elizabeth collins stoddard – Page 4 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 571: Bring me a mirror

In #210, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis found an old coffin and broke into it, hoping to reap a harvest of hidden jewels. Instead a hand darted out, and Willie became the sorely bedraggled blood thrall of vampire Barnabas Collins.

The next person to open Barnabas’ coffin was Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Barnabas was keeping Maggie prisoner in his house on the great estate of Collinwood as part of his plan to persuade Maggie to forget her personality and turn into his lost love, the gracious Josette. In #250, Maggie decided to drive a stake through Barnabas’ heart, but had the bad luck to set to work a moment before sunset. He awoke, and spent the remaining two weeks of her captivity treating her even more cruelly than he had previously.

In #275, Willie’s onetime friend, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, made his way to Barnabas’ basement and found the coffin. As Willie had done 13 weeks before, Jason jumped to the conclusion the coffin was full of jewels. Willie tried to tell him this was not the case, but could not stop Jason looking inside. As when Maggie made her attempt to stake Barnabas, it is sunset. Again Barnabas’ hand darts forth; this time, he strangles Jason to death.

The first time someone opened Barnabas’ coffin during the day was in #289. Mad scientist Julia Hoffman had collected substantial evidence indicating that Barnabas was a vampire. As final confirmation, she slipped into his house one morning, made her way to the basement, opened the coffin, and reeled away, simultaneously shuddering and giving a look of triumph.

From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. In #410, wicked witch Angelique had just turned Barnabas into a vampire. She went to his coffin with a stake and mallet, regretting her curse and trying to cut its effects short. As Jason and Maggie would do in 1967, Angelique waited until sunset to open the coffin. Barnabas awoke, demanded to know what was going on, and killed her.

Since then, Barnabas’ vampirism has gone into remission and he and Julia have become fast friends. As we begin today, Barnabas is engaged in a desperate battle for Julia’s sake. The new vampire on the block, Tom Jennings, has been feeding on Julia. She is near death, and will herself rise as a vampire unless Tom is destroyed and she is freed from his influence. Barnabas has found Tom in a crypt next to a coffin, and the two of them have an embarrassingly awkward fight scene. The sun rises, and Tom has to leave Barnabas and get into his coffin.

Barnabas stands over Tom’s open coffin with a mallet and stake. He wonders if anyone ever looked down on him in his coffin when he was a vampire. He tells himself no one could have, for they would have destroyed him if they had. This is a strange thing for him to think. Julia eventually told him that she had sneaked a peek at him in his coffin, and he must remember Willie, Maggie, Jason, and Angelique.

Julia is back at Barnabas’ house. Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, mistress of Collinwood and escaped mental patient, is watching over her. She is telling Julia that Barnabas left her to die and that she will be dead any moment. This cheery behavior is the consequence of Liz’ fixation on death and her obsessive fear that Julia and others are part of a conspiracy to bury her alive.

As Barnabas drives the stake through Tom’s heart in the crypt, Julia cries out from her bed, then suddenly gains strength. She asks Liz to bring her a mirror; Julia is delighted to see that Tom’s bite marks are gone.

Evidently Julia’s mirror is possessed by a far-right internet troll of the 2010s. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas comes back, sends Liz away, and tells Julia that she will be safe from Tom now. Barnabas and Julia are starting to get uncharacteristically mushy over each other when we cut to the downstairs, where Liz looks out the window and sees her brother Roger approaching.

Roger wants to send Liz back to the psychiatric hospital from which she escaped. Liz believes Roger is part of the conspiracy to bury her alive, and that sending her to the hospital will further that goal. So she hides behind an armchair.

In #10, Liz and Roger had a conversation in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood while Roger’s son David hid behind an armchair. In that conversation, Roger declared his belief that David should be sent to an institution, a plan which Liz forbade him to pursue. After Liz left the room, Roger caught David behind the armchair.

David found the prospect of institutionalization so terrifying that his next stop was the garage, where he tampered with the brakes of his father’s car in what very nearly turned out to be a successful attempt at patricide. Liz is too upset to develop such an intricate plan, and doesn’t seem to have David’s skills as an auto mechanic. But she shares her nephew’s horror of institutionalization. So after Roger and Barnabas have talked for a moment, she jumps up from behind the chair and starts making accusations.

Liz tells Roger and Barnabas that she saw Julia in a crypt in the family burial ground nearby, and that there was a coffin there. Barnabas is alarmed, since this is the coffin in which Tom’s staked remains now repose. Roger agrees to go to the crypt and to see if there is a coffin. Barnabas offers to go with him.

The suave Nicholas Blair shows up at the front door with a bouquet of flowers. We know that Nicholas is a warlock and that he is behind the renewed outbreak of vampirism, that he was watching while Barnabas staked Tom, and that he is also responsible for some other plots involving Barnabas and Julia. For their part, Barnabas and Julia have every reason to suspect that this is so, and have talked about their suspicions more than once. Nicholas tells Barnabas, Roger, and Liz that he has heard that Julia is ill and has come to visit her. At Liz’ insistence, Barnabas lets Nicholas see Julia while he and Roger go to the crypt.

Nicholas expresses his relief that Julia’s recovery will enable her to return to work soon. The only work Julia has done in the year she has been a houseguest at Collinwood has been in association with the supernatural goings-on she and Barnabas have been entangled in; currently, an agent of Nicholas’ is forcing them to build a Frankenstein’s monster. Nicholas may as well say explicitly that he is behind that scheme and the vampire troubles too. He tells Julia that he thinks he might fall ill and need her help as a doctor; she says that he seems indestructible, a word he receives with pleasure.

Barnabas comes back and tells Julia that the coffin has disappeared. He mentions that it is strange that Nicholas turned up when he did. Julia suggests that Nicholas may be the one who moved the coffin. All of a sudden Barnabas seems to forget everything he knows about Nicholas and dismisses that idea. It’s one of those frustrating moments when the characters seem to have the memory of a goldfish, and it ends the episode on a sour note.

Episode 570: Are you being profound?

When we first met Willie Loomis in March 1967, he was a dangerously unstable ruffian who came to the town of Collinsport and eventually to the great house of Collinwood in the train of seagoing con man Jason McGuire. Willie was such a violent and unpleasant fellow in those days that it was difficult to see why even a villain like Jason would choose to be associated with him.

