique returned to torment him in the spring of 1968, Barnabas repeatedly confronted her about her evil schemes, keeping her up to date on exactly what he did and did not know, while concealing everything from the people who wanted to help him fight her. Longtime viewers can see that there is no danger that Barnabas will learn anything from his experiences.

Episode 707: Dark for over a hundred years

One day in 1897, Edward Collins convenes his siblings Judith, Carl, and Quentin for a family meeting in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. Their grandmother Edith died the night before. She was supposed to tell Edward a celebrated family secret, but did not do so. Edward is convinced she must have told one of the others, and declares that no one will leave the room until he finds out which.

Returning viewers know that Edith did not tell any of them, and we can imagine a half hour of nothing but the four Collinses of Collinwood sitting around staring at each other. Fortunately, Quentin points out that Edith was briefly alone with their recently arrived and thoroughly mysterious cousin, Barnabas Collins, and she might possibly have told him. Edward orders Carl to go to the Old House on the estate, where Barnabas is staying. Carl asks why it’s always him who has to do these things, and Edward angrily shoos him away. Louis Edmonds and John Karlen were both talented comic actors, and this little exchange is very funny.

In the Old House, Carl finds Sandor Rákóczi coming up from the cellar. He asks Sandor what he is doing there. Sandor says he lives there. Carl says that he’d heard Barnabas was living in the house now. Sandor says that Barnabas hired him and his wife Magda as servants. Carl laughs at that and says of Barnabas “He is an odd one, isn’t he?” Sandor gives him a fierce look, offended. Carl apologizes.

Carl explains that he has come to fetch Barnabas. Sandor says Barnabas won’t be back until after dark. Carl explains why they need him at the great house, and Sandor laughs. “You must have Gypsy blood! Nobody in the family trusts nobody else!” Carl laughs, too.

This scene may remind longtime viewers of the first time we saw Thayer David on this set, when he was playing crazed handyman Matthew Morgan. The dramatic date and the date of production were both 1966 then. Strange and troubled boy David Collins found Matthew hiding in the Old House, and agreed to help him avoid the police. Carl is a grown man, but he is as eager to please and uninterested in asserting dominance for any length of time as was the nine year old David. Further, he is so naive that he reacts with bewilderment to the idea that lust for money might be a motive for murder. Carl may not be less prejudiced against Romani people than are the rest of the Collinses, but his childlike qualities allow him to laugh at a joke that would have drawn a violent response from any of his siblings.

Carl insists that Sandor go home with him and tell Edward that Barnabas is away. Again, this shows Carl’s childishness. He wants to prove to Edward that he did as he was told and went to the Old House. In fact, Edward is appalled to see Sandor in the great house, and can barely stand listening to him.

While Sandor is leaving, Judith stops him. Sandor is astounded that she is speaking to him at all. She tells him that her grandmother may have tolerated his presence in the Old House, but that she and her brothers will not. Sandor and his wife Magda are to leave the property within twenty four hours. Judith does not give Sandor a chance to tell her that Barnabas has hired them as servants.

On the terrace, Quentin finds Rachel Drummond, the new governess. The two of them look very good together. In fact, Quentin’s seductive manner and Rachel’s response to it make them the most attractive couple we have seen on the show, by a long way.

Chemistry lesson. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

They talk about the house. Quentin mentions that no one has been in the room on top of the tower since 1796, 101 years ago. Later that night, Rachel will see a light burning in the room, and she will rush into the drawing room to tell Edward about it.

She comes in after a meeting between Edward and Judith. Judith came to tell her brother about something entirely new to the audience. She says that the matter relating to the tower room is going well. Maidservant Beth goes to the room three times a day, and Beth also goes into town regularly to take money to a Mrs Fillmore.

This will interest returning viewers. The other day, Quentin found Beth going into town with a parcel and an envelope containing $300 in cash. Beth said Judith gave her permission to go to town to conduct personal errands, and claimed, absurdly, that she had saved the money from her salary. We now know that she was taking the money to this Mrs Fillmore for some purpose of Edward and Judith’s. Later, Quentin found Beth taking a tray of food upstairs. He asked who was supposed to eat it; she said it was for Edith. When he pointed out that it was more than Edith could eat, she said Judith would be eating with her. In Edith’s room, Beth told Judith about this. She said they would have to be more careful now that Quentin was back home, and dismissed her to take the rest of the food “upstairs.” We now know that this “upstairs” is the tower room, and that Beth is helping Judith and Edward to hide someone there of whose presence in the house Quentin is unaware.

