For its first 38 weeks, Dark Shadows was the story of well-meaning governess Vicki and her attempt to make her way through life on the great estate of Collinwood. One by one, Vicki’s problems were either solved or forgotten. From week 43 on, the show has focused on vampire Barnabas Collins. Barnabas has refused to involve Vicki in his life, leaving her confined to B plots at best.
The current B plot is about Vicki’s relationship with a man named Peter, who keeps trying her patience and ours by pretending to be named Jeff. Peter/ Jeff’s shouting voice, which he uses by default, makes him sound like he is suffering from severe gastrointestinal distress. He has a habit of manhandling people around him, causing them obvious discomfort. These bad habits, and several others, are less the product of the writing or direction than they are symptoms of the casting of Roger Davis as Peter/ Jeff. Alexandra Moltke Isles, like all the other actresses, is so ill at ease when she is in proximity to Mr Davis that it is impossible to believe that Vicki is in love with Peter/ Jeff.
Peter/ Jeff had been connected to the A plot through his boss, mad scientist Eric Lang. Peter/ Jeff has total amnesia. Lang released him from a mental hospital and told him that he was suspected of strangling two women by the waterfront in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He used Peter/ Jeff as his assistant in an experiment that is supposed to free Barnabas from vampirism. Now Lang is dead, and Peter/ Jeff goes to his house to search for the file on his own background.
There, he meets Barnabas. The two of them display hostility to each other, but the scene fizzles out as it becomes clear that Barnabas has no motivation to oppose Peter/ Jeff’s goals and wouldn’t be in a position to stop him if he did. Peter/ Jeff finds a paper which proves that Lang was lying, and he is not a murderer after all. With that, he and Vicki both lose whatever reason they had to be on the show.
His file from the mental institution had those three magic words: “No homicidal tendencies.” As something to be proud of, that’s a pretty low bar, but he seems happy.
Unfortunately, that basically nerfs Jeff’s entire storyline. He’s not working for Dr. Lang anymore, and the secret that Lang was holding over him — the idea that he might be a murderer — has just dissolved.
This is just throwing a story point away, rather than advancing anything, and Jeff is left at a loose end. He has no job, no family, and no real connection to a story. Now he doesn’t even have homicidal tendencies. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had.
Danny Horn, “Episode 487: Precious Moments,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 24 September 2014
Peter/ Jeff goes to share this news with Vicki. It’s a tribute to Mrs Isles’ acting ability that she makes us believe Vicki is bewildered that Peter/ Jeff thought he had homicidal tendencies. Mr Davis usually seems angry enough to kill someone, as for example at various points in today’s episode when Peter/ Jeff’s joy leads him to wrap his hands around Vicki’s throat, plant a rather painful-looking kiss on her, pick her up, and point her underwear at the camera.
The highlight of this episode is a scene between Julia Hoffman and Timothy Eliot Stokes. Julia is Barnabas’ best friend. She has decided to take over the experiment after the death of her fellow mad scientist Lang. Wicked witch Angelique is trying to prevent her helping Barnabas, and so Julia turns to Stokes, a sage in the ways of the occult.
Stokes is the second such character on Dark Shadows, after the ill-fated Dr Peter Guthrie. Vicki recruited Guthrie into her battle against undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins in #160 and Laura killed him in #185. We haven’t heard about Guthrie since the end of the Laura story, but the show went out of its way to remind him of us when it showed Lang’s death yesterday. Like Guthrie, Lang died as the result of an indiscreet word from housekeeper Mrs Johnson to an undead witch in the drawing room at Collinwood. Also like Guthrie, Lang is a paranormal researcher who is deeply involved with a tape recorder.
While these similarities served to remind us of Guthrie, they also reminded us of the radical differences between him and Lang. Guthrie was as sane and law-abiding as Lang is crazed and lawless. Seeing Stokes today, we recognize him as Guthrie’s successor, and wonder if his fate will be any different.
Julia is deeply troubled because of a dream she had last night. She was so very upset by it that she was up all night chain smoking.* It was no ordinary nightmare, but part of “The Dream Curse,” a piece of mental malware Angelique has sent to infect one character’s mind after another. Julia recaps the Dream Curse to Stokes while looking into a convex mirror. It’s a striking visual.
It doesn’t look good for Stokes. Angelique is a supercharged force of destruction, and Julia withholds several crucial pieces of information while recruiting him to the fight against her. Julia does not identify Angelique as the witch. She can’t tell him about Barnabas’ vampirism or about Lang’s experiment without incriminating herself in many felonies, including murder. When Vicki was recruiting Guthrie to the fight against Laura, a far less formidable adversary than Angelique, she held nothing back and ensured that her friends gave him their full support. If Stokes is going to survive, he will need more backing than Julia can offer him.
*Fans of Dark Shadows wince when they see Julia smoking; Grayson Hall had asthma.
Mad scientists Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall) and Eric Lang (Addison Powell) are conferring in Lang’s lab. Lang is putting the finishing touches on a Frankenstein’s monster into which he plans to transfer the “life force” of recovering vampire Barnabas Collins. Julia, Barnabas’ best friend, has been opposed to this experiment, but now has accepted that she can’t stop Barnabas and Lang from going through with it. She volunteers to assist.
Lang is having trouble concentrating because of a nightmare he had last night. Unknown to him, the nightmare was part of the Dream Curse, a dead end storyline about wicked witch Angelique sending a dream that each of a series of people will have. When the last person has the dream, Barnabas is supposed to revert to full-on vampirism.
Lang tells Julia about his nightmare. He says that she was in it. When he tells her that she did not speak, she smiles comfortably and says that that was proof that it was a dream. This is not only a genuinely funny line as Grayson Hall delivers it, but it is an extraordinary moment of self-awareness from Julia, a character who usually exists at the outer edge of heightened melodrama. It’s a shame that Addison Powell doesn’t know how to get out of Hall’s way for the half second it would take for it really to land with the audience.
Barnabas and his ex-blood thrall Willie are at home in the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. Willie is smirking and Barnabas is rigid with embarrassment while the dogs howl outdoors. Willie laughs a little as he makes a remark about how Barnabas hasn’t changed as much as he thought he had. This exchange reminds us of the moment in #346 when Julia and well-meaning governess Vicki noticed that some fresh flowers Barnabas touched had died and shriveled up. Like the howling of the dogs when Barnabas feels bloodlust, the shriveling of the flowers was a consequence of his vampirism, effectively a bodily function that he cannot control. He squirmed when Julia and Vicki looked at him then, and he is stiff and flustered when Willie laughs at him now.
Barnabas orders Willie to take a letter to matriarch Liz at the great house on the estate. It will explain that he is going away on a long trip, and that Adam Collins, a young cousin from England, will be coming to stay in the Old House. Willie is alarmed by this.
Willie asks what Barnabas will do if Liz won’t let him stay in the Old House when he is in the form of Adam. Barnabas is sure she will, and dismisses Willie’s doubts. This is an interesting sequence to regular viewers. The show has never made it clear whether Liz still owns the house or has signed it over to Barnabas. A whole year ago, in #223, Liz was talking to strange and troubled boy David as if the Old House and its contents were Barnabas’ legal property. Since then, there have been moments that tend to confirm that impression, as when Barnabas takes Liz’ keys to the house away from David and does not give them back to her, and other moments that conflict with it. Willie’s question and Barnabas’ response would seem to prove that the house still belongs to Liz.
Another question we might ask is why Barnabas doesn’t go to Liz himself. Certainly she will be unhappy that he went away without saying goodbye to her. Moreover, when he showed up at the great house in April 1967, Barnabas told Liz that he was the only survivor of the English branch of the family. Liz will be skeptical if another member of this imaginary branch presents himself and expects to take possession of a big mansion on her property. She has had unpleasant experiences with Willie, so much so that a letter he delivers seems unlikely to allay that skepticism.