The next month, Willie inadvertently freed vampire Barnabas Collins from his coffin. Barnabas bit Willie and transformed him into a sorely bedraggled blood thrall. That version of the character was so heavily beaten down and so sincerely remorseful that it was easy to wish him well, but he was so thoroughly dominated by Barnabas that no one else could get close to him.

In March 1968, Barnabas’ vampirism went into remission. His other victims regained their old personalities and apparently forgot about their time under his power. It is unclear just what effect Barnabas’ re-humanization has had on Willie. In #483, his first episode after Barnabas’ cure, Willie ran through the whole range of behavior he had shown in the preceding year. For a time, it seemed he might not remember that Barnabas had been a vampire. During that period, Barnabas assumed that Willie remembered everything, treated him as if he did, and after a couple of weeks of that treatment Willie and Barnabas were having the same kinds of conversations they had in the old days. Perhaps Barnabas accidentally gave Willie the therapy he needed to get his memory back.

Today, we open with Barnabas and Willie bickering in the front parlor of Barnabas’ house. They have been out hunting Tom Jennings, a vampire who has been feeding on Barnabas’ friend Julia. Willie says Barnabas has a reason for being so concerned about Julia, and Barnabas says that of course he does. He describes Julia’s current functions in the plot, and Willie says that isn’t what he’s talking about. Barnabas gets flustered, then asks “Are you being pro-fouuuund?”

Jonathan Frid lingers on the second syllable of “pro-fouuuund” until the whole audience is likely to be laughing. The whole scene is funny, because it shows us sides of Barnabas and Willie that we always suspected existed, but that we never expected to see. As my wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out, Barnabas has been so phenomenally selfish for so long that it is excruciatingly difficult for him to admit that he is willing to put a friend’s interests ahead of his own. And seeing Willie tease him about his feelings shows that the former slave and master are now buddies. Willie is neither menacing nor cringing, but is sympathetic enough and self-confident enough that anyone could enjoy his company. At long last, we know why Jason fell in with him, and what Willie lost, at first by his descent into criminality, and later as Barnabas’ victim.

Willie needles his old pal Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

An unexpected visitor drops in. It is Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, mistress of Collinwood and escaped mental patient. Liz tells Barnabas that she saw Julia in a room with a coffin. Barnabas takes a while to put the pieces together, but it finally dawns on him that Liz is describing Tom’s lair. He goes there, and finds Julia unconscious on the floor next to the coffin.

Barnabas carries Julia into his house. Liz announces that Julia is dead. Barnabas assures her that she is still alive. Even though she is clearly breathing, Liz refuses to believe him.

Later, Liz goes up to Julia’s bedroom. She sits by Julia and tells her that she knows she was part of the conspiracy to bury her alive, but that she forgives her. The whole story of Liz’ fixation on this supposed conspiracy is pretty dull, but Joan Bennett was an extraordinary talent. When she has a scene like this, she can sell Liz as effectively as if she were at the center of an exciting arc.

Just before dawn, Barnabas and Willie go to Tom’s coffin with a mallet and stake. Willie keeps pointing out that the sun isn’t up yet, but Barnabas opens the coffin anyway. It’s empty. Willie panics and runs off. It’s unclear why Barnabas opened the coffin- maybe he turned in early in his time as a vampire, and assumed Tom would do the same. At any rate, the episode ends with a lot of rather awkward stage business as Barnabas and Tom wrestle and Tom bares his fangs. This poorly choreographed fight scene leaves us with a laugh as sour as the laughs from the intentionally funny scene between Barnabas and Willie at the opening were sweet.

Episode 569: Call me a superstitious woman

When housekeeper Mrs Johnson was first on Dark Shadows in September 1967, she was hyper-intense, determined to exact vengeance on the ancient and esteemed Collins family for the death of her longtime employer, Bill Malloy. In #69, she told the Collinses’ nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, that “I believe in signs and omens!” and that the signs and omens she could see showed that reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her family had Bill’s blood on their hands.

“I believe in signs and omens!” Mrs Johnson with Burke Devlin in #69.

As the storyline centered on Bill’s death petered out, Mrs Johnson forgot about her hostility to Liz and her family, and became their devoted retainer. Her new personality was that of a friendly old busybody who kept advancing the plot by blabbing all the information she has to whoever can use it to make the most trouble. Since Mrs Johnson opened the front door to the great house of Collinwood in #211 and admitted Barnabas Collins, she has become an intermittent presence on the show, but Clarice Blackburn plays her with so much style that her occasional appearances are always a highlight.

Today, Mrs Johnson lets suave warlock Nicholas Blair into the house. She informs Nicholas that Liz has escaped from Windcliff, the mental hospital where she has been staying for the last nine and a half weeks. She gets very worked up as she declares that Liz’ aberrations are no ordinary psychiatric problem, but are the product of a hostile supernatural force that plagues the Collinses. Her voice is fearful and she shies away from eye contact with Nicholas, a contrast with the anger and boldness she had shown with Burke Devlin 100 weeks ago, but she again underlines her point with exaggerated hand gestures and facial expressions.

Mrs Johnson tells Nicholas about the curse on the house. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

For regular viewers, it is surprising that Nicholas doesn’t seem to have known about the details of Liz’ trouble. His subordinate, the wicked witch known variously as Angelique and Cassandra, had sent Liz mad by placing a spell on her shortly before he arrived on the scene. He’s still keeping Angelique/ Cassandra around his house- he stripped her of her powers, turned her into a vampire, and has been using her to attack various men he wants to silence. You’d think he would at some point have asked her what happened to the lady who owns the town he has settled in. But, evidently his curiosity did not extend that far.

Liz’ brother Roger comes home and invites Nicholas to join him for a brandy. As they are headed for the drawing room, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman enters. She is pale, unsteady on her feet, and talking with great distress about her inability to find Tom Jennings. Roger points out that Tom is dead, and Julia faints.

Nicholas carries Julia to the couch in the drawing room. While she lies on it unconscious, he sneaks a peek under her scarf and finds bite marks on her neck. Thus he learns that Tom, whom Angelique turned into a vampire at his direction, has been feeding on Julia.

