Tag: finley’s cove

Episode 1062: You shouldn’t look the same

Vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman have come unstuck in time and found themselves 25 years in the future, in the year 1995. The great house of Collinwood is in ruins. They are trying to find someone who can tell them what happened after they left in 1970.

They meet Carolyn Collins Stoddard Hawkes, who has changed her name to Carolyn Fredericks. Carolyn now lives in an old shack on the beach. She is offended that Julia and Barnabas look the same as they did in 1970. She refuses to answer any of their questions and orders them to leave her house.

During the day, Barnabas takes shelter in his coffin in the secret chamber hidden in the old Collins family mausoleum. Julia leaves the mausoleum and finds Carolyn waiting outside. Carolyn warns her that she and Barnabas must leave the area. Julia goes on her way, and occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes comes out of the shadows and talks with Carolyn. Carolyn had seemed to be drifting in and out of lucidity while talking to Julia, but she is crystal clear while she and Stokes discuss the need to get rid of the new arrivals.

Julia goes to the county building and tries to get the clerk to answer questions about what happened in 1970. He is frightened by the mention of the date and claims that there are no records of any kind from that year. She finds Stokes in the corridor outside the clerk’s office. She greets him joyously. He tells her to go away, lest he and others be “forced to act.”

After nightfall, Julia and Barnabas decide to visit a man named Victor Flagler, whose name the clerk had mentioned. As Barnabas and Julia leave the mausoleum, Stokes and the clerk watch them go and speculate as to their destination. Evidently the secret chamber is no longer secret at all.

Victor is in his 30s; he has a framed picture of his wife Jeanne that appears to have been taken during the Coolidge administration. Some fans complain that everyone in the 1995 segment dresses in clothes that might have been found at Ohrbach’s in 1970, but I don’t think that’s a problem. The Collinses of Collinwood had a stranglehold on the economy of the village of Collinsport in the 1960s, and if they were annihilated in 1970 and their assets left to rot it stands to reason people in the area would still be wearing the clothes they bought then. But the antique style of this photograph really does take me out of the show:

A photo taken no earlier than 1985. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Victor initially resists having anything to do with Julia and Barnabas, but finally tells his story. He and Jeanne went into Collinwood on a dare, believing it to be just a big empty house. They felt an evil presence there, and something pushed a heavy object from the top of the foyer stairs onto Jeanne’s head, killing her. When Victor found that Jeanne was dead, he heard laughter resounding through the house.

Barnabas and Julia go back to the mausoleum, only to find that the door to the secret chamber is standing wide open. They wonder who knows about it.

The clerk’s name is Ed. He is played by Ronald Dawson, who also appeared in #910 as art restorer Henry Osmund. This is Ed’s only episode, and Dawson’s final appearance. It is also Victor’s only episode, and Cliff Cudney’s final appearance. Cudney played a zombie in #963, 964, and 965. Both Dawson and Cudney have much better chances today to show us what they could do than those earlier parts afforded them. Indeed, all the actors are on top form. All roles played by Nancy Barrett are serious contenders for the title Best Character Ever, and in her scene with Barnabas and Julia in the little house on the beach, we can see that Carolyn Fredericks will be no exception.

Episode 1061: Time past or future, our time or parallel

The episode opens with a seldom seen still of the exterior of the mansion representing the great house of Collinwood, suggesting we are going to be seeing things from a new angle today.

This part of the place is in fairly good shape.

Vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman have escaped an alternate universe where a fire was raging around them. They find themselves unsinged and in their own timeline, back in the room at the great house where they first passed through the aperture that connects the universes. Barnabas is plunged into self-pity, since he wasn’t able to bring a girl he met while he was in the other universe home with him. She was comatose when they first met, and he goes on about how much he loved that. “She’s the only woman who ever made me forget my dear lost Josette. The moment I saw her, so still, so helpless, I felt a love I haven’t felt since I first met Josette.” Barnabas himself is dead half the time, so necrophilia is not inappropriate or even kinky in his case, but this is still a pretty funny line.

Julia has given up everything in her life for Barnabas’ sake, and she is so deeply implicated in his countless crimes that there is no way she can build a meaningful relationship with anyone else. She has decided to make the best of this, and has fallen in love with him. He does not requite this love in the slightest. When Julia first let Barnabas see how she felt, in 1967, he ridiculed her for it and reveled in showing her that nothing could ever develop between them. Now he is friendlier, most of the time, but still keeps expecting her to assist him while he chases after other women. When he rants about how he has lost his one chance at love, she looks up at him adoringly. She chokes back tears while she says “We forget how rare a life of love can be. You’re not the only one who’s had so little hope. It’s something one learns to live with. We can get used to anything if we have to.”

Barnabas reacts to this anguished little speech with a flash of outrage. He then turns from Julia and resumes lamenting his fate. He seems deeply offended that she started talking about trivial stuff like her feelings when the topic was supposed to be the most important thing in the world, his feelings. Barnabas and Julia’s exchange is not an example of anything that you will ever see described as good scene construction, but between the two of them, as we know them to be, it is magnificently constructed. It’s exactly the kind of non-conversation you would expect to take place between a colossal narcissist and someone who can’t even hope to get free of him.

