Tag: iconography

Episode 1119: Where the Devil is everybody.

Ben Stokes

From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. In that period, we learned how scion Barnabas Collins first became the vampire we had met in April 1967, and more importantly learned that he could be interesting even if he were not a vampire.

We also met much-put-upon indentured servant Ben Stokes. Ben was played by Thayer David, who first joined the cast of Dark Shadows in 1966 as crazed handyman Matthew Morgan. Matthew was so maniacally devoted to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard that he inadvertently killed a friend of hers whom he imagined to be her enemy and was about to deliberately murder another of her favorite people, well-meaning governess Victoria Winters, when the ghosts who haunt the estate of Collinwood emerged from the background and did him in. When we met Ben, he was as open-hearted and kindly as Matthew was dark and twisted.

Barnabas was the one member of the Collins family who took a liking to Ben. He taught Ben to read. Later, Barnabas would press his father, haughty overlord Joshua Collins, to free Ben from his indenture. When Barnabas became a vampire, Ben repaid his kindness by protecting him and abetting his crimes. Eventually, Ben’s devotion to “Mistah Bah-nah-bahs” led him to recreate the very crimes that triggered Matthew’s destruction, killing a man in the course of a struggle and murdering a woman in cold blood. We saw that he and Matthew were two versions of the same character. Ben became what Matthew was after a few months in the shadow of the Collins family curse. Matthew had spent his entire life in the shadow of that curse, and so he was doomed from the beginning.

Barnabas brought the vampire curse on himself when he met the gracious Josette, jumped to the conclusion that she could never love him, and consoled himself in a brief affair with her aunt’s maid Angelique. Unknown to Barnabas, Angelique had a talent for witchcraft. When it turned out that Josette did love Barnabas and agreed to marry him, Barnabas cast Angelique aside. Humiliated and enraged, Angelique used her powers of witchcraft to make him into a ghoul and sentence him to exist forever without love. The vampire curse was dramatically satisfying, because Barnabas had been so selfish that it was fitting he should be reduced to a metaphor for extreme selfishness. And Angelique’s declaration that anyone who loved him would die gave an extra pathos to his underestimate of his own lovableness.

As his involvement with Angelique led to Barnabas’ destruction, so Ben’s involvement with her blighted his life. He met Angelique in #372, and thought she was making a sexual overture to him. Without further ado, he walked up to her and took her in his arms. She gave him something to drink first, which made him the victim of a spell that subjected him to her will. As Angelique’s slave, he did harm to Barnabas and others whom he loved, filling him with anguish and self-loathing. Ben did not share Barnabas’ selfishness, so there would have been little point in making him a vampire. But his desperate response to Barnabas’ kindnesses suggests that he, too, believes himself to be unlovable.

Now, the show has traveled back in time again. Mad scientist Julia Hoffman, Barnabas’ devoted friend in 1970, escaped a disaster in that year by passing through a time warp that took her to 1840, when the seeds of the disaster were planted. Barnabas used some mumbo-jumbo to project his 1970 personality into his body as it was in 1840 and joined her there. The two of them needed help establishing themselves in the Collinwood of that period. They found that Ben was living there and that he was still devoted to Barnabas. Ben was very old, but also amazingly resourceful. He was able to provide Julia with contemporary clothing and a set of luggage that she seemed to have left at the Collinsport Inn, and to substantiate the story that Barnabas and Julia were the son and daughter of the original Barnabas Collins. Now they are securely ensconced in the bosom of the Collins family. At the rate Ben has enabled them to go, Julia and Barnabas should be able to solve all the problems they face in another week or two.

Of course, it cannot be so. Ben sees that Desmond Collins, a cousin of the Collinses who live in the great house, has brought a severed head back from a trip to the southeastern coast of China. Ben recognizes this loathsome thing as an object that was mentioned in connection with a series of murders many years before. He has gone to Desmond’s home, a mansion known as Rose Cottage, and left a book with a chapter about the murders and a note urging him to destroy the head. He also spent some time looking at the head and telling it he was going to see to it that it was destroyed. That turns out to have been unwise; when Ben is walking home through the woods, the head appears to him and he cries out in distress. The next morning, Ben’s corpse is found. It looks as if he tried to cut his own head off.

The Happy Couple

In March 1969, Barnabas began the longest of all Dark Shadows’ excursions backward in time when he went to the year 1897. When he arrived at Collinwood, the matriarch of the house was dying. She was Edith Collins, nonagenarian widow of Gabriel Collins. On her deathbed, Edith reminisced about the difficult relationship she and her darling Gabriel had with Gabriel’s father, Daniel Collins, master of Collinwood. At the time, that startled longtime viewers. We had seen Daniel as a twelve year old boy in the 1790s segment, and he seemed pleasant enough. But if we were to believe that he was the man his daughter-in-law remembered decades after his death, he grew up to be bitter and estranged from his own nearest kin.

We have met the adult Daniel, and he is indeed a difficult sort. He is confined to the tower room in the great house because of his unfortunate tendency to mistake women for his late wife and to try to kill them as he killed her. He also has dementia, so that people have to keep telling him which members of the family are dead and what year it is. In fairness to Daniel, these points are extremely difficult for anyone to keep track of on Dark Shadows. We’ve also heard that Daniel has a heart condition that medical science as of 1840 is powerless to do anything about.

We have met Gabriel, too. He uses a manual wheelchair to get around; apparently he is quite skilled with it, since he keeps appearing in rooms on every floor of the house without any apparent assistance getting up and down stairs. He is a vicious bully, a characteristic Edith did not bring up in her deathbed reminiscences.

Today, we meet the young Edith. She is played by Terrayne Crawford, who in the 1897 segment played lady’s maid Beth Chavez. We haven’t seen her on the show since Beth’s final appearance in #880, though she did have a small part in the feature film House of Dark Shadows which was in theaters at this time.

Unlike the dying Edith of 1897, this version of the character despises Gabriel. There is an amusing idea in there. Perhaps in the 57 years between what we see today and what we saw then, Edith talked herself into believing that she and Gabriel had a lovely marriage and that only Daniel’s hostility gave them trouble.

If that was an idea they were planning to develop, they probably should not have given the part of Edith to Miss Crawford. She seems to be a very nice person, but she had severe limitations as an actress. All of the roles in the 1897 segment included dialogue which called for the depiction of multiple layers of feeling at once, and Miss Crawford was alone among the cast in failing to meet this challenge even a single time. So when Beth tells a devastatingly handsome married man that she doesn’t want him to make passes at her, that’s all there is to it- she simply does not want that, and he simply is a jerk for continuing to do it. We can see no conflict within her to set up a story in the course of which she will stop resisting his charms and begin an affair with him.

Eventually they started writing Beth as a one-dimensional character. That allowed Beth to be part of the story, but they did have to sacrifice some themes they had apparently meant to develop. So in her first appearance, Beth reacted with alarm when a Romani character dropped a hint that she was going to reveal to the Collinses that Beth was Romani, too. That fit with Beth’s origin as a servant who had come to Collinwood in the train of Jenny Collins, who was herself secretly Romani. But delivering on it would have required Beth to have more complicated feelings than Miss Crawford could be relied on to portray, so that was laid quietly to one side.

Showing the audience that Edith is the sort of person who will, in her own mind, eventually retcon her crappy marriage into a great but haunted romance would place even greater demands on a performer than would showing that Beth is hiding the facts about her ethnic background. But as we see her today, Miss Crawford seems to have become an even worse actress than she was playing Beth a year ago. She keeps changing her tone of voice in the middle of her lines for no apparent reason, making us wonder if she is trying to suppress the hiccups. That isn’t because she is tense- on the contrary, she is relaxed and comfortable, with a big grin on her face, an inexplicable affect when every conversation Edith has consists of everyone reviling and threatening everyone else.

Gabriel is in a good mood despite Edith’s loathing for him. He is blackmailing the evil Gerard Stiles into murdering Samantha Drew Collins, widow of his brother Quentin Collins. This will leave Daniel with no choice but to leave the Collins fortune to Gabriel. Samantha has no suspicion that anything like this is going on, but she does know that Gabriel hates her and cordially returns his hatred.

Gerard has told Gabriel that he will give Samantha a poison that will cause her to have a fatal stroke while he and she are in the village and Gabriel is at home, so that she will die in front of witnesses and no one will suspect him even if it is discovered that the stroke was artificially induced.

