jack sullivan – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 633/634: Now was the moment, or never at all

Suave warlock Nicholas has had bad news. His boss, Satan, will be recalling him to Hell, and does not plan to send him out to the world of the living again. Satan gave Nicholas two tasks to complete before his time runs out. He is to perform a Black Mass during which he will sacrifice Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town, and afterward take her to Hell with him as his bride. He is also to complete the project he has been working on, forcing mad scientist Julia and old world gentleman Barnabas to resurrect Eve, the mate of Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Yesterday, we saw that Nicholas plans to make Barnabas and Julia use Maggie as the donor of the “life force” that will bring the mate back to life. It was entirely unclear how Maggie could both be sacrificed on Nicholas’ altar and used as the “life force.”

We open today with a reprise of yesterday’s closing sequence, showing Nicholas performing a rite while Maggie lies on his altar. We then cut to the basement of Barnabas’ house, where Eve’s body lies on a bed in a laboratory full of mad science equipment. Barnabas vows to Julia that this is the last time they will ever go through the vivification procedure; she asks “What’s the point of saying that? We’re at Nicholas’ mercy.” The other day, Barnabas confronted Nicholas with some demands, threatening to stop cooperating with his project unless he complied. Nicholas gave some ground in response, suggesting there might yet be some dramatic tension left in his relationship with Barnabas and Julia. But when Julia sounds this note of total defeat she is telling us that their conflict with Nicholas is exhausted, that the Frankenstein story has nowhere to go, and that Barnabas is therefore right and this is the last time we will see them run the experiment.

Julia looks at the body and expresses sympathy for “poor motherless Eve.” “There’s a poem about that,” she says. Indeed there is, and it is an apt reference here. Nicholas’ attachment to the ingenuous Maggie has always been jarringly out of character for him; Ralph Hodgson’s 1913 poem “Eve,” with its juxtaposition of the innocent Eve with the crafty serpent, not only tells a story that is as broadly melodramatic as any episode of Dark Shadows, but also dwells on the incongruity of Eve and the serpent, the sheer strangeness of the fact that they coexist at all. “Here was the strangest pair/ In the world anywhere.”

Yesterday we caught our first glimpse in a long time of a character who, like Maggie, was introduced in the first episode. He was Mr Wells, the innkeeper. Maggie has been with us through all of the show’s transformations, but we hadn’t seen Mr Wells since #61, when Dark Shadows was all about what went on among people while they were drinking coffee together. Seeing him again puts that 1966 show side by side with this dramatization of “The Monster Mash,” and that contrast is as jolting as anything Hodgson manages.

Visitors let themselves into the lab. First comes Nicholas. He is trying to seem cheerful. He comes down the stairs with a bounce in his step and greets Julia and Barnabas with a jokey “Why are my conspirators so reluctant?” He might be trying to evoke the same unholy jollity that we see at the end of Hodgson’s poem, “Picture the lewd delight/ Under the hill tonight/ ‘Eva!’- the toast goes round-/ ‘Eva’ again.” But the imminent prospect of his return to Hell has Nicholas in no jolly mood, and his mask of good cheer falls away the moment Barnabas complains of his untrustworthiness.

It is true that Barnabas’ complaint strikes Nicholas at a most sensitive spot. He tells him that “You seem to specialize in second chances” and gripes that he revived vampire Tom Jennings and left him to do the dirty work of ensuring Tom would never rise again. Giving second chances was the very habit for which Satan reproved Nicholas in #629 when he told him he would soon be returning to Hell. Stung by the echo of his master’s words in Barnabas’ mouth, Nicholas retorts that destroying a vampire must have been “traumatic” for Barnabas, who was until recently a vampire himself. Because of some magical business, Barnabas will revert to that condition if Adam dies, and it is Nicholas’ threat to kill Adam that has compelled him and Julia to assist in his diabolical plan. Having reminded Barnabas and Julia of the source of his power over them, Nicholas composes himself, agrees with Julia that there is no time for quarrels, and leaves the room.

A moment later, Adam enters. Adam hates Barnabas and Julia, believes that Nicholas is his friend, and looks forward to Eve’s resurrection. Barnabas tells Adam he doesn’t want him there, but Nicholas enters with the command “He stays, Mr Collins.” A third visitor follows and shocks Julia and Barnabas even more deeply. It is Maggie.