Liz has not been an active part of any major storyline since #272, when it turned out that her belief that she had killed her husband was mistaken and she did not in fact have any terrible secrets to conceal. So Nicholas’ lack of interest in her might just be a sign that he doesn’t want to waste time on irrelevant details. But Julia is indispensable to Nicholas’ plan to found a new race of artificially constructed human beings. She is a medical doctor, and is the only person Nicholas can coerce into building a mate for the Frankenstein’s monster she recently helped bring to life. She hasn’t been able to work on the project since Tom bit her, and apparently won’t be able to resume work until she is freed of his influence. If Nicholas lets his projects get in each other’s way to this extent, one can draw no conclusion other than that he is a bad manager.

Julia recovers and refuses to see a doctor. She goes to bed, and Roger tells Nicholas he thinks Liz might be on the grounds of the estate. The two of them go out to look for her. Of course Liz is there; of course she sees Tom; of course it is only when Roger and Nicholas approach that Tom vanishes and she is spared his bite.

It has been established that Windcliff is about 100 miles north of Collinsport; in #294, the ghost of Sarah Collins performed one of the most stupendous of her many feats when she transported Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, from Windcliff to Collinsport on foot in about an hour. Liz has had 24 hours since she went missing from her room, and people used to hitch-hike in those days, so it wouldn’t necessarily have required a supernatural agency to get her home in that time. It still would have been quite a trip for an escaped mental patient to make by herself, without bus fare, as the subject of a state police all points bulletin, on the roads running through the woods of central Maine.

Back in the house, Liz makes it clear that she is not herself when she only gradually recognizes Mrs Johnson. She is also obsessed with a fear of being buried alive. Roger concludes that she has to return to the hospital, and goes off to get the car. Julia comes downstairs, and Mrs Johnson asks her to keep an eye on Liz while she goes off to telephone the hospital.

Liz asks Julia, who is the nominal director of Windcliff and a qualified psychiatrist, to examine her and see that she is sane. As she is about to respond, Julia hears dogs howling outside and goes into a trance. She opens the window and stares out into the night, saying that the dogs are calling to her and that she must go to “him.” While she does this, Liz asks her what she’s talking about, but clearly still wants her to serve as the standard of sanity. The first time we saw Liz, in #1, she was standing where Julia stands in this shot, looking out the window with Roger behind her. Liz reprised that pose many times in the first year of the show, and it became her signature. It is incongruous to see Julia in Liz’ customary place as Liz looks on. The whole encounter is so funny that I suspect the humor must have been intentional.

Liz begins to doubt that Julia will be able to help her.

Julia rushes from the house; Liz follows her out. Julia goes to the crypt where Tom’s coffin is kept; evidently Tom’s hunger is getting the better of him, and he has decided to DoorDash it tonight. Liz follows her in. Julia sees Liz and demands that she leave. Liz sees the coffin and asks if it the one in which she will be buried alive. Julia tells her it has nothing to do with her, and repeatedly yells at her to “Get out!” She complies. Tom appears, and opens his mouth to bite Julia.

Julia’s expulsion of Liz from the crypt is an effective turn, but it is also a sad one for longtime viewers. When Dark Shadows started, the presence of Joan Bennett in the cast was probably its single biggest ratings draw, and all the way through her name appears at the beginning of the credits under the word “Starring.” But for a year now, the show’s whole attitude towards Liz has been one of active hostility. They simply will not let her be involved in the action. When Julia shouts “Get out, get out, get out!,” she is speaking with the voice of the story conference.

Danny Horn’s post about this episode on Dark Shadows Every Day details how Liz has been pushed to the margins and kept there as the show has evolved. Danny makes a point of not discussing the first 42 weeks, when Liz was enough of a part of the action that Joan Bennett had some chance to show what she could do, but in this post at least he seems to realize that the makers of Dark Shadows were squandering a considerable resource.

Episode 568: The unchaperoned

In May 1967, seagoing con man Jason had for long months been blackmailing matriarch Liz into letting him stay at the great house of Collinwood. He told Liz that people in the village of Collinsport were starting to talk about the presence of an unmarried man in her house. He informed Liz that they would solve this problem by getting married. She laughed in his face, but he pressed his threats to expose her terrible secret, and they were in the middle of a wedding ceremony when Liz broke down and announced her secret to everyone. It then turned out that there never really was a secret- the whole thing was a sort of misunderstanding. A few days later, Jason was dead, and he hasn’t been mentioned since March 1968.

Today, Liz’ brother Roger shows up at the Old House on the estate, home of their distant cousin Barnabas. He is looking for Julia, a permanent houseguest who settled in at the great house a few weeks after Jason disappeared. Barnabas, a bachelor, tells him that Julia is staying with him for a few days. Roger’s startled response makes it clear that the mores Jason mentioned in #243 have not changed. But Roger is not in a position to insist on propriety, and he has come on an urgent matter. Liz has escaped from Windcliff, the mental hospital of which Julia is the nominal director, and he wants her to come back with him at once to the great house so that she can consult with her staff on the telephone.

Roger is momentarily stunned to learn that Julia is sleeping at Barnabas’ house.

Barnabas tells Roger that Julia is ill and cannot help him. He insists, so Barnabas goes up to her bedroom. Not only does he tell her about Roger and his news, but he also informs her that he earlier found an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff in the basement. Since the basement houses a lot of technical equipment and a stolen corpse which they are planning to use as material for a Frankenstein’s monster, Julia finds this alarming. But Barnabas has talked Peter/ Jeff into helping them with their little arts & crafts project, and he assures her that he has Peter/ Jeff under control.

Julia is in fact ill, and she tells Barnabas she cannot see Roger. Julia has been bitten by a vampire named Tom. Barnabas, a recovering vampire himself, plans to use her as bait to lure Tom into the bedroom tonight so that he can shoot him with a silver bullet. He explains to her that he took a candlestick to the local silversmith earlier this morning and that the silversmith melted it down and forged five silver bullets. No wonder people are reluctant to leave Collinsport, even much bigger places don’t have same-day service like that.

We cut to the basement, where Julia is wearing her lab coat. Barnabas tells her it is 5 PM. There is no sign they have been working on the project; for all we can tell, they waited around her bedroom all day and decided to get to work shortly before sundown. Peter/ Jeff enters and reports for work. They tell him to work on a particular piece of equipment. Barnabas takes Julia back up to her bedroom, leaving Peter/ Jeff alone with the corpse. Since he was just recruited for the project, this shows a remarkable degree of confidence in his loyalty.