When Willie gets to the great house, Angelique herself opens the door. She is living there under the name Cassandra. She has cast a spell on Liz’ brother, sarcastic dandy Roger, and married him so that she will have a residence at Collinwood while she works to restore Barnabas’ curse to its full potency. Showing his typical degree of strategic ability, Barnabas has not bothered to tell Willie about any of this.
Angelique/ Cassandra ushers Willie into the drawing room, sits him down, and chats with him. Willie answers her questions about Barnabas, not realizing that he has any more reason to be discreet with her than with anyone else. He tells her that Barnabas has been spending his days with Lang. Angelique/ Cassandra already knows that it was Lang who gave Barnabas the treatments that put his vampirism into remission and that Lang is preparing further treatments for him. Barnabas should know that she knows this, since she went to Lang’s house and tried to kill him. Willie also tells her that sometimes Barnabas doesn’t seem to have changed as much as you might expect. Angelique/ Cassandra’s reaction makes it clear this is new information to her, and that it might help her in her efforts.
The scene raises yet another question. Barnabas had expressed the hope that once the experiment was complete, Angelique would see that his old body was dead, would assume that meant that he no longer existed in any form, and that she would then go away and leave him alone. But he knows that she knows about Lang, and now he is planning to come back to Collinwood, where she lives, as another “cousin from England.” The question is this- how dumb does Barnabas think Angelique is?
Back in the lab, Lang and Julia are preparing for the experiment. Barnabas shows up. When he talks with the doctors, his face is reflected in the mirror above Lang’s creature. Not only does this suggest the idea of his personality moving into the creature’s body, it also reminds us that until Lang gave him his first course of treatment, Barnabas did not cast a reflection. The whole idea of Barnabas’ reflection will remind longtime viewers of #288, when Julia first confirmed her suspicion that Barnabas was a vampire by peeking at the mirror in her compact and not seeing him. That draws a contrast between Lang, whose initial success with Barnabas appears to be leading to disaster because his impersonal, hyper-masculine approach leaves him unable to recognize the threat Angelique poses, and Julia, whose own attempts to cure Barnabas of vampirism did not match Lang’s spectacular results, but whose femininity, as symbolized by the compact, represents a fighting chance against the forces that really govern this universe.
Barnabas takes his place on a bed. He tells Julia he is glad she is with him, and she smiles at him with the sad tenderness of someone saying a final farewell to a loved one. As with her self-deprecating joke in the opening part of the episode, this smile shows a new side of Julia. For a time in October 1967 she tried to launch a romance with Barnabas, and he rejected her. Hall played Julia’s unrequited love in the same larger-than-life style that the rest of her action called for. Her feelings seemed to be an outgrowth of despair- she was by that point so deeply entangled with Barnabas that there was little hope she could ever make a life with anyone else, so even though he was an active vampire, she had little to lose by committing herself to him. But this sweet little exchange is played so gently that it opens a window on a more complex inner life for Julia.
As Lang starts the experiment, we cut to Angelique in the drawing room at Collinwood. She is talking to a clay figure, calling it “Dr Lang,” and saying that it cannot overcome her powers, for they were a gift to her from the Devil himself. She jabs at the clay figure. In the lab, Lang writhes in pain, interrupting the experiment.
It was not until #450 that Dark Shadows let on that there might be anything to Christianity. In that episode, good witch Bathia Mapes held Barnabas at bay by showing him a cross. Up to that point, Barnabas had many times strolled comfortably through the old cemetery north of town, where half the grave markers are in the shape of the cross, and they hadn’t bothered him a bit. The only representatives of the faith who figured in the story were repressed spinster Abigail Collins and fanatical witchfinder the Rev’d Mr Trask, both of whom were fools whom Angelique easily twisted to her own purposes. Now we have a character named Adam, a New Adam through whom a resurrection is supposed to take place, and he is wearing a headpiece that is photographed to look like a crown of thorns. Angelique’s reference to the Devil suggests that she can be defeated only through the aid of a being more powerful than the Devil, and since we haven’t heard about Ahura-Mazda or any other non-Christian deities who represented a supreme principle of good pitted against an otherwise irresistible evil, it looks like we’re drifting Jesus-ward.
It is daring to take that direction, even if it is only for a little bit. Vampire legends are pretty obviously an inversion of the Christian story, in which a man comes back from the dead, not having destroyed the power of death once and for all, but only to die again every time the sun rises. While Jesus feeds us with his body and blood in the Eucharist and thereby invites us to share in his eternal life, the vampire feeds himself on our blood and thereby subjects us to his endlessly repeated death. That’s why Bram Stoker’s Dracula has all those crosses and communion wafers, because it is a religious story of the triumph of the promise of resurrection in Christ over the parody of that resurrection that the vampire has settled for. It also explains why Dark Shadows so studiously avoided Christian imagery for so long. Christianity is such a powerful part of the culture that once you let any of it in, it tends to take over the whole story.
There are many reasons the makers of the show would want to avoid that fate. Not least is the tendency of religions to fracture and stories based on their teachings to become sectarian. Dracula itself is an example of that; the vampire is a Hungarian nobleman from Transylvania, connected with the Szekely clan. There really was such a clan, and like other Hungarian nobles in Transylvania its members were Calvinists, supporters of the same version of Christianity that Abigail and Trask represented. Stoker was a Roman Catholic from Ireland, a country where most Protestants are Presbyterians, a tradition that grew out of Calvinism, and so his depiction of the vampire is clearly driven by sectarian animus. The Collinses have an Irish surname, settled in New England when that region was officially Calvinist, and did very well there. So it would be easy to present their troubles as a cautionary tale about Calvinism. That would seem to be a surefire way to shrink the audience drastically. Not only are there millions of Calvinists whom it would offend, there are billions of people to whom Calvinism means nothing at all, and they would be utterly bored by a denunciation of it.
The episode is daring in several other ways as well. When Barnabas and Willie were first on the show, ABC-TV’s office of Standards and Practices kept worrying that viewers might interpret their relationship, which was founded on Barnabas’ habit of sucking on Willie and swallowing his bodily fluids, as somehow homosexual. Not only is the scene between them at the Old House reminiscent of the scenes that attracted memos from that office in the spring and summer of 1967, but the whole idea of Barnabas draining his “life force” into the body of Adam would seem to invite the same concerns.
The experiment scene would only intensify such concerns. The experiment is a medical procedure that is supposed to bring a new life into the world, which by 1968 was how Americans usually thought of the process of birth. Barnabas is the patient, he is lying down, and the doctors sedate him. Thus he takes on all the medicalized marks of a mother-to-be. Julia asked Lang if the process would be painful for Barnabas; he does not disappoint, but ends the episode screaming in response to labor pains. Not only does turning Barnabas into Adam’s mother invert the expected gender performance, but it also introduces a homosexual side to Barnabas’ relationship with Lang, who is Adam’s other parent.
Somebody ought to be there telling Barnabas he’s doing great and urging him to push. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Christian imagery and gender-nonconformity would have been rather a queasy combination for most Americans in 1968. That’s unusual, in historical terms. Before modern times, Christians didn’t hesitate to discuss ways that familiar gender roles break down in the relationship of humans to Christ. The “Fathers of the Church,” the prominent Christian intellectuals of the fourth and fifth centuries, talked about that all the time, going into depth not just with the image of the Church as the Bride of Christ but of each human soul, whether male or female, as one of Jesus’ wives, and of the physical contact between humans and Jesus in the Eucharist as a consummation of their marriage.
For their part, Calvinists tended to be skeptical of the physical aspect of the sacraments, but that didn’t mean that they shied away from conjugal metaphors to describe the relationship between the soul and Jesus. John Donne, like most priests in the Church of England in the 16th and early 17th centuries, was basically a Calvinist, yet his sonnet “Batter my heart, three-person’d God” is one of the most vivid and uncompromising statements of the ancient idea of an erotic dimension to Christian life that transcends the binaries between masculine and feminine, male and female. That tradition makes today’s conjunction of Christian and homoerotic themes all the bolder- imagine if Dark Shadows wrote itself into a corner where they had no choice but to explain nuptial imagery and mystical eroticism in the writings of Saint Ambrose. The whole audience could fit into a seminar room.