Gerard comes back to Collinwood. Gabriel menacingly says that “If you tell me anything went wrong…” Gerard replies that nothing went wrong. It is done. Delighted, Gabriel asks for all the details. Gerard says that he and Samantha made a stop at the police station to arrange for Ben’s body to be released for burial. Gabriel asks if it happened at the police station. Gerard says no, then goes on to say that they went from there to the bank. Gabriel asks if it happened at the bank. Gerard says no. He then says that they went to the courthouse. Gabriel is thrilled at the idea that it happened at the courthouse, and Gerard confirms that it did happen at the courthouse.

Gabriel asks where the body is now. Before Gerard can answer, the front door opens and the body comes walking in. What happened at the courthouse was not Samantha’s death. It was Gerard and Samantha’s wedding. Gabriel is dumbfounded.

Gabriel absorbs the news of the wedding. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When he first joined the show in January 1970, Christopher Pennock had some troubles with line delivery that limited him almost as badly as Miss Crawford’s weaknesses limited her. But he has grown by leaps and bounds over the last ten months, and he really breaks through as Gabriel. The three “It happened in the–” questions and his responses to the answers they elicit are pattern from a bit that was old when Gallagher and Shean did it in vaudeville in 1910, but he and James Storm execute it so well that it feels fresh today. The expression on his face when he learns that Samantha has married Gerard is just exquisite.

The measure of Pennock’s success came earlier in the episode, when Samantha slapped Gabriel in the face. Virginia Vestoff is likable enough that her characters can get away with almost anything, but not even she could sell an audience on an able-bodied person who physically assaults a wheelchair user. But Pennock has established Gabriel as such an utter louse that we can see Samantha’s point.

Also in this episode, Samantha clears the toys out of a space known as “The Playroom.” It is explicitly acknowledged that her son Tad had outgrown the toys in it long before, a point the fans like to make whenever The Playroom is mentioned. Samantha has set aside her earlier resolution to leave the room unchanged to honor Tad, who was washed away in a storm at sea and is presumed dead, along with his father Quentin. She has decided the time has come to move on from the past.

The time warp that brought Julia to 1840 was localized in The Playroom, so we wonder what clearing it out will do to the prospects for a return trip. Also, The Playroom occasionally popped into being, complete with Tad’s old toys, in 1970 and in 1995, due to the influence of a bunch of ghosts of people from this period. So while first-time viewers will not likely find any significance in Samantha’s redecoration project, returning viewers may have many questions about it.

Episode 1111: The healer himself

Dark Shadows has been drifting downward in the ratings and the writing staff has been repeating material. If it is to survive, the show needs a new villain who will generate fresh story points and another breakout star to grab the attention of the public as Jonathan Frid did when he joined the cast as vampire Barnabas Collins in 1967 and as David Selby did when he came along as the dangerous Quentin Collins late in 1968 and early in 1969. They are gambling that they will be able to fulfill both of these requirements with James Storm as the evil Gerard Stiles.

Gerard has been on the show as an unspeaking ghost for twelve weeks. He makes his first appearance as a living being today, and delivers his first lines. He makes less of an impression than does any other member of the cast, which I believe is intentional.

Yesterday, mad scientist Julia Hoffman traveled back in time to 1840. Previous time-travel segments have begun with episodes mounted on the biggest scale of production the show could manage, but yesterday they tried a new approach. Most of the episode took place in one little section of the great house of Collinwood, with Julia hiding behind partitions in darkened rooms while she eavesdropped on random conversations. That structure suggested that 1840 is going to open out gradually, introducing new characters and situations a little bit at a time. So far from whisking us into the new world with a torrent of additional information, they subtracted from what we came in thinking we knew. When they revealed that governess Daphne Harridge is unknown in the great house, and Quentin Collins* and his son Tad are missing at sea and presumed dead, we found that this is a very different place from what we were led to expect. That was as good a way as any of ensuring we would come back on Monday.

Gerard makes his entrance in the middle of a scene between fluttery novelist Flora Collins and evil-tempered bully Gabriel Collins. Gabriel is not as cruel to Flora as we have seen him be with others, and he even pretends to take her latest novel seriously. But when she describes Gerard as “The Healer” and claims that he has supernatural powers, Gabriel has had enough. He insists that Flora ought not to waste her time with a man who, if he were not a transparent fraud, could only be a practitioner of the black arts. Flora is appalled by Gabriel’s description of Gerard as a possible Satanist.

Gerard enters and Flora tells him she is coming down with a migraine. She coquettishly asks him to do his thing for her. He rubs her forehead for a bit, and she proclaims that she is cured. After she exits, wheelchair user Gabriel tells Gerard that if he really has a miraculous gift of healing he would welcome him using it to restore his own ability to walk. Gerard angrily refuses.

Gabriel then tells Gerard that Flora claims more for him even than a gift for healing. She says that he is clairvoyant. Gerard says that he does have such a gift. Gabriel shows him an earring he found in the upstairs playroom and asks if he can identify it. Gerard goes into a trance and says that he sees “a tall woman… not dressed as a woman should be.” The earring belongs to Julia, whom we heard a clairvoyant describe as “a tall woman” in #1059, and she is indeed wearing the clothes she had on when she came from 1970. So we know that Gerard is a real clairvoyant, and expect that he will recognize Julia when he meets her. But Gabriel hasn’t been watching the show, so he laughs out loud and tells Gerard that he is indeed a fraud.

Gerard gets even angrier than he was a moment before, and tells Gabriel that he will not abide being laughed at. That suggests a complicated existence for a character on Dark Shadows, a show that has a lot of great stuff in it but that rarely goes more than ten minutes at a time without making at least one member of the cast look ridiculous.

Gabriel is unimpressed with Gerard. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Of course, no one is easier to laugh at than people who take themselves absolutely seriously, which is one of the reasons Barnabas and Julia were such big hits. But most of the characters who demand to be regarded with solemnity have had an expiration date, no matter how much value they added while they were on the show. So the fanatical witchfinder the Rev’d Mr Trask was one of the highlights of the show when it was set in the 1790s from November 1967 to March 1968, but no one could have expected Trask to stay in the cast when it returned to contemporary dress. Those who have lasted and have helped to grow the audience have had a sense of humor about themselves. By the middle of 1968, even wicked witch Angelique could crack the occasional joke at her own expense. Unless Gerard gains the same ability, he would seem unlikely to rise above Trask’s level in the hierarchy of characters.

Meanwhile, the aged Ben Stokes has befriended Julia. In the 1790s segment, Ben was a much-put-upon indentured servant whose extreme regard for Barnabas led him to become complicit in Barnabas’ crimes in his first nights as a vampire. When we revisited the 1790s in January 1969, Ben followed the footsteps of the first character Thayer David played on the show, crazed handyman Matthew Morgan. Matthew’s fanatical devotion to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard led him to inadvertently kill a man who was the head of the Collins fishing fleet and to attempt the deliberate murder of a woman who was played by the daughter of a countess. In #666, Ben inadvertently killed roguish naval officer Nathan Forbes, who was in Collinsport to do some executive work associated with the Collins family’s ships, and then deliberately murdered Natalie DuPrés, a character who bore the title countess. We saw that the kindly, sensible, open-hearted Ben whom we met before the great curse was placed on the Collins family had been deformed into the same shape that a century and a half in the shadow of that curse had inflicted on Collinsport dweller Matthew. Now, we see that Ben has lived on into his eighties and has recovered much of the goodness that was his hallmark when first we met him.

Julia tells Ben the insane story of her travels through time and her friendship with Barnabas, and he decides to help her find a place in 1840. He digs up a period-appropriate gown for her. It’s too big for his granddaughter Carrie and too small for him, so it does not seem likely to have been in his possession. He doesn’t have time to make a gown. He doesn’t leave the house, so even if there had been shops in central Maine in 1840 that sold ladies’ formal wear off the rack, he wouldn’t have been able to buy it at one of those. And any of the ladies in the house would surely notice if one of their dresses went missing and a stranger showed up wearing one exactly like it. So I suppose it must have belonged to a lady no longer resident in the house who left it behind in a disused room.

Ben drills Julia in a plan he has devised. She is to present herself at the front door of the great house of Collinwood at 8:30 PM, wearing the gown he has provided. She is to say that her name is Julia Collins, daughter of Barnabas, and that she has been living in America for ten years. Her brother, Barnabas Junior, is still based in England, where their father died some time ago. He wrote her a letter saying he was coming to the States and she was to meet him at Collinwood. Her bags are at the Collinsport Inn, where she is staying.