Julia is sitting in a chair and Barnabas is hiding in the closet when Tom materializes. Julia puts herself between Barnabas and Tom, and Tom vanishes. Julia apologizes; Barnabas knows enough about the compulsions that afflict the vampire’s victim that he does not seem to be really upset with her. He frets that they will never have such a good shot at Tom again now that he knows to be on his guard. He looks out the window and thinks he sees Tom on the lawn. He turns, and finds that Julia, too, is gone. He realizes that she must now be alone with Tom.

In his Dark Shadows Daybook post about this episode, Patrick McCray makes some apt remarks about the acting. As Barnabas, Jonathan Frid starts the episode with an unusually self-assured tone in his confrontation with Peter/ Jeff. That’s what the scene calls for, since we need to believe that Barnabas’ force of personality is sufficient to overpower Peter/ Jeff’s aversion to the gruesome project. But it all falls apart about halfway through, when Frid has some line trouble, and as a result we wind up listening to the arguments with which Barnabas defends his position. Patrick doesn’t say anything about those arguments, but on Dark Shadows Every Day Danny Horn does a fine job explaining how utterly unconvincing they are.

Playing Julia as an addict needing a fix, Grayson Hall falls far short of her usual standard, but Patrick doesn’t blame her: “These are the heavy blinking, o-mouthed, head vacillating performances that critics of Hall use against her. I don’t call it bad acting… there’s only so much you can do with a cartoon. But seeing Julia like that is always evidence of a questionable match.” I like the tenderness Barnabas and Julia show each other in their scenes yesterday and today; for me, Barnabas’ earnest concern for Julia and her quiet trust in him outweigh the deficiencies in Frid’s memory for dialogue and Hall’s attempt to show Julia’s weakness. But those deficiencies are impossible to overlook, unfortunately.

Episode 520: What is it about this family?

Permanent house-guest Julia Hoffman walks into the great house of Collinwood and greets Roger Collins with a chipper “Good morning, Rodgie!” This is the second time we have heard Roger addressed as “Rodgie.” The first time was in #103, when he called to well-meaning governess Victoria Winters with “Oh, Vicki!” and she responded with “Oh, Rodgie!” That was a disastrous blooper; at that point, Roger was the show’s chief villain and Vicki was supposed to be terrified that he was about to murder her. Roger has long since been rendered harmless, and Julia is in a breezy mood, so “Rodgie” seems appropriate.

Roger’s own mood is anything but cheerful. His wife Cassandra hasn’t been seen since last night, and there is no indication where she might be. He is convinced something must have happened to her, and he calls the police.

Julia knows that Cassandra is actually Angelique, a wicked witch who in the 1790s turned Barnabas Collins into a vampire. Now Barnabas’ vampirism has gone into remission, and Angelique/ Cassandra is determined to revive her curse on him. The other day, Julia and some other people conjured up another personage from the 1790s, the Rev’d Mr Trask, a fanatical but wildly inept witchfinder. Julia hopes that Angelique/ Cassandra’s absence means that Trask has destroyed her.

Barnabas stops by. Julia tells him of her theory. He can’t believe Angelique/ Cassandra is really gone. They go to Barnabas’ house and look in the alcove in the basement where, in 1796, Barnabas murdered Trask by hanging him from the ceiling and bricking him up. Trask’s bones had disappeared when Julia and the others brought him back to life, but are there again now. Julia takes this to mean that he is at peace, not a condition usually associated with hanging from a ceiling in a bricked-up little space, and that Angelique/ Cassandra must therefore have been defeated once and for all. At no point does it occur to them to take Trask’s bones down and give him a more respectful resting place. Apparently they consider human remains a standard part of household decor.

Back in the great house, Julia finds evidence that Angelique/ Cassandra’s powers are still at work. Matriarch Liz is still under a spell Angelique/ Cassandra cast and believes herself to be Naomi Collins, mother of Barnabas. She believes her brother Roger to be Naomi’s husband Joshua and Julia to be houseguest the Countess DuPrés. Most alarming, Liz has all the knowledge Naomi had in the hour before her suicide. She even mentions to Roger and Julia that Barnabas is “the living dead.” Roger and Liz don’t know that Barnabas was a vampire, and Julia doesn’t want them finding out.

Julia goes back to Barnabas’ house and confers with him about the situation. Barnabas says that Roger knows more about the family history than Liz does, and that if he starts hearing the actual facts there is a great danger he will figure everything out. This is a change- previously the show had always indicated that while Liz took some interest in the Collinses of years gone by, Roger took none.

We cut back to the great house and see Liz sitting at the desk in the drawing room. She is putting a note in an envelope addressed to “Joshua.” Regular viewers saw Naomi sit at this same desk and put a note in just such an envelope in #458. As Naomi did then, Liz pours a snifter of brandy, takes a container from the desk drawer, pours a powder from the container into the brandy, then drinks it. She again follows Naomi’s lead when she goes upstairs.

Barnabas and Julia enter. Julia asks exactly what Naomi did before she died. He starts telling the story, and she finds the note. Barnabas says Naomi died in the tower room; they go there, and find Liz. She talks to Barnabas as if she were Naomi and he were her accursed son. She collapses in his arms, as Naomi did in 1796.

Episode 519: Poor suffering servant of Satan!

Roger Collins is on the telephone in the foyer of the great house of Collinwood. He is assuring the caller that it will be fine if Maggie, whom returning viewers know to be The Nicest Girl in Town, comes to stay. He says that he and Cassandra will be glad to have her for as long as she wants to be with them, and that he is sure Liz will approve. First time viewers thus learn that Roger has a wife named Cassandra, and that they live as guests in a house belonging to someone called Liz. A moment later, Liz enters, and is too distracted to hear anything Roger says to her.

Roger ends the phone call, and follows Liz into the drawing room. She stares out the window and makes a gloomy remark about death. He says he understands she must be very upset about Sam Evans. Returning viewers know that Sam was Maggie’s father, and that he died in yesterday’s episode. Roger goes on about how it is natural to be grieved at the loss of a friend like Sam, but soon learns that Liz’ mood has nothing to do with Sam’s demise- it’s news to her that he is dead.

Roger’s lines will startle longtime viewers. For the first 40 weeks of the show, Roger and Sam were united by a deep and abiding mutual hatred, and since then they have had no contact at all. Roger’s words about Sam as a family friend are so far from what we have previously seen that they should be considered a retcon.