Closing Miscellany
Lang and Julia wear white lab coats. This is the first time Julia has worn a white coat. Her previous lab coat was light blue, which looks white on the black and white TV sets most households had in 1968, but now that the show is being produced in color they are buying costumes and props for color televisions.
The idea of a machine that would cause a person to go to sleep in one body and wake up in another was a big deal on TV in the 1960s. Just today I saw this screenshot from The Avengers on Tumblr:
This episode marks the first appearance of Robert Rodan. When Adam was a nameless heap of flesh under a blanket, he was played by a stand-in named Duane Morris. Rodan had a few small parts on TV shows in 1963 and 1964 and was in a couple of commercials between 1964 and 1968. Adam was his first, and last, recurring role on a series. In 1969, he appeared in a little-seen feature film called The Minx, then spent the rest of his life selling real estate in Southern California.
Recovering vampire Barnabas Collins has brought his former blood thrall Willie Loomis home to the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. Willie had been confined to a mental hospital during the several months that have passed since Barnabas framed him for crimes he himself committed against Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. The chief of the mental hospital, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, is now Barnabas’ best friend, and he talked her into releasing Willie to him.
Today, Barnabas tells Willie he is going to send him back to the hospital for the rest of his life. Barnabas is furious that the first thing Willie did after promising not to leave the Old House without him was to sneak off and go to Maggie’s house. Barnabas found out about this when Maggie’s boyfriend Joe came to the Old House and told him about it. Joe also told Barnabas that he would kill Willie if he ever again saw him anywhere near Maggie.
Yesterday, it was impossible to tell what was going on in Willie’s mind. At one point he seemed to be in a childlike state, remembering nothing of his time with Barnabas and believing that they had been friends. When he went to Maggie he seemed to have reverted to the way he was when Barnabas was holding Maggie prisoner in the Old House and Willie was desperately trying to spare her the worst. At the end of the episode he pointed an unloaded rifle at Joe and squeezed the trigger, grinning maniacally when he heard the click. Perhaps two of those attitudes were fakes meant to cover the third, or perhaps his personality really is unstable and was fluctuating as the episode went on.
Barnabas has concluded that Willie’s childlike friendliness is a fake and that he is exactly the same as he was when he lived with him. So he gets impatient with Willie when he doesn’t seem to remember that he was a vampire. He talks to Willie as if he remembers everything. He tells him that he can go around in the daytime now, but that he is not really free of the curse yet. He persuaded Julia to release him so that he could help with an experiment that will complete the cure.
Julia enters in time to hear that, and reacts angrily. The experiment is the work of another mad scientist, Eric Lang. Julia is opposed to the experiment and had no idea Barnabas was planning to use Willie to further it. She and Barnabas stand on either side of Willie and argue. At the end of their argument, Willie says he will do whatever Barnabas and Lang say.
Barnabas and Julia fight over Willie.
Lang comes to the Old House. Julia tells him that Willie was Barnabas’ victim, and says he has hidden resentments against Barnabas that will likely surface and prompt him to sabotage the experiment. This is interesting as an explanation of Willie’s visit to Maggie, which was after all one of the most self-destructive things he could possibly have done. However much damage Willie did to himself by going to Maggie’s house, he also subjected Barnabas to considerable embarrassment and inconvenience. So maybe Willie’s puzzling behavior yesterday was the result of a neurotic complex, unconscious hostilities towards Barnabas combined with feelings of guilt that drove him to actions he himself couldn’t have explained. On this interpretation, Barnabas is accidentally functioning as Willie’s therapist. By modeling the conversations they used to have when Barnabas was a vampire and Willie was his blood thrall, Barnabas is helping Willie recover his memory.
The rest of the episode is taken up with a dead end story called the Dream Curse. This consists of frequent repetitions of an acting exercise that gives each cast member an opportunity to show what they can do when they don’t have many lines and just have to emote. Unfortunately, this time it is Lang’s turn to run through the exercise, and Addison Powell’s abilities as an actor were severely limited. He’s pretty nearly unbearable.
There are two things going on while Powell is shouting and stumbling around that I want to mention. Julia appears to him at the beginning of the sequence, and she makes a series of delightful little balletic movements with her arms. There is no apparent reason in the story for her to turn into a ballerina, but those movements are more worth watching than anything we’ve seen from Powell.
At the end of the sequence, Lang opens a door and is greeted by a headless body with a turtleneck sweater. The men in the segments of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s all wear either neckties or turtlenecks, and lately the turtlenecks have been getting ever more prominent. I suppose it was just a matter of time before a character appeared whose turtleneck replaced his head altogether.
Not sure what this guy’s deal will turn out to be, but he’s already more appealing than Lang.
In April 1967, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis inadvertently freed vampire Barnabas Collins to prey upon the living. Barnabas made Willie his blood thrall, and reduced him to a sorely bedraggled state. As spring turned to summer, Barnabas added Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, to his diet. When Barnabas first held her captive in his house, Maggie was dazed and submissive, but as he tried to brainwash her so that her personality would disappear and that of his lost love Josette would take its place, she began to rebel. Maggie and Willie formed a strange friendship as he did what he could to protect her from Barnabas. Eventually she escaped, and mad scientist Julia Hoffman erased her memory of what Barnabas did to her. When Willie tried to warn Maggie that Barnabas might attack her again, the police jumped to the conclusion that it was he who had abducted her. They shot him. He was declared insane and sent to Windcliff, a mental hospital of which Julia is the director.
A few weeks ago, another mad scientist, Eric Lang, gave Barnabas a treatment that put the symptoms of his vampirism into remission. At the time he was feeding on two women, heiress Carolyn and well-meaning governess Vicki. When Barnabas gained the ability to go around in the sunlight, cast a reflection, and eat solid food, Carolyn and Vicki’s bite marks disappeared. It is unclear whether either of them remembers that Barnabas was a vampire, but their personalities certainly went back to what they were before he bit them. That leaves us wondering about Willie. When Barnabas responded to Lang’s treatment, did Willie revert to the violent personality he had in his first full week on the show, when on Tuesday he menaced Maggie in a barroom, on Wednesday he cornered Vicki in the study at Collinwood, and on Thursday would have raped Carolyn if she hadn’t drawn a gun on him? Did he become some version of the deeply troubled young man who was desperate to help Maggie but powerless to resist Barnabas? Or did he become something else entirely?
Today, in furtherance of Lang’s evil plans, Barnabas wants to free Willie from Windcliff and bring him back to his house on the great estate of Collinwood. Julia has become Barnabas’ best friend, but she is firmly opposed to his association with Lang. So Barnabas lies and tells her that he wants to free Willie because his conscience is plaguing him. Julia knows that isn’t true, and points out that he never visited Willie at Windcliff. Barnabas replies that when he was in the full grip of the curse, he could move about only after dark, and says that he could hardly show up at the hospital to visit Willie in the middle of the night. Julia says that she would have arranged it had he asked. He doesn’t have an answer to this, and she doesn’t fall for any of Barnabas’ other fabrications. But she can’t figure out what he really is doing. She plays along with him, and the two of them go to see Willie at Windcliff.
This is the first time we have seen Barnabas outside of a little orbit composed of Collinwood, the village of Collinsport, and the cemetery north of town. Not only was Barnabas’ ability to travel limited while the symptoms of the curse were manifest, he often lost interest in people when they left the area. So in the fall of 1967 he was obsessively hostile to strange and troubled boy David and obsessively indecisive about Vicki until the two of them went to Boston, at which point he seemed to forget they existed. It’s too bad the set representing the waiting area at Windcliff isn’t more visually striking- Barnabas’ first trip out of the Collinsport area marks a significant change in the character’s possibilities, and it would be good if it came with an image that would stick with us.