Julia is reluctant to follow Ben’s plan. She is preoccupied with Barnabas. She expects him to use some mumbo-jumbo to project himself from 1970 into his body as it is in 1840. Since that body is in a chained coffin in the secret room of the old Collins family mausoleum, she wants to go there and release him.

Ben points out that Julia’s desire is preposterous. Barnabas won’t meet Julia for another 127 years. The vampire in that coffin has no idea who she is, and if she lets him out she will be only the first of many victims in a renewed rampage of murder and enslavement.

Of course Julia goes to the mausoleum; of course she opens the panel to the secret room. If she were capable of taking good advice when it was offered, there wouldn’t be a show. We end with Julia trying to communicate with Barnabas through the coffin. She has already said that she has a sense that he might be calling her, a sense that she admits might be her imagination. So we know that it is unlikely that she will fail to discern the summons she so desperately wants to hear.

*Not the one we eat in 1968 and 1969, though apparently he is also David Selby.

Episode 1108: The Nicest Girl in Town

In episode #1 of Dark Shadows, first broadcast 27 June 1966, Victoria Winters came to the great house of Collinwood to serve as governess to strange and troubled boy David Collins. On her way, Vicki stopped at the Collinsport Inn and had a meal at the diner there. Her waitress was Maggie Evans, a young woman with short blonde hair whom the original story bible identified as “everybody’s pal and nobody’s friend.” Maggie opened their conversation by telling Vicki that she was a “jerk- J-E-R-K” for going to live at Collinwood. Maggie told Vicki that the great house would turn her long black hair gray in two months. When Vicki said she would go there anyway, Maggie offered her a “piece of apple pie on the house- and I won’t take no for an answer.”

Maggie lays it on the line for the new jerk.

Maggie was the chief representative of Collinsport’s working class in the show’s first months. The diner was a meeting place for a variety of characters, so we saw her wait on all sorts of people. She shared her home, “The Evans Cottage,” with her father, drunken sad-sack Sam Evans. Sam’s career as an artist was ruined when he took a bribe from high-born ne-er-do-well Roger Collins and allowed his one-time friend, Burke Devlin, to go to prison alone for a crime of which Roger was also guilty. Sam’s misery and Maggie’s Adult Child of an Alcoholic (ACoA, they call it) mannerisms, such as laughing awkwardly whenever she begins to speak, attest to the dire consequences for the whole town of what goes on in the big house on the hill. As Maggie and Sam’s territory, the cottage was a space where Burke, who left prison and came back to Collinsport as a corporate raider, could talk about his plans to wrench control of the cannery and fishing fleet from the feudal-minded Collinses and bring the area into the age of capitalism.

From #12, Maggie at home with Sam. At that point, Sam was played (very badly) by Mark Allen.

They eased up on the “everybody’s pal and nobody’s friend” business pretty quickly. Maggie’s short blonde hair was a wig seen for the last time in #12; from #20 on, she has Miss Scott’s long brown hair. When Miss Scott’s real hair came out, her real personality started to peek through as well. While Maggie could still make a caustic remark or a tactless one as occasion demanded, the signs were already there of her final form, The Nicest Girl in Town.

Our first look at Maggie as a brunette.

In #63, Maggie made her first visit to Collinwood. She had made a vow never to set foot in the great house, and was ill at ease when she broke it. With a great show of courage she stood up to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. She told Liz that she believed that her family had information about what had gone wrong in her father’s life, and she wanted answers.

Maggie admits to Liz that she had to screw up her courage to come to Collinwood.

The supernatural was represented in the first months of Dark Shadows primarily by people using the word “ghost” as a metaphor when talking to Vicki, prompting her to reply “Surely you don’t believe in ghosts!?” They would then respond that they damn well did believe in them, and that if she went on living at Collinwood it wouldn’t be long before she believed in them, too. The first unequivocal sign the audience had of supernatural activity came in #70, when the ghost of the gracious Josette Collins emanated from her portrait above the mantel of the Old House at Collinwood, walked outside, and danced among the columns. The figure of Josette was none other than Kathryn Leigh Scott, who volunteered for the task when the original plan to achieve the effect without a performer fell apart.

Emergence
Dance

Miss Scott reprised the role of Josette’s ghost in #126, wearing a heavy veil over her face. We hear her voice, with a French accent of sorts, telling Vicki not to be afraid even though a madman has tied her up and is on his way with an ax to cut her head off. Josette then leads the other ghosts of Collinwood in killing the madman before he can harm Vicki.

“I am Josette Collins.”

With that, Miss Scott became the first member of the cast to play multiple roles on Dark Shadows. For anyone who happened to recognize her voice in #126 and notice that she was in the credits, even though Maggie was not in the episode, the wised-up waitress and the ghost of Josette would have made an interesting pair. All we knew about Josette at that point was that her maiden name was LaFreniere, that she came to Collinwood in 1830 and married Jeremiah Collins, that she died by jumping off the cliff at Widows’ Hill, and that her ghost could be seen and heard around the estate. For all we knew, the LaFrenieres may have been a humble Franco-American family whom Jeremiah’s haughty relatives snubbed. She may have grown up in a house like The Evans Cottage, and her death might have been the outcome of a class conflict. Later, Josette’s family name would be retconned to DuPrés, her time of arrival to 1795, and she would be presented as a French aristocrat who was the daughter of one of the richest sugar planters on the island of Martinique, a description met in our universe by Joséphine de Beauharnais, wife and empress to Napoleon I.

In the first months of the show, Liz’ daughter Carolyn was dating hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell. Carolyn and Joe were bored to tears with each other, and only kept going out because Liz thought they should. Joe and Carolyn finally broke up in #84, and he started dating Maggie by #129. Maggie and Joe were happy together, and soon planned to get married once Joe had saved up the money to go into business for himself with a boat and crew of his own. Their cheerful repartee was more agreeable to watch than were the many many scenes of Carolyn and Joe staring silently at each other, but it did not generate any story. It would be helpful that Joe and Maggie each had someone to talk to if they got involved in the plot in any way, but there were long stretches when we did not see either of them.

Maggie invites Joe to stay for a nightcap after a date in #129.

From December 1966 to March 1967, Dark Shadows was dominated by the story of undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Maggie was very far from the center of the action during that period. Laura’s story gathered up the loose ends of all the ongoing stories, including “The Revenge of Burke Devlin” and the significance it gave to Sam’s alcoholism. That would clear the decks for the transformation of the show from a Gothic romance with occasional nods to the uncanny to a full-blown supernatural thriller.

After Laura went up in smoke in #192, Sam wrestled with the idea of admitting Burke that he had taken a bribe from Roger to stay silent in his case. Maggie had a tearful scene in #199 when Sam told her the truth. She urged him to make a clean breast of it. Even if he went to prison, he would be better off in prison than he has been these last ten years. In #200 and #201, Burke heard Sam’s confession and Roger’s, and decided to peace out. The Revenge of Burke Devlin never was a very exciting storyline, and it was apt that Burke himself eventually gave up on it.

In April 1967, Laura was succeeded as the show’s supernatural Big Bad by vampire Barnabas Collins. Barnabas met Maggie in #221, and shortly after added her blood to his diet. She went through a period bedridden in her room at The Evans Cottage, helplessly weak during the day and aggressively determined to deliver herself to Barnabas at night. Eventually he took her to his home, the Old House, where he set about erasing her personality and replacing it with that of Josette.

Barnabas with the partially Josettified Maggie in #241.

Despite Miss Scott’s appearances as the ghost of Josette in #70 and #126, the show had always associated Josette primarily with Vicki up to that point. At times it seemed Barnabas believed Maggie really was Josette come back to life; he certainly expressed himself with conviction in #260, when he sat with Maggie in the prison cell in his basement to which he had confined her after she started trying to resist him and said “But you are Josette!” And David, who had been very chummy with the ghost of Josette, saw Maggie in the dress in #240 and #241 and took her for Josette, remarking that her face looked exactly the same as it always had. In those moments, the show was nodding to the 1932 film The Mummy, in which Boris Karloff plays the undead Imhotep, who recognizes in Helen Grosvenor (Zita Johanns) the reincarnation of his lost love Ankh-Esen-Amun (also Zita Johanns.)

At other times, it seems that any pretty girl will do for arnabas’ fiendish plan. So in #274, after Maggie escaped and he decided to repeat the experiment with Vicki as the subject, Barnabas tells his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie Loomis that if you “Take the right individual, place her under the proper conditions and circumstances, apply the required pressure… a new personality is created.”

