We open in the woods on the estate of Collinwood, where a young woman in heavy makeup and bright clothing is crying. Another woman in even heavier makeup and even brighter clothing approaches and asks her what is wrong. The first woman says that she had a vision which told her that the rakish Quentin Collins will die of stab wounds twelve days from now, on 10 September 1897.
The first woman used to be Charity Trask, the miserably repressed daughter of the evil Gregory Trask. She is now possessed by the spirit of Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye. Charity knew that Quentin was a werewolf, and wanted nothing to do with him. Evidently Pansy did not acquire that knowledge when she took up residence in Charity’s body, and has decided that she will marry Quentin. Quentin has no interest in either Charity or Pansy, and already has two other fiancées, one of whom he loves, at least after his fashion, and the other of whom is sealed to him by a pact with the Devil. Yesterday Charity/ Pansy learned of the second engagement, and tried to kill Quentin to prevent it coming about; week before last, she tried to end the first engagement by killing the fiancée. Pansy had her faults, but she wasn’t inclined to physical violence. That part seems to be Charity’s contribution to the symbiont.
The other woman is broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi. Magda was the one who made Quentin a werewolf in the first place. She cursed him for murdering his wife Jenny, who was her sister. It was only after she had placed the curse that Magda learned that Jenny had given birth to Quentin’s twin children, a boy and a girl. Since the curse is hereditary, Magda is now desperate to lift it, and she and Quentin have become allies.
Some time ago, we learned that if Quentin dies, there will be no hope of lifting the curse. So Magda is terrified when Charity/ Pansy tells her of her vision of Quentin’s death. She takes her back home to the great house on the estate, where her father and Quentin are bickering while they recap yesterday’s story. Trask tries to deny that Charity/ Pansy is insane or that she is capable of killing, but when she enters and announces that she will murder the first person who comes between her and Quentin he has to admit that it might be time to find a place for her in residential care.
We turn our attention to the upstairs of the great house. We see Charity/ Pansy in bed, with Magda sitting in a chair beside. The gramophone is playing a record of Pansy Faye’s theme song. Regular viewers will wonder where Charity/ Pansy could possibly have found such a thing. Charity never met the living Pansy, who was killed the very evening she arrived at Collinwood. Perhaps Pansy’s fiancé, the childlike Carl Collins, bought the record when he met Pansy in Atlantic City and brought it back with him. Carl himself was killed well before the possession began, but perhaps Charity or Charity/ Pansy found it among Carl’s effects.
Charity asks Magda if she likes the tune. “I only like Gypsy music,” she replies. Charity/ Pansy and Quentin both reiterate their theme songs endlessly, but few other characters in the 1897 segment have so much as a dedicated entrance cue. This line of Magda’s makes us wonder what the show might have been like if they had given every major character a theme song.
Trask has a crisis in the drawing room. He hears a ghostly voice warning him that there will be another killing soon. He starts shouting the name “Minerva!” and pleading for mercy. First time viewers might not know what to make of this. Those who have been with the show for a while know that Minerva was Trask’s wife and Charity’s mother, and that he instigated a plot to murder her so that he could marry wealthy spinster Judith Collins and become master of Collinwood. When the voice starts to talk about “the beast that walks like a man,” Trask says “You’re… not Minerva?” Jerry Lacy is an expert comic actor, and his delivery of that line is laugh-out-loud funny.
The same ghost appears visibly to Quentin in his room. He recognizes it as that of Tessie Kincaid, a woman he killed in a recent fit of lycanthropy. He knows that she is appearing to him because tonight there will be a full Moon.
Magda enters and finds Quentin writing a suicide note. She tells him he must not kill himself. She chains him to a post in his room and stands by with a pistol. Trask enters and finds them in this compromising position. Mrs Acilius and I laughed as we imagined how Magda and Quentin might have claimed they were planning to spend the evening.
But there is no point in lying to Trask. Between what Tessie’s ghost told him and what he overheard while eavesdropping on a conversation Quentin and Magda had earlier in the drawing room, he has figured out Quentin’s problem. He takes the gun from Magda and recognizes the bullets with which it is loaded as silver. He announces that he will wait until the Moon rises and see what happens.
Tessie’s turn today marks Deborah Loomis’ third and final appearance on Dark Shadows. Miss Loomis didn’t get to do very much, but she made the most of all of it, and I wish we had seen more of her.
Count Petofi, 150 year old sorcerer, is holding time-traveling vampire Barnabas Collins prisoner. Barnabas’ distant cousin, rakish libertine Quentin Collins, is convinced that only Barnabas can free him of the curse that has made him a werewolf and condemned any male descendants he may have to the same fate. Petofi is afraid of the Rroma people, a group of whom are in the area, and Quentin hits on a plan to use this fear to his advantage. He will tell Petofi that he has a confederate who will tell the Rroma where he is unless he releases Barnabas by 12:45 AM.
In fact, Quentin has enlisted his girlfriend, maidservant Beth, to carry this message to the Rroma camp. When Petofi reminds Quentin that his magical powers make it very easy for him both to compel Quentin to tell him who the messenger is and to stop any messenger once he knows her name, Quentin says there is no need to compel him to say the name. He claims that it is wicked witch Angelique.
As soon as Quentin tells this lie, we wonder why he hadn’t thought of Angelique sooner. Angelique has intervened to rescue Barnabas before, and she and Quentin are in touch. Petofi’s powers may be greater than hers, but it would take him more time to outfight her than it would for her to show the Rroma the way to his hiding place.
Petofi insists Quentin drink with him, and Quentin is too civilized to refuse. This is mirrored back at Collinwood. The repressed Charity Trask has lost her personality and became a vessel for the spirit of Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye. Charity/ Pansy insists that Beth drink with her.
While Petofi does not tamper with Quentin’s drink, Charity/ Pansy puts something in Beth’s that knocks her out. Charity/ Pansy wants Quentin for herself. She has thought of killing Beth, and knows Quentin will be upset with Beth if she disappoints him. That leaves us in suspense as to whether she murdered Beth or merely kept her from running her errand.