The rite on the altar dedicated Maggie to Satan, but it did not involve her death. When Julia and Barnabas see that Nicholas has brought Maggie, they declare that they will not go ahead with the procedure. But Maggie declares that she is there of her own free will. Quite calmly, she looks around the laboratory in Barnabas’ basement, and says “I’ve been here so often.” Indeed she has- in May and June of 1967, Barnabas was still a vampire, Maggie was his victim, and he kept her imprisoned in a cell here. Julia used her extraordinary hypnotic abilities to make Maggie forget her ordeal, but this line suggests that she now remembers what Barnabas did to her, and that she is, terrifyingly enough, happy about it.

When Maggie was Barnabas’ prisoner, he was trying to erase her personality and replace it with that of his lost love Josette. Later, the show took us back in time to the year 1795, where we saw Josette when she was alive and realized that she wasn’t on board with Barnabas’ plans then any more than Maggie was in 1967. But it looks like Nicholas has succeeded where Barnabas failed and remade Maggie as a companion fit for a demon. Barnabas is already miserable at being forced to toil in Satan’s cause, and now he goes nuts with jealousy.

Barnabas loudly protests that he will not be a party to the experiment. Nicholas silences him by causing Adam’s heart to beat dangerously fast. Their magic bond gives Adam and Barnabas the connection Alexandre Dumas’ Corsican Brothers had, so that Barnabas also suffers the pain. Julia was originally introduced as Maggie’s doctor, but she long ago betrayed her patient for Barnabas’ sake. She pleads with Maggie to stop Nicholas, but Maggie just smiles and asks “Why should I?” Julia tells her that otherwise Nicholas will kill both Adam and Barnabas. Perfectly relaxed, Maggie responds “Then you stop him. Do what he wants.” Julia capitulates, saying “We’ll use her.”

This glimpse of Evil Maggie is breathtaking for longtime viewers. In #1, Maggie premiered as a wisecracking waitress who was, in the words of the original series bible, “everybody’s pal and nobody’s friend.” Soon, we saw her with her father Sam, the town drunk, and she emerged very clearly as a classic Adult Child of an Alcoholic (ACoA.) In #20, Maggie left behind the short blonde wig she had worn in her first appearances, and from then on she was The Nicest Girl in Town.

When Barnabas first bit Maggie, she went through the phases the vampire’s victim usually experiences, including snappishness towards her loved ones when they try to get between her and the ghoul on whom she is becoming dependent. During her time in Barnabas’ house, her level-headedness and warm-heartedness reasserted themselves, and even when she was in the mental hospital as a psychological wreck after escaping from him she was never far from a display of kindliness. In the eighteenth century flashback, Kathryn Leigh Scott took on the part of Josette. Josette was so unfailingly virtuous that not even Miss Scott could find a way to make her interesting. This brief moment of a Maggie utterly indifferent to the value of human life, even her own, is such an extreme departure that we can immediately see a world of possibilities opening up for her as a character and for Miss Scott as a performer.

Maggie is strapped to a table and Julia and Barnabas get to work. We have seen the procedure often enough that it is far from fresh, but in-universe it is still highly experimental. The equipment doesn’t work as Julia and Barnabas expected; gauges indicate higher readings than they want, and the adjustments that are supposed to bring them down just make them go even higher.

Maggie cries out that she is dying; Eve barely moves. The readings get even worse; Barnabas shuts the apparatus down. Nicholas tries to cast a spell to immobilize Barnabas; he struggles against Nicholas’ power at first, but still smashes the equipment, and soon is free of the spell altogether. Nicholas calls out to his master and pleads “Don’t desert me now!” His powers gone, he runs to Adam and starts trying to choke him, but Adam brushes him aside easily. Nicholas runs away; Barnabas runs after him, saying that he will take the opportunity to kill Nicholas.

Adam is shocked that Nicholas attacked him. He and Julia find that nothing is left of Eve’s body but a skeleton with a wig. Adam sobs, declaring that now he has no one. Adam decides that Barnabas is to blame for Eve’s destruction. He goes upstairs, tells himself that Barnabas “doesn’t deserve to love,” then leaves the house. Later, we see him in the great house of Collinwood. Regular viewers know that Adam has in the past thought of punishing Barnabas by murdering well-meaning governess Vicki, in whom Barnabas does not actually take much interest but whom he frequently claims to love. So we can expect that Friday’s episode will involve some apparent danger to Vicki.