While Barnabas was holding Maggie in his basement cell, the ghost of his little sister Sarah showed up and befriended Maggie. It was she who helped Maggie escape. Sarah’s appearances turned out to be at least as big a turning point in Dark Shadows’ development as anything else that had happened up to that point, since it showed that the beings who lurked in the supernatural back-world behind the show’s action are starting to emerge into the foreground. Eventually, they will come on in force.

Sarah visits Maggie in her cell.

Maggie was sent off to a psychiatric facility called Windcliff after her ordeal as Barnabas’ prisoner. She had lost much of her memory and regressed to an almost nonverbal state. Her doctor, Julia Hoffman, probed into her mind, and soon learned the truth. Julia then went to Collinwood, where it turned out that her true loyalty was not to Maggie at all. She had been working on a cure for vampirism, and wanted to attach herself to Barnabas. When Sarah magically released Maggie from Windcliff and led her back to Collinsport, Julia betrayed her patient completely by using her powers of hypnosis to erase her memory and protect her abuser.

In November 1967, the supernatural back-world switched places with the naturalistic fore-world when Vicki traveled back in time to 1795. There, she met Josette, played by Miss Scott. That casting confirmed that Maggie really was the reincarnation of Josette, as Helen Grosvenor really was the reincarnation of Ankh-Esen-Amun. Those who remember how bleak the show was in May and June of 1967 when Maggie was in Barnabas’ basement can’t help but squirm at the thought that his attempt to torture her into expressing Josette’s personality was motivated by anything other than his utter loathsomeness, yet here the show is telling us that, however unsound his methods may have been, he had a point.

Josette’s first appearance as a living being, in #370.

When the show returned to contemporary dress in March 1968, it was a Monster Mash with a cast drawn from the whole back-catalogue of Universal Studios horror pictures from the 1930s. Wicked witch Angelique struck Sam blind; later, he befriended Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Not knowing his own strength, Adam would accidentally kill Sam. The story moved so fast in those days that Maggie didn’t have much time to mourn her father.

Angelique defied her master, suave warlock Nicholas Blair. To punish her, Nicholas turned Angelique into a vampire. Angelique took Joe as a victim, wrecking his relationship with Maggie. In #599, Maggie had recovered her memory of her own time as Barnabas’ victim, and she saw Angelique biting Joe. She pleaded with Joe to run away with her, urging upon him the hope that there was still time for them to escape. Then, Nicholas got hold of them. He erased Maggie’s memory again, leaving her cheerful and Joe beyond help.

Shortly thereafter, Nicholas and Maggie went on some dates. Nicholas had plans for Adam that required a woman to risk her life. In #633/634, Maggie accompanied Nicholas to the basement of the Old House, where he was forcing Julia and Barnabas to do his bidding. Maggie calmly and cheerfully volunteered to serve the function Nicholas had in mind for her. She looked around the basement and mentioned that she had spent a great deal of time there, indicating a knowledge of everything that had happened to her in that place before. When Nicholas threatens to kill both Adam and Barnabas if he does not get his way, Julia tells Maggie to stop him. Maggie blandly asks why she should. Her willingness to risk her life seems to be the measure, not of her resignation to her fate, but of an indifference to human life so total as to include her own life. Maggie was under a spell then, and when Nicholas’ plans failed she became her usual self again. But in that scene, we catch the only glimpse we will ever get of Evil Maggie. It is thrilling.

Maggie working with Nicholas in #633/634.

Not long after Nicholas’ defeat, Vicki disappeared. Maggie took her place as the new governess at Collinwood just in time for a story that calls for a new governess, an adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. Unlike the famously unreliable narrator of that novella, Maggie is not an overpowering presence who would obviously a danger to the children in her charge even if she were right about the ghosts. Instead, she is a squish, a completely ineffective teacher whom David and his live-in playmate Amy Jennings easily wrap around their fingers.

That’s a long way from the hard-boiled dame in the short blonde wig. Nor is it what we would have expected of the plucky heroine who fought her way back from dependence on the vampire’s bite to escape Barnabas in June 1968. It works in the story, though, and we’ve all known people who are tough and efficient in one situation but who go to pieces in a different kind of situation. And if we remember #63, we know that even when she was at her most hard-bitten Maggie couldn’t keep from trembling at the thought of Collinwood, so longtime viewers can believe that Maggie would be unable to bring herself to discipline David, who is after all one of Liz’ principal heirs.

The “Haunting of Collinwood” segment ended with another trip back in time, in this case to 1897. In that period, Miss Scott played Rachel Drummond, a neurotic intellectual hired to act as governess to children Jamison and Nora Collins. Rachel had spent the first twenty-odd years of her life under the thumbs of the horrendous Rev’d Mr Gregory Trask and his equally unspeakable family, wife Minerva and daughter Charity. The show gave Miss Scott enough to work with that we could see why Rachel kept going back to the Trasks and submitting to further abuse from them.

Miss Scott’s performance as Rachel was a finely observed and persuasively realized study of the psychology of dependence, which is probably why the fans all hate it so much. Dark Shadows was such a slam-bang adventure show at that point that Rachel seemed to have wandered in from the Strindberg play in the theater down the street. But so far as I’m concerned, she anchors the whole 1897 segment. Every story in it depends on our dread of the Trasks. They are the villains in the part that is concerned with the danger that they will take control of Collinwood. The Collinses are such a mess that the Trasks have to be something special to make us see them as a step down. The other parts of the segment require that we enjoy watching or even root for villains who are so wicked that we might be expected to want them to be stopped immediately. It is because they are a relief from the Trasks that we can find sympathy for werewolf Quentin Collins, can be amused by sorcerer Count Petofi, and can be glad that Angelique makes friends with Julia and Barnabas. Rachel’s torment shows us just how much is at stake in the battle against the Trasks and makes those reactions possible.

Rachel died halfway into 1897. After a bit, Miss Scott returned to the cast as Kitty Soames, a young American woman who is the dowager Countess of Hampshire. Kitty schemes to marry stuffy Edward Collins for his money, while he wants to marry her for her money. As it happens, they don’t have a cent between them. This farcical situation is executed with charm and wit, and as Kitty Miss Scott proved that she could play a character who is not The Nicest Girl in Town.

Kitty’s story came to a bizarre end. It turned out that she really was the reincarnation of Josette, that Josette’s personality was lurking in her subconscious, and that she wanted to trade places with her and live again. Barnabas was all for this, and he and Kitty vanished from 1897 into Josette’s portrait. They came out in 1796, where Kitty was indeed an inchoate memory somewhere in the depths of Josette’s mind. Barnabas tried to prevent Josette dying, but succeeded only in diverting her from her leap off the cliff to a fatal dose of poison. Poison was a suitable way to end that story, since it left a bitter taste in the audience’s mouths.

When the show was back in a contemporary setting in February 1970, Josette’s ghost appeared one last time. In #948, she told Barnabas that it was over between them, and that he should get a new girlfriend. In March, it looked like he and Maggie were becoming an item. She was certainly interested in him. In #973, she asks the newlywed Carolyn how married life is treating her, and mentions that she has a dinner date with Barnabas. When Carolyn responds that “Oh, maybe you and Barnabas…,” with the implied conclusion “will get married soon, Maggie doesn’t contradict her. It is unclear how Barnabas can take Maggie to dinner- she doesn’t know that he’s a vampire, and if she looks up from her salad to see him munching on one of the girls at the docks she will probably catch on. But for a couple of weeks they are getting remarkably cozy.

In #980, Barnabas traveled to an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” In Parallel Time, Maggie’s counterpart is married to Quentin’s. Parallel Quentin is an abusive jerk, and he and Maggie Collins never have a single happy day together. This Maggie stands up for herself in #985. In one of the very best scenes Miss Scott ever played on Dark Shadows, she objects that Quentin insists on talking to her “like a child, and I am not a child, and I refuse to be treated like a child.” She walks out of the house and does not return until #1016.

Maggie Collins refuses to be treated like a child.

The six weeks of Maggie’s absence were the six weeks Miss Scott was in Tarrytown, New York for principal photography on the feature film House of Dark Shadows, in which she played the lead. When we see Maggie again, she is in her sister’s apartment in New York writing a letter to Quentin saying that it is time to formally end their marriage. She crumples that letter up before the phone rings and she learns that Quentin is gravely ill. Whether she would have written another draft making the same point, we never find out.