This diptych emphasizes Petofi’s power and Charity/ Pansy’s unpredictability. Quentin need not fear Petofi will poison him, because there are any number of more elegant ways he could kill him if he wished to do so. As another sorcerer said of himself in #528, he is much too talented to spend his time drugging drinks. But Beth should fear Charity/ Pansy, because she is still connected to the world of the living only uncertainly, and there is no telling what she might do to find her footing.
For some time after the Rev’d Mr Gregory Trask first appeared in #725, he projected an intense evil that overshadowed everything around him. Trask’s daughter Charity debuted in #727. Charity was Trask’s enforcer, and was herself so intensely joyless that her mere presence could drain the life out of anyone she disapproved of. The Trasks are triumphs of acting by Jerry Lacy and Nancy Barrett, but they are so intense they threaten to overload the show. So even as devoted a fan as my wife, Mrs Acilius, chose to skip many of the Trask-driven episodes on this watch-through.
In #771, inveterate prankster Carl Collins brought Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye home to the estate of Collinwood. At that point, Dark Shadows was quite somber; when Pansy starts singing and dancing, she seems to have wandered in from another universe altogether. Pansy bills herself as a mentalist; when she tries to do her act at Collinwood, an actual message from the supernatural interrupts her, much to her astonishment.
Pansy was killed by a vampire named Dirk Wilkins the very night she arrived at Collinwood, leading us to assume that the note of brightness she represented was at an end. But strangely, she has now returned. Charity and Pansy never met; when Carl was looking for Pansy in #772, he asked Charity if she had seen her, and the sheer idea of the two of them sharing a scene was enough to raise a chuckle. But now they share more than that. Sorcerer Count Petofi has cast a spell causing Pansy’s spirit to take up residence in Charity’s body. Now, Charity’s personality seems to have faded away altogether, and all that’s left is Pansy.
Charity/ Pansy has a scene with Trask that blasts away the excessive tension he once introduced. He keeps demanding that she behave as he is used to seeing Charity behave, and she keeps singing, dancing, and making fun of him. Miss Barrett and Mr Lacy are both highly accomplished comic actors, and this scene is among their finest achievements in that field.
It also includes a serious moment that further confirms Charity really is channeling Pansy, not acting out some kind of delusion. At one point she becomes very still and prophesies the circumstances of Trask’s death. As she completes this pronouncement, she says that it is different now when she speaks of things unseen. It used to be a game, but now she hears another voice and reports what it tells her. This picks up on Pansy’s astonishment at her own success in #771, something Charity could not possibly have known about.
In #797, the ghost of Rroma maiden Julianka appeared and placed a curse on her fellow grievous ethnic stereotype, Magda Rákóczi. Julianka blamed Magda for her death, and decreed that everyone Magda loved would die. Today, Magda is trying to prevent Julianka’s curse from taking the life of her desperately ill infant niece Lenore, daughter of her late sister Jenny. Magda goes to Lenore’s crib in company with Lenore’s father, Quentin Collins. Magda and Quentin try to conjure up Julianka’s ghost to plead for Lenore’s life, but instead they get the ghost of another Rroma woman- Jenny.
Jenny assumes physical form. She picks up Lenore and sings the lullaby “All the Pretty Little Horses.” We’ve heard Jenny sing this almost every time she has been on the show. It appears to be the only song she knows. For his part, Quentin has a phonograph and only one record, which he plays obsessively over and over. When they lived together, their home must have been a pretty grim place, playlist-wise.
Jenny lifts Lenore’s illness, and says that if Quentin looks into his heart he will know what he must do to ensure that Lenore has a bright future. She vanishes, and Quentin mutters dismissively at the idea that his heart will be a source of useful information.
Later, Quentin will have a dream while sleeping in the drawing room at the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Jenny visits and tells him that he must have nothing to do with Lenore and that she must grow up far from Collinwood. So far, dream sequences on Dark Shadows have always represented visits from the supernatural, but this one might be an exception. Jenny did say that the information Quentin needed to help Lenore was already in his heart. He is clearly not the stuff of which good fathers are made, and as Jenny explicitly says in the dream no one has ever been happy at Collinwood. So the advice she gives does seem to be correct. Perhaps this is just Quentin’s own knowledge taking a shape he can recognize.
Quentin goes on dreaming that his brother Edward is choking him. He wakes up to find that Edward is in fact choking him. This might seem like a prophetic dream, but it too might just be a natural expression of Quentin’s own unprocessed knowledge. Edward, because of a magic spell not directly connected with today’s events, is under the mistaken impression that he is a valet formerly in the service of the Earl of Hampshire. Quentin has followed the Collinses’ long-established protocol for dealing with mentally ill family members, and locked Edward up in the room on top of the tower in the great house. He knows this makes Edward miserable, and it is reasonable to suppose that he would expect Edward to express anger about it. Strangulation is Quentin’s own preferred method of expressing anger, especially towards members of his immediate family, so it can’t have been hard for him to see that coming.
Edward’s motivation is not as simple as Quentin’s would be if their positions were reversed. The evil Gregory Trask has been visiting Edward in the tower room, and has told him that Quentin is determined to keep him imprisoned in that room forever. He asks him to kill Quentin. Edward apparently has decided to comply.
Earlier in the episode, Edward had been more punctilious about cooperating with Trask. Trask presented him with a document to sign, promising that by signing it he would secure his freedom. Edward read the document, even after Trask very loudly insisted that it was unnecessary to do so. When Edward saw that it involved making Trask guardian of his son, Edward protested that he had no son. Trask said that this did not matter, but Edward would not be moved. Edward later tells Quentin about this encounter.