Julia is too busy with Maggie to take any notice of Adam’s doings. The last time Julia ran the experiment, the “life force” donor died. Julia is frightened when she cannot get Maggie to respond to any stimulus. She gives her a shot, and Maggie opens her eyes.

Longtime viewers wonder what Maggie will be like now. If Satan has lost interest in Nicholas, it seems unlikely that the heartless Maggie of a moment ago will stick around. If she returns to her usual sensibilities with her memories of Barnabas’ crimes restored, the show will no longer be able to use the sets representing the houses at Collinwood since Dark Shadows will become a prison drama about the activities of Barnabas and Julia on their respective cell blocks. If she just snaps back to the way she was before she got involved with Nicholas, it will feel like a cheat.

What they actually choose to do is to give Maggie total amnesia. She does not recognize her own name or Nicholas’, refuses to believe she has ever met Julia, and has no idea where she is. Julia tries desperately to reactivate Maggie’s memory. She takes her up to Barnabas’ living room. In a moment longtime viewers will find impossible to believe, Julia takes a music box and plays it for Maggie. She tells her that it once belonged to Josette and that Maggie has heard it many times. Indeed she has- Barnabas forced her to listen to it incessantly during the weeks when he was trying to Josettify her. Julia, who has gone to such great lengths to bury Maggie’s memory of what Barnabas did to her, is now trying to dislodge her recollection of his very worst crimes. When Maggie does not remember the music box, Julia takes her up to Josette’s bedroom, where Barnabas kept her for much of her time as his prisoner. It is simply impossible to imagine what Julia could be thinking at this point.

Meanwhile, Barnabas is skulking in the foliage near the peak of Widow’s Hill. He is eavesdropping on Nicholas, who is pleading with Satan to give him another week to get the Frankenstein project back on track. He dissolves into a process shot depicting flames, and Barnabas smiles the most evil grin anyone has ever managed.

Mr Warmth. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Even though poor motherless Eve is on screen for only a minute or two, doesn’t open her eyes, has no lines, and moves only a couple of fingers and those just barely, they brought Marie Wallace back to play her. That was $333 well spent. Miss Wallace’s presence on screen convinces us that Eve is really dead and that she will not be back. Combined with Maggie’s amnesia, that leaves Nicholas without any connection to an unresolved storyline. The only former underling of his still at large is witch-turned-vampire Angelique, and she had broken from him decisively a couple of weeks ago. When he vanishes, we can accept it as a line drawn under the part of the show in which he was the principal villain.

Eve’s decomposition and Nicholas’ damnation are not the only departures today. This was the final episode directed by John Walter Sullivan. As “Jack Sullivan,” he was credited as an associate director on a great many episodes, from #15 to #549. When John Sedwick left the show in the summer of 1968, Sullivan took over his share of the directing duties, alternating with Lela Swift. He directed a dozen episodes as “Jack Sullivan,” from #504 to #580. He then took the name “Sean Dhu Sullivan,” and directed 50 more. Sullivan was not as accomplished a visual artist as either Swift or Sedwick, and the camera operators had more trouble keeping his episodes in focus than they did either Swift’s or Sedwick’s. But his scenes were never any more confusing than you would have expected, considering the ridiculously convoluted stories the scripts gave him to work with, and he seems to have been as good a director of actors as either of them. The period when he was helming segments happened to be the one when the show had its most explicitly Christian elements, which you might say made him a Sean Dhu for the Goyim,* but I doubt he had anything to do with that.

*This is my only chance to make this joke, please just let me have it.

Episode 553: The five captivities of Victoria Winters

The First Captivity

In #83, strange and troubled boy David Collins repaid his governess, the well-meaning Vicki, for her determined attempts to befriend him by locking her in a room where he hoped she would die. The room was located deep in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood, and Vicki found that she could neither open the door nor reach the window.

Vicki had two visitors during her time trapped in this dusty chamber. In #85, the ghost of local man Bill Malloy appeared and sang to her; this was the first sustained and direct interaction between a living person and a supernatural being on Dark Shadows, and it left Vicki terrified and confused. In #87, David’s abusive father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, knocked on the door and pretended to be a ghost, scaring Vicki further. When Roger then opened the door and rescued Vicki, she threw her arms around him, sobbing and saying that he was right and David really was a monster. In those days, Vicki’s attempt to win David over was the only storyline on the show that worked; when it seems that she will join all the other grownups in giving up on the little guy, the audience’s hearts break.