Maggie goes back to Collinwood, where Quentin dishes out more of the same stuff. This time she does allow herself to be treated like a child. It is a demoralizing thing to see. We don’t get enough of Maggie Collins’ backstory to give Miss Scott room to etch a portrait of the psychology of defeat like that which made Rachel such a triumph for her. Worst of all, Quentin is not in the position of the Trasks- we aren’t supposed to hate him. On the contrary, we can get invested in the story only to the extent that we like him. Seeing how he treats Maggie, that extent is zero.

In July 1970, Barnabas returned to the original continuity. After a few days we saw that Maggie was distraught that he wasn’t coming around anymore. Other characters tried to explain that he and Julia had learned of a terrible menace facing Collinwood and were busy trying to fight it, and they did eventually enlist Maggie in their efforts. But she is still disappointed that her romance with him has fizzled. Considering that Barnabas’ attempted Josettification of Maggie was the story that first made Dark Shadows a hit, and that it is retold in House of Dark Shadows, you don’t have to be a longtime fan for this attitude to make you queasy.

For the last couple of weeks, Maggie has been the victim of a vampire other than Barnabas. This turns out to be Roxanne Drew, counterpart of a woman Barnabas fell in love with in Parallel Time. Barnabas has taken male victims before, but this is the first time a female vampire has taken a female victim. They never showed Barnabas biting Willie or the luckless Dirk Wilkins, while they often lingered over him biting female victims and Angelique, in her vampire phase, biting male ones. The ABC network’s office of Standards and Practices was vigilantly on guard against any exploration of homoerotic imagery. We never see Roxanne bite Maggie, though the final image of #1104 does show Maggie with a startlingly raw look of longing as she approaches a veiled Roxanne.

She wants her disease.

We see Maggie for the last time today. She is in a car, being driven back to Windcliff by strangely dressed man Sebastian Shaw. Some speculate that this ending was a private joke on the part of executive producer Dan Curtis, who thought that Miss Scott was crazy to want to leave the show and move to Paris with her husband, photographer Ben Martin.

The last of Maggie.

Be that as it may, it is a nice touch that the final reference to Windcliff should be in connection with Maggie, for whom it was invented in the first place. Her stay there brought Julia onto the show, and Julia, for all her villainy, has for some time been the chief protagonist and audience identification character. Sending her there also leaves open the widest range of options for ways to bring her back. Maybe she will still be a patient there, as she was when she played a mad scene in #265 that was the single most frightening moment in all of Dark Shadows. Or maybe she will return to Collinwood, or maybe she will become a monster, or maybe something else will happen. Anything is possible.

Except that nothing is possible. The ratings are going down, Curtis and the writers are exhausted, and the public has moved on from the mood that made Dark Shadows one of the big fads of the late 1960s. The loss of Miss Scott, a performer who gave the show so much of its heart, is a nail in a coffin that was almost fully built already. House of Dark Shadows is in the theaters, and it is a big enough hit that MGM will greenlight another film in the franchise. But the series is on a one-way road to cancellation. In April 1971, Mrs Ben Martin will pick up an American paper from a newsstand in Paris and be astonished to read that Dark Shadows has broadcast its final episode.

In the years since, Miss Scott has been perhaps the most assiduous member of the original cast at keeping the fandom alive. No one has attended more of the conventions; she presided over the last two, held this year. Her publishing firm, Pomegranate Press, has put out many Dark Shadows-themed books, some of which she herself wrote. She, along with Jonathan Frid, David Selby, and Lara Parker, had a cameo in Tim Burton’s 2012 Dark Shadows film. She took roles in many of the audio drama continuations of the show produced by Big Finish, and she is the voice performer for the audiobooks of “Marilyn Ross'” Dark Shadows novels. If Dark Shadows was a projection of the personality of Dan Curtis while he was alive, in the last twenty years Kathryn Leigh Scott has been the first lady of the world of Dark Shadows, and has done more than anyone else to set the cheerful, welcoming tone of its fandom.

Episode 1105: Look for the H and follow the arrow

From March until July 1970, Dark Shadows was set in a universe other than the one where the action had taken place up to that point. In that universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time,” the counterparts of heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard and woebegone lowlife Willie Loomis were a married couple. That other Will Loomis was a bestselling but hard-drinking author who had squandered his earnings, and Carolyn Loomis was a poor relation of the master of the great house of Collinwood. They bickered incessantly, in an adaptation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? that, in the hands of John Karlen and Nancy Barrett, sometimes seemed to rival Edward Albee’s original.

We’ve been back in the original continuity for five weeks now. The Carolyn we have known from the first week of the show is back, but she is half mad, intermittently possessed by a ghost known as Leticia Faye. Willie is helping time travelers Barnabas Collins and Julia Hoffman in their efforts to battle two distinct supernatural menaces, one consisting of a group of ghosts including Leticia, the other a vampire whose identity they have not discerned but whom they know to be feeding on governess Maggie Evans. Carolyn and Willie have their first scene together today since the return from Parallel Time. It is infused with the energy Karlen and Miss Barrett brought to their versions of Albee’s George and Martha. Karlen has some scenes alone where he wanders around and shouts in the general direction of a microphone; those don’t work at all. But when he has Miss Barrett to anchor him, he’s terrific and so is she. When she addresses him as “Willie Loomis!,” we are, for one lovely moment, right back in Loomis House.

Carolyn gives Willie a riddle and tells her that unless he’s too stupid to solve it, it will lead him to the missing governess: “Where the north woods path is narrow, you’ll be at sixes and sevens, but look for the H and follow the arrow, that points to Maggie Evans.” That riddle reminds longtime viewers how far the show has come in the last three years. The last time Maggie was the victim of a vampire, it was the summer of 1967 and the ghoul was Barnabas. The ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah appeared to Maggie in the cell where he and his blood thrall Willie were keeping her and gave her a riddle which she solved, finding an escape route and avoiding the death Barnabas had planned for her. Now Maggie is helpless, and Willie and Barnabas are the good-ish guys. This riddle will enable Willie to come to her rescue.

Willie goes to the narrow part of the path through the north woods. He shines a flashlight directly into the camera, a sure sign that we are watching Dark Shadows. Willie finds himself in a graveyard. He notices a tombstone inscribed with the name of Harrow. Subtracting the H, what’s left is “arrow.” He keeps moving his eyes rightward beyond the edge of the stone and sees the door of a mausoleum. He goes inside and finds Maggie on the floor, beside an empty coffin. He infers that the empty coffin must be where the vampire rests during the day.

H + arrow = Harrow. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Willie takes Maggie back to her room at Collinwood and confers with Julia and Barnabas. Barnabas decrees that Willie and Julia should go to the mausoleum during the day and stake the vampire. When they do, they are uneasy to find that no one is guarding the coffin. The episode ends with Julia’s expression of shock when she sees inside the coffin.

Episode 1071: The incredible part of our story

Quentin Collins comes to the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood to deliver some bad news to his distant cousin, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. He was peering into the room in the east wing of the house through which an alternate universe is occasionally visible. He saw the room as it is in that other timeline, engulfed in smoke and occupied by a young woman calling the name “Barnabas.” Since Liz and Quentin’s distant cousin, Barnabas Collins, and Barnabas’ dear friend Julia Hoffman crossed over into the alternate universe some time ago and the aperture in the east wing is the only place where transits between the universes are known to be possible, Quentin proclaims to Liz that the “only conclusion” one can reach is that “we shall never see them again!” No sooner has he got those words out than the drawing room doors open to reveal Julia and Barnabas standing side by side, smiling happily, and saying “Elizabeth! Quentin! We’ve returned!”

One might think this would cure Quentin of the idea that he knows what the “only conclusion” is at which one might reasonably arrive, but no such luck. He tells Barnabas and Julia that today’s date is 3 August 1970. They say that was the date when they left the other universe, and that they then spent over a week in the year 1995, when they saw a bleak and horrifying future that resulted from a disaster that will occur later in 1970 unless they can somehow prevent it. Quentin says their experience in the future must have been an hallucination, because they can’t have come back to 3 August in one year from any date other than 3 August in another year. Julia and Barnabas share detailed recollections of their experience in the future, and have already met a living person in 1970 whom they saw for the first time as a ghost in 1995, but this argument shakes their confidence.