However much this may interest us, it does not interest Edward at all. He is outraged that Judith so much as mentioned the matter to him, saying that he wants her to handle it without notifying him in any way. She objects that they will have to talk about it sometimes; he does not agree.

When Rachel enters and tells them about the light, Edward detains her with a disquisition about the impossibility of the tower room being lighted while Judith scurries off and goes upstairs. After a while, Edward takes Rachel back to the terrace and shows her that the room is dark. He asserts that it was also dark when she looked at it earlier, and it has been dark for over a hundred years.

Longtime viewers will recognize this scene. In March 1968, Dark Shadows was set in 1796, and Barnabas had just become what he is again now, a vampire. Barnabas’ father, haughty overlord Joshua, confined him to the tower room while he tried to find a way to free his son of his curse. Barnabas’ mother Naomi saw lights in the tower room, as did his second cousin Millicent. When Naomi told Joshua about the lights, he pretended not to see them, and when Millicent told her husband Nathan she had seen the lights, he, for his own reasons, also pretended not to see them. Those pretenses led each woman to go to the room, resulting in madness for Millicent and suicide for Naomi. Quentin tells Rachel that the tower room has been closed since 1796 because “a woman killed herself” there; that is an explicit reference to Naomi.

Like Edward and Judith, Joshua and Naomi were played by Louis Edmonds and Joan Bennett. It is a sign of how much more dynamic the 1897 section is than the 1790s section that Judith is an active participant in whatever scheme is going on, not simply a helpless person who stumbles upon a terrible secret and promptly kills herself.

Episode 705: Mrs Collins no longer exists

Three of the residents of the great house of Collinwood in the year 1897 are spinster Judith Collins, her brother, libertine Quentin Collins, and their grandmother, nonagenarian Edith Collins. At the opening of today’s episode, Judith walks in on Quentin strangling Edith in her bed. She tells him to stop it and leave the room. He complies, with a sulk. Edith shakes off her annoyance with Quentin, and she and Judith have a conversation about various matters.

One of Dark Shadows’ signature relationships is that between Bossy Big Sister and Bratty Little Brother. However serious the misconduct Bratty Little Brother commits in his disobedience to Bossy Big Sister, in the end she will cover it up and protect him from its consequences. Nothing at all will happen to Quentin as a result of his attempt on his grandmother’s life; Judith will just continue disapproving of him, as she has always done. Later in the episode, Quentin will remark to his recently arrived and quite mysterious distant cousin Barnabas Collins that Judith “gets carried away by delusions of authority. The fact is, she has no authority whatsoever.” Judith overhears this and objects to it, but Quentin’s presence in the house suffices to prove that her manner is not an expression of authority, but simply childlike role-playing.

Quentin’s motive for his attack on dear old grand-mama was his demand that she tell him the family’s “secret.” Edith has declared that she will pass this secret on only to Edward, who is Judith and Quentin’s eldest sibling. Edward is away, and Edith is terribly afraid she will die before he returns. After Judith shoos Quentin out of Edith’s room, she herself tries to wheedle Edith into telling her the secret. Edith tells Judith she is better off not knowing, but Judith does not seem to be convinced. Quentin has said in so many words that his only desire is to take control of the family’s wealth, and Judith is focused on preventing him from doing that. So we can assume that their frantic eagerness to learn the secret is rooted in the belief that the person who knows it will inherit the estate from Edith.

We see Edward. He is not at Collinwood, or even in the village of Collinsport. If I recall correctly, this is the first time the show has taken us anyplace out of town other than the mental hospital since we visited Phoenix, Arizona in #174, more than two years ago.

Edward is in a train station, impatient and irritable, talking with a young woman whose rigid posture and blank facial expression show that she is exceedingly uncomfortable. Her name is Rachel Drummond, and she is to be the new governess for Edward’s son and daughter. He says that he means for her to use her own judgment in making up their curriculum. Rachel says she will have a clearer idea of what her approach will be once she has met the children and Edward’s wife. Edward freezes, and says that he has no wife. Rachel apologizes for her assumption; he says that she has no need to do that, as he had given her no way of knowing about the situation. In a soft voice, Rachel asks about Mrs Collins’ death; Edward replies that “Mrs Collins no longer exists” and that is all he will be saying about the topic. Rachel asks how she should respond if the children ask about their mother; Edward tells her to say that she is away, nothing more.