The Second Captivity

In #108, Vicki had come to the conclusion that Roger killed Bill. Unsure where to go, she stopped in the cottage on the estate where handyman Matthew Morgan made his home. Talking to him, she prompted him to make an indiscreet remark that revealed that he, not Roger, pushed Bill off the cliff from which he fell to his death.

Matthew would not let her leave the cottage. He acknowledged that she had done nothing wrong, but said that he would have to kill her now that she knew his secret. She tried to dissuade him, but it was only a chance visit from matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard that prevented the murder. Matthew ran away, and Vicki was free.

The Third Captivity

In #116, Vicki went to look for David in the long-deserted Old House on the estate. She did not find him, but instead found Matthew, a wanted fugitive with a grudge against her. Until #126, Matthew kept her bound and gagged in the secret room behind the bookcase in the front parlor.

Others came and went. David, no longer homicidal, is convinced Matthew is innocent of Bill’s death and unaware he is holding Vicki, and he sneaks Matthew food he has stolen from the kitchen in the great house. Vicki’s friends Burke and Joe search the Old House, and she can only listen while Matthew hides with her in the secret room.

Matthew was fetching an ax with which to kill Vicki when the ghost of the gracious Josette Collins appeared to her and told her not to be afraid. When he came back, Josette led the ghosts of Bill Malloy and of the legendary Widows of Widows’ Hill as they surrounded Matthew and scared him to death.

The Fourth Captivity

From #365 to #461, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late eighteenth century. Vicki had come unstuck in time, and found herself at Collinwood as it was in those days. Her total failure to adapt to her new environment led to her arrest, trial, and condemnation as a witch. From #401 on, she was in gaol, with a couple of brief and disastrous excursions.

Vicki had several visitors during her time in gaol, most of them people who had at some point wished her well but whom she alienated by her compulsive sharing of information she had learned when she was in the 1960s. By the time she had been sentenced to hang, she had only two friends left. One was her gaoler/ defense attorney/ boyfriend/ co-conspirator/ fellow prisoner, an unpleasant man named Peter Bradford. The other was Barnabas Collins, a vampire. Neither was able to do her much good, so in #460 and #461, Vicki mounted the gallows, was hooded, a noose placed around her neck, and the lever pulled to open the trap door under her feet. She then found herself restored to her own time, mere moments after her departure, but wearing the clothes she wore in the 1790s and bearing the marks of the wounds she sustained then, including the rope burns on her neck.

The Fifth Captivity

Shortly after Vicki returned to 1968, Barnabas’ vampirism went into remission. Peter also turned up, suffering from total amnesia and calling himself Jeff Clark, but still disagreeable to look at or listen to. Vicki and Peter/ Jeff became engaged the other day. Yesterday, Vicki left Peter/ Jeff to wait for her in the great house while she went to the Old House, which is now Barnabas’ home. She wanted to give him the news.

What freed Barnabas of the vampire curse was the creation of Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Now, Adam wants a mate, and is under the mistaken impression that Barnabas can create one for him. He has decided to extort Barnabas’ cooperation by taking Vicki as his hostage.

Adam is wanted by the police for abductions and assaults he committed before he learned to talk. Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, who is acting as mistress of Collinwood while Liz is in the hospital, took pity on Adam and has been hiding him in a dusty room in the west wing. It is not the room Vicki was trapped in back in 1966; there is a window within reach. But when she comes to and finds herself there, she tells Adam she knows where she is. He responds “No!” She says that it’s the west wing, and she has been there before Most of the audience joined the show long after Vicki’s first captivity, so it will be as much news to them as it is to Adam that Vicki is on familiar ground.

Adam agrees that Vicki has done nothing to harm him, but tells her that he may nonetheless have to kill her. In this, he reminds us of what Matthew said to Vicki when he held her prisoner in his cottage.

Peter/ Jeff is still waiting for Vicki in the foyer of the great house when Carolyn finds him. He tells her Vicki went to Barnabas’ house more than two hours before, promising to return in an hour. Carolyn smiles and, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, tells Peter/ Jeff that Barnabas and Vicki are “such good friends” it’s no wonder the two of them would lose track of time when they were alone together. This bothers Peter/ Jeff almost as much as it was obviously intended to do, and he goes to the Old House.