Quentin’s claim, nonsensical as it is to new viewers, actually does fit in with a notion the show has been developing since it first committed to being a supernatural thriller in late 1966 and early 1967. Since the laws of nature that science studies do not apply, they have to find other predictive models that will make it possible to build suspense. So they had well-meaning governess Victoria Winters figure out that women named Laura Murdoch incinerated their young sons named David at intervals of “exactly one hundred years!!!,” and therefore that Laura Murdoch Collins would soon present a mortal danger to her young son David Collins.

From that point on, the power of anniversaries has been a tremendously potent force in the metaphysics of Dark Shadows. Barnabas traveled back to the 1790s in #661 by going to a grave on the anniversary of its occupant’s death and shouting at the deceased for a while (shouting is also a potent metaphysical force.) Quentin himself first joined the cast of characters as the malevolent ghost of a man who died in 1897 and in 1968 and 1969 returned to haunt Collinwood, kill several people, and drive the survivors from the house. Barnabas traveled back to 1897 and bungled around until someone else changed history to prevent Quentin dying or even aging. On the anniversary of that change, the haunting broke, just in time to allow David to return from the dead. But when Quentin showed up as a living being late in 1969, everyone who had lived through the ten months of the haunting remembered it. So apparently the reality of Dark Shadows is a composite of all the various, mutually inconsistent timelines, and the consequences of the actions not taken are just as real as are those of the ones taken. The power of anniversaries is the thread that binds these unmatched events into a cosmic crazy quilt.

As the aperture between universes was a door to a room in the east wing, so the aperture from 1995 to 1970 was a door inside a room in the west wing. Barnabas and Julia were trapped in a mysterious playroom there when the ghost of a blonde teenager known to them as Carrie appeared, beckoned to them, and walked through the wall. A moment later, a door materialized in the spot through which Carrie had exited. Julia and Barnabas went through the door and found themselves on a staircase. They followed the staircase to another door. It was the door through which they had entered the playroom, but the corridor outside was in good repair, not in ruins as it was in 1995. They saw a girl there who appeared to be Carrie, though she was wearing different clothes, was alive, and demanded to know who they were.

Barnabas and Julia gave the girl their thanks for her help, and she repeated that she had no idea who they were or what they were talking about. She said that she was not named Carrie, but Hallie, Hallie Stokes, niece of Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes. She told them Liz was in the drawing room, Liz’ brother Roger was in Europe, and the year was 1970.

Later, Julia questions Hallie about some names and phrases she heard in 1995. Grayson Hall delivers all of these questions as if she were playing a Gestapo interrogator in a very bad World War Two movie. Even when Hallie says it is her bedtime, Hall enunciates the lines “All right, Hallie. Good night” while standing rigidly still and peering at the girl from under a single ruffled eyelid, as if the next words were going to be “Dream uff ze Fazzerlahnt, und uff ze famlee you shtill haff zere!”

Hallie is terrified of Julia, a perfectly natural reaction which Grayson Hall seems to think she needed to explain by turning into a villain from Hogan’s Heroes. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The script calls for Hallie to hear something sinister in Julia’s voice, and Hall was an extraordinarily accomplished actress who should easily have been able to make us understand why a friendly series of questions might sound that way to a nervous person. This exaggerated performance cannot be explained as an ordinary failure. She also failed atypically last week when required to show that Julia was secretly under the control of the evil spirit. There was zero subtlety in her performance, leaving it inexplicable that Barnabas didn’t instantly catch on. Those episodes, like this one, were directed by Henry Kaplan, a hack. Kaplan’s idea of working with actors involved poking them with a stick and tying them up with gaffer tape. Hall’s misfires may not have been a protest against Kaplan’s brutishness and incompetence, but he certainly did not do anything to help her correct them.

When Julia and Barnabas left for the alternate universe, Quentin was still living somewhere in the village of Collinsport; it was implied Julia was paying his rent. At some point since, he has relocated to the great house. We see today that he has moved back into his old room. This is as hilarious for longtime viewers as was the instant refutation of Quentin’s claim that the only logical conclusion from the available facts is that they will never see Barnabas and Julia again. During the 1968-1969 “Haunting of Collinwood” segment, Quentin’s room served the same function the mysterious playroom served in the excursion to 1995 and in this incipient Re-Haunting of Collinwood. It was a place known at first only to the children, who visited it, fell under the power of the ghosts of its former occupants, and thereby became the instruments of general destruction. But he’s even brought his old stuff with him, including his haunted phonograph.

When we got to know Quentin as a living being during the eight months the show was set primarily in 1897, we saw that he had the same vices and the same appeal Roger had when he was introduced as a villain at the beginning of the series. Roger was eventually nerfed into a harmless snob who made sarcastic remarks and sipped brandy, and then reinvented again as an upright family man. Throughout those personality shifts, Roger continued to be one of the “Logical Explanation People.” No matter what he saw or experienced, he would reject any supernatural account and insist “There must be a logical explanation!” Quentin has followed Roger’s character progression to the point where he, a former student of black magic who conjured up demons from a fireplace, who turned into a zombie the first time he died and into a werewolf after he was resurrected, who died again and became a ghost, whose second death was then averted when he became half of a magical dyad including an enchanted oil painting, and who is now a hundred years old even though to all outward appearances he is about 30, is insisting that There Must Be a Logical Explanation.

As if that were not enough, when we see Quentin in his room he is wearing a dressing gown, an article of attire Roger favored in his first months on the show. Roger drifted to the margins of the action as he lost his capacity for villainy; he made his final appearance in #979. The show has had so much difficulty figuring out what to do with Quentin since it returned from 1897 that we may well fear he is headed for the same fate, and these resonances do nothing to assuage that fear.

Hallie comes in to see Quentin. She asks if Barnabas and Julia are good people. He hesitates to answer. He knows that Barnabas is a vampire and Julia is a mad scientist. Nonetheless, they are his friends, and he believes that they are motivated by a sincere desire to prevent the disasters they think they have foreseen. So he might answer truthfully by saying that they are locked in a three-way tie with him for the title of Most Dangerous Person You Have Ever Met, but that he likes them, and so long as Barnabas doesn’t start looking at her neck and Julia doesn’t try to strap her to a table and hook her up to an apparatus including Tesla coils she will probably survive her encounter with them. But he’s more interested in reassuring her than he is in adhering to strict literal accuracy, and so he says “Now look, now you listen to me. Barnabas and Julia are very fine people, and you don’t have to be afraid of them or of anything else. Now you believe that.” None of the other actors is having a good day at the office with this episode, but David Selby is on top form, and he delivers this little speech with a note of urgency that makes him sound like he is telling the truth, but with a panicked flicker in his eyes that makes it clear he is desperate for Hallie to accept a lie that might keep Julia and Barnabas from murdering her.

Hallie tells Quentin that she saw Barnabas and Julia emerge from a door in the west wing. He calls Barnabas to his room and tells him that since the aperture to the other universe is in the east wing, that causes Quentin to think there might be something to their story after all. Barnabas leads him to the door, and says that the playroom was behind it in 1995. Quentin says that there is no playroom there and never has been. Barnabas himself knew that full well when first he opened the door and saw the room in 1995, but for some reason is shocked today when sees that it is a linen closet. Quentin says that there cannot possibly ever be a playroom there, since the other wall is to the outside. Evidently it is perfectly in order for an entire alternate universe to intermittently fit into a room in the east wing, but the west wing doesn’t swing that way.

In his post about the episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn complains about Kathleen Cody’s performance as Hallie, claiming that she renders the next several weeks of the show unwatchable. I agree that in adopting a constant tone of freaked-out disbelief, Miss Cody made an acting choice that left her nowhere to go. If you’re already at the limit of the amount of bizarreness you can accept in your life, that’s it for you as a character on Dark Shadows.

I can see why Miss Cody thought that was the only way to go, though. This is her first substantive appearance on the show, and Quentin warns Barnabas not to tell anything disturbing to Hallie, because “She’s a very sensitive child… She frightens quite easily.” Everything else in the script reinforces the idea that Hallie is on the brink of a panic attack, so that’s how she plays it today. That’s the angle subsequent scripts are going to stick with, so I can see that Miss Cody felt she had no choice but to stay in the corner she had painted herself into.

When actors find themselves in a jam like that, a director might be expected to offer some kind of helpful guidance. That wasn’t going to happen with Henry Kaplan at the helm, and even principal director Lela Swift, an outstanding visual artist, was not an enthusiastic director of actors. John Karlen said that the only direction Lela Swift ever gave him was the single word “Go!” So once an actor took a wrong turn on Dark Shadows, they could find themselves trapped in a dead end. Many of the cast members who joined the show without much experience have spoken with gratitude about guidance they received from their veteran cast-mates; Karlen, Joan Bennett, Jonathan Frid, Clarice Blackburn, and Humbert Allen Astredo are most often mentioned as gifted teachers of acting. The only director any of the actors mentioned as a source of productive suggestions was John Sedwick, who left the show in June 1968. So unless Miss Cody could get some help from one of her cast-mates, it was very likely that her initial mistakes would doom her whole performance.