The tower room is a re-dress of the set used as the bedroom of strange and troubled boy David Collins in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s. Today it includes the bed from that set, and we see Edward trying to sleep in it. This is a powerful image for longtime viewers. Louis Edmonds plays Edward in this costume drama segment and David’s father Roger in contemporary dress. Edward is the father of Jamison, who like David Collins is played by David Henesy. Not only has the spell robbed Edward of the memory of Jamison and of his role as a father, it has reduced him to curling up in a bed made for a boy rather than a man.
Roger was, for the first year of Dark Shadows, a spectacularly bad father. He openly hated David and exploited David’s miseries to try to manipulate him into doing his own criminal dirty work. He was indifferent to the family’s name and the fate of its businesses, would go to any lengths to hide from the consequences of his actions, had killed someone, and was an alcoholic. Edward shares none of these shortcomings. On the contrary, he goes to the opposite extreme. He is as brave as Roger is cowardly and tenderly loves his children, Jamison and Nora. But he is also stuffy, name-proud, and money-grubbing. The contrast with Roger shows these failings, not simply as negatives, but as the overgrowth of the virtues that separate Edward from Roger. Though Louis Edmonds and Jerry Lacy are such accomplished comic actors that Edward’s scenes with Trask are funny enough to be worthy of a staging of the Jeeves and Wooster stories, Edward’s loss of his identity as father of Jamison and Nora is a genuine tragedy.
Quentin is fond of Jamison, and once he learns that his children exist he seems to wish them well. Nonetheless, he shares most of the other vices of early Roger. As Edward shows us what Roger might have been had he had stronger moral fiber, Quentin is Roger with his vices magnified by black magic. When Jenny tells Quentin that he must not raise Lenore, longtime viewers remember Roger as he was when first we knew him, and remember how grim David’s future seemed at that time. It was only after well-meaning governess Vicki became the chief adult influence in his life that we could have hopes for David. So we cannot doubt that Jenny is right.
This is the last of 21 episodes of Dark Shadows directed by executive producer Dan Curtis. When Curtis first took the helm in #457, he had no experience as a director, and it showed. But he learned very quickly. This one looks great and the scenes play very smoothly. He would later direct the feature films House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows, as well as six episodes of the 1991 prime time revival of Dark Shadows and many other productions.
Charity Trask is in the drawing room of the great house on the estate of Collinwood trying to call the police when her abusive step-uncle, Quentin Collins, comes out of a secret panel and takes the telephone from her. He tells her that there is no longer any point in telling the police about Tessie, the injured woman upstairs. Tessie won’t be telling them anything. She has died. Apparently the sheriff of Collinsport is the same in 1897 as are his counterparts in other periods when Dark Shadows has been set- if you’re already dead, it’s too late for them to take an interest in you.
Charity says that Quentin killed Tessie. Charity knows that Quentin is a werewolf. He locks the door to the room and asks “Are you afraid to be locked in alone with a beast, a murderer, a creature of the supernatural?” This would seem to be rather an odd question, especially since he spent yesterday’s whole episode threatening to kill her.
Charity says that her father, Gregory Trask, will see to it that Quentin is brought to justice. Quentin takes a paper from his pocket and shows it to Charity. It is a confession to the murder of Charity’s mother, signed by her father. Charity claims that it was fabricated by Satan, which is what her father told her when she first saw it, and that Trask repeatedly tried to destroy it. This only convinces Quentin that the confession is true. He says that if either Charity or her father tells the police about him, he will hand over the paper. He adds “Now, Charity, I may hang for murder, but your father will be dancing at the end of a rope, too.”
Dark Shadows is set in the state of Maine, which in our universe abolished capital punishment in 1887. That used to be true in the show’s universe, as well. In #101, broadcast and set in November 1966, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins told his son, strange and troubled boy David, that “They don’t hang people anymore. Not in this state, anyway.” But by the time the show left the 1960s for its first costume drama segment a year later, characters were already afraid of being sentenced to death. The morbid fascination of the gallows is so much of a piece with the show’s exaggerated melodrama that there must be a death penalty, no matter when or where the action is supposed to be taking place.
Quentin tells Charity that there is a chance- a small chance, he concedes- that he will be cured of lycanthropy before the next full Moon, so that she need not feel that she is an accessory to murder if she doesn’t turn him in right away. Miserable, frightened, and confused, she takes this seriously enough that she remains quiet at least through this episode.
We cut to a hiding place where a man known as Aristide is looking at himself in a mirror and primping his hair, moving his fingers through it with an exaggerated daintiness. We pan to broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi , who impatiently asks “Did you send for me so there would be two of us to admire you?” Aristide has some business to discuss relating to plot points not directly involved in this episode, and he and Magda trade menacing insinuations about the danger each faces from the various supernatural forces at work in the area. Magda says that what the ziganophobic Aristide calls her “Gypsy cunning” will protect her, and Aristide says that an amulet he wears around his neck will protect him.
Magda replies “All right, we’ve both got something to protect us. I go now,” and starts to leave. Aristide stops her, and says that she must recover the severed hand of Count Petofi. She says that a man named Tim Shaw stole the hand and ran off with it, and she has no way of knowing where Tim is. Aristide says she must find out and bring it soon, “before time runs out.” She asks “Before time runs out for who? You mean when Petofi comes back!” In fact, Aristide means more than that- his master, 150 year old sorcerer Count Petofi, will die in a matter of days unless he is reunited with the hand that was cut from his right arm a century before, in 1797. If he does recover the hand in time, he will become immortal. Magda fears Petofi and hates him, and would doubtless make any sacrifice to keep the hand away from him if she knew these were the stakes. So Aristide is mortified that he let slip the phrase “before time runs out,” and is anxious to avoid saying anything else.
Back at Collinwood, Quentin confers with a Mrs Fillmore. Mrs Fillmore has been looking after the twin children Quentin’s wife Jenny bore him after he left her and before he murdered her. This is the first time we have seen Mrs Fillmore. It is also the first confirmation we have had that Quentin has seen Mrs Fillmore. He didn’t know about the twins until #798, when the boy twin was already dead as the result of a curse that a woman named Julianka placed on Magda, who is Jenny’s sister. Now Mrs Fillmore tells Quentin that the girl is suffering the same symptoms the boy showed before he died, and that the doctor is at a loss what to do for her. Quentin says he will look for someone who might be able to help, and they both exit.