While Barnabas waits, a glossy magazine catches his attention. He picks it up and leafs through it. Since we are about to see Willie for the first time in several months, there is a good chance that this little bit of stage business will remind regular viewers of a peculiar remark Barnabas made shortly before the last time we saw Willie. Shifting the blame for his own crimes onto Willie, Barnabas planted Maggie’s ring in Willie’s room. When he came up with this plan, Barnabas remarked that the cheaper sort of tabloids say that criminals sometimes hold onto morbid mementos of their crimes, prompting us to picture Barnabas reading a cheap tabloid. That incongruous image comes to life here:
Julia joins Barnabas in the waiting room. They talk for a moment, then a nurse ushers Willie in.
At first, Willie is silent, a confused look on his face. He walks slowly towards Barnabas. Barnabas asks Willie if he recognizes him. In this moment we pick up exactly where we left off in #329, when Willie was a patient in another hospital and did not remember who Barnabas was.
This time Willie does recognize Barnabas. But as he did at the end of #329, he seems happy and untroubled. He is positively childlike in his eagerness to go back to Barnabas’ house and work for him again. He says that he and Barnabas were friends and that he always enjoyed their time together, a statement that dumbfounds Julia, as it dumbfounds anyone who remembers the show from April to September 1967. Even when Barnabas wasn’t bashing Willie across the face with his cane, Willie was miserable beyond words and hated everything Barnabas forced him to do.
Julia sends Willie back to his room, and Barnabas proclaims that Willie is entirely cured. Julia sarcastically thanks him for his diagnosis, calling him “DOCTOR Collins!” This too harks back to #329, which ended with Willie asking Barnabas if he were a doctor, to which Barnabas replied, “That’s right. I am a doctor!”
Barnabas takes Willie back to his house and tells him that for the time being, he must not so much as go outside by himself. Willie accepts Barnabas’ explanation that many people in the area will have to be prepared for his return before they see him. Willie gladly agrees to stay in the house. Barnabas leaves him alone, and he immediately slips out. He is heading for Maggie’s place.
Maggie’s father Sam is a painter, a fact advertised by the canvases around the cottage they share. When we cut to the cottage, she is making a frame. This is rather an obvious visual metaphor. The last time Willie came to the cottage, he inadvertently framed himself for Barnabas’ crimes against Maggie.
Of course Maggie is horrified to see Willie at the door; of course she demands he leave; of course she threatens him with her hammer when he insists on staying and telling her he is innocent; of course she cries for help when her boyfriend Joe comes to the door; of course Willie runs off when Joe enters. Willie puts himself in the frame again, this time as an ongoing threat to Maggie and all the women of Collinsport.
Joe goes to Barnabas’ house and demands to see Willie. At first Barnabas plays dumb, but Joe doesn’t give an inch. Barnabas then admits that he persuaded Julia to let Willie out of the hospital, but assures Joe that Willie is no longer dangerous and tells him that he will see to it that Willie behaves himself. Joe says that Barnabas has already failed in his responsibility, since Willie just went to Maggie’s house and scared her. Joe says that he will kill Willie if he goes near Maggie again. He repeats that assurance, and his voice is pure steel.
Joe exits the house. We see him outside, walking away. Willie emerges from the shadows with a rifle. He takes aim at Joe and squeezes the trigger. The gun isn’t loaded, so Willie makes nothing more than a click. Apparently that was enough for him. He grins maniacally.
On their Dark Shadows Every Day, John and Christine Scoleri point out that the the gleeful face Willie flashes after he clicks his rifle at Joe is the same expression he showed in the frenzied crimes he committed before he came under Barnabas’ power. They back this observation up with a pair of screenshots, one of Willie immediately after he pretended to kill Joe, one from his last moment before he released Barnabas and lost his freedom:
Indeed, the whole episode replays Willie’s character arc from April to September in reverse. He starts as the crushed little thing we had seen at the end of #329, becomes Maggie’s tormented and misunderstood would-be protector, then ends as the dangerously unstable ruffian who followed seagoing con man Jason McGuire to town. If the episode were a few minutes longer, John Karlen might have had to take a break and let James Hall play the last scene. This recapitulation heightens the initial suspense generated by the question of how Willie would be after Barnabas had lost his vampire powers. Whatever effect the change in Barnabas has had on Willie has certainly not made him less complex or more predictable. We can’t tell when he is being sincere and when he is faking. Based on what we see today, it’s possible he is being sincere the whole time, but that he is just extremely impulsive, and equally possible that everything he does and says is a fake meant to cover up something we don’t yet know enough to guess at.
The actors are uniformly excellent today. John Karlen has to recreate the three faces of Willie in quick succession, and executes each of them clearly and memorably. Almost all of Grayson Hall’s dialogue is expository, but while delivering it she shows us all of Julia’s complicated feelings about Barnabas and lets us into her attempt to solve the riddle of his plans for Willie. Kathryn Leigh Scott is only on screen for a few minutes, beginning with her absorbed in carpentry and proceeding directly to screaming and running around and clutching at her male scene partners, but still makes it clear that Maggie is a strong and level-headed person who has been forced into frantic behavior by circumstances no one should have to face.
In the confrontation with Barnabas, Joel Crothers shows us a new side of Joe. Always loyal, always honest, always hardworking, Joe has up to this point been soft-spoken and self-effacing, deferential towards members of the ancient and esteemed Collins family. The only time he broke that deference was when he spoke some harsh words to matriarch Liz in #33, and he had to get thoroughly drunk to manage that. There is no trace of drink in him now, and he does not regard himself as anything less than Barnabas’ equal. For the first time since Burke Devlin lost his connection with the plot and shriveled so drastically that he ceased to be Mitch Ryan and became Anthony George, Dark Shadows has a plausible action hero in its cast.
The part of Barnabas is especially challenging today; he tries and fails to fool Julia in the beginning and Joe at the end, and in between may or may not have fooled Willie. So Jonathan Frid must show us what it looks like when Barnabas does an unsuccessful job of acting. He chooses to do that by having Barnabas overact. My wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out that Frid’s own performance in the role of a man who is severely overacting is in fact exceptionally restrained and precise. Frid bobbles his lines as he usually does, but never makes a wrong physical move, and not for one second does he miss the perfect tone for Barnabas’ lines. The result is simply outstanding.
Mad scientist Eric Lang has been building a Frankenstein’s monster out of body parts his assistant, a man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff, has dug up out of the cemetery. Once the body is completed, Lang will “drain the life-force” from recovering vampire Barnabas Collins into it, bringing it to life and freeing Barnabas of vampirism once and for all. The time has come to fasten a head on the creature. Barnabas and Lang decided the other day to cut Peter/ Jeff’s head off and use it. When Peter/ Jeff found out about this, he irritated Lang with a lot of small-minded objections. When Barnabas realized that his friend Vicki was in love with Peter/ Jeff, he had second thoughts and stopped Lang from proceeding with the decapitation.
Lang pulls a gun on Barnabas, leading to several minutes of rather tedious business. Lang finally capitulates to Barnabas’ insistence that they call in a second mad scientist. Barnabas assures Lang that Dr Julia Hoffman can be trusted to keep their secrets. Julia, Barnabas says, “cares for me,” and will be discreet for his sake. He telephones her.
Julia is a permanent houseguest in the great house on the estate of Collinwood. We see her there carrying on a friendly conversation with the newest member of the household. Like Peter/ Jeff, this person has two names. She is Angelique, the wicked witch who made Barnabas a vampire in the first place. She has been telling everyone that her name is Cassandra, and has made her way into the house by marrying sarcastic dandy Roger Collins.
