geography – Page 2 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 669: Hide and seek

Governess Maggie Evans forbids her charges, David Collins and Amy Jennings, from going outside. They ask her to play hide and seek. She agrees, and accepts the role of It. She searches for them for a long time, ultimately finding them outdoors. She points out that she had told them to stay indoors, and they pretend not to have understood that this applied to their hiding places.

Maggie does not punish Amy and David for this obvious insubordination. This establishes that Maggie is a squish who will not maintain discipline. That point had already been made in yesterday’s episode, when Maggie caught Amy hiding in David’s room, in defiance of orders from heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard. At that time, Maggie lied to housekeeper Mrs Johnson to cover up what the children had done. Maggie’s irresolution bears repeated exposure, though, since the children are coming under the influence of the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins and would not be very effective as his helpers if they were subject to even moderately competent adult supervision.

Today Mrs Johnson and her son Harry are under orders from Carolyn to fix up the caretaker’s cottage on the estate. Carolyn has invited mysterious drifter Chris Jennings, Amy’s big brother, to live in the cottage. In the opening, Mrs Johnson tells Maggie she objects to this idea on the grounds that the cottage is cursed. Maggie dismisses Mrs Johnson’s belief in such a curse, but she really shouldn’t. Mrs Johnson keeps calling it “Matthew Morgan’s cottage” after the crazed handyman who lived there for eighteen years. Matthew killed Mrs Johnson’s beloved employer Bill Malloy, then tried to kill Maggie’s dear friend and predecessor as governess at Collinwood, Vicki Winters. Maggie knows all about those incidents. Mrs Johnson also says that no good happened at the cottage after Matthew; the only resident of the cottage since Matthew’s death was David’s mother, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Maggie knows plenty about Laura as well, since her father Sam was deeply involved in the strange goings-on concerning Laura and Vicki led the fight against her.

Under orders from Quentin, the children contrive to trap Mrs Johnson in the cottage by herself. Quentin appears to her there. She is terrified. This is quite a surprise to regular viewers. Quentin has appeared on screen only once before, in #646. Moreover, the children have made it very clear that Quentin is confined to the little room hidden in the long-deserted west wing of Collinwood where they found him. We are left to wonder how he gained the ability to manifest himself in the cottage and even to walk outside it when no one is looking.

Quentin terrifies Mrs Johnson. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Perhaps we are to think that Quentin is in some way connected with the curse on the cottage, and with Chris. When the children first contacted Quentin, Amy could communicate with him before David could. This left David miffed, since “Quentin Collins is my ancestor.” That line of David’s led us to expect that we would learn that Quentin is also Amy and Chris’ ancestor. Tomorrow, David will tell Amy that Quentin is “quite pleased” that Chris is living in the cottage. Maybe it was Amy’s presence in the room in the west wing that activated the ghost of Quentin there, and Chris’ impending arrival in the cottage that activates it in that space.

This episode marks the last appearance of Harry. Until today, he was played by Craig Slocum. Edward Marshall takes Harry over the horizon. Mr Marshall must have been watching the show; he does a flawless imitation of Slocum’s very peculiar line delivery. His Harry is just as petulant and resentful as Slocum’s was, but he is so much more physically relaxed and so much more responsive to his scene partners that he is enjoyable to watch in a way Slocum never was. I can’t help but wonder if Harry would have caught on and become a bigger part of the show had Mr Marshall taken the part earlier. Harry’s personality made it impossible for him to figure in a romance of any kind, limiting his usefulness on a soap, but there’s plenty of room on Dark Shadows for comic relief in the form of an inept, grumbly, dishonest servant.

Episode 668: Very odd games

When Ron Sproat joined the writing staff of Dark Shadows in the Autumn of 1966, he used his first several scripts to catalogue the ongoing storylines and classify them according to their potential for future use. Now Sproat is approaching the end of his time on the show, and he is again in a self-referential mood. Today’s episode is mostly about the geography of the great house of Collinwood and the grounds around it.

We first heard about the servants’ quarters in Collinwood in #196, when seagoing con man Jason McGuire imposed himself on matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard as a houseguest. Liz faced front and looked past the camera to stage right, saying she might find a room for Jason that way. He cut her off, saying that was where the servants’ quarters were. He insisted on a room upstairs, among the family.

Today, we see the servants’ quarters for the first time. Children David Collins and Amy Jennings are under the influence of the evil spirit of Quentin Collins, and David tells Amy that Quentin wants them to go to a particular room. Since it is late and they are supposed to be in bed, they take care that none of the adults see them. Rather than go past the other bedrooms and down the main staircase in the foyer, they cut through the long-deserted west wing and enter the drawing room through a secret panel. They are detained there briefly when they hear heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard talking with Amy’s brother, mysterious drifter Chris Jennings, in the foyer. When Carolyn and Chris go away, Amy and David leave the drawing room and exit the same direction Liz had faced when she tried to get Jason to stay in the servants’ quarters.

The only servants living in the house now are housekeeper Mrs Johnson and her son, unsightly ex-convict Harry. Mrs Johnson comes down the corridor and hears the children talking behind a door. She is wearing her robe over her nightgown, confirming that the part of the house the children have gone to includes her bedroom. A very nice painting hangs on the wall of the corridor, showing that the Collinses’ habit of cramming their properties with fine art extended to every part of the house.

Also in this episode, Carolyn invites Chris to live in the cottage on the estate that was once occupied by crazed handyman Matthew Morgan, and later by undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Carolyn tells Chris that the cottage is very far from the main house, profoundly isolated. It has been fairly well established that another mansion on the estate, the Old House, is a fifteen minute walk through the woods from the main house, so Carolyn’s tone suggests that the cottage, too, is about that remote.