Charity is alone in the drawing room, making an earnest effort to get drunk. Magda enters and expresses surprise that the unbendingly prudish Charity has been drinking. Charity replies that she merely ate some chocolates that were filled with brandy. At the sight of an empty snifter, she says that after eating the chocolates she poured herself a small brandy. She then picks up and drinks another, regular-sized brandy. Charity starts talking about how terrible life at Collinwood is. Magda mentions Tim Shaw, who was once Charity’s fiancé and who was framed for her mother’s murder. Charity wonders if Magda can use the Tarot cards to find Tim and bring him back. She asks if Tim will have to tell the truth if he comes back, and Magda assures her that he will. Magda may assume that the truth Charity wants is about the end of her relationship with Tim; she does not know that Charity is desperate to revert to believing that Tim, not her father, murdered her mother.
Magda asks Charity to tell her as much as she can about Tim. Charity says that when Tim was a boy, his closest friend was named Stephen Simmons, and that “He and Stephen Simmons used to always say they would go to San Francisco when they grew up.” Magda asks where Stephen Simmons is now, and Charity says she thinks he lives in Worcester, Massachusetts. She goes to her bedroom to look for a Christmas card Stephen sent her last year, hoping it may have his current address.
Quentin returns and finds Magda. He asks Magda how she knew about his daughter. She asks what he means. When Quentin tells her that the girl is suffering the same symptoms that her brother showed immediately before his death, they rack their brains to come up with a potential defense against Julianka’s curse. Magda remembers Aristide’s amulet. It is capable of warding off vampires and witches- perhaps it will defend against Julianka as well. Magda tells Quentin where Aristide is hiding, and he decides to go to Aristide and rob him of the amulet.
Aristide is asleep when Quentin arrives. He awakens before Quentin can take the amulet, and declares “This pendant protects me from witches, warlocks, and unnatural spirits.” Quentin asks “How does it do against flesh and blood, Aristide?” Aristide draws a curvy piece of wood with no sharp edges and replies “For flesh and blood, I have The Dancing Lady.” The piece of wood is supposed to be a knife. When Aristide first displayed it in #792, he called it “The Dancing Girl.” Perhaps this is a case of Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome, and in a couple of weeks it will be The Dancing Dowager, then The Dancing Crone. At any rate, Quentin replies “Then let her dance, Aristide, let her dance.” Quentin wins the subsequent fistfight. He knocks Aristide senseless, then takes the amulet from him.
Quentin and Magda go to Mrs Fillmore’s house, the first time we have seen this set. Appropriately for a member of the Collins family, the baby sleeps in a cradle shaped like a coffin.
Quentin talks with Mrs Fillmore about little “Lenore,” a name we have not heard before today. The only other girl of Lenore’s generation in the Collins family is the daughter of Quentin’s brother Edward, and she is named Nora. Since the name “Lenore” became popular outside Greece because speakers of English and French thought it was an alternative form of “Nora,” that would suggest rather a limited imagination regarding girl’s names on the part of whoever chose them.
But it is appropriate that Quentin and Edward have children with similar names. They are two variations on Dark Shadows’ first archvillain, Roger, whose evil largely expressed itself in his amazingly bad parenting of David. Edward’s attentive and caring interactions with Nora and her brother Jamison show that he is a less villainous Roger, while Quentin’s frequent assaults on his adult family members are among the evidence that he is an even worse version of the same character. Jamison is the only child we have seen Quentin interact with, and he is fond of him. But while we were still in the 1960s, Quentin’s ghost was possessing and killing the children at Collinwood, and in #710, only two weeks into the 1897 flashback, he and his fellow Satanist Evan Hanley used Jamison as a “sacrificial lamb” in a ritual meant to exploit his innocence for their own sinister purposes. Clearly, Quentin is no more to be trusted with the care of a child than was the early Roger.
Quentin asks Mrs Fillmore to leave him and Magda alone with Lenore. They apply the amulet, and it does not seem to work. Magda tries to raise the spirit of Julianka. After some pleadings and whatnot, there is thunder, wind, and other signs of ghostly presence. Magda cries out in hope that Julianka has come with pity. A figure materializes and says “Not with pity, Magda.” But the figure is not Julianka. It is Jenny.
In #804, we saw a photograph of Jenny in Quentin’s room. It was a full length picture in a period-appropriate costume, not just Marie Wallace’s professional headshot, raising a hope that we would see Miss Wallace again before too long. But after a week and a half, those hopes had begun to fade. Perhaps they took the picture months ago and never got around to using it when Jenny was on the show. If they had done that, they wouldn’t be above sticking in a scene of Quentin looking at the picture and discussing it with his distant cousin Barnabas the vampire so that they could get their money’s worth out of it. When Miss Wallace does in fact return, the show sends us out on a high note.
The 150 year old evil sorcerer Count Petofi has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins. Jamison/ Petofi has been casting spells to make the various residents of the estate of Collinwood reveal their true selves. Jamison’s distant cousin, Barnabas the vampire, has locked Jamison/ Petofi in the prison cell in the basement of the Old House on the estate. When Barnabas says that he will let Jamison out once Petofi has vacated his body, Jamison/ Petofi replies “If that is what you intend to do, Mr Collins, I’m afraid that you are stupid and incompetent.” There is no need to cast a spell on Barnabas- Maker of Stupid and Incompetent Plans is his true self, and we love him for it.
The great house on the estate is currently under the legal authority of the evil Rev’d Gregory Trask, husband of Judith Collins, who is a patient in a mental hospital. Jamison/ Petofi’s spell has caused Trask’s daughter Charity to be intermittently possessed by the spirit of Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye. Trask is horror-stricken by the makeup, clothes, and hairstyle Charity wears when Pansy is in charge of her, and her East London accent, insouciant attitude towards him, and tendency to sing and dance escalate this horror further. Nancy Barrett and Jerry Lacy are both talented comic actors, and their scenes as Charity/ Pansy and Trask are hilarious.