Julia smiles at Cassandra/ Angelique, agrees with everything she says, and talks in a soft, warm voice. She praises her for her honesty, and tells her that honesty is a quality she admires in people. With this, returning viewers have no doubt that Julia knows exactly who she is dealing with. Honesty is a quality Julia finds difficult to tolerate; several times we have seen her having conversations with the scrupulously ingenuous Vicki, and she could barely wait for Vicki to look away from her before she rolled her eyes, squirmed, and showed evidence of physical pain. When Barnabas was still an active vampire Julia once went to him after a conversation with Vicki and offered herself to him as his next victim, apparently a desirable fate if the alternative was having another conversation with Vicki. Angelique/ Cassandra hasn’t known Julia long, but her puzzled facial expressions do hint that she might suspect that her pliant manner and conventional words are an act put on to deceive an enemy.
The telephone rings; as a houseguest, Julia steps aside and lets Angelique/ Cassandra, a member of the family, answer it. We see the grimace on Barnabas’ face when he hears the voice of his bête-noire answer. He asks for Julia. Angelique/ Cassandra hands her the phone, and Barnabas orders her simply to do as he says. She replies, still speaking in the sweet, quiet tone she had been using with Angelique/ Cassandra, “all right.” This is so much unlike her usual self that it can only be an act she puts on when she is in the presence of an extremely deadly foe. Barnabas commands that she come to Lang’s and bring the medallion she uses to perform stupendous feats of hypnosis.
At Lang’s, Julia asks what’s going on. When Barnabas and Lang give her a cover story about Peter/ Jeff having paranoid delusions, she has her back to them and her face to the camera when she assures them that she is accepting their version of events. Again, we can see that she is far too savvy for these two guys to hoodwink.
Julia, unconvinced by the story Barnabas and Lang have given her. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Lang escorts Julia to the room where the sedated Peter/ Jeff is tied up on a bed. Julia orders Lang out of the room. Peter/ Jeff regains consciousness; Julia identifies herself as a friend of Vicki’s come to help him, and he tells her all about the experiment and Lang’s attempt to murder him. After she hypnotizes him into forgetting the preceding five hours, she goes to the laboratory, finds the creature, and confirms Peter/ Jeff’s story. At the sight of the creature, she can’t help but scream.
Grayson Hall’s performance up to this point in the episode has been so masterful that the scream is a terrible letdown. Hall had asthma, and as a result she could not control the quality of her voice when she screamed. This was a major disability for an actress on Dark Shadows.
Julia’s scream brings Lang and Barnabas. Barnabas makes it clear that he is still determined to go through with the experiment. He just wants to make sure the person they decapitate isn’t close to Vicki. Julia staggers out of the lab. She is in the foyer when we hear her interior monologue. She tells herself she cannot be a party to another murder, not even for Barnabas’ sake. She goes into Lang’s front parlor and picks up the telephone to call the police. Lang and Barnabas come to the door of the parlor, find it locked, and pound on it. Lang draws his gun again.
This is the first episode without any cast members who were on Dark Shadows before Barnabas was introduced in #211. This one is so much focused on Julia that faces which would remind regular viewers of what the show was like in those first 42 weeks would just be a distraction, so it’s logical to leave them all out.
Wicked witch Angelique (Lara Parker,) pretending to be named Cassandra, met sarcastic dandy Roger Collins (Louis Edmonds) one day and married him the next. Roger’s sister, matriarch Liz (Joan Bennett,) confronts Angelique/ Cassandra. Liz tells her that Roger has not been well and urges her to annul their marriage.
In the course of her confrontation with Liz, Angelique/ Cassandra reveals that she is not all-knowing. She thinks that Roger owns the great estate of Collinwood and the family’s business. Liz quickly explains that Roger owns nothing. He lives as a guest in her house and works as an employee of her company. Angelique/ Cassandra takes this in stride, and stands up to Liz’ insistence that the marriage must end. The only sign that Liz’ words are having an effect on anyone at all comes in the very last syllable of the scene. Unfortunately for Liz, it is not Angelique/ Cassandra who is intimidated by her, but Lara Parker who is intimidated by Joan Bennett. Angelique/ Cassandra’s mid-Atlantic accent vanishes and the purest musical note of Parker’s native Tennessee sounds as the word “you” emerges as “yeww.” If there had been another page or two of dialogue, she might have ended with a honeyed smile and a lethal “Bless your heart!”
From #395 to #461, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late 1790s. In that segment, Angelique came to Collinwood as a servant girl and used her magical powers to manipulate scion Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) into marrying her. Barnabas’ parents, Joshua (Louis Edmonds) and Naomi (Joan Bennett) were unhappy about the marriage. Joshua demanded that it be annulled, as Liz today demands Roger and Angelique/ Cassandra’s marriage be annulled. Naomi took a more conciliatory approach. Advocating Joshua’s position and but showing Naomi’s temperament, Liz combines two challenges Angelique has already shown herself able to overcome easily. Returning viewers will therefore have little hope that Liz will be able to stave off the disasters Angelique has in mind for the Collinses.
Angelique/ Cassandra is eager to get to work on the evil plans she has for the people at Collinwood, and so she is trying to stop Roger taking her on a honeymoon. She contrives to injure her ankle. We see permanent houseguest/ medical doctor/ mad scientist Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall) in the bedroom Angelique/ Cassandra will be sharing with Roger, bandaging her ankle. Angelique/ Cassandra asks a series of questions about old world gentleman Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid,) making Julia visibly uncomfortable.
Barnabas is the same man Angelique married in the 1790s. He is here in 1968 because she turned him into a vampire then. He was relieved of the symptoms of vampirism only a couple of weeks ago. He and Julia are becoming fast friends, and on Tuesday he told her all about Angelique. He identified her as the woman in a portrait that has obsessed Roger, and expressed his belief that Roger’s obsession was a sign that Angelique herself was returning to Collinwood. Julia can see how strongly Cassandra resembles the portrait, and knows that Roger’s obsession led directly to his marrying her, so she really ought to have figured out by now that she is Angelique.
Like the scene between Angelique/ Cassandra and Liz, the scene between her and Julia makes an instructive comparison with the parts the same actresses played in the 1790s segment. Angelique was originally lady’s maid to the Countess DuPrés. We saw her helping the Countess put herself together in a bedroom that was a different dressing of the set on which Julia is now attending to her foot. This apparent reversal of roles illuminates the extent to which Angelique’s command of black magic always made her a mightier figure than her nominal mistress. As a mad scientist, Julia is far more formidable than was the countess, but this scene leaves us wondering if she will be able to stand up to Angelique for any longer than could her counterpart.
Well-meaning governess Vicki (Alexandra Moltke Isles) had traveled back in time and was at Collinwood through the 1790s segment. She recognizes Angelique, knows well how dangerous she is, and is desperate to stop her. She tries to tell Liz about the situation, but Liz has a very limited tolerance for information about the supernatural. Vicki later meets Julia at the gazebo on the grounds of the estate and shares her information with her. Julia knows as much as anyone about the strange goings-on, and what Vicki tells her confirms what she already has reason to suspect. However, Julia pretends to have trouble believing Vicki.
This pretense enables Julia to probe the limits of Vicki’s own knowledge. Barnabas and Julia do not want Vicki to know any of Barnabas’ secrets. Julia incredulously asks Vicki if she thinks the Barnabas Collins of 1968 is the same person she knew in the eighteenth century. Vicki turns away from Julia, looks troubled, and says that she does not believe this. Vicki has encountered plenty of evidence to that effect, not least when Barnabas bit her and sucked her blood, and the audience wonders what she knows. We see Julia studying her, trying to find the answer to the same question. In the first year of Dark Shadows, Vicki represented the audience’s point of view, the resolutely normal outsider getting to know the Collinwood crazies. In this moment, we see Vicki through Julia’s eyes. We identify, not with any sane person from the world of sunlight and natural laws, but with a mad scientist who has cast her lot with a vampire.
Vicki thinking about Barnabas, with a facial expression straight out of MAD magazine. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Angelique/ Cassandra and Roger chat in their bedroom. He seems utterly delighted to be married to her, until she slips something into his drink. Suddenly he starts having doubts. Nothing we have seen leads us to expect she would want him to feel this way. The scene leaves us scratching our heads.