This might bring a chuckleworthy image to the minds of longtime viewers. In #139, well-meaning governess Victoria Winters carried a breakfast tray loaded with tea things from the main house to Laura at the cottage. She is conspicuously careful with the tray. Vicki was at once so resolute when she had a task to accomplish and so utterly lacking in practical sense that it is very easy to picture her hiking the better part of a mile through the woods carrying such a thing.

Episode 664: Consigned to this time forever

In January 1969, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins learned that governess Vicki Winters had traveled through time to the year 1796, where she and her boyfriend Peter Bradford were hanged for their many crimes. Barnabas decided to follow Vicki to that year in order to save her and Peter. Barnabas himself lived in the 1790s, and is alive in the 1960s because for 172 of the years between he was a vampire. Once he made his way back to 1796, Barnabas reverted to vampirism.

Yesterday, Barnabas killed a streetwalker named Crystal. After he watched her corpse sink in the bay, he went home to the great house of Collinwood to get to work on his main occupation, feeling sorry for himself. To his shock and bewilderment, he found that Crystal’s body had materialized in an armchair in the study.

Today, Barnabas calls his servant Ben Stokes to help him dispose of Crystal’s body. We have seen that when characters go from the foyer to the study, they walk past the camera, exiting stage right. Once, it seemed the camera might follow a character into the space beyond the foyer. That was in #196, when matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard took several steps towards the camera while telling seagoing con man Jason McGuire that if he wanted to stay at Collinwood he could use a room that direction. Jason called Liz back before she went too far, and insisted on a room upstairs. This time, Barnabas leads Ben all the way off the set. They walk through some darkened space for a couple of minutes before entering the study.

The camera is tight on the two of them throughout this sequence, concealing the fact that there is no set decoration behind them. The episode was directed by executive producer Dan Curtis. Barnabas and Ben’s walk through the void bears Curtis’ directorial signature. Curtis was extremely audacious in everything he did, but had very little experience as a visual artist. He wanted to create the illusion that Collinwood was a big place, but the tight closeup results in a static composition and leaves the audience guessing where Barnabas and Ben are supposed to be. Moreover, making the sequence work at all requires that half the studio be plunged into darkness, creating problems throughout the episode.

In the study, Barnabas and Ben find that Crystal is gone and Barnabas’ ex-wife, wicked witch Angelique, is sitting in the chair. Angelique and Barnabas send Ben away so they can talk privately. Barnabas hasn’t tried to explain to Ben that he is on a return trip to the eighteenth century after 20 months in the 1960s; he hasn’t even told Vicki that he is the man she knew in her own time. But he recognizes that Angelique is not a continuation of her 1795 self, but is a fellow time traveler from 1968. Once Ben is gone, he asks her why she has returned to the era.

Barnabas and Angelique play out their big scene in the lighting dictated by the walk through the nonexistent hallway.

She explains that after she failed to advance the plot in 1968, her demonic masters punished her by sentencing her to remain in “this time forever.” It is not at all clear what that means. Will she relive the year 1796 over and over, like Bill Murray in the 1993 movie Groundhog Day? Or will she just go on living forever and experience time in the usual linear fashion? In the latter case, she would rejoin the 1960s in episodes to be broadcast in the 2130s. Not only would that negate all the timelines we’ve heard about and establish a whole new continuity, it would also mean that Lara Parker had secured the longest-term contract in the history of professional acting.

Angelique tells Barnabas she will help him free Vicki if he will agree to stay and resume their marriage. He is appalled by the notion, but she asks if he can save Vicki without her. He says that he cannot. This is a bit of a puzzle. Barnabas’ vampirism comes with a wide array of powers he could use to break someone out of jail. He could bite the jailers and establish control over them sufficient to force them to let Vicki out. If he isn’t thirsty, he has great physical strength, and is invulnerable to most weapons, so he could just force his way in to the gaol and carry Vicki off. He might not even have to bother with the front door. In #242, Barnabas ripped the iron bars out of the windows of a doctor’s office, and Vicki’s cell at the Collinsport gaol has a window with bars that can’t be much stronger than those were. But I suppose he is worried about distorting the course of subsequent history if he does something spectacular, and he certainly doesn’t want Vicki to find out that he is something other than a human. So he makes a deal with Angelique.

The idea is that Vicki will go to the gallows, appear to drop dead before the hangman does his thing, and that after Barnabas and Peter take Vicki’s body back to Collinwood Angelique will revive her. Both Peter and Ben are horrified at the idea of trusting Angelique, but Barnabas seems to think he has no choice. He insists that Vicki and Peter both wait patiently for Angelique to accomplish her part.

The hanging goes ahead as scheduled. Peter is enraged that Barnabas let Angelique cheat them out of the chance to thrash around and scream during the execution. They take the body to Collinwood and lay it out in the study, a few feet from where Crystal’s body had been at the beginning of the episode. They leave it alone, and Angelique appears. Evidently she does intend to bring Vicki back to life, but she vows that Vicki will be under her power from now on.

Episode 660: Suppose I am from another century

A couple of weeks ago well-meaning governess Victoria Winters vanished into a rift in the fabric of space and time, traveling back to the 1790s to be with her husband, a loudmouthed idiot known variously as Peter and Jeff. Now evidence is accumulating that when Vicki and Peter/ Jeff were reunited, they were immediately put to death for their many crimes. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins is determined to follow Vicki into the past and thwart the course of justice.