Peter/ Jeff arrives and demands Barnabas take him to Vicki. Barnabas is taken aback by Peter/ Jeff’s tone, and for good reason. When actor Roger Davis shouted his lines, which he did most of the time, he projected his voice not from the muscles of the pelvic floor, as singers are often taught to do, but from the sphincters in his buttocks, with the result that he sounded like he was trying to defecate. Barnabas has some nice rugs on his floor, so an angry Peter/ Jeff is an alarming visitor.

While Peter/ Jeff yells at him, Barnabas remembers that Adam had been in the house just moments before Vicki came, and that he had threatened to make Barnabas “very sorry” for not doing what he wanted. It was odd that Barnabas didn’t offer to walk Vicki home after that, a fact which has apparently dawned on him. He rounds on Peter/ Jeff and says that they are both to blame if anything happened to Vicki, since neither of them should have let her walk through the woods alone. Peter/ Jeff agrees with that, and his yelling moderates a bit. They get some flashlights and go out to search for her.

As they are searching, Peter/ Jeff proves that he is a true member of the Dark Shadows cast when he shines a flashlight directly into the camera. Barnabas tells him they should split up. This may or may not be a logical step towards finding Vicki, but it definitely will reduce Barnabas’ exposure to Peter/ Jeff, so it is no wonder he is eager to do it.

Peter/ Jeff carries on the tradition. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas goes to the great house and talks to Carolyn. He tells her that Vicki is missing, that he and Peter/ Jeff have searched the woods thoroughly, and that he suspects Adam has abducted her. He insists that she tell him where Adam is, and she denies knowing. He tells her he does not believe her, and says that if Adam harms Vicki, she “will be held responsible.” Jonathan Frid and Nancy Barrett were always interesting to watch together, and this is the first time they have played a scene where their characters were adversaries facing each other down. The dialogue is nothing special and the situation is all too familiar, but their performances make for a few fresh and exciting minutes.

Carolyn goes to Adam’s room. As Barnabas had been reading when Peter/ Jeff called on him, so Adam, who shares a mystical connection with Barnabas, has a book in his hand when Carolyn stops by. As David sneaked food from the kitchen to Matthew at the Old House, so Carolyn has been sneaking food from the kitchen to Adam in the west wing.

Adam is very slow to let Carolyn into the room. She notes that he has always invited her in before, and does not go away when he claims to have been asleep. He lets her in. As Burke and Joe had searched the Old House when Matthew was hiding Vicki in the secret room there, so Carolyn looks around the room while we know Vicki is somewhere inside it. Adam denies having been out of the room, and tells her Barnabas was lying when he said he had gone to his house. Adam has not lied to Carolyn before, so she accepts what he says. After she leaves, Adam opens the door to his own secret room, a closet in which Vicki is bound and gagged as Matthew had once bound and gagged her.

This is the twelfth episode directed by John Walter Sullivan, but the first credited to him as “Sean Dhu Sullivan.” The name “Jack Sullivan” appeared on the previous installments.

Episode 531: A blazing light

Yesterday, recovering vampire Barnabas opened the door to his closet. Hardworking young fisherman Joe fell out, and Barnabas saw Frankenstein’s monster Adam at the window, laughing menacingly. Adam has many reasons to hate Barnabas, and Barnabas concludes that Adam wants to frame him for the murder of Joe.

A commenter on John and Christine Scoleri’s Dark Shadows Before I Die, posting under the name “Grant,” pointed out that in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel Frankenstein the Creature kills someone and frames one of Frankenstein’s closest friends for the crime. The reference seems to be pretty obvious.

Barnabas’ friend, mad scientist Julia, shows up. She finds that Joe is not dead. She says that he has, in a bit of Collinsport English we have heard once or twice before, “a pulsebeat.” She and Barnabas have a long conversation about a variety of topics, several of them highly incriminating, while Joe lies on the floor. Julia goes off to attend to another matter, and Barnabas’ servant Willie comes. Joe is still on the floor while Willie argues against Barnabas’ orders to take Joe to the hospital. Barnabas, who had told Julia that Adam must have “wanted Joe to be found here,” dismisses Willie as “absurd” when he says that Adam is trying to frame them.