We end with Angelique/ Cassandra alone in the foyer of the great house, looking at the portrait of Barnabas that hangs there and vowing to restore the curse that had made him a vampire. We know that she is Angelique and that such is her goal, so her speech doesn’t set up any new story points.
It does give us some world-building information. Angelique says that the only way she knew that Barnabas was walking among the living in the 1960s was that Vicki had traveled back in time to the 1790s and told her. That explodes a theory some fans like that Angelique herself called Vicki back in time. When Vicki left the 1960s in #365, it was quite clear that the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah was sending her on the journey. Sarah has been fading steadily from our awareness, not least because child actress Sharon Smyth aged out of the part, and so it is not surprising that people expect a retcon to attribute the time travel story to a different force. But not only does Angelique rule herself out with this line, Sarah’s name comes up in the conversation between Julia and Vicki, reminding regular viewers of the original explanation.
More importantly, it confirms that once one person has made a wrong-way journey through time, a gate opens through which other unexpected things may come. To some extent we saw this when Barnabas himself was released from his coffin and Sarah’s ghost began showing up around the estate. The cosmological point will become extremely important for the rest of Dark Shadows, as one time-travel story keeps leading to another. Dark Shadows is often described as the story of the house, and so I can’t resist an inelegant metaphor from the building trades. It’s as if Vicki wrecked the plumbing of the universe when she went through the pipes backwards and then abruptly forward. Time will never flow the right way again.
Well-meaning governess Vicki and mad scientist Julia have gone to the Collins family mausoleum in the old cemetery north of town. Vicki wants to see whether her memory is correct and there is a chamber hidden behind a secret panel in the mausoleum, and Julia is trying to limit what Vicki can find. As they enter the mausoleum, Vicki shines a flashlight directly into the camera, then sees a man lurking in a dark corner of the mausoleum.
Vicki assures us that, no matter how much the show might have changed since last summer, it’s still Dark Shadows.
The man is Peter, an unpleasant fellow with whom Vicki unaccountably fell in love when she met him on an unscheduled journey through time to the 1790s. For no reason that will ever be of interest to the audience, Peter keeps insisting that his name is Jeff and that he is not a time traveler. Yet he is the one who finds the mechanism to open the secret panel and expose the hidden chamber where Vicki and Peter once found refuge. Even after that he keeps wasting our time with his pointless denials of the obvious facts.
While they inspect the chamber, Vicki realizes that Julia knew it was there. She confronts her about it, and Julia feigns ignorance. Vicki points out that Julia tried everything she could to keep her from going to the mausoleum and that when those efforts failed she insisted on accompanying her there. Vicki is taking a breath, apparently about to list further evidence supporting the same conclusion, when she glances at Peter and changes the subject.
Vicki remarks that the only way the room has changed since she was there in the late eighteenth century is that there is now a coffin in the middle of it. Julia knows that it is the coffin in which vampire Barnabas Collins was confined from the 1790s until 1967. Barnabas bit Vicki several days ago, but it didn’t really take, and he has since been cured of vampirism. So Vicki probably doesn’t know that Barnabas ever was a vampire, and certainly doesn’t know that it is his coffin. Peter opens the coffin. The empty interior of the coffin dissolves to Barnabas in his hospital bed.
Mid-dissolve.
Barnabas sits up by bending from the waist, showing that old habits die hard. He cries out for the doctor who rehumanized him, Eric Lang. A look of panic spreads across his face.
Terrified Barnabas
He is alarmed to hear hounds baying outside his window. He goes out on the terrace of his hospital room and touches its stone balustrade.
What, your hospital room doesn’t have a terrace with a stone balustrade?
Barnabas goes back inside and continues crying for Lang. When Lang shows up, he explains that the cure isn’t quite complete. There will be occasional relapses of varying intensity, and further treatments are necessary. Barnabas throws a tantrum in response to this news, pouting that if he has to keep taking medicine he may as well go back to being an undead abomination who preys upon the living. Lang talks him down, telling him that he is confident he will be able to effect permanent remission.
We see Julia standing in the rain beside a sign for the Collinsport Hospital, looking up at Barnabas’ silhouette in the window behind his balustrade. She walks away. We then see Lang at a desk in a large wood-paneled room. There is a knock. Lang gives a self-satisfied smirk as he looks at his watch, then opens the door to let Julia in. We see that the wood paneling continues in the corridor behind her. In later episodes we will learn this is in Lang’s house. In that case, the paneling in the corridor behind Julia makes it clear someone has already let her in. At this point, a viewer would naturally assume that it is Lang’s office in the hospital. Wood paneling may not be standard for doctors’ offices in hospitals, but neither are terraces with stone balustrades standard for patient rooms.
Julia looking innocent.
Julia had been treating Barnabas’ vampirism in 1967, and wants to reclaim the case. She and Lang sit across from each other and engage in a verbal fencing match. Lang uses many of the ploys we have seen Julia use to keep control of the situation. On his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day,Danny Horn speculates that the audience’s revulsion at the prospect of Lang replacing Julia was the intended reaction. It cements our sympathy for Julia as a trickster figure and as the de facto protagonist of the chief storylines.
I agree with Danny’s assessment of the scene’s effect, but I doubt it was fully intentional. When I imagine the scene played with Howard da Silva instead of Addison Powell as Lang, I see the audience conflicted and in suspense. We are invested in Julia and her relationship with Barnabas, and so we don’t want Lang to push her aside. But an actor like da Silva would be so intriguing that we couldn’t help but be curious how it would play out if he did. It is only the severity of Powell’s professional deficiencies that causes us to see Lang as nothing but a threat. Compared with the more complex reaction a da Silva could have generated, this scene falls flat.
As Julia is leaving Lang’s office, Peter barges in. Julia’s eyes widen when she sees that the two are connected. Lang realizes that she is likely to make good use of this information, and is furious with Peter for exposing it to her.
It becomes clear that Peter has been implicated in a homicide, that he is suffering from amnesia, and that Lang is blackmailing him into stealing body parts from a nearby cemetery. When Peter says he will no longer help Lang, Lang threatens to send him back to the institution for the criminally insane where he found him. He also forbids Peter to see Vicki again, telling him that Barnabas Collins wants to marry Vicki and that Barnabas’ happiness is important to his plans.
In yesterday’s episode, Peter talked to Lang about his hope that he might be able to learn something about himself from Vicki. This reminds longtime viewers of the first year of Dark Shadows, when Vicki’s motivation for staying in the great house of Collinwood was her hope that she would learn who her biological parents were and why she was left as a newborn at the Hammond Foundling Home. Peter even uses the same phrases Vicki had used in expressing the desire to learn more about himself. Moreover, Vicki, like Peter, has an important gap in her memory, having forgotten key details of her time in the eighteenth century.
That Lang has plans for Vicki was strongly suggested last time, when he told her that he expected her to have an extremely significant future. When we see what future he has decreed for a character who is in a position so similar to Vicki’s, and that the future he has in mind for her includes marriage to Barnabas, we can have little doubt that his plans for her are most evil.
The scene between Lang and Peter is a very efficient piece of exposition, but it is poorly executed as drama. Addison Powell keeps pulling funny faces for no apparent reason, does not appear to have any control over the volume of his voice, and alternately drifts off his mark and stands unnaturally still. Roger Davis is a highly trained professional actor, but he must have skipped the day when his acting teachers covered means of shouting without sounding constipated. The two of them together are not very easy to watch. I get through their scenes with a further bit of imaginary recasting, picturing a onetime Dark Shadows extra like Harvey Keitel as Peter opposite da Silva’s Lang.