Barnabas and his best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, call on occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Barnabas pleads with Stokes to work the same mumbo-jumbo for him that enabled Peter/ Jeff to go back to the 1790s. Stokes says that the procedure would have no effect on Barnabas. He explains that it transported Peter/ Jeff only because Peter/ Jeff properly belonged to that period. It would do nothing to a person who was already living in his own time. Barnabas then asks “Suppose I am from another century?” Stokes replies “Then it’s one of the best-kept secrets in Collinsport, isn’t it?” while Julia coughs and looks panic-stricken.

Julia and Stokes react to Barnabas’ invitation to suppose that he is from another century.

In fact, Barnabas is a native of the eighteenth century. He finds himself in the 1960s because he was, for 172 years, a vampire. This is indeed one of the best-kept secrets in town. If any part of it leaks out he and Julia will be spending the 1970s and 1980s in prison, so it is no wonder she tries to shut him down before he can make any indiscreet revelations to Stokes. But it is an exciting moment for longtime viewers. As it stands, Julia is the only character who knows Barnabas’ secret, and therefore the only one who can speak freely with him or interpret new information in the light of what the audience already knows. Stokes is a highly dynamic character; if he joins the inner circle, there is no telling how fast the action might move or in what direction. It is a bit of a letdown that Barnabas decides not to come out to him.

Stokes makes a little speech that puzzles many viewers. He says that he has reached the conclusion that Peter/ Jeff really was two people. The spirit of an eighteenth century man named Peter Bradford must have come to the year 1968 and taken possession of the body of a living man named Jeff Clark. Now that Peter has returned to the past, Jeff must have regained control of his physical being and is out there in the world someplace. This theory does not fit with anything we have seen over the last several months, and it won’t lead to any further story development.

Peter/ Jeff himself suggested the same idea a few weeks ago, but he had so little information about himself that we could discount it. Stokes, though, is one of the mouthpieces through which the show tells us what we are supposed to believe.

Many science fiction and fantasy fans like to take the world-building elements of their favorite franchises as seriously as they possibly can, and treat every apparent contradiction or dead end as a riddle to be solved. That kind of analysis doesn’t get you very far with Dark Shadows, a narrative universe whose structure star Joan Bennett summarized by saying “We ramble around.” It is tempting to go to the opposite extreme, and to assume that they didn’t do any advance planning at all. But we know from an interview that writer Violet Welles gave to the fanzine The World of Dark Shadows in 1991 that they did the same planning exercises that other daytime soaps did. They would make up six month story forecasts called “flimsies” and fill those out with more detailed plans covering periods of 13 weeks. Welles explains the resulting difficulty:

The difficult ones were — we were in 13-week segments, and there were sometimes characters that didn’t work, and because they didn’t work, they didn’t use them as much, they weren’t part of the plot. So at the end of the 13 weeks, toward the end of the cycle, you’d have characters who were really not a lot of interest who had to play scenes with other characters who really didn’t have a lot of interest, dealing with things that basically didn’t concern them. Those were hard to write. But you never felt particularly overwhelmed.
Violet Welles interviewed by Megan Powell-Nivling, The World of Dark Shadows, issue #59/60, June 1991. Preserved by Danny Horn on Dark Shadows Every Day, 30 August 2015.

In other words, while the writers definitely did long-range planning, those long-range plans come into the audience’s view not a source of secret message to decode, but in the residue left over from stories that didn’t work out. During his months on the show, Peter/ Jeff spent a lot of time getting violently angry when people called him “Peter,” responding in his grating whine “My na-a-ame is JEFF! CLARK!” That disagreeable habit made up about 90 percent of Peter/ Jeff’s personality, and the other 10 percent was no picnic either. Coupled with this Goes Nowhere/ Does Nothing story about Peter appropriating the body of Jeff Clark, I would guess that in some early stage of planning they kicked around the possibility of having two Peter/ Jeffs. But it has long since become clear that one Peter/ Jeff is already one too many. That leaves them to fill out some scenes that would otherwise run short with material that may have seemed like a good idea when they made up the flimsies six months ago, but that is pointless now.

Also in this episode, children Amy Jennings and David Collins visit Eagle Hill cemetery and have questions. Amy suggests they go see the caretaker, a suggestion David derides. He declares that the caretaker is as old as the tombstones, and that he won’t answer any of their questions. Amy insists, and they go looking for him.

The caretaker appeared on the show four times when David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, was the chief supernatural menace. He then made five more appearances early in Barnabas’ time as a vampire. As played by veteran stage actor Daniel F. Keyes, he was a delight, a boundlessly befuddled old chap who seemed to have strayed in from the pages of EC Comics. Sadly, David and Amy don’t find the caretaker today.

Eagle Hill cemetery itself was introduced as one of several burial grounds in the Collinsport area. It is the old graveyard north of town, and Barnabas and his immediate family were the only Collinses buried there. The rest of the Collins ancestors were interred in a private family cemetery, and there was also a public cemetery somewhere in or around the village of Collinsport. They stuck with this geography longer than you might have expected. But today Amy explicitly says that Eagle Hill is on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, just outside the front door of the main house. This contributes to the effect, growing very noticeable lately, that the imaginary space in which the drama takes place is collapsing in on itself. The occasional excursions the show took to the town of Bangor, Maine in its early days are long gone, and now we barely even see the village of Collinsport. It’s often said that Dark Shadows is Star Trek for agoraphobes; it is starting to feel as if it is retreating into a very small cocoon indeed.