Liz and Roger spend several minutes in the drawing room. She keeps going on about the all-pervasive reality of death, and he keeps urging her to see a doctor. There isn’t much to their lines, but Joan Bennett and Louis Edmonds were such extraordinary screen performers that it’s always fun to watch them together. This scene might be a particular pleasure to longtime viewers, who have rarely seen Roger as the responsible adult in any encounter.

We dissolve to a bedroom where a young woman in a black wig is sifting through some powders, looking directly into the camera, and telling Liz that her obsession with death will become even worse than it already is and will have dire consequences. Liz will believe that she is someone else, a woman who lived and died in another century, and may die by the same poison that killed that person.

There is a knock at the door. It is Roger. The woman hides her powders and lets him in. He addresses her as Cassandra and asks why the door was locked. Thus first-time viewers learn that she is his wife, that this is their room, that she is a witch, and that Liz’ problem is the result of a spell she has cast.

Cassandra tells Roger that she locked the door because David kept pestering her about Sam’s death and she wanted a moment to herself. With that, first-time viewers find out that David is Roger’s son, that Cassandra is his stepmother, and that she expects Roger to consider locking him out of the room an appropriate response to his grief about Sam.

Roger does not so consider it, and is bewildered by what Cassandra tells him. He tells Cassandra that Liz is in a bad way, and he is worried about her. Cassandra says she did not know that Roger was so concerned about his family. Baffled by this, Roger says that of course he is concerned, Liz is his sister. This tells first time viewers both what Roger’s relationship to Liz is, and that Cassandra has so little sense of family that she cannot imagine how other people feel.

Regular viewers will learn more. In the first year of the show, Roger’s keynote was his lack of loyalty to the family. That has now been set aside once and for all, and his normal attachment to his son and his sister provide a contrast with Cassandra’s apparently sociopathic coldness. Further, we saw a great deal of Cassandra from November 1967 through March 1968, when the show was a costume drama set in the 1790s and she was called Angelique. We saw then that Angelique had no conception of family or friendship, and that her idea of love begins and ends with her control over a person.

Cassandra promises to join Roger downstairs for a game of bridge in half an hour. He leaves, and she gets back to work spellcasting. As she does so, a figure in a black cassock materializes behind her. She turns, and the figure vanishes. In a quizzical tone, she says Roger’s name, revealing that she did not see the figure or realize that it is a supernatural presence. Together with her locking the door, scrambling to hide her magical paraphernalia when Roger knocked, lying to cover what she was doing, and failing to understand what a person with a reasonable amount of human empathy would consider acceptable behavior, her puzzlement shows that whatever her powers may be, they have definite limits.

Back in the foyer, another young woman with black hair lets a man into the house. She calls him Joe, and he calls her Vicki. Joe and Vicki talk about Sam’s death and about Maggie. Joe says that he wants to marry Maggie as soon as possible and to move away. Vicki is all for their marriage, but does not want them to go. Joe talks about how close he and Sam were. Longtime viewers will remember that when Sam and Roger were enemies, Sam was the town drunk. Even then, Joe was always happy to help him in whatever way he could, and did not see his condition as any obstacle to marrying Maggie.

Liz enters and angrily addresses Joe as “Lieutenant Forbes.” Joe has never heard of Lieutenant Forbes, and cannot understand why Liz, who knows him well, would not recognize him. Vicki clearly does know who Liz is talking about, and manages to calm her down. After Liz apologizes and hastens away, Vicki answers Joe’s questions only by saying that Forbes is someone from “the past.” Since we heard Cassandra talk about Liz taking on the personality of someone who lived in “another century,” this suggests that Vicki, too, has an unnatural familiarity with that same century.

Joe wants to go upstairs to the room where Maggie is sleeping so that he will be the first person she sees when she wakes up. Vicki is about to lead him to Maggie when Cassandra insists she join her in the drawing room to talk about David. Vicki tells Joe which door to open, and complies with Cassandra’s directions. This shows that Vicki is a member of the household staff whose responsibilities have to do with David. Regular viewers know that she is his governess, and that they are very close.

Cassandra tells Vicki that David has been asking about Sam’s last words. Vicki says that he addressed them to Maggie, not to her, and implies that she did not hear them. When Cassandra continues probing, Vicki protests. She asks if Cassandra can’t see that she is upset. Considering how clueless Cassandra was about human feelings in her conversation with Roger, it is entirely possible that she cannot. Vicki tells her that Liz is deeply depressed; Cassandra feigns ignorance. Vicki says in a cold voice, “You wouldn’t know anything about that,” then leaves.

Longtime viewers know that it was Vicki who came unstuck in time in #365 and took us with her to the 1790s. During her nineteen weeks in the past, Vicki came to know not only Forbes, but Angelique. She knows perfectly well that Angelique and Cassandra are the same person, that she is a witch, and that she is a deadly menace to everyone. She likely suspects that Liz’ depression is the consequence of one of Cassandra’s spells, and the tone of her parting remark would suggest that she does. Further, those who saw the show yesterday know that Vicki is lying about Sam’s last words. They were addressed to her, and she heard them clearly. She is choosing not to repeat them to Cassandra lest Cassandra use them for her nefarious purposes.

Cassandra is alone in the drawing room for only a few seconds. She is joined there by the same figure who had appeared in her room. This time she sees him. He confronts her.

Regular viewers know that the figure is the Rev’d Mr Trask, a fanatical witchfinder who mistook Vicki for the witch in the 1790s and sent her to the gallows. He tells Cassandra that he now has the opportunity to correct that error. He shows her a cross, from which she recoils. We cut to a scene in the woods. Trask has tied Cassandra to a tree and performs an exorcism on her. This is Trask’s go-to technique; he tied Vicki to a tree in #385 and performed an exorcism on her in #386. Since Cassandra actually is in league with the devil (or as Trask would say, THE DE-VILLL!!!,) he has more success this time. Cassandra vanishes and leaves the ropes hanging on the tree.