Collins family lawyer Evan Hanley is at home. Barnabas appears in Evan’s drawing room and asks for some information which Evan denies having. Evan tells Barnabas he has renounced his former interest in black magic and Satanism. Barnabas is skeptical, and Evan replies that his latest forays resulted in a gruesome disfigurement of his face. This disfigurement was later relieved, how we (frustratingly) do not know. But he wants nothing more to do with the occult, since he values the ability to look at himself in the mirror. Barnabas reminds Evan that he cannot see himself in a mirror, implying that he will use his vampire powers against him if he does not cooperate.
Trask comes to Evan’s house. He asks him to draw up papers that will complete his plan to seize control of all the Collins family’s assets. He mentions in passing that Jamison thinks he is Petofi. Evan knows enough about Petofi to be terrified. He tells Trask that neither of them has a chance in a battle with Petofi, and refuses to draw up the papers. Trask responds contemptuously.
Alone in the cell, Jamison/ Petofi decides to have some fun with Evan. We see Evan dozing in his armchair. He has a dream in which Jamison appears. Jamison kisses him; it is by his kisses that Petofi spreads the “true self” spell. Later, Evan goes to the great house at Collinwood and presents Trask with a paper to sign. Trask signs it eagerly, assuming it is the document he asked Evan to bring him. Instead, Evan has prepared a full confession to the murder of Trask’s first wife Minerva. The two of them plotted this murder together, and Trask is horrified when he sees his signature on it. He throws the paper in the fire; after he leaves the room, it rematerializes on the desk, complete with signatures.
During Trask’s confrontation with Charity/ Pansy Faye, the picture suddenly changes from color to sepia tone. After about a half a minute, it changes back. Evidently there was a fault in the videotape master at this point, and an excerpt from the kinescope was used to patch it. The color comes back right after Trask slaps Charity/ Pansy, causing Pansy to release Charity for a bit. It creates the eerie feeling that Trask somehow fixed our TV set by slapping her.
Dark Shadows continually comments on itself as it goes along. In the early days, all the episodes were scripted by Art Wallace. Wallace’s favorite method of composition was a sort of diptych, in which two sets of characters faced similar situations and responded to them differently, highlighting the contrast between their personalities. Petofi’s “true self” spell is of course another way of creating similar contrasts between characters played by the same actor.
As the show came to focus on time travel stories, they could cast actors as characters who represent alternative versions of parts they played in other periods, again putting characters played by the same actors in contrast with one another. And as Wallace would juxtapose similar situations within a single episode, the multiple times periods allowed them to take themes that had been developed in one way in a story set in one year and develop them differently in a story set in another. So Jamison/ Petofi’s contagious curse is a reworking of the “Dream Curse,” which dragged on from April to July 1968. The Dream Curse involved a lot of repetition and very little variety of tone. Jamison/ Petofi’s spells all get right to the point, and are sometimes scary, sometimes bizarre, and often quite funny. So the second time is definitely the charm here.
At one point Charity holds a recorder and tells her father she wants to learn how to play it. The first time we saw this prop was in #260. That episode was set in 1967, and Barnabas was holding Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, prisoner in the cell where Jamison/ Petofi is today. The ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah befriended Maggie, and materialized in the cell playing “London Bridge” on that recorder. Over the next several months, the recorder came to be a symbol of Sarah, one that she occasionally left behind as a sign that she had been in a place. Longtime fans will likely remember that, and see it as an indication that what is happening to Charity is going to have permanent consequences, as Sarah’s haunting had permanent consequences.
The evil Count Petofi, a 150 year old sorcerer, has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins and is wreaking havoc in the great house of Collinwood. Due to Petofi’s spells, Jamison’s father Edward thinks he is a valet recently separated from the service of the Earl of Hampshire. Edward’s brother Quentin tries to explain to him what is actually going on, but Edward merely concludes that he is Quentin’s valet now. When Quentin follows the Collinses’ long-established protocol for dealing with mentally ill family members and locks Edward in the tower room, Edward bangs on the door and protests that he won’t be able to do his job if he is locked up. “And I will do it!” he vows.
Charity Trask, disastrously uptight step-daughter of Quentin and Edward’s sister Judith, falls under Petofi’s influence and is possessed by the spirit of Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye. Pansy was on the show briefly in June. The childlike Carl Collins, brother to Judith, Edward, and Quentin, was engaged to marry Pansy before she was killed by vampire Dirk Wilkins. Pansy and Charity never met; when Carl asked Charity if she had seen Pansy, the scene was staged to make it seem absurd that the two women could exist in the same universe. Now, they exist in the same body.
If Petofi has caused startling changes in Jamison, Edward, and Charity, the change in Quentin is perhaps the most jarring of all. He has been a ghost, a homicidal maniac, a Satanist, a zombie, and a werewolf, but always and everywhere a source of total chaos, who destroys all recognized order and is perfectly at home in the midst of sheer madness. Today, Quentin keeps making earnest attempts to restore everyone to their right minds and reestablish the proper and respectable relations within the household.
First time viewers will immediately catch on that the preteen David Henesy is not the actor who would usually play a 150 year old Hungarian nobleman, and when Nancy Barrett suddenly takes on an East London accent and enters wearing a garish costume and doing a dance with lot of hip shaking and pelvic thrusts, they will know that Charity is turning into someone else. The dialogue in the scenes involving Edward explains what is happening to him. They may not know that Quentin is not supposed to be the defender of the status quo. That information is supplied in two scenes. Charity/ Pansy receives a psychic message from the world beyond telling her that Quentin was involved in the murder of Carl, and she announces this information. Also, Quentin calls for help, and the helper who materializes is his distant cousin, Barnabas Collins the vampire.