Episode 1070: Never without you

The sun has set, and vampire Barnabas Collins is opening the lid of his coffin in the basement of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Suddenly a cross is thrust in his face. He recoils from it, crying in pain and becoming immobile. The cross is wielded by the sheriff of Collinsport, who announces “I know all about you, Barnabas Collins!”

Before the sheriff can take matters any further, a teenage girl appears nearby. Shocked to see her, he reels away from the coffin. He jabbers at her, saying that he recognizes her and pleading with her not to come closer. Barnabas grabs him from behind and strangles him to death.

Barnabas didn’t have anything against the sheriff, but can’t deny that it feels good to use the old strangling muscles again. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas goes upstairs and finds his best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. He tells Julia that the sheriff’s gun was loaded with silver bullets, and that only the manifestation of the ghost of Carrie prevented his destruction. The police know about him, and more officers will be coming any time. Julia admits that she told the sheriff about Barnabas. Shocked, he says “You betrayed me?” He has said these words many times, always as a prelude to extreme violence. Julia braces herself, expecting the same. But to her amazement, Barnabas is gentle and understanding. He realizes she is under the sway of an evil ghost named Gerard. She says that she will betray Barnabas again and again, and urges him to leave without her. He says he will never do that. She embraces him, weeping, and he comforts her. For most people, a day that begins with the murder of a policeman is a day when nothing goes well, but Barnabas is not like most people. This is far and away the most mature behavior we have ever seen on his part.

The year is 1995; Barnabas and Julia have come unstuck in time and found themselves at Collinwood 25 years after a mysterious disaster wrecked the great house on the estate, ruined its inhabitants, and left Gerard in charge. They believe they can travel back to 1970 and prevent the disaster from ever occurring, if only they can find out what it was. Barnabas’ distant cousin Carolyn left him a note yesterday consisting of six cryptic phrases which he took to be clues, but Gerard killed Carolyn before Barnabas could ask her to explain them.

Barnabas has brought occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes to the Old House. We find Stokes exclaiming to Barnabas “You killed the sheriff?” Barnabas confirms, “Yes, I killed him.” Stokes replies, “Everyone’s going mad. It’s the effect of this place. I’m not surprised at your terrible story. Horrified, not surprised.” One wonders what the story was that Julia and Barnabas told. Stokes’ role in the parts of the show set in contemporary times was always limited, because he is too decent and law-abiding to be a party to the continued existence of a vampire. He could never be allowed to learn the truth about Barnabas. He stays in the room, chatting amiably with Barnabas and Julia, so clearly they haven’t told him now, either. Perhaps they just told him that the sheriff was going to shoot Barnabas, and let him assume that the reason was that Gerard was making him do it.

Be that as it may, Stokes is still aware of the situation. “Do you realize that I will be implicated in all this if the police come here?” he asks. They say that they do, but that they desperately need him to make a third for a séance. He dismisses as hopelessly naive the idea that Gerard would allow a séance to succeed, but Barnabas says that Gerard may not have the power to prevent Carolyn’s spirit coming through and telling them what her note meant. The idea of one spirit trying to block another from emerging out of the supernatural back-world and speaking at a séance harks back to the very first séance on Dark Shadows, in #170 and #171, when undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins used her powers to impede the spirit of the gracious Josette from warning the company about her. Stokes gives in and agrees to participate; Julia, self-conscious because of her compromised position, is reluctant, but Barnabas proclaims that if Carolyn is to speak it will be through her.*

The séance begins. Julia goes into the trance, and starts speaking in what appears to be Carolyn’s voice. If this is Grayson Hall’s Nancy Barrett imitation, it is terrible. Mrs Acilius and I laughed out loud at it. But the voice does not give any useful information, and Julia is under Gerard’s power, so it is also possible she is faking the trance to throw Barnabas off. In that case, it is Julia’s Carolyn imitation, and it reminds us of the ups and downs in the relationship between those two characters.

When the séance is over, Stokes says he feels a presence. He rises from the table, drifts towards the window, and sees Gerard watching him from outside. Gerard touches the pane. Stokes staggers back, descends into a chair, and becomes still. Barnabas finds that he is dead. He looks up and realizes that Julia has fled the house.

Julia has gone to the great house. She is in a mysterious playroom with Gerard. Gerard gives her a dagger. She asks if she “must.” She is reluctant, but finally works herself up to joy as she says that she always knew it would come to this, that now she will be with Gerard as he wants her. She lifts the dagger to stab herself in the heart.

Barnabas enters. He confronts Gerard. As the two beings from beyond the grave stare each other down, Julia drops the dagger. Barnabas tells Gerard he cannot stop them leaving. Gerard looks offended at this. He touches Julia, who collapses. She is not dead, but she and Barnabas fear she is dying. Gerard leaves the room and takes his time locking the door from the outside.

Carrie’s ghost materializes to Julia and Barnabas. She beckons to them, then walks out through the wall. They stare at the wall, and a door appears. They pass through the door, and find themselves on a staircase. They follow the staircase, and come to another door. They exit in the same corridor outside the playroom; they have gone in a circle. In space, anyway- the time appears to be different. The corridor is in severe decay in 1995, but is in good repair now. And they see a girl who looks exactly like Carrie, but is alive. She asks them who they are.

This is the final episode set in 1995. It is also the last we will see of Don Crabtree. Previous sheriffs of Collinsport have been ridiculously ineffective. Crabtree’s sheriff doesn’t chalk up many successes either, but no one else meets with anything but failure in these two weeks. Every death and defeat we see reinforces the sense that the evil which Gerard represents is overwhelming. As the penultimate victim of the 1995 curse, the sheriff is second only to Stokes as someone who would have been able to make a positive difference, if anyone could have, and Crabtree makes us believe that he belongs in that position.

*In the main continuity of Dark Shadows, spirits at séances always speak through a medium of the same sex as themselves. In the séance in #990, when the show was set in a mirror universe, the spirit chose a medium of the opposite sex.

Episode 1064: There are only intruders

A disruption in the very nature of time and space has thrust vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman into the year 1995, where the great house of Collinwood is in ruins and everyone is annoyed with them.

Yesterday, Julia and Barnabas were poking around inside the great house against the express instructions of its owner, Carolyn Fredericks, as conveyed earlier in the evening by the sheriff when he arrested them for trespassing. A heavy bust fell from the railing on the top of the foyer stairs, narrowly missing Julia. She and Barnabas fled the house. They looked back, and saw a young man in nineteenth century garb glaring at them from a window.

Today, Barnabas and Julia are in the parlor of the Old House on the estate. She tells him that when she saw the man in the window she was overcome by a powerful sensation. “It was the very essence of evil! I felt evil all around me. I was trapped by it!” Regular viewers may have thought Julia would be used to that by now, but apparently not. “It made me aware of something deep inside me that I don’t even understand — as though, with that one look, he could concentrate every grain of evil I have in my nature! Make it grow, and grow…” She asks Barnabas if he felt the same thing, and he says he didn’t, not at all. He concedes that he is an inhuman abomination from beyond the grave, so maybe he’s immune to that kind of thing.

Meanwhile, Carolyn is at home in the old shack by Finley’s Cove, accompanied by Mrs Johnson, who was the housekeeper at Collinwood in the late 1960s. Carolyn is brushing her hair and smiling. She reminisces about when she was a little girl and Mrs Johnson used to brush her hair. Mrs Johnson is not shy then or later about contradicting anything Carolyn says that is not so, but does not deny that she did that. So the audience is supposed to believe it. Some say this is a retcon, since Mrs Johnson did not join the staff at Collinwood until 1966, when Carolyn was fully grown. But in a comment on Danny Horn’s post about the episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day, I expounded a theory as to how it might be true:

In the early episodes, Carolyn talks about having gone to school in town. How did she get there?

She can’t have walked; it was miles away, much of it along a winding road with several blind curves. Her mother never left the grounds during those years, she couldn’t have driven her. Roger was living in Augusta with Laura.