Episode 657: We will never leave this house

Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, temporarily in charge of the great estate of Collinwood, has decided to place children David Collins and Amy Jennings in boarding school in Boston. Under the influence of the evil ghost of Quentin Collins, Amy and David want to remain in the house. While they pretend to be enthusiastic about Barnabas’ plan, they try to thwart it by talking about when exactly certain clothes had been in or out of certain closets. As it plays out on screen, this plan is somehow even more tedious than you might expect. Eventually Barnabas sets aside the idea of Boston, not because of anything the children have done or know about, but because the ghost of their former governess, the well-meaning Victoria Winters, made its presence known. Barnabas is attached to Vicki and he doesn’t want to miss a visit from her.

David and Amy’s new governess is Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. For the first year of the show, Maggie was a waitress, her father Sam was a drunken artist, and their house was a counterpoint to Collinwood. As a working-class residence in the village of Collinsport, it represented all the homes affected by the crises the Collinses put themselves through, and scenes there suggested that there is a whole community of people whose futures hinge on what happens on top of the hill. In 1966, there were even stories about the Collins family business and its employees, and events at the Evans cottage were key to those.

When Barnabas joined the cast in April 1967, he was a vampire, and he soon took Maggie as his victim. In time, she escaped, her memory was erased, and he was cured of vampirism. Sam died in #518 and left the show in #530. Maggie’s engagement to hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell ended a while ago; there isn’t much left to happen in the Evans cottage. When Maggie was hired to replace Vicki in #652/653, she moved into the mansion. The show formally bade farewell to the Evans cottage as a place in its own right at the end of that episode and beginning of the next, when Joe went there to get Maggie’s things and was attacked by a werewolf. From now on our excursions out of Collinwood will be brief; we don’t have any place left to stay.

Maggie looks like she’s rethinking her decision to move into the mansion. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

For some time one of the cameras has been on its last legs. In this one, it is almost completely unusable. It is something of a peculiar effect to cut back and forth between two cameras, one of them up to the broadcast standards of the period, the other of which produces only ghostly green images. The episode was directed by Henry Kaplan, who was a poor visual artist under any circumstances. The only remotely ambitious composition he tries today is a shot from a point of view inside a fireplace. They did this several times between December 1966 and March 1967, when David’s mother, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, was on the show, often to good effect. But this time it is done with the defective camera, and it is simply difficult to see what is going on.

Episode 648: Her name is Madame

This is the second of three episodes featuring Cavada Humphrey as Madame Janet Findley, a medium called in to investigate the strange goings-on at the great house of Collinwood. Humphrey’s performance so utterly dominates the segment, and I have so little to add to what I said about her style in yesterday’s post, that all I can do is make a series of more or less miscellaneous observations about its other aspects.

Today Madame Findley meets children David Collins and Amy Jennings. Amy and David are coming under the influence of evil spirit Quentin Collins. She questions them in the drawing room, and finds a hidden panel that leads to the long-abandoned west wing of the house. Over the children’s objections, she enters the secret passage. As soon as she is in, they hurriedly close the panel, locking her in. Evidently their objections were part of a ruse designed to lead her to Quentin’s stronghold. All too often on Dark Shadows, the audience knows too much about what characters are trying to do. This scene stands out, because they really do keep us guessing whether the children want Madame Findley to go into the secret passage. We don’t really know what their goals are until we see them shut her in.

Madame Findley goes into the darkness. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Earlier in the episode, Amy’s brother Chris dropped in. He was very eager to see permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD. Amy mentioned to Chris that there was another visitor in the house. When Chris asked who it was, Amy replied, “Her name is Madame- Madame something- at least that’s what they call her.”

I heard these lines in the voice of T. S. Eliot. The rhythm is reminiscent of a section of his poem The Waste Land, which in 1968 was an extremely familiar text to people with literary ambitions:

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

Had a bad cold, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,

With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,

Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,

(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,

The lady of situations.

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find

The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.

Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:

One must be so careful these days.

It was indeed a mysterious Tarot card that prompted matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard to call for help, and that call brought Madame Findley to the house. The card she interprets is the Tower of Destruction, which unlike the cards Eliot’s Madame Sostris describes actually appears in existing Tarot decks. She doesn’t have a cold, and she isn’t in the business of selling horoscopes door to door. On the contrary, as Humphrey plays her she is a dazzling presence.

Liz did not call Madame Findley directly. She telephoned occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes, who introduced her to La Findley. At first sight, Stokes appears to be a stuffy academic with an impossible Anglophile manner, but as we get to know him he turns out to be very much at home in the bizarre netherworld in which the show takes place, so much so that his supernatural adversaries fear that he may have powers surpassing theirs. T(homas) St(earn)s Eliot was so much like T(imothy) Eliot St(oke)s in the first impression he made, so highly regarded by the sort of people who wrote Dark Shadows, and so generally famous in the 1960s that it is very likely that Stokes’ name was at least partly inspired by him.

It’s true that Madame Findley’s name lacks the exotic glamour Eliot gave his character. I suppose if you have all of Europe to choose from, you can take your stray Tarot cards to someone named “Madame Sosostris,” but if you are limited to central Maine, you have to settle for “Janet Findley.”

I made a remark about Madame Findley’s name in the comments on Danny Horn’s post about episode #647 on his great Dark Shadows Every Day:

It’s just delightful that they introduce an otherworldly, mystical character, played with an actress who brings a genuinely eerie note to her performance, and her name is… “Janet Findley.” It’s like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when they meet the wizard who is known as “Tim.”