At the end of the episode, Barnabas lays hold of Jamison/ Petofi and drags him into the secret passage leading from the drawing room to the west wing. It is usually bad news when a vampire abducts a child and shoves him into a dark space, but David Henesy brings such joy to the role of Jamison/ Petofi that we can hardly doubt that what comes next will be equally fun to watch.
Meanwhile, a painter named Charles Delaware Tate has presented himself. Tate’s first appearance will cause a sinking sensation in longtime viewers; he is played by Roger Davis, a terrible actor who delivers much of his dialogue by shouting while clenching the sphincter muscles in his buttocks, and who routinely assaults the women and children in the cast while on camera. We may have hoped we had seen the last of Mr Davis when his most recent character, Dirk, was destroyed shortly after murdering Pansy. But evidently Pansy’s return in the form of another actress has come at the price of Mr Davis’ return in the guise of another character.
For much of 1968, Mr Davis played a man known variously as Peter Bradford and Jeff Clark. His approach to characterization consisted of shouting “My name is Jeff Clark!” When this technique was played out, he took to shouting “My name is Peter Bradford!” He doesn’t shout today, mercifully. But he does say the name “Charles Delaware Tate” quite a few times.
Today’s story about Tate is potentially interesting. Jamison/ Petofi finds him when he answers the front door. Tate asks to see Jamison Collins; Jamison/ Petofi confirms that despite his appearance, he is indeed the person Tate has come to see. Tate accepts this with a blandness that suggests that he knows he is dealing with a magical personage.
Jamison/ Petofi gives Tate a photograph of Quentin and says that he wants a portrait of him. When Quentin comes to the drawing room and finds Tate sketching, he asks who he is. Again, Quentin adopts a stern tone which suits someone defending the sanctity of private property against an unknown intruder. Tate introduces himself and shows him a handwritten letter which Quentin instantly accepts as the product of his grandmother Edith. He tells Tate that Edith has been dead for some time and that he is not interested in a portrait of himself. Tate says that he has already accepted the commission and the money that Edith sent with it, and so he will rent lodgings in the village of Collinsport and finish the job regardless. Quentin does what viewers have hoped everyone who shared a scene with one of Mr Davis’ characters would do, and throws him out.
The forged letter is a fascinating touch for returning viewers. Petofi made himself welcome as a guest at Collinwood by showing Edward forged papers creating the impression that he shared Edward’s friendship with the Earl of Hampshire. That he has also created papers that Quentin immediately accepts as coming from Edith, who died long before Petofi had any reason to come to Collinwood, suggests that his powers of forgery are very extensive indeed.
Tate not only seems to know that Petofi has magical powers; he also shows an acquaintance with Petofi’s henchman Aristide.* When Tate mentions Aristide, he calls him “Aristeedy,” a sort of pet name with a diminutive suffix. This is probably just a blooper on the part of Mr Davis, but since Petofi is continually telling Aristide how lovely he is and how he is more attractive when he doesn’t speak, it does remind us of the gay subtext that runs through their scenes together. We might suspect that Petofi and Aristide’s sexuality is in one way or another one of the reasons they are connected to Tate.
The script opens all of these questions about Tate. Had he been played by an actor who was capable of depicting depth and highlighting ambiguity, it could have been a lot of fun to speculate about just what their answers might be. In #137, future movie star Frederic Forrest was a featured extra on the dance floor at The Blue Whale tavern; it’s easy to suppose he would have taken a speaking part. So when the show puts Mr Davis in front of us, I like to make the time a little more tolerable by imagining what Forrest might have brought to the role of Tate.
*His name is spelled “Aristede” in the closing credits, but it was “Aristide” in the original scripts.
The spirit of evil sorcerer Count Petofi has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins, much to everyone’s consternation. David Henesy spends most of the episode mimicking Thayer David’s Petofi, with hilarious results.
Jamison/ Petofi sipping a glass of “mineral water… for the digestion.” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
We see Jamison’s favorite uncle, Quentin the Satanist, trying to cast a spell to break Petofi’s possession of Jamison. As he always does when he is calling on the dark powers of the unseen realms, Quentin gets very fervent. We pan to Jamison/ Petofi, standing next to Quentin in a state of utter boredom, asking if Quentin will bring him a glass of mineral water once he’s “finished with all the mumbo-jumbo.”
Twice, Jamison/ Petofi pretends he is not possessed, but is his usual preteen self. He does this in order to trick people into letting him kiss them, which is how Petofi’s power spreads to them. This gives Mr Henesy the challenge of showing how Thayer David would play Petofi playing Jamison. That’s the sort of thing an actor needs a director’s help to pull off. Unfortunately, the woeful Henry Kaplan was at the helm today, so we discover that Petofi’s imitation of Jamison sounds exactly like the original, who is in turn uncannily like Jamison’s grandson David Collins and his great-great-grandfather Daniel Collins, who are also played by Mr Henesy.
Those whom Jamison/ Petofi kisses reveal their “true selves.” So maidservant Beth reveals that she was under the power of Jamison’s distant cousin, vampire Barnabas Collins. When Jamison’s father Edward passes this word along to Quentin, Quentin tells him is going to confront Barnabas. Edward has been hunting Barnabas, and by saying this Quentin implies that he knows where Barnabas is and that he has been helping to hide him. For some reason, Edward only smiles in response to this revelation.
Petofi wears a prosthesis in place of his right hand; Edward finds that Jamison’s right hand has also been replaced with a prosthesis. After this horrifying discovery, Jamison/ Petofi kisses Edward. Quentin returns shortly after, and finds that Edward does not recognize him or know the name of the house. Edward identifies himself as a newcomer to the area, and says that he would be glad of any work the family might hire him to do. Evidently his “true self” is a guy who needs a job. Since he has not inherited any assets or accumulated enough to live on, I don’t suppose we can disagree with whatever force it was that declared this to be Edward’s reality.