In November 1967, Dark Shadows was very rapidly running out of stories to tell. Rather than introduce new characters and new complications to solve this problem, they kept killing off existing characters and foreclosing possible developments, making it impossible not to notice that they were speeding directly towards a blank wall. In #365, they did something no one could have seen coming. Rather than crashing into the wall, they passed right through it and relaunched the show as a costume drama set in the 1790s. The result was a triumph, nineteen weeks of high drama, low farce, lurid horror, pointed satire, and authentic tragedy. Now they are back in contemporary dress, and we are waiting to see what comes next.
Before the costume drama insert, mad scientist Julia was trying to keep well-meaning governess Vicki from falling into the clutches of vampire Barnabas. Julia’s efforts pitted her against many opponents. Vicki regarded Barnabas as a friend, actress Alexandra Moltke Isles was eager to get into the main storyline, the fans wanted to connect the show’s original point of view character with its breakout star, and the writers needed a fresh story to tell. But by repeatedly hypnotizing Vicki and making her subconsciously aware of Barnabas’ horrible secret, Julia was able to hold the line until Vicki disappeared into the 1790s and took the audience, the writers, and Mrs Isles with her.
At the top of today’s episode, Julia is hypnotizing Vicki again. Vicki is in bed, and Julia is extracting memories of her visit to the late eighteenth century, using a post-hypnotic suggestion to sequester those memories from her conscious mind.
Vicki has a dream in which the ghost of Jeremiah Collins, who befriended her in 1795, warns her about Barnabas. The ghost’s voice is provided by Addison Powell, whom Danny Horn named on his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day as “THE WORST ACTOR EVER TO APPEAR ON DARK SHADOWS.” I can think of two or three who might finish ahead of Powell in the contest for this title, but his voice performance today is indeed amazingly bad. He delivers his lines on a single shrill note throughout, and has a lot of trouble managing his breath. I suppose his attempts to get through long speeches without inhaling make sense for someone who just emerged from his grave, but the consequent lack of emphasis on any particular words or phrases and the intermittent gasps each time he runs out of oxygen do keep him from establishing the sense of mystery and terror that the scene calls for.
We then cut to the terrace outside the house, where we see Barnabas approaching the door. Julia meets him, with a new haircut.
This is Grayson Hall’s actual hair; the wig she was wearing in the first scenes had been part of Julia’s costume from her first appearance, in #265. The last time an actress was freed from a wig to perform under her own hair was when Maggie Evans’ tight little blonde hairpiece gave way to Kathryn Leigh Scott’s reddish brown tresses in #20. With that, the wised-up waitress who was everybody’s pal and nobody’s friend became The Nicest Girl in Town. Longtime viewers who remember Maggie’s transformation will recognize what is happening today, when the same device marks a reset of a character. Julia, who yesterday was precisely as hostile to Barnabas and as helpless before him as she was when we left off in November, is today both willing to cooperate with him and very much in control of the situation. He even goes down on one knee to beg her to help him find out what Vicki learned during her sojourn in the eighteenth century. She promises nothing.
After another visit to Vicki in her room, Julia assures Barnabas that she can use her mastery of hypnosis to cordon off any memories Vicki may have that might pose a threat to him. Unconvinced, Barnabas decides to take matters into his own hands.
Barnabas appears in Vicki’s room. She awakens and is surprised to find him at her bedside. She recoils from him as she had been doing in November, when Julia had made her unconsciously aware of his true nature, but, again as she had done in those days, she overcomes her aversion and turns to him. He tells her to come to him. She hesitates, but does. He tells her he can give her peace and make it seem that everything that is distressing her is far away. She embraces him and asks him to do so. It looks very much like a seduction. Considering that Vicki kept embracing Barnabas and pushing her neck towards his teeth before Julia started hypnotizing her, it is an overdue one. Barnabas opens his mouth. He displays the same inner struggle he has shown on previous occasions when he had the chance to bite Vicki, but is still bending his head towards her neck when we fade out for the closing credits.
For the first nine months it was on the air, Dark Shadows was the story of well-meaning governess Vicki Winters and her efforts to befriend her charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins. That phase of the show reached a climax with the story of David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, who was on from December 1966 until March 1967. Vicki rallied the regular characters in opposition to Laura’s evil plans for David, and when Laura went up in smoke David found refuge in Vicki’s arms. He had exchanged his destructive, death-oriented mother for the loving, life-affirming Vicki. At that moment, Dark Shadows version 1.0 ended.
Now, Vicki has been thrust back in time to the year 1795. Vicki has managed to get another job as governess on the great estate of Collinwood, supervising the education of ten year old Sarah Collins and her second cousin once removed, the visiting (but so far unseen) Daniel Collins. There is a blonde fire witch here as well, the mysterious Angelique. Viewers who have been with the show from the beginning will remember Vicki’s leadership of the campaign against Laura, and are waiting to see how she will take charge of the effort to defeat Angelique.
It’s already been a long wait. Vicki has not adapted her thinking at all to her new surroundings. Angelique’s spells have wrought considerable havoc, and members of the Collins household have begun to wonder whether a witch might be at work among them. Angelique hasn’t lifted a finger to deflect suspicion to Vicki, but Vicki’s own behavior has been so bizarre that she is the obvious suspect. As we open today, she has been tied to a tree by the Rev’d Mr Trask, a visiting witch-hunter from Salem, Massachusetts.
Vicki’s ineptitude is particularly frustrating to watch because the major theme of Dark Shadows 2.0, which ran from Laura’s immolation in March to Vicki’s temporal displacement in November, had been a brilliantly successful deception by a different sort of time-traveler. Vampire Barnabas Collins presented himself to the Collinses and their neighbors, not as a blood-sucking ghoul native to another century, but as a distant cousin from contemporary England. Barnabas made plenty of slips and raised miscellaneous suspicions in the minds of various people, but he played his part well enough that the Collinses let him take possession of a house on their estate, the people of Collinsport accepted him as a member of the local aristocracy, and in one way or another he made himself indispensable to everyone around him. We began this version 3.0 expecting to see Vicki do in 1795 something like what Barnabas had done in 1967, and instead we see her as a tedious dingbat.
Barnabas is alive and benevolent in 1795. He and his friend, caddish naval officer Nathan Forbes, are men of the Enlightenment who are appalled that there are still people who believe in witchcraft. They hold Trask in contempt and are committed to saving Vicki from him. Barnabas and Nathan ask the Collins family’s house-guest, the Countess DuPrés, what Trask has done with Vicki. The countess had originally believed Vicki to be a witch, but after seeing Trask’s lunatic behavior while interrogating her came to regret her involvement in bringing him to Collinwood. She tells them that Trask tied Vicki up and took her out of the house, whither he would not say.
Outraged, the men head out of the house. They meet Trask coming in. He refuses to tell them where he has left Vicki. Barnabas thunders that “[I]t perhaps has escaped your memory that we have just fought a war recently-a war to establish certain rights. And I am defending the right of this girl to be judged innocent until she is proved innocent. I am sure that this idea is a little complicated for your mind to absorb.” He’s probably right about that, I certainly find it difficult to absorb.
Once Barnabas and Nathan are on their way to look for Vicki, Trask tells the countess he has tied her to a tree somewhere in the woods and that if she is a witch, the tree will be dead by morning. Angelique’s regular job is as the countess’ maid. She is in the room with a tea tray when Trask says this, and she smiles delightedly when she hears it. Later, she will sneak out of the house to go searching for Vicki herself.
Barnabas and Nathan find Vicki and untie her. They decide to hide her in the great house of Collinwood. The great house is Vicki’s home in the 1960s, and is under construction in 1795. They set off, and Angelique comes to the tree.
Once she is alone, Angelique takes a cutting from the tree and sets fire to it. This causes the tree itself to burn. It is not entirely clear why she doesn’t just set fire to the tree, since the cutting she has taken is the greenest and least flammable part of it, but witches gonna witch, I guess.
The next morning, Trask goes to the tree. The countess insists on accompanying him. They find that Vicki is gone and the tree is a hunk of scorched timber. Trask triumphantly silences the countess’ doubts.