I wonder if there’s any connection between the name “Janet Findley” and the name “Janet Fisher,” whom Carolyn mentioned as a friend once of twice in the first season. Seems like a lot of Janet Fs. For that matter, I wonder if there’s a connection between Tim the Wizard from Monty Python and Tim(othy Eliot) Stokes, who a couple of episodes back had to tell Vicki that he isn’t a wizard.

–Comment left by Acilius, 8 October 2020, on Danny Horn, “Episode 647: The Wire,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 12 May 2015

That remark drew a response from a commenter who posts as “Mary”:

Findley is a popular name on Dark Shadows. In addition to Janet, Margaret Findley is one of the ghostly widows, Thomas Findley is one of Jeb’s zombies in the Leviathan storyline and Findley’s cove is the location of Carolyn’s cottage in 1995.
Comment left by “Mary,” 18 February 2021, on Danny Horn, “Episode 647: The Wire,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 12 May 2015

When Madame Findley asks about the closed-off parts of the house, Liz tells her about both the west wing and an east wing. The phrase “east wing” had come up a couple of times in the first year of the show, but it always seemed to be either a case of the writers not having made up their minds which side of the house the deserted wing was on or a slip of the tongue by the actors. This is the first time the show makes it clear that the house really does have two deserted wings.

Humphrey was too perfect for Dark Shadows to play only one role. In a comment on Danny’s post about this episode, I indulged in a little fanfic about another part that would have been right for her:

Cavada Humphrey looks quite a bit like Jonathan Frid. I wonder what 1795 would have been like if Barnabas had had an older sister who bossed him around, stood around during his ridiculously childish fits of petulance, occasionally acted as his conscience, and time and again serve as his enabler and protector. It would have been funny to see Grayson Hall’s Countess express disapproval of such a relationship.

Heck, that older sister could have been Sarah. Just because she’s a child in her ghost form doesn’t mean she has to have died at that age. Maybe she comes back in the form in which her relationship to her brother took its permanent shape, when she was about nine and he was about seven. Of course, that possibility is foreclosed at Sarah’s first appearance, when she tells Maggie not to let her “big brother” know she saw her, but I suppose they could have retconned that away with a phony flashback where she says “little brother.”

Comment left by Acilius, 8 October 2020, on Danny Horn, “Episode 648: Astral Disturbances,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 14 May 2015.

I’m very fond of Sharon Smyth, and Sarah’s last appearance in the 1795 segment was so poignant it would have been a substantial loss for her not to have been in it. On the other hand, she had so much less to do when she was playing a living being than she did in the preceding months when Sarah was a ghost, and so much of what she did get to do was outside her rather sharply limited range, that it is not difficult to imagine a different kind of Sarah making the eighteenth century insert a more compelling drama.

Episode 629: I know him by another name

Suave warlock Nicholas has botched his main project, and is in big trouble with his supervisor. He is called into the corner office, which apparently represents Hell, and talks the boss into giving him another chance.

Nicholas gets an unsatisfactory performance review. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Regular viewers will immediately recognize Hell as a redress of the basement of the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, home to old world gentleman Barnabas. Strangely enough, this is not the first time it has seemed that Hell is in a corner of Barnabas’ basement. In #325, strange and troubled boy David had a dream in which the ghost of Barnabas’ sister Sarah brought him to the basement. The set was decorated much as we see it today. David met a faceless figure and saw Barnabas, who was at that time a vampire, rise from his coffin. In #512, the ghost of the Rev’d Mr Trask, a witchfinder whom Barnabas murdered in the late eighteenth century, conjured up the spirits of many of Barnabas’ victims, and put him on trial in the basement. Again, we see that it is the abode of the unhappy dead.

Nicholas has to admit to his boss that he has fallen in love with Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. Contemptuous of warm human feelings, the boss tells Nicholas that he and Maggie can indeed be together for all time, but only “here”- confirming that the set does represent Hell. Nicholas is horrified, but the boss yields nothing. He will have to sacrifice Maggie in a Black Mass so that she can be damned along with him. He must also get his original project back on track, breeding a race of Frankenstein’s monsters who will be loyal to the spiritual forces of darkness.

Returned to the world of the living, Nicholas goes to the great house of Collinwood, where he tries to persuade mad scientist Julia to help him with the Frankenbabies plan. She can see that he is desperate, and is therefore unimpressed with him. She presses him for more information, and he tells her to read the Book of Genesis. His boss figures in it, as the one who tempted Adam and Eve. Julia gasps at the idea that Nicholas is one of Satan’s direct reports. Nicholas explains what he wants her to do. Julia calls the idea “monstrous,” a description which Nicholas considers apt. She refuses to have any part in such an enterprise, but she capitulates when he threatens her dear friend Barnabas.

Danny Horn’s post about this episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day is devoted to the packet of View-Master reels featuring images related to episodes made around this time. I’ve always enjoyed View-Master; I think it’s a shame it was slotted as something for young children only. I find it refreshing to spend three or four minutes peering into its little worlds. I left this comment:

Some years ago I bought a bunch of ViewMaster reels. I’d liked them when I was a kid, and I was curious about the non-cartoon ones, the reels depicting landscapes and such. I found that it was a meditative exercise looking into the viewer and teasing out all the 3-D effects.

Anyway, I still have those reels, including the Dark Shadows set. Inspired by this post, I looked at them this morning. There are a bunch of very good shots with high contrast between actors and background. Bud Astredo was particularly good at striking poses that would make him stand out. Grayson Hall is just as good, it’s a shame she’s only in the one picture.

(20 October 2020, 11:12 am Pacific time)

Danny’s post also links to this wonderful piece about the packet on a blog called View-Master 3D.