The opening voiceover plays over this image, a type of visual effect we have not seen before at the beginning of an episode:
A transparent sticker of Barnabas superimposed on the exterior of the Old House. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Barnabas Collins has bitten dimwitted servant Dirk Wilkins, turning Dirk into a vampire like himself. Barnabas has been out all night, searching for Dirk’s hiding place. He hopes to expose Dirk and frame him for his own crimes.
Barnabas comes home to the Old House on the estate of Collinwood to find that Dirk seems to be trying to do the same thing to him. There is a blood-drained corpse in an armchair in his front parlor. It is that of Miss Pansy Faye, Cockney showgirl and Dirk’s first victim.
Barnabas’ distant cousins live in the great house on the estate. One of them, prankster Carl Collins, brought Pansy home with the intention of making her his bride. No sooner does Barnabas discover Pansy’s remains than Carl starts banging on the front door, shouting that he wants to speak with her.
Barnabas hides what’s left of Pansy in a secret chamber behind a bookcase, then lets Carl in. Grisly as the circumstances are, one person lying to another about the presence of a third nearby is a stock situation from farce, and John Karlen and Jonathan Frid play the scene with the particular brand of desperate seriousness that only works in farce. Barnabas persuades Carl to go away and search the grounds of the estate.
That takes a few minutes, starting from what the opening voiceover told us in so many words was “an hour before dawn.” In what remains of that hour, Barnabas takes Pansy’s body to a cemetery and buries her in a shallow grave between tombstones, telling her to “rest in peace.”
Barnabas comes home, and finds Carl, who has in the interval not only gone to the great house, the groundskeeper’s cottage, and a house on the estate which is currently occupied by a school, but has also gone into the village of Collinsport and made inquiries about Pansy. A speedy bunch, the Collinses.
Before Barnabas returned to the house, Carl had heard Pansy’s disembodied voice singing the song she had so memorably performed for Barnabas in yesterday’s episode. He had spoken to Pansy’s voice telling her that his grandmother’s will gave him a house to live in and that she could live there with him. This is puzzling for returning viewers. In #714, it was made perfectly clear that the will did not mention Carl at all. Edith Collins left her entire estate to Carl’s sister Judith, and the only one of the brothers who was mentioned was Quentin, who received no money or negotiable assets of any kind but who was guaranteed the right to stay at Collinwood as long as he pleased. Perhaps they are retconning that away, perhaps Carl is lying to Pansy, or perhaps Carl is losing his grip on reality.
Whether or not we are supposed to doubt Carl’s sanity, Barnabas talks Carl into suspecting that he might have hallucinated Pansy’s voice. Carl leaves, and Barnabas has time to return to his coffin before dawn.
The rest of the episode is taken up with doings at the school Carl had visited. We saw Carl questioning Charity Trask, daughter of the school’s master, the overwhelmingly evil Gregory Trask. The prim Charity was exasperated that Carl kept asking about Pansy after she had already denied having seen her. The scene is an interesting one- Charity and Pansy are such total opposites that it is a shame they never met. It would be amusing to see them juxtaposed.
Charity is engaged to marry Tim Shaw, a teacher at the school. Neither of them is happy about this situation. Tim was in love with Rachel Drummond, another of the teachers, and Charity is Barnabas’ blood thrall. But Gregory blackmailed Tim and bullied Charity into accepting the arrangement.
Charity’s mother, prudish Minerva Trask, does not like Tim or want him as a son-in-law. She urges Charity to set her sights on Carl. Charity says that she would rather marry Barnabas; Minerva says that her instincts are sound, but that she ought not to settle for a cousin of the rich Collinses when one of the brothers is available. Even if they have retconned Carl into owning a house, he is clearly not a rich man, so this reveals that Minerva knows as little about his financial position as she does about the curse under which Barnabas labors.
Charity tries to engage Tim in conversation, and is baffled that he is not willing to talk to her. Indeed, he does not seem like himself at all. Not only is he dismissive with Charity, but when Minerva confronts him he is bold and insolent, a far cry from the broken man we have seen interacting with the Trasks previously. When Charity tells him their engagement is off, he does not express the relief that she and we expect, but puts on a stagey voice we have not heard him use before and marches off to apologize to her mother.
There is a reason for Tim’s behavior. Gregory enlisted warlock Evan Hanley to brainwash Tim so that he would kill Minerva. There is some business with the Queen of Spades, first when Tim mutters the phrase “Queen of Spades,” then when Evan sends him a note on which is scrawled “Queen of Spades,” and lastly when he walks in on Minerva playing solitaire and sees her turn up the Queen of Spades. Many viewers in 1969 would have remembered Richard Condon’s 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate and its 1962 film version. In Condon’s novel, Raymond Shaw became a robot capable of murder when he saw the Queen of Hearts; in the film, the card was the Queen of Diamonds. Many first time viewers, seeing Tim Shaw’s reaction to the Queen of Spades, would have made the connection and understood why he ends the episode by poisoning Minerva’s tea.
Tim Shaw differs from Raymond Shaw in that he is under a spell for a long while, including the whole time we see him today, and he can talk and act independently while it operates on him. Raymond simply became catatonic when he saw the card and remained that way until he heard a command. He then executed the command and came back to himself once he was finished. Tim’s behavior may suggest a nod to another literary work, Pushkin’s story “The Queen of Spades.” That tale, which Tchaikovsky turned into an opera and which in 1949 was made into a feature film, is about a timid man who inadvertently kills a powerful woman and loses control of himself as a consequence. Like Tim, Captain Herman is coerced into marrying a woman he does not love. Presented with an opportunity to get out of the marriage, he finds himself making extraordinary efforts to go through with it, efforts which bring about his ultimate downfall.
Vampire Barnabas Collins is about to leave his house with his thrall, maidservant Beth Chavez, to look for Dirk Wilkins, a dimwitted servant whom he inadvertently turned into a vampire and let go. They are stopped when Barnabas’ distant cousin, inveterate prankster Carl Collins, comes in and insists on telling him about his recent trip to “Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Queen of the Boardwalk cities!”