Trask exorcises Cassandra. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

A first-time viewer might take this climax as an indication that Dark Shadows is a Christian show and Trask is its hero. Not only is Trask going after the right target, he is clearly making some headway. He says all the right things about casting the evil out of Cassandra and saving whatever good is left in her. His delivery of his lines is so fervent that Mrs Acilius, a vigorous Christian, cheered him on. In fact, Trask’s wild incompetence throughout the 1790s segment led to one disaster after another, and was of a piece with the show’s light regard for religion. Not until #450 did a cross provoke a reaction from a monster; that was the first suggestion the show gave that there might be anything to Christianity, and the scenes between Cassandra and Trask today are the second.

Dark Shadows borrows story points freely from all sorts of books, plays, movies, and folklore. So far, it has steered clear of Christianity as a source. For obvious reasons- most of the audience is at least nominally Christian, and Christianity is, in one way or another, a live option for the rest. So it’s a topic that can take over very quickly once it is introduced. I suppose a specifically Christian version of Dark Shadows could have worked, but I can’t imagine that the staff they had would have been particularly interested in making a show like that. So when it looks like they are going to let Trask have even a temporary win, we see the show running one of its boldest risks yet.

Episode 514: Serious talking

Hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell is engaged to marry Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Early in their relationship, Maggie warned Joe that they might never be able to get married, because her father Sam was an alcoholic and would always need her to come rescue him. Joe liked Sam, drunk or sober, and was always quick to lend him a hand. He didn’t seem to understand Maggie’s worries.

Now, it’s Joe who is worried, and Maggie who doesn’t understand why. Sam’s drinking doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem as it was then. But he has been struck blind, ending his career as a painter. Joe still wants to marry Maggie, and is still glad to help Sam. But Sam has befriended a very tall, phenomenally strong man named Adam, who is wanted by the police because he abducted heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard several days ago. Sam doesn’t consider the abduction to be a strike against Adam, whose ignorance of social customs he considers to be a disability equal to his own blindness. Joe is convinced that Adam is a violent felon and is alarmed that Sam insists on inviting him to the Evans cottage. Maggie has been out of town and doesn’t know about Adam.

Today, Joe finds a reason to be as alarmed about Maggie’s judgment of men as he is about Sam’s. Maggie was missing for some weeks in May and June of 1967, and when she was found she was so severely traumatized that she could barely talk. She spent months in a mental hospital called Windcliff after that, during which time she had regressed to childhood and developed a tendency to become wildly agitated. She seems to be her old self now, but she still has amnesia covering the whole period from her disappearance through her time at Windcliff.

Like the rest of the village of Collinsport, Joe believes that Maggie was abducted and brutalized by Willie Loomis, servant to old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, and that Willie was trying to kill Maggie when the police shot him in #322 and #323. When he survived his gunshot wounds, Willie was sent to Windcliff. In #483, Joe was appalled to find that Barnabas had arranged Willie’s release and brought him back to work for him. Joe informed Barnabas that he intended to kill Willie if he ever again saw him near Maggie.

Joe is on his way to the Evans cottage when he sees Willie heading for the front door. He confronts him and reminds him of what he told Barnabas. Willie tells him Maggie is no longer afraid of him, that they are friends now, that she visited him at Barnabas’ house earlier that evening, and that it wasn’t the first time she had gone there. Willie is going on about himself as Joe’s “competition” for Maggie’s attention when Joe hits him a couple of times and knocks him out.

Joe goes into the house and tells Maggie what happened. She admits that she did go to Barnabas’ house earlier, that she talked to Willie, and that it wasn’t the first time. Joe reacts with incredulity and says that Willie tried to kill her. Maggie insists that Willie is innocent. Joe asks why she believes that; she can’t explain. He asks why she went to Barnabas’ house. Again, she can’t explain. She says that she does not know why she went there, but that she is sure it wasn’t to see Willie. Joe is shocked that Maggie can’t explain something she did just an hour or two before. He keeps asking, but she insists that she does not know why she went to the Old House.

Joe becomes more and more alarmed. Maggie turns away from him, and he grabs her arm. All the fansites remark on the roughness of this move; it looks like an act of domestic violence. It certainly is not what we would expect of Nice Guy Joe, who was Carolyn’s doormat in the early months of the show and has been a Perfect Gentleman in his relationship with Maggie since then. The 1960s were a particularly bad time for intimate partner violence on screen, so it speaks relatively well of actors Joel Crothers and Kathryn Leigh Scott, and especially of director John Sedwick, that this moment passes briefly. Joe doesn’t follow it up with any further violence, and Maggie seems to forget about it instantly, as if it were an accident. In those days, it might just easily have been highlighted as a proof of Joe’s manliness.

Joe gets rough. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The arm-grab is not defensible, but Joe’s intense feelings in response to Maggie’s inability to explain her behavior are. Joe and Sam visited Maggie at Windcliff in #265. She didn’t recognize them and started shrieking lyrics to “London Bridge” in what I think is the single most frightening scene in the whole of Dark Shadows. Maggie’s amnesia blotted that out, but Joe can hardly have forgotten it. He also remembers Willie as he was in his first weeks on the show, when he seemed determined to rape all the young women and beat up their boyfriends. The idea of Maggie’s mental health regressing to such a low point that she would wander off with a man like that must terrify Joe.

In his post about this episode on his Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn lists eight ongoing storylines it references. They are:

#1. Sam recently went blind; that’s why Joe has to pick him up at the bar.

#2. “Cassandra” is really Angelique, who’s cast a complicated Dream Curse spell that will eventually lead to Barnabas’ death. The gift that she brought was pipe tobacco, laced with a magic powder that would make Sam have the dream.

#3. Professor Stokes is fighting Cassandra, and trying to stop the Dream Curse. He stole the pipe tobacco, because he doesn’t want Sam to have the dream.

#4. Willie has a crush on Maggie, so he stole a pair of Josette’s earrings from Barnabas, and left them in Maggie’s purse while she wasn’t looking. When she puts the earrings on, she has a flashback to the period when Barnabas held her captive, and tried to convince her that she was Josette — a period that should be blocked from her memory.

#5. Adam, the newborn Frankenstein, has befriended Sam, and is now looking for him…

[#6.] Barnabas… was chained up a couple episodes ago and trapped behind this wall. Now he’s kicking at the wall, desperate for someone to come and rescue him.

[#7. A] man… abducted Carolyn a few weeks ago.

[#8.] Cassandra putting a curse on Liz, and making her think about death all the time.
Danny Horn, “Episode 514: That Endless Summer,” Dark Shadows Every Day, published 2 November 2014.