Back at Collinwood, a recently arrived visitor named Barnabas Collins comes calling with a gift for Edith. It is a piece of jewelry that he inherited from Naomi Collins, whom he identifies as his great-great-great-grandmother. Judith accompanies him to Edith’s bedroom.

Meanwhile, Edward lets himself and Rachel in the front door. He is carrying their bags and grumbling about the lack of servants. Quentin enters. Edward is shocked that his ne’er-do-well brother has returned to the house from which he was banished a year ago, he hoped forever. He has little to say as Quentin teases him and Rachel, saying that she is too pretty to be either the new governess or Edward’s new wife. He asks if she is Edward’s mistress, angering him and making the already unhappy Rachel quite miserable. She says she is the new governess. Quentin asks if she is married. Edward erupts with “Would it make any difference to you if she were?” In the wake of the painful exchange about Edward’s wife no longer existing, this carries a suggestion that makes Rachel’s position even more difficult. Edward realizes what he has said and falls into a horrified silence.

Edward asks Rachel to excuse him and Quentin while they have a private talk. She has nowhere to go; she has not been shown around the house or told which areas she is free to enter, so all she can do is sit quietly in the foyer. Still, that would appear to be an improvement over the endless cascade of awkward exchanges she has had so far, and so she agrees without protest.

While Edward reads Quentin the Riot Act in the drawing room, Judith shows Barnabas into Edith’s room. The room is darkened so that only the outlines of their figures are visible. Judith opens the curtains to let the moonlight in, and sees Edward’s carriage outside. She hurries down to fetch Edward, leaving Barnabas alone with Edith.

Edith asks his name. When he says that he is called Barnabas Collins, she is startled. She sits up and uneasily asks him to step into the light so she can see his face. She reacts with horror. “You! You are the secret!” she exclaims. “Passed down from one generation to the other! You were never to be let out! We have failed! We have failed!” He approaches her. “Don’t come near me! I know what you are!”

Edith tells Barnabas that he is the secret. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When Dark Shadows premiered, the Collinses of 1966 had three big secrets. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard had summoned a young woman who had never heard of her or of Collinwood, Victoria Winters, to be governess to her nephew David. Vicki was trying to find out who her biological parents were and why she was left at a foundling home as an infant; the show hinted heavily that Liz was her mother, but dropped that without any resolution. Also, Liz hadn’t left the house for 18 years. That turned out to be because she thought she killed her husband and that his body was buried in the basement. After 55 weeks of that story, it turned out she hadn’t killed him at all, and within days they forgot about the whole thing forever. The third secret was about Liz’ brother Roger. A man named Burke Devlin thought Roger had framed him on the manslaughter charge that cost him five years in prison, and vowed to destroy the Collinses in revenge. After 40 weeks, Burke forced Roger to confess that his suspicions were correct, but by that time Burke had decided to let bygones be bygones and that story also vanished with barely a trace.

With that record, all the talk about “the secret” that we hear when we first arrive in 1897 might make longtime viewers apprehensive that there will be another interminable guessing game that peters out with little or no resolution. But the show has changed. This secret is not only revealed to us within a week, it is a forceful and elegant solution to a major problem.

Barnabas is a time traveler from the 1960s. He has come back by means of some mumbo-jumbo to prevent Quentin’s ghost from haunting Collinwood and making life impossible for the Collins family in the year 1969. He is also a vampire. He originally lived in the 1790s, and Naomi was his mother, not his great-great-great-grandmother. A would-be thief accidentally freed him to prey on the living in April 1967; he managed to conceal his true nature from his living relatives, and in March 1968 he was freed from the effects of the vampire curse. When he came to this period, he found himself once more an undead abomination.

Barnabas has no idea why Quentin’s ghost has become such a problem in 1969, no idea how to investigate the question, and no idea what, if anything, he will be able to do to correct matters if he somehow does manage to find the answer. Since events are moving very fast in 1897, everyone there is deeply and intricately involved with everyone else, and Barnabas is a stranger, there is a distinct possibility that he will be sidelined. That happened to Vicki when she left November 1967 and found herself in the year 1795; by the time the show returned to contemporary dress four months later, she had been an ineffectual ninny for so long that she had lost the loyalty of the audience, never to regain it. As a vampire, Barnabas could make his way to the center of the story by killing everyone, but that would tend to create a narrative cul-de-sac. So Dark Shadows is taking an enormous risk with its star by putting him in this situation.