Carl offers Barnabas some saltwater taffy, only to find that the tin is empty. He frets that “she” must have eaten it all on the trip back- “You know how women eat when they are nervous.” This leads to Carl’s second order of business, introducing Barnabas to Miss Pansy Faye. Carl met Pansy on the train, and he intends to marry her.
Carl opens the door, then stands before Barnabas and Beth and announces in his most booming voice “Presenting! Direct from her triumphs before Her Imperial Majesty, Queen Victoria of England, that world-famous mentalist and most beguiling songstress, Miss Pansy Faye!” Pansy enters, singing and dancing. In a vaguely Cockney accent, she intones:
I’m gonna dance for you! Gonna dance your cares away. I’ll do the Hoochie Koo, and the Ta Ra Boom De Ay! I’ll sing a happy song, as we dance the whole night long! When the music begins, I’ll give you some spins, I’ll even invent a step or two! So, on with the show! You’ll love it, I know! Oh, I’m going to dance for you!
Pansy’s dance is not particularly elaborate; it is performed almost entirely below the waist, and ends with her bending over and thrusting her rear end upward. That is followed by a cut to Barnabas wearing a look of stupefaction that all the black magic and demonic intrusions he has witnessed over the centuries have not elicited. He turns to Beth, who is visibly struggling to keep a straight face.
Against the backing track of Dark Shadows super-solemn music, this scene is hilarious. Longtime viewers will savor it even more than others. Carl is played by John Karlen, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s plays the luckless Willie Loomis, Barnabas’ first blood thrall. When Barnabas first enslaved Willie in the spring and summer of 1967, the show was at its bleakest. Barnabas was able to fool his distant relatives in the great house into regarding him as a living being and letting him occupy the Old House, but that was only because they had been isolated and embattled for so many months before. When we saw Barnabas and Willie on this set in those days, Barnabas was as grim as death itself, beating Willie with his heavy cane whenever he dared do more than whimper. That Karlen is now here as the man who is introducing a character as exuberantly and preposterously alive as Pansy and that Barnabas’ current thrall is suppressing a laugh takes the despair of that period and packs it with joy.
The despair reasserts itself at the close of the episode. Pansy will go out into the woods, Dirk will take her as his first victim, and Barnabas will come home to discover her body propped up in a chair in the parlor. But the comedy in between is so strong that we can be confident that this will not be the last word. Carl tries to persuade his sister, spinster Judith, to accept his marriage to Pansy. He tells her that he is a new man thanks to Pansy’s influence; he has actually managed to go 48 hours without playing a practical joke. Judith is impressed by this new record, but still will not believe that Pansy is fit to become a Collins. She controls all the family’s wealth, and threatens to cut Carl off without a penny if he goes through with the marriage. He reacts with a series of facial expressions that the Three Stooges would have admired.
While Barnabas and Carl are out, Pansy stays in the Old House with Beth. Beth offers her a cup of coffee; Pansy says she would prefer sherry. Beth goes to look for sherry, and Pansy is caught off-guard that Beth doesn’t live there. When Beth says that she is based at the big house on the property, Pansy asks how big it is. Beth says that it is very big indeed; Pansy says that Carl had told her it was like a palace, and Beth confirms that it is indeed on that scale. Pansy is surprised that Carl was telling her the truth. She takes the drink at a single gulp. With Carl, Pansy was acting a part, and she was a terrible actress indeed. Alone with Beth, she drops the act. The Cockney accent is still not too well-developed, but Kay Frye is much more convincing as a hard-boiled working class woman than Pansy is in any of her roles.
Carl persuades Judith to sit still in Barnabas’ parlor while Pansy does her mentalist act, trying to locate Dirk. Pansy actually goes into a trance and announces that Dirk is dead and his murderer is in the room. When she comes to, Pansy is as surprised as anyone at what happened. Judith is demanding an apology, and Pansy is shocked when Barnabas tells her that she accused someone in the room of murder. A moment later, she is alone, wondering what came over her and lamenting that she “mucked that one up.”
The Old House is a dangerous place to be a fake practitioner of supernatural arts. In #400, set in the 1790s, fanatical but inept witchfinder the Rev’d Mr Trask performed an exorcism of the Old House, and was visibly delighted when that exorcism seemed to work. That time it was the intervention of wicked witch Angelique that gave Trask his apparent success, but now it seems that Pansy is simply getting it right for the first time.
That Dirk leaves Pansy in a chair in Barnabas’ front parlor is also something that will bring back memories for longtime viewers. In the 1790s segment, another brassy dame on the make brightened up the show for a little while before meeting a grisly demise on this spot. She was Suki Forbes, estranged wife of untrustworthy naval officer Nathan Forbes. Barnabas strangled Suki in #423, after she had discovered his secret. Suki took until #424 to die, but did not manage to disclose what she knew about Barnabas.
An even closer parallel is to #530. In that one, Frankenstein’s monster Adam hates Barnabas for making him what he is. Adam attacks a man called Joe Haskell and thinks he has killed him. At the end of the episode, Barnabas finds that Adam has planted Joe’s body in the front parlor. Any doubt that Adam was trying to frame Barnabas for Joe’s murder would be removed by consulting the novel Frankenstein, in which the Creature frames another character for the murder of his creator’s brother. Dirk knows that Barnabas made him into a vampire, and so has the same motivation to pin a murder charge on Barnabas that Adam had.
Adam was just a few months old when he tried to frame Barnabas for murder, and Dirk is a simpleton. Neither of them had the skills to get the police interested in Barnabas, no matter how many dead bodies they add to the decor of his house. On the other hand, Barnabas himself once very nearly managed to make such a plan work. In #440 and #441, part of the 1790s segment, Barnabas left the corpse of his victim Maude Browning in a bed belonging to Trask. It was only Nathan Forbes’ timely intervention that kept Trask from the gallows that time.
Dark Shadows Commentary 