Danny might have mentioned several other stories that don’t come up today, but of which regular viewers are aware and on which the ones that do come up depend. For example, Barnabas’ vampirism has gone into remission, and as a result his sometime victims were freed of the effects of his bites. It is unclear what this means for them, particularly for Willie, who often seems to have become once more the dangerously unstable ruffian whom Joe and the others knew when he first came to Collinsport. Also, a man named Peter is dating well-meaning governess Vicki, and Vicki has trouble remembering that Peter would prefer to be called Jeff. That may not be too exciting, but it’s no duller than Liz moaning endlessly about death. We could also bring up strange and troubled boy David, who has come into possession of a tape recorder with a message that has been played for the audience approximately umpteen billion gazillion times, but that no character other than Adam has heard, and if anyone else does there will be consequences. And Harry, the ex-convict son of housekeeper Mrs Johnson, is staying at Collinwood, and may someday be mentioned again. If he is, there is a danger that the audience will once more have to watch Craig Slocum try to act, truly a grim prospect.

Danny argues that the dense packing of so many storylines into the show makes watching it a stimulating cognitive exercise that “actually teaches people how to process information more efficiently.” As this blog makes obvious, I enjoy this kind of complexity very much. Not only do I keep talking about how ongoing storylines relate to each other, I reach back and find echoes of plot elements from months or years before and consider the significance of the common themes they develop; I look at the way the show borrows stories from books and plays and movies and folklore and notice how they put those source materials in dialogue with each other; and sometimes, my dissatisfaction with stories that didn’t work leads me to think up other stories that might have turned out better, adding yet another layer of narrative accretion to the already extremely intricate existing dramatic text.

I think Danny goes overboard, though, in his presentation of his case. He suggests that an increase in the number of storylines per minute of airtime is equivalent to an increase in the intellectual power of the show. But analysis and collation of plot elements is only one of many kinds of mental activities audiences engage in, and is far from the most important one. If that was all you wanted, you wouldn’t need actors. When an actor creates a character, s/he transforms the story points into the experiences of a person and the audience into witnesses of those experiences. When the drama is well executed, those experiences, even if they can be assigned to some category that is familiar to us, strike us as fresh and unique. When that happens, you don’t need a large number of interlocking storylines to generate complexity- your responses, emotionally and intellectually, will be as complex as your own background can support.

The audience’s background matters. There’s an old saying that when you engage with a literary work, it isn’t just you who read the book, but the book reads you. I often see how true this is in my job as a faculty member in ancient Greek and Latin at a state university in the interior of the USA. When I teach courses on ancient Mediterranean literature in translation, students aged 18-25 have an entirely different reaction than do the “non-traditional” students, those coming back to school after some years doing something else. Most of the students who are in the traditional college age group make interesting connections with a wide variety of topics, while others in that group get bored and can’t see a point in reading old books. But of the dozens of students I’ve taught when they were over the age of 40, every single one has found the reading to be a deeply rewarding experience. The literature that we have from the ancient world was written for adults, and the average American post-adolescent is only going to get so much out of it.

At this point in 1968, Dark Shadows is very much a show for children. The biggest and fastest-growing share of the audience is under 13 years old. So if it is going to be a smart show, it’s going to be smart in the sense that IQ tests measure, transmitting large amounts of information and giving the audience a short period of time to absorb, analyze, and recombine that information before it is followed by another close-packed message. It’s no wonder that an actor like Joel Crothers would become discontented with the show and go away complaining that the cast was being crowded out. He has ever less basis for the hope that he will be able to present the audience with a recognizable human feeling and leave them with hard thinking to do about what that feeling means.

Episode 513: The woman in the window

Wiggéd witch Angelique/ Cassandra and her reluctant cat’s paw Tony are on the terrace at the great house of Collinwood, quarreling about Tony’s failure to complete his latest mission. Angelique/ Cassandra talks about the punishments she is capable of inflicting on Tony, and decides that she will force him to fall hopelessly in love with her. This punishment will begin as soon as she has kissed him.

This is not the first time Angelique/ Cassandra has found a reason to kiss Tony. The last time she did so, in #489, her stepson David caught them, and she had to scramble to come up with a spell to wipe his memory. This time, her sister-in-law Liz catches them, and she curses Liz to become obsessed with death. As she is casting the spell, she tells Liz that the obsession will make her life less empty. It does not promise to make it more interesting for the audience to watch.

Joan Bennett as The Woman in the Window. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 504: A talent for making everyone feel guilty

Well-meaning governess Vicki was the main character of Dark Shadows for its first year, but has been receding further and further to the margins since. Today she returns after a 14 day absence, the first time she has been off screen so long.

Vicki is in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood with her employer, matriarch Liz. Liz is distraught because her daughter Carolyn has been abducted by a strange man. Liz fears that Carolyn is dead or dying; Vicki urges her to set those fears aside. The police telephone; they have captured the man, but Carolyn was not with him, and he has not answered any of their questions. Liz and Vicki set out for the gaol to see him.

They are accompanied by a sheriff’s deputy. The Collinsport police are exceptionally useless, but even by their standards this deputy is a low performer. Though the man is so strong that it took twenty men to subdue him and bring him in, the deputy enjoys taunting him. He sticks his service revolver in the cell; the man is shackled to the wall, but he is so tall he sweeps his hand into contact with the gun. If the script didn’t say otherwise, he could easily take it from the deputy. Liz orders the deputy to stand back out of the man’s line of sight. Since she owns most of the town, he grudgingly obeys.

The deputy puts his weapon within Adam’s reach.

Yesterday, Liz went looking for Carolyn at the Old House on the estate, home to her distant cousin Barnabas. She found Barnabas’ servant Willie on the ground, suffering from a fresh head wound. Willie told her that the man had been by a few minutes before, and that he had been carrying the unconscious Carolyn. He also referred to the man as “Adam.” When Liz asked him why he used that name, he denied that he did and began jabbering about some bad dream that had frightened him. Today, Liz addresses the man as Adam, and he responds, proving that Willie does in fact know more about him that he will admit.

Liz and Vicki tell Adam that they will treat him as a friend if he tells them where Carolyn is. Adam knows the word “friend.” He repeats it, and adds “food!” Again he says “Friend, food!” The women do not know what he is driving at. They give up and go home.