Episode 619: Advantages of being the master

Well-meaning governess Vicki has found a grievously injured Barnabas Collins in the woods. Barnabas insists Vicki not take him to a doctor or anyone else, but hide him somewhere no one will find him. She thinks of a secret door to the long-abandoned west wing of the great house of Collinwood, and uses that to take him to a hiding place there.

For the first year of Dark Shadows, the west wing was strongly associated with Vicki. In #14, she alone saw the locked door separating the bedrooms from the west wing open and close, apparently by itself. That was the first unequivocal evidence of supernatural activity on the show. In #84, Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David, led her into the west wing, the first time we had seen its interior. He then trapped her in a room there, hoping she would die. She would languish in that room until David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, rescued her in #87. When Vicki was engaged to Roger’s nemesis Burke Devlin in #338, matriarch Liz offered to restore the west wing and let Vicki and Burke live there. After Burke died in a plane crash in #345, Vicki vowed to go on with the project of restoring the west wing. In #347, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, exploited Vicki’s interest in the west wing to get her to stare into a crystal supposedly taken from a chandelier there until she is in a state of deep hypnosis.

More recently, Frankenstein’s monster Adam stayed in the west wing for many weeks as the guest of heiress Carolyn. Vicki’s connection with the wing was renewed when Adam abducted her and hid her there for a few days starting in #553. Today, Vicki hides Barnabas in Adam’s old room, re-establishing the west wing as her space. Thus we loop back to a theme that goes back to the third week of the show.

Later in the episode, Barnabas wakes up and is distressed to find that it is almost sunset. He pleads with Vicki to bring him a cross as quickly as possible. The audience knows, but Vicki does not, that Barnabas is the victim of vampire Angelique. Vicki’s ignorance of this point reminds us that she has been excluded from the show’s A-plots ever since #211, when Barnabas was introduced, himself in those days a vampire. Her calm departure to go fetch a cross reminds us that she knows this part of the house well. Every room in it is stuffed with bric-a-brac, undoubtedly she will have seen something nearby that is in the shape of a cross.

Meanwhile, Julia is in a hospital room, visiting local man Joe Haskell. Julia has become Barnabas’ inseparable friend, and Joe is Angelique’s other victim. She does not know that Angelique is the vampire, though she had surmised as much in #608. She questions Joe. At first he denies everything, but after she discloses that she was for a time the victim of yet another vampire he tells her that she must know why he can’t tell her who has been sucking his blood. She asks if the suave Nicholas Blair is hiding the vampire. Joe closes his eyes and scoffs at the idea. This reaction does nothing to curtail Julia’s suspicions of Nicholas.

Julia goes to Nicholas’ house. He genially escorts her into his living room. There, he takes a seat while she stalks about the room and tells him what she knows about him. Barnabas has a self-defeating habit of showing his cards to his adversaries, and longtime viewers may at first be afraid Julia has picked it up from him. Since Nicholas is a warlock who not only controls Angelique but has a wide range of magical powers that he uses to promote Satan’s interests on Earth, he is not an opponent with whom one can afford to make mistakes. Angelique herself was once a witch who, in #378, was able to turn a man into a cat at a moment’s notice. Nicholas’ command of the black arts goes far beyond Angelique’s. He was able to strip Angelique of her powers, raise her from the dead at least twice, and turn her into a vampire. Julia is simply a mad scientist, and she does not have any equipment with her. There’s no telling what Nicholas might do to Julia if their interview displeases him.

On his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn lists three reasons why we know Julia will survive this confrontation without being turned into a toadstool:

Really, the thing that everybody wants to know is: why can’t the Stormtroopers shoot straight in Star Wars? It turns out there are three simple answers. #1. Stormtroopers shooting laser bolts are more interesting to look at than Stormtroopers who stand around complaining. #2. Shooting Luke Skywalker in the head halfway through the first movie is going to leave a rather obvious gap in the trilogy. #3. ‘Strong Guy Kills Weak Guy’ is not headline news.
Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day, “Episode 619: The Gunslinger,” posted 4 April 2015

This is all very true- of course Nicholas and Julia will not leave each other alone indefinitely, of course the show cannot spare her, of course she will overcome her disadvantages and come away from their showdown with the upper hand. But it misses the point. Suspense comes when we know what must happen, but cannot see any way it might happen. What makes the scene work is the moment when Julia tells Nicholas that Barnabas is missing. That is news to him, and as Danny says elsewhere in his post, it is “the first sign of a crack that’s going to bring his entire operation crashing down,” as his shocked reaction suggests it might be.

Julia realizes she has won her showdown with Nicholas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The scene is one of the best in the series, though it is marred by a miscalculated ending. In the early part, we see Julia making an effort to keep her cool while Nicholas sits watching her smugly. She succeeds in keeping her brave face on until she senses that she has Nicholas off guard, at which point she moves in for the kill and tells him about Barnabas. She is then firmly in command. He composes himself and dismisses her.

That’s when it goes wrong. When Julia is heading out the door, Nicholas recovers his smugness and tells her that he must admit that he admires her for coming to see him. She looks alarmed and asks why. He replies, in a half-whisper, “You know.” She hastens out. I can see that this ending may have seemed like a good idea. We clearly saw in the beginning how hard it was for Julia to keep her fear in check and how easy it was for Nicholas to bask in the superiority his powers give him over a mere mortal. Though Julia has emerged as the winner in this engagement, she still has grounds for immense fear, and he for boundless self-confidence. But it is so broadly drawn as to be confusing. Has Nicholas already found a way to turn Julia’s success against her? Has she realized too late that she has made a mistake we aren’t aware of?