In our time-band, the last witchcraft trial in the English-speaking world was held in Scotland in 1727. The Westminster Parliament finally abolished all laws against witchcraft in 1736, including those still on the books in Massachusetts* and some other British colonies in North America. Had they lived in our 1795, Barnabas and Nathan could have gone to the constable and reported that Trask had abducted Vicki, bound her, and left her outside. The constable would help them find her, arrest Trask, and that would be it. But of course Dark Shadows takes place in a world that differs from ours in many respects, not least in regard to the legal history of Massachusetts.
As the countess, Grayson Hall has been doing an excellent job establishing a character who is distinct from mad scientist Julia Hoffman, the role she plays in the segments of Dark Shadows set in the twentieth century. But as my wife, Mrs Acilius, points out, Hall does lapse into Julia a few times today. When she gasps in horror, she makes a little clicking noise in the back of her throat that is one of Julia’s most recognizable mannerisms. Julia is deeply entangled with Barnabas’ activities, and has developed an emotional attachment to go along with her inability to get away from him; shortly before Vicki took us with her to 1795, we heard Julia address him with a deeply felt “Barnabas, Barnabas.” The countess barely knows Barnabas, but in an anguished moment today, she says “Barnabas, Barnabas” to him. Hall does return to being the countess before the episode is over, but there is a weird little visit from Julia in the middle of it all.
Vicki went back to the past after Sarah’s ghost took possession of her at a séance and said she was going to “tell the story from the beginning.” Vicki has traded places with Sarah’s original governess, a woman named Phyllis Wick. Presumably Angelique chose Phyllis as a patsy, and she wound up as Trask’s target. Maybe Angelique did this simply because Phyllis was new to the house and had no old friends to object that she couldn’t possibly be a witch, but maybe it was because she had caught on to Angelique.
It would make it all the more exciting to see Vicki catch on to Angelique and do battle with her. We’ve already seen Smart Vicki defeat one blonde fire witch, so if we see her try to fight another, we will hope that she might win again. Only when we saw the attempt end in disaster would we realize that everything we’ve seen Vicki doing is what Phyllis Wick did the first time around, and that her intervention won’t have changed a thing. That would be a powerful twist ending to the whole 1795 flashback. Instead, we are subjected to Dumb Vicki doing things neither Phyllis nor anyone else who belonged in 1795 could possibly have done, and we end up wondering what she is doing in this story.
*Collinsport is in Maine, which until 1821 was part of Massachusetts.
Repressed spinster Abigail Collins has invited a visitor to the great estate of Collinwood. He is the Reverend Mr Trask. It’s 1795, so the Rev’d Mr T missed the big excitement in his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts by 103 years, but he’s trying to make up for it by hunting witches elsewhere.
Both caddish naval officer Nathan Forbes and young gentleman Barnabas Collins are appalled by Trask, and each of them wants to defend the target of Abigail’s suspicions, governess Victoria Winters. They are powerless to do much for her. Barnabas cannot overrule his father, haughty overlord Joshua Collins, who is the master of the house and has given Abigail “full rein” in re Vicki. And Nathan cannot persuade Vicki to run away with him, because she distrusts his intentions and cannot believe that she is really in danger.
Unknown to any of the other characters, Vicki is a time-traveler displaced from 1967 by the ghost of Sarah Collins, who is now alive and studying under her direction. Vicki has been making one inexplicably foolish mistake after another since she began her uncertain and frightening journey to the past four weeks ago, and now they are all catching up with her.
It is hard to imagine what the writers were thinking when they made Vicki do such dumb things. Today, Trask, accompanied by his supporters Abigail and house-guest the Countess DuPrés, confronts Vicki in her room. At first, her behavior in that scene makes sense. He keeps putting his hands on her, prompting her to object; he asks her leading questions based on the assumption that she is guilty of witchcraft, to which she reacts with disbelief. But she has been in 1795 for nearly a month, and that whole time she has been a servant in the house of the tyrannical Joshua. She must know that she is subject to arbitrary exercises of power.
Further, we have seen Vicki in 1966 teaching history to her charge, strange and troubled boy David. You would think that she would have some appreciation of social context and would make some effort to play along with people who are native to the setting in which she finds herself. When Trask tells her to kneel and pray, he’s giving her the option to get out of trouble by doing something she wouldn’t have any reason to find objectionable. But she just gets angrier. She and Trask take turns slapping each other, and Abigail helps him bind and gag her.
Later, Abigail and the countess are in the front parlor of the manor house. The countess has been pushing hard for action against Vicki, but she recoils from Trask’s methods. She tells Abigail that she wishes she knew where Trask had taken Vicki. Abigail reproves her, shocked that she would second-guess “a man of God!” The countess is played by Grayson Hall, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the twentieth century plays mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Like the countess, Julia is fascinated with the occult. Julia has expert knowledge that leads her to draw correct conclusions about this subject. Perhaps the countess’ misgivings about Trask show that she, too, is smart enough to see through the charlatans. Maybe Vicki will find herself with a more formidable ally than the irresponsible Nathan or the bumbling Barnabas.
Trask has tied Vicki to a tree deep in the woods. He tells her that if she is guilty of witchcraft, the tree will be dead by morning. He asks her to renounce Satan. In another Dumb Vicki moment, she refuses simply to say “I renounce Satan and all his works.” He leaves her tied up.
Jerry Lacy joined the cast in #357 as lawyer Tony Peterson. In his performance as Tony, Mr Lacy did his famous Humphrey Bogart imitation. Bogart slips out once or twice today; when Trask looks away from Vicki and goes into monologues, he does sound like he is about to start explaining how he will find out who stole the strawberries from the officers’ mess. But what’s more important about his performance is how very far he goes over the top. Lara Parker famously described the Dark Shadows house style of acting by talking about the hyper-intense manner in which she was expected to deliver the line “Go back to your grave!”; Mr Lacy’s performance today is as intense as any we will ever see.
As Vicki, Alexandra Moltke Isles is usually one of the quietest and most interior-directed members of the cast. In Vicki’s scenes with Trask today, she shows that she can shout with the best of them. If Vicki had taken her brain with her to 1795, it might have been fun to see what Mrs Isles could do with the part under the new regime.
Mr Lacy wasn’t the first shouty actor to share a scene with Mrs Isles. For the first several weeks of the show, the cast included a man named Mark Allen. In alternate episodes, Allen either shouted all his lines or whined all of them. Mrs Isles responded to that memorably in #20 by growing ever more still and quiet as he bellowed at her. But while Allen’s shouting was simply a sign of incompetence, Mr Lacy’s is textured, nuanced, and funny. When other actors shouted back at Allen, the result was a lot of noise. When Vicki shouts back at Trask, she comes to life.
I do wonder about Trask’s name. Just a few days ago, I was looking through a book about Marvel Comics in the 1960s, and learned that a villain named Bolivar Trask was introduced in The X-Men in 1965 and was a big deal in several Marvel titles for the next few years. The writers, producers, and directors of Dark Shadows were all middle-aged, and it is unlikely that they were reading comic books for pleasure. But they had shown engagement with comics before- a graveyard scene in #209 includes a rather clear echo of the visual style of the horror comics EC was putting out fifteen years or so earlier. Since that is part of the lead-up to the vampire story, the directors would have been making an obvious move had they sent a production assistant to a flea market to look for some old horror comics to which they could slip in an homage.
Besides, Dark Shadows itself had been licensed to Dell for comic books by this time. It would only have been natural for people involved with the show to have been curious what might come of that. Maybe they were browsing through Marvel’s output to get a sense of what was going on in that medium.
Or an influence could have come through an even less unusual vector. Several members of the production staff had children who were teenaged and younger, as did writer Sam Hall. Those children might well have been fans of Marvel’s in those days. So it is possible that someone behind the scenes might have heard the name “Trask” mentioned around the house as a good one for a villain.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 