Returning viewers know that Adam has stashed Carolyn in an abandoned structure that looks exactly like Fred and Wilma Flintstone’s house, that he calls Carolyn “Friend,” and that he had gone out to look for food for her when he was captured. He is dejected when he cannot make it clear that she is hungry.

Liz and Vicki return to Collinwood. They spend several seconds taking off their coats in unison. In the early days of the show, there were a number of scenes designed to emphasize Liz and Vicki’s resemblance and to present each as the other’s reflection in support of a storyline that led us to believe that Vicki was Liz’ unacknowledged daughter. That storyline was forgotten long ago, and it isn’t entirely clear what director Jack Sullivan is getting at here.

Back in the drawing room, Liz tells Vicki her reasons for believing that Barnabas knows a great deal about Adam. Apparently the doors separating the drawing room from the foyer amplify sound, because as the camera takes us from the drawing room to the foyer Liz and Vicki’s conversation only becomes more audible. Liz’ new sister-in-law is in the foyer. This woman calls herself Cassandra, but regular viewers know that she is in fact wicked witch Angelique. Vicki knows that perfectly well. Vicki traveled back in time in #365 and spent nineteen weeks living under the same roof as Angelique while Angelique wrought havoc on the Collins family of the 1790s and framed Vicki for her crimes. Angelique’s only disguise as Cassandra is a black wig- otherwise, she looks, sounds, and moves exactly as she had when Vicki knew her in the eighteenth century. As a result, Vicki is very much on her guard around her.

Angelique/ Cassandra enters the drawing room. Liz excuses herself, and Angelique/ Cassandra demands to know why Vicki doesn’t like her. When Vicki says that she resembles someone she didn’t get along with, Angelique/ Cassandra proclaims that she isn’t that person, bursts into tears, and runs out. Vicki stays in the drawing room, but the camera follows Angelique/ Cassandra to the staircase, where we see her smile gleefully.

Liz returns, and Vicki tells her she may have misjudged Cassandra. It doesn’t speak well of Vicki’s brainpower that a single display of crocodile tears would override the memory of their long and painful acquaintance, but since Barnabas and the others who are doing battle with Angelique/ Cassandra refuse to accept Vicki’s help, she may as well forget everything she knows. Liz tells her that she doesn’t think she misjudged Cassandra, and says she doesn’t trust her either.

Back in the gaol, the idiotic deputy goes back to Adam’s cell to taunt him some more. When Adam protests, the deputy opens the door and waves his baton at him. He places himself within easy reach of Adam, who grabs him and knocks him unconscious.

Yesterday, the high sheriff said “I’m not a stupid man.” He may not have been as stupid as is this grinning imbecile, but it is on his responsibility that he has a badge and a gun.

Another deputy enters. He sees his moronic colleague on the floor, the bars twisted in the window, and no sign of Adam.

Adam is 6’6″, so it’s difficult to see how he could fit through this opening. Perhaps he is not only tremendously strong, but is also a contortionist.

Episode 502: Some experience with the criminal mind

Yesterday, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her daughter Carolyn were in their drawing room quarreling about some family matters when a strange man stumbled into the house. The man was 6’6″ tall, his face was scarred, he trailed a length of chain from a shackle he wore on one ankle, and could speak only a few words. When Carolyn tuned the radio to an Easy Listening station, the man found that the listening was not at all easy for him. Saying “Not music!,” he smashed the radio. This prompted Liz to threaten him with a letter opener. Frightened, the man clutched at Carolyn. The situation escalated when Liz’ distant cousin Barnabas burst in and pointed a rifle at the man. Finally, the man ran out of the house, carrying Carolyn with him.

Today, Liz is moping in the foyer. Local man Tony Peterson, who had gone on a few dates with Carolyn some months ago, comes to the door. He and Liz discuss the situation. Liz laments the harsh tone she took with Carolyn during their argument. She tells Tony that she supposes there is a generational difference between them. He and Carolyn hide their feelings, while Liz expresses hers. This is an exceedingly strange thing for Liz to say- the whole foundation of her character is denial. In the first months of Dark Shadows, Liz was a central character, and the show was largely a study of that psychological defense mechanism and its consequences. She has moved to the margins of the action since then, but hasn’t changed her personality. Indeed, Liz’ conversation with Carolyn took a harsh turn precisely because she refused to face the unpleasant facts Carolyn was reporting to her.

Tony comforts Liz. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Liz and Tony go to the Old House on the grounds of Liz’ estate, home to Barnabas. They find Barnabas’ servant Willie on the ground by the front door of that house; the door is open, and Willie is nursing a recent head wound. He confirms that the man had been there and that he was carrying Carolyn in his arms. He says that Carolyn appeared to be unconscious. Tony announces that he will go after them, and Willie tells him he will need a gun. “He’s strong, that Adam,” says Willie.

Liz demands to know why Willie called the man “Adam.” Willie denies that he did. That only irritates Liz, who insists that Willie tell her what he knows about the man. Willie repeats his denial, and says that he is worried about a nightmare. He keeps going on about this topic, to which Liz angrily responds “I don’t want to hear any more about your dream!”

Liz confronts Willie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Adam has taken Carolyn to an abandoned root cellar somewhere in the woods. This is a new set. Regular viewers, knowing what a rarity new sets are on a show with this one’s budget, will expect something important to happen there. What happens there today is that Adam and Carolyn struggle to communicate with each other. She asks him what he wants; he manages to say “Kill Barnabas!,” a goal which people who have been watching for the last several weeks will agree he has excellent reasons to pursue. He holds a burning pine cone and is surprised to find that it hurts when the fire reaches his hand; she is startled to find that he didn’t know that, and says that he is like a baby. She tries to leave the root cellar, but he won’t let her get to the door.

Liz spoke for the audience when she said she didn’t want to hear any more about Willie’s dream, but it is dramatized for us anyway. It ends with the image that frightens Willie the most, a wolf’s head. Longtime viewers can well understand why this might be a terrifying symbol to Willie. When Willie first worked for Barnabas, Barnabas habitually beat him with his heavy wooden cane topped with a metal handle in the shape of a wolf’s head. In those days, Barnabas was a vampire, and when he felt bloodlust dogs would howl. As Barnabas’ blood thrall, that sound would therefore tell Willie that either he himself would soon be drained of more blood, or that he would be forced to help Barnabas prey on someone else. So it makes sense that for Willie, terror has a canine face.