When Edith tells Barnabas that he is the secret, at one stroke she puts him at the center of the story, connects the part of the show set in 1897 with that set in 1795, and raises a whole set of questions about how the events of those two periods led to what we have seen in the parts set in the 1960s. She electrifies the audience with the promise of an entirely new kind of show.

She also answers a minor, but potentially nagging question. From #204 on, we saw that Barnabas’ portrait hangs beside the entrance to the great house, and we are repeatedly told that it has been there as long as anyone can remember. The Collinses know that the man who sat for it was a cousin of their direct ancestor, and believe that he left for England in the 1790s, never to return. Why display the portrait of so distant a relative in so prominent a place for so long?

Edith’s recognition of Barnabas tells us why. She has studied the portrait for as long as she has known the secret, and when he comes into the light she can see at once that he is its subject. The portrait was therefore meant to help the keeper of the secret defend the family against Barnabas. It actually had the opposite effect. In 1967 and again on his arrival at the great house this week, Barnabas appealed to his resemblance to the portrait as evidence that he was a descendant of “the original Barnabas Collins,” and so persuaded the living members of the family to let him make his home in the Old House on the estate.

The opening voiceover today is the same we heard yesterday and the day before. I do not believe they had ever replayed an opening voiceover even once prior to this; I’m sure they had never done so twice. This one just tells you that Barnabas has traveled back in time, and it is now 1897. Repeating it doesn’t hurt anything, but I do wonder what they were thinking. Were they considering changing the nature of the voiceover, making them so simple that they could be reused routinely? Or was there some kind of problem, say a technical difficulty with the equipment or an issue with the actors’ contracts, which kept them from recording fresh ones?

Episode 697: He was so cold and evil, he touched me.

Chris Jennings is a werewolf, a fact which old world gentleman Barnabas Collins is helping him conceal. Two years ago, Chris’ fiancée Sabrina Stuart chanced to see him transform; she hasn’t been able to speak since. Her hair turned white, and she is in a nearly catatonic state. Sabrina’s brother, a very loud man named Ned, has brought her to the village of Collinsport and keeps demanding that Chris visit them and explain what happened.

There is a full moon tonight, so Barnabas has sealed Chris up in the secret chamber hidden in the old Collins family mausoleum. He tells Chris that he will try to persuade the Stuarts to leave town and forget about him. Chris tells him that is impossible; Barnabas seems to believe he can pull it off.

In the Stuarts’ suite at the Collinsport Inn, Barnabas tells Ned that he is harming Sabrina by taking her along on his mission to confront Chris and that he ought to take her home and move on with his life. Preposterous as this is, Ned makes it seem credible. To be more precise, it is actor Roger Davis who makes it seem credible. He rubs himself all over Lisa Blake Richards’ scalp, face, and chest while she is required to remain motionless. To the extent that we accept them as their characters, we are forced to think of Ned as a caretaker who abuses his disabled sister sexually; to the extent that we recognize Mr Davis’ behavior as typical of his previous performances on Dark Shadows, we wonder how bad things were for women in show business in the late 1960s that Miss Richards didn’t contact the union and bring him up on charges. It isn’t every performer who can make an audience sympathize with an ex-vampire’s attempt to keep a woman in a comatose state lest she endanger his werewolf buddy, but you can always trust Mr Davis to enlist the viewers’ support for any plot development that will get him off the screen.

I wonder how much of that look is Barnabas reacting to Ned’s story and how much is Jonathan Frid wondering if he should stop tape and call Equity. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There are also some indications that the show is firming up some of its world-building. For the first time, we hear the name “Edward Collins” as the grandfather of the senior generation now resident at the great house of Collinwood. We hear that Edward was the father of Jamison Collins and the brother of Quentin Collins. Quentin was first mentioned months ago as Jamison’s uncle, but on Friday Barnabas had a line identifying him as his brother, suggesting some behind-the-scenes wavering about this point. Quentin’s ghost is the chief villain in the current A story, and we heard several weeks ago that he wants to turn strange and troubled boy David Collins into a replica of Jamison, so these relationships are important to the action.

Longtime viewers will have fond memories when stuffy Roger Collins sees a book open by itself on the table in the drawing room of the great house. The same book opened itself on the same table in #52, one of the first unmistakable signs that ghosts were at work. No one but the audience was around to see that, but when it happened again in #182, Roger was there. It jolted him out of his refusal to face the facts about the supernatural menace operating at that time.