We learn shortly after that neither of these things has happened. Angelique comes upstairs. She sees Nicholas being very still. She makes several attempts to engage him in conversation. He finally approaches her and strikes her across the face. He then orders her to undo what she has done to Barnabas before it ruins his plans.

This is the second time Nicholas has slapped a woman in the face. The first time was in #610, when he struck Frankenstein’s monster Eve. Humbert Allen Astredo and Marie Wallace executed that business well, as he and Lara Parker execute it well today. For that matter, Grayson Hall and Lara Parker had done a good job when Julia slapped Angelique in the face in #535. Watching them, you can admire trained professionals practicing a specialized aspect of their craft. But since Nicholas has such vast powers, he is persuasive as a villain only when we are left guessing about just what he is up to. When we see him is reduced to hitting a woman, he shrinks from avatar of Satan to cheap pimp.

After Julia leaves Nicholas’ house, she lingers in the woods outside, watching his front door. She sees Nicholas leave the house, then sees Angelique and realizes that she is the vampire.

Julia is the most intelligent character on the show, and while we watch her in the woods her face suggests that she is thinking clever thoughts. Unfortunately, we hear her interior monologue in a recorded voiceover, and her lines are remarkably obtuse. On the heels of her overdone fear on the way out of Nicholas’ house, it does as much to undercut Julia’s image as a smart person who can win a duel with the Devil as Nicholas’ physical abuse of Angelique undercuts his image as a demonic sorcerer.

Episode 574: Another girl

When Dark Shadows began in June of 1966, hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell was dating flighty heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard. The two of them were bored beyond words with each other. They only kept going out because Carolyn’s mother, reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, was determined that they should get together, and neither of them wanted to disappoint her. For months, we were subjected to one scene after another of Joe and Carolyn having nothing to say to each other while we waited for Liz to give up on them.

Joe and Carolyn finally called it quits in #84, and shortly afterward Joe started seeing Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. The audience has been rooting for Joe and Maggie ever since, but because there are too few obstacles to their romance for them to have a storyline of their own, we sometimes go months at a time without seeing them together.

Now, Joe has become the blood thrall of vampire Angelique, and Angelique’s master Nicholas has designs on Maggie. If Nicholas and Angelique were ordinary criminals and she were blackmailing Joe or had hooked him on drugs, this would be an archetypal soap opera situation. The supernatural twist makes it specific to Dark Shadows among the daytime serials of its period, but the story is still so deep in the genre’s wheelhouse that it is no wonder they’ve spent three days in a row luxuriating in it.

There’s a lot of emphasis on bachelor’s quarters this time out. Maggie lives alone, but we see so much of and hear so much about her late father’s paintings today that it feels as if the Evans cottage is still his house and Maggie is still his little buddy. That makes her relationship with Joe feel all the more urgent. She is waiting to make a home with him so that her adult life can begin.

We see Joe’s apartment as well. It is apartment 24, the default number for a Collinsport bachelor pad. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin lived in suite 24 at the Collinsport Inn in the first year of the show, and Humphrey Bogart-esque lawyer Tony Peterson lived in apartment 24, presumably in some other building, in the fall of 1967. Joe is sitting in his apartment 24 and staring at a glass of booze when Maggie knocks on the door. She tells him that his boss called her at home and told her that Joe hasn’t shown up at work lately. If Joe doesn’t call soon, he’ll have to fire him. Joe says he won’t call the boss, since he can no more explain the nature of his trouble to him than he can to Maggie.

We also see Nicholas’ house. Even though he is keeping Angelique on the premises, Nicholas is very much a bachelor. He peers into his magic mirror and sees Willie Loomis, servant to old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. Willie is asleep in his room in Barnabas’ house. The only other time we saw Willie’s room was in #328, when Barnabas framed Willie for terrible crimes he had himself committed against Maggie. Now, Nicholas uses his mirror for a magical video call with Willie. He interrogates Willie about an evil plan of his that is playing out in Barnabas’ house.

Willie in Nicholas’ mirror. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

On Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri caught this screenshot of Nicholas making an unfortunate gesture while he is telling Maggie what he thinks of Willie:

Nicholas is not impressed with Willie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Every Day.

Episode 563: A kind of magician

Beverly Hope Atkinson

This episode features the first appearance on Dark Shadows by an actor of color, and the only speaking part any non-White performer ever had. (CORRECTION: Mr Nakamura, played by Sho Onodera in #903, has a couple of lines.) This fact is made even more depressing because that performer fits so perfectly into the show that a first time viewer would assume she had been a major player from episode #1.

Beverly Hope Atkinson plays an unnamed nurse who meets suave warlock Nicholas Blair when he is trying to make his way into a hospital room occupied by Tom Jennings, a victim of one of Nicholas’ evil schemes. She firmly refuses him admittance. When Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, enters and asks to see Tom, the unnamed nurse smiles brightly and says “Of course, Maggie!” in a tone that makes it sound like they’ve been friends all their lives. She then shuts the door before Nicholas can follow. He asks her why Maggie can go in and he cannot, and she tells him sternly that Maggie has permission from the doctor.