(I should expand on this point. Roger says that when Carolyn was born, he was away at boarding school. So he would still have been in college when his niece first became a pupil at Collinsport Elementary. He then busied himself squandering his inheritance, a process which included the ten years between his marriage to Laura and his return to Collinwood. So that doesn’t leave any time for him to have looked after his “Kitten” when she was little.)

The only servant was Matthew. Matthew and Carolyn don’t seem at all close; it doesn’t seem likely that he drove her to school every morning. If a school bus came up the hill to Collinwood day after day, the kids who rode it couldn’t have maintained the attitude Carolyn describes, whispering behind her back about her living with the witch in the haunted house. Sooner or later they’d have started talking to her face to face about it.

Carolyn also talks about Bill Malloy being more like a father to her than any other man, and the two of them do have a cozy relationship. Carolyn is also very quick to fall in with Mrs Johnson when Burke pitches the idea of her joining the household staff at Collinwood. So I think we have to conclude that Bill Malloy and his housekeeper were in charge of getting Carolyn to school in the mornings. Malloy was on the fishing boats, so that would require an early start to the day. There were probably many days when little Carolyn was still in her pajamas when she got to the Malloy house. On those days, Mrs Johnson brushed her hair while the water came to a boil for breakfast.

Comment left by “Acilius,” 27 January 2021, on Danny Horn, “Episode 1064: Here Comes the Hotstepper,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 20 August 2017.

Carolyn seems to be a crazy lady these days. Yesterday, we saw that much of this is an act, but in her scene with Mrs Johnson we see that it is an act she puts on even when she is alone with someone she trusts. It allows her to smile and laugh and be happy even when she is surrounded by the residue of an unimaginable catastrophe.

Carolyn tells Mrs Johnson that she will be going to the great house of Collinwood to get ready to host a picnic at the gazebo, which she pronounces “ga-ZAY-bo” in a bit of Collinsport English that we’ve been hearing intermittently since Lara Parker invented it in the summer of 1968. Mrs Johnson reacts with horror, saying that no one can go to the devil-haunted wreckage of Collinwood, but Carolyn laughs off her objections. Carolyn shows a picture of a picnic they had at the ga-ZAY-bo in 1970, the last year Collinwood was habitable. Mrs Johnson spots a figure in the background and declares that was “the first time we saw him.” Carolyn gets upset and tears up the picture.

Barnabas had insisted to Julia that the man they saw at the window may not be the only supernatural entity operating within the great house, and Carolyn seems to confirm that he is right. She does not want to hear Mrs Johnson referring to him, nor does she want to have a picture of him. But she happily says that she is going to the great house tonight with a present, because it is his birthday. Apparently him and his refer to different beings, each of which inheres in the haunting. One wonders how much of supernaturalism would dissolve if people would just use proper names instead of pronouns.

Julia and Barnabas barge into Carolyn’s house. Carolyn tells them to get out, which they refuse to do. They badger her with the story of what happened when they were illegally roaming around in her other house, and Mrs Johnson runs out. Eventually Carolyn resumes her crazy lady demeanor. Barnabas and Julia give up and leave, and for a moment we wonder if they are on their way to let themselves into some other property of Carolyn’s.

Julia and Barnabas go back to the Old House. They find that Mrs Johnson is waiting for them there. They tell her that they are time travelers, and that if she will tell them what happened they might be able to go back and prevent it. She is dubious about this claim, but starts telling the story anyway. She casts her mind back to the summer of 1970. “It all began when the days were so beautiful, you couldn’t help but be happy. There was a spirit of joy at Collinwood; there was a feeling that hadn’t been there in a long time. There was so much love among all of us at that time…” This would be the period that began immediately after Barnabas and Julia left.

Mrs Johnson says that all of the beauty and joy and love and other things you might experience when you don’t have a vampire and a mad scientist around your estate came to an end one quiet night. She seems to be on the point of saying something important when she looks at the window of the parlor and sees the glaring young man. She breaks off, screams that she won’t tell, and runs out into the night. Julia tells Barnabas she felt the evil presence, and that the ghost was there. They go out to look for Mrs Johnson.

The ghost catches up to Mrs Johnson first. He touches her shoulder, and she dies. When Barnabas and Julia find Mrs Johnson, she is sitting on the ground, her back against a tree, her eyes open. This was the same posture in which Clarice Blackburn’s character Abigail Collins was found when we saw her corpse in #432. That image was a brief shocker in the last couple of seconds of the episode; this time the camera zooms in on Blackburn’s face and pans across it, allowing her to show that an outstanding actress can give a powerful performance even when she is altogether motionless.

Carolyn happens by. Julia and Barnabas hide. Carolyn thinks Mrs Johnson is alive and chatters to her. As the truth begins to dawn, Carolyn’s alarm mounts. Finally Barnabas and Julia emerge from the shadows. Carolyn accuses them of killing Mrs Johnson. They deny their guilt. Carolyn is unconvinced, and indeed we cannot help but think that since Mrs Johnson lived through the 25 years of their absence and turned up dead so shortly after they returned, Julia and Barnabas cannot be exactly innocent.

Barnabas and Julia follow Carolyn into the great house. Julia wonders what Mrs Johnson could have meant by “the children’s old room.” This is a blooper on Grayson Hall’s part- Mrs Johnson mentioned “the room the children called The Playroom.” Julia and Barnabas hear music playing, and follow it to a room upstairs. Barnabas looks at the doorway and remarks that the room was never there when he knew the house. The shot is framed at such a severe Dutch angle that we can tell something isn’t on the level.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

They hear Carolyn inside, talking and laughing with at least one other person. Since their whole philosophy of life now seems to be making themselves as obnoxious as possible to Carolyn, they let themselves in.

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

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

This part of the place is in fairly good shape.

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

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

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

Barnabas is appalled at Julia’s interruption.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 1059: Who will ever light this light?

Sixteen weeks ago Dark Shadows crossed over to a different universe than the one where the first 196 weeks of the action took place. The show insists on calling this segment “Parallel Time.”

The only villain left standing in this next-to-last installment of “Parallel Time” is the evil Tim Stokes, whom we did not see and barely heard of until the tenth week of the segment, and who did not start acting on his own initiative until the last few days. Thayer David does a great job playing Stokes, and the character evokes his earlier parts in interesting ways. But he is obviously a last-minute addition meant to keep the story going while they take care of some loose ends they were in too much of a hurry to tie up in a natural way.

Desperate to get vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman out of Parallel Time, writer Gordon Russell resorts to what Roger Ebert used to call an “Idiot Plot,” a series of events that can take place if and only if every character is dumber than any member of the audience.

Barnabas has fallen in love with and bitten a non-character named Roxanne, who, in lieu of a personality, has psychic powers. Yesterday Barnabas gave Roxanne a scarf that belonged to Julia’s counterpart in this universe, and Roxanne told him its owner was dead. Only today, when Maggie speaks the name of that other Julia Hoffman with revulsion, does Barnabas remember that there are two of them, and that the scarf belonged to the one whom he already knew to be dead.

Barnabas and Roxanne know that Stokes is on the loose and that he has vowed to take revenge on everyone. So she walks home alone, and finds Stokes waiting for her there. He finds Barnabas’ bite marks on her neck, and realizes that he is a vampire. Stokes decides he must lock Roxanne up. A man of his evil ways must know of any number of places where he could lock Roxanne up, many of which would take Barnabas a long time to find, but he choose to stick her in her closet. Minutes after his departure, Barnabas comes to the house and lets her out.

Barnabas takes Roxanne back to the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, where Maggie has the suitcase Julia brought with her when she came to this universe five weeks ago. Roxanne takes a piece of costume jewelry and confirms that its owner is alive. She leads them to the basement of the great house on the estate. They hear Julia weeping in the dungeon behind a bookcase where Angelique trapped her a few days before her own destruction. This weeping sound will bring back memories for longtime viewers. In the first months of the show, several characters heard the sound of a woman weeping behind a wall in the basement of the great house, a sound strongly implied to be of ghostly origin. They eventually gave that sound an explanation that was neither supernatural nor consistent with what we had seen up to that point, and then never mentioned it again. But it’s good to be reminded of it regardless.

Barnabas, Roxanne, and Maggie eventually find Julia and take her back to the Old House, where they give her a large brandy. Barnabas, Maggie, and Julia then go to the police station, leaving Roxanne alone in the house so that Stokes can get at her. She threatens him with a dagger, and he withdraws. Maggie then goes from the police station to the great house by herself so that Stokes can grab her.

A joyous reunion. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 1058: Dead or alive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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