Barnabas is appalled at Julia’s interruption.

Julia and Barnabas realize that the room is damp and musty, not at all like it was when last they were there. They find that the house is in a state of collapse. The foyer and drawing room is the only permanent set on Dark Shadows; it is extremely impressive by the standards of 1960s daytime TV, and has always looked very solid. Longtime viewers will find the images of it in ruins unforgettable.

Julia left for the other universe only five weeks ago; she and Barnabas cannot imagine what could have caused the destruction they see in such a short period. Julia wonders if a hurricane or a war is responsible for the damage. When they find some note paper that has yellowed and begun to crumble, Barnabas speculates that some kind of radiation may have accelerated its decay. Barnabas grew up in the eighteenth century and takes only a desultory interest in anything more recent than the Washington administration, so it is rather jarring for regular viewers to hear him talking about radiation and wondering if a thermonuclear exchange has taken place.

Barnabas and Julia go to the cemetery to find a coffin for him to spend his days in. They see a freshly dug grave with a marker giving the current year as 1995. That explains how the decay at Collinwood could have happened in the time after Julia followed Barnabas into the alternate universe in 1970. The aperture returned them to their own universe, but to a later period of time. They also find a grave marked as that of strange and troubled teen David Collins, whose date of death is given as 1970.

A gray-haired woman cries out to Julia and Barnabas to leave David’s grave alone. They recognize her as Mrs Johnson, housekeeper at Collinwood from 1966 to 1970. Mrs Johnson recognizes them too, and sees that they have not changed since last she saw them. She takes them to be ghosts, and demands they stop haunting David’s place of rest.

Barnabas and Julia deny that they are ghosts and ask Mrs Johnson what happened after they left. She starts telling transparent lies, claiming that the adult members of the Collins family are alive and well and living overseas. She rushes off, but as she goes she says the name “Fredericks” and “The old shack at Finley’s Cove.” Clarice Blackburn was always excellent, and this scene is one of her very finest turns.

Julia and Barnabas let themselves into a small house at Finley’s Cove. Julia remarks that the house was always vacant when she knew the area. Barnabas says that in the other universe, it was his comatose girlfriend’s house. They notice that the place is chock-a-block with objets d’art from Collinwood. Julia is excited that whoever lives there knew the place; Barnabas surmises that they may have been its destroyers, and that they might have looted the stuff from it. The doorknob turns, and Julia says that they will soon know who lives in the house.

Episode 1058: Dead or alive

Julia Hoffman, MD, can do many things no other medical practitioner has ever accomplished. She can build a Frankenstein’s monster and bring it to life; she can erase a person’s memories and overwrite them with whatever she pleases; she can cure vampirism; and, a few weeks ago, she overcame time and space and transferred herself to a parallel universe. Yet, Julia is quite unreliable about something which most doctors do accurately every time they attempt it. She is often incorrect when she pronounces a patient dead. Julia has been known to pronounce the same person dead twice in one episode, only for us to see them alive and well before the credits roll.

So, it is only fitting that in this mirror universe Julia should be the one who is inaccurately pronounced dead. The pronouncement comes not from a physician, but from a woman named Roxanne Drew who, in lieu of a personality, has the ability to look at a person’s belongings and visualize their current physical state. Julia’s friend, vampire Barnabas Collins, gives Roxanne a scarf that belonged to Julia’s counterpart in this universe. Roxanne declares that the scarf’s owner is dead. The audience knows full well that the other Julia Hoffman is indeed dead, and so does Barnabas. Julia killed her Doppelgänger when she arrived in this universe in #1036. But Barnabas has apparently forgotten about that. He decides that it is his friend who is dead, and he gives up the search for her. He leaves her trapped in a dungeon in the basement of the great house of Collinwood, about to die of thirst.

Julia in durance vile. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Roxanne has short red hair, pale skin, and a strong chin. She looks enough like Julia that when we first saw her, we thought she would be revealed to be the daughter of Julia’s counterpart. The false death pronouncement reinforces the suggestion of a kinship between them, but the show has taken no other steps towards substantiating this idea.

Julia has an unrequited love for Barnabas and has given up everything in her life for his sake. He repays her by ignoring her feelings and chasing after other women. Vampires are metaphors for extreme selfishness, but even granting that fact, Barnabas stands out as a jerk.

Roxanne tells Barnabas she has fallen in love with him, and he tells her he loves her. In a display of actual unselfishness, he tells her they cannot be together. The central couple in this part of Dark Shadows, Quentin and Maggie Collins, have had many conversations in which Quentin refuses to tell Maggie about obstacles to their relationship; in #990, Maggie told him that he is treating her “Like a child! And I am not a child!” This scene takes place on the same set as that one, and Roxanne even says “You treat me as a child, and I am not.” Barnabas has a reason for his behavior, while Quentin had none. So the echo explains both why we can care about him, and why we never could care about Quentin.

Barnabas’ unselfishness lasts only for a few minutes. He bites Roxanne. She is happy afterward. She tells Barnabas she lives in a house at Finley’s Cove, and he says he will see her there later.

Roxanne goes home alone. She finds the villainous Tim Stokes waiting for her there. He harasses her, discovers the bite marks on her neck, and learns Barnabas’ secret.