Unnamed nurse is happy to see Maggie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

I have a fanfic idea about Atkinson’s nurse that I originally posted as a comment on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day. I can’t find it there, but here is a copy of it:

In the first 42 weeks of the show, when the supernatural was in the background and the stories were slow, it would have been easy to have a couple of tea party scenes at the Evans cottage where Maggie and her lifelong friend, Unnamed Nurse, recap whatever is going on. Those scenes could have led to a whole exploration of the tension between the working-class people in the village and the jerks in the big house on the hill. That in turn could have led to the introduction of Unnamed Nurse’s family, headed by Unnamed’s parents, Mr and Mrs Nurse, including her brothers, Young Mr Nurse and Master Nurse, and her sister, Moody Miss Nurse. We could then have seen the ancestors of the Nurse family in each of the flashback segments and analogues of them in Parallel Time.

At some point in my musings about this idea, I decided the family should be named “Wilson” (if I had a reason for this, I’ve forgotten it, but I now think of Atkinson’s character as Nurse Wilson,) and that in a flashback segment we should learn that they are descended from free persons of color who settled in Collinsport before the Civil War and were the first proprietors of the Collinsport Inn. Some wicked deed by a member of the Collins family knocked them out of the entrepreneurial class long ago, and they’ve been working their way back up the socio-economic ladder ever since.

We met Maggie in #1 as the waitress at the diner in the Collinsport Inn. She, her late father Sam, and her fiancé, hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell, have been Dark Shadows‘ main representatives of the people in the village. Her house, the modest counterpoint to the mansions on the Collins family’s great estate, has been familiar to us from the beginning, and is the place where we have seen most vividly what the Collinses’ doings have meant for the people who work for their businesses and live in their town. So, as a frequent visitor there, the nurse could have given a whole new dimension to the drama, showing that it isn’t just one family whose lives hang in the balance, but that a whole community is exposed to the consequences of what happens on the hill.

The Blue Whale

Joe is sitting alone at a table in the Blue Whale tavern, and he looks terrible. He’s pale and fidgety, looking around and periodically jumping up to peek out the window.

Maggie comes in and joins Joe. At first she is angry with him- he stood her up last night, without so much as a telephone call. She sees how upset he is and her anger is mixed with worry. He pounds on the table while the camera is tight on her. Her startled reaction reminds us of the early months of the show, when Sam was a self-pitying drunk and Maggie was a sophisticated portrait of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

Maggie startled. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

After that moment, Maggie gets very quiet. When Joe says with alarm that it is getting dark, she responds that “It usually does, at this time of day.” It’s inherently funny to hear someone make that kind of matter-of-fact statement in response to an inexplicably intense remark, but also poignant to those of us who remember Maggie’s early interactions with Sam. From childhood on, simple rationality must have seemed to Maggie like a joke in the face of the overpowering irrationality at the center of her life.

As it happens, Joe is indeed exhibiting addicted behavior. But he isn’t hooked on alcohol. Instead, he is under the power of a vampire. Angelique, who was once the wicked witch who first made Barnabas Collins a vampire, found herself reduced to bloodsucker status when she displeased Nicholas. At Nicholas’ direction, she bit Joe the other day, and now Joe is desperate to hear her summons and report for another bite. She does call, and he does dash out, leaving a bewildered Maggie behind.

It was at the Blue Whale that we first met Joe, back in #3. Then, he was an upstanding young man who indignantly rejected the attempts of one of the Collins family’s sworn enemies to bribe him into spying against them. We’ve seen him in the tavern many times since then, always as the doughty representative of the wholesome and intelligible world against the sinister and supernatural. For example, in #215 it was a deeply troubled Joe who brought the news to Maggie and others at the Blue Whale that the cows on his uncle’s farm had been somehow drained of blood, news which turned out to be the first sign of vampirism in the area. This is the first time we’ve seen the Blue Whale since #358, back in November, and the first time a scene has closed with the formerly very familiar Blue Whale jukebox dance tunes in even longer than that. Longtime viewers see a loop closing. Joe leaves the place where he has most often shown himself as one who dwells in the daylight and goes down to the deepest dark.

Once Joe is gone, Nicholas enters. He engages Maggie in conversation, and talks his way into the seat Joe vacated. Soon he is doing magic tricks for her and she is agreeing to have dinner with him. He brings up the idea of staying out all night, and she seems amenable. Where is her old friend the nurse when you need her?

The Fix

Joe lets himself into Nicholas’ house, a place by the sea that he is renting from the Collinses. Angelique is there. Joe laments his dependency on her, and asks if she was the one who attacked Tom, whom he identifies as his cousin. Perhaps the son of the uncle whose cows fell victim to Barnabas long ago! She doesn’t bother to deny it. She tells him that they will both visit Tom tonight. She bites Joe.

Joe visits Tom, who has emerged from the coma in which Angelique’s first bite left him. He tells Joe all about Angelique’s attack on him. He says he knows how bizarre the story sounds, but that he hopes that if he has Joe to vouch for him he will be able to make the police take it seriously. Joe gives Tom a few perfunctory assurances, then opens the window. Joe explains that he is doing this because it is hot in the room. Tom does not agree that it is hot, but Joe insists, and Tom is too ill to argue long.

Joe leaves, and we jump forward to 2 AM. The window is still open- apparently no nurse was on duty. Perhaps the hospital thought Beverly Hope Atkinson’s character did such a good job on the day shift that the patients could just cruise along through the night. We hear a bat squeaking, and Angelique appears. She bites Tom.

In Barnabas’ first weeks on Dark Shadows, the show made heavy use of the idea that vampires can enter a lodging only when they have been invited. For example, he went to the diner after hours so that Maggie would have to invite him in, and later went to her house and stood just outside the front door for a noticeably long time before she explicitly asked him to enter. They haven’t done anything with that idea in a long time, but neither have they very clearly contradicted it. Perhaps Joe’s opening of the window is the invitation Angelique needs to make her way into the hospital.