When Willie was first on the show, he was a dangerously unstable ruffian who was determined to rape all the young women and beat up their boyfriends. In #210, he accidentally released Barnabas, who enslaved him and turned him into a nice guy. Now that Barnabas’ vampirism has gone into remission, Willie has taken several steps back to his old ways. He whines that if Joe dies, his fiancée Maggie might turn to him. Barnabas finds this idea “insane,” and Willie tells him that Maggie has recently stopped by the house and talked to him more than once. This is true, and Barnabas’ reaction makes it clear that it is the first time he has heard it. He responds that he is not interested in discussing Willie’s “mental aberrations,” and tells him that if Joe dies he will tell the police about Willie’s interest in Maggie. That leaves Willie no choice but to help get Joe to the hospital.

Julia has gone off to see well-meaning governess Vicki. Vicki is about to have a nightmare that is part of the “Dream Curse.” Three months ago, wicked witch Angelique decreed that one person after another would have the same dream. After Vicki has it, the dream will pass to Barnabas, and Angelique means for it to reactivate his vampirism. Vicki doesn’t seem to know that Barnabas was a vampire, though she has had many clues, as for example when he kept biting her and sucking her blood. I suppose she just thought he had a really aggressive make-out technique. But she does know that Barnabas is supposed to die if he has the dream.

Julia urges Vicki to come with her to Windcliff, a sanitarium she runs, and promises that she will get the best of care there. But she finds that Vicki is resigned to having the dream. Julia reports this to Barnabas, and tells him that she wants to go away with him, far away from Vicki. Vicki can’t pass the dream to Barnabas unless she describes it to him after she has it, and she won’t be able to do that if she can’t find him. Barnabas refuses to go, reminding Julia that those who have the dream suffer terribly until they pass it on to the next person. When he says “You know how I feel about Vicki,” Julia gets a brief closeup, and her reaction reminds us that she is supposed to be harboring an unrequited love for Barnabas. This is rather an easy point to forget. Barnabas and Julia spend all their time together and tell each other all their secrets. Since there doesn’t seem to be any such thing as sexual contact in the world of Dark Shadows, it’s hard to see how her feelings could be much more requited.

Julia urges Barnabas to run away with her.

Vampires are metaphors for extreme selfishness, and Barnabas usually plays to type. It is startling that he tells Julia that any part of his motivation for sticking around is his wish to spare Vicki suffering. But he also talks about his long vain struggle against Angelique in terms that immediately make it clear that whatever goodwill he might have for Vicki is a distant third behind his usual ruling passions, self-pity and laziness, but still, her well-being is among his considerations. That sets him apart from her ostensible boyfriend, a man variously known as Peter and Jeff. As Christine Scoleri points out on Dark Shadows Before I Die, Vicki might never have had the dream at all if Peter/ Jeff hadn’t refused to listen to her explanation of the curse and insisted that she stay where he could visit her easily, yet now that she is suffering from the dream and its effects he is nowhere to be seen. Christine speaks for all of us with her summary of Peter/ Jeff’s character- “What a louse!”

Vicki has the dream. Barnabas beckons her into the haunted house attraction where the bulk of it has always taken place before. She keeps telling him that she doesn’t want to have the dream, not for her sake, but for his. She opens three doors that show Halloween gimmicks we’ve seen before, then opens a fourth behind which she sees the Sun. The Sun shrinks into the distance, and she walks through the door, following it. Her face dissolves into an image of the Sun; the Sun dissolves to the exterior of Barnabas’ house. We cut to the interior, looking at the doors. A small dot of Sun appears there. It expands until it fills most of the screen. The doors open, and the Sun gives way to Vicki. She enters, and sees Barnabas lying on the floor by his desk. He is bleeding from two small wounds on his neck.

Part of the dream is a bit of doggerel that has never made much sense. The last lines are “Ahead a blazing light does burn, And one door leads to the point of return.” These lines are almost explained today. Each door exposes a symbol of something that is frightening either to the dreamer or to Barnabas or to both. Vicki isn’t afraid of the Sun, but she knows that Barnabas has a strange and intense relationship with it. In #277, he harangued her about his hatred for the Sun; in #347, he made plans with her to watch the Sun rise, plans which he had to break under very strange circumstances in #349. So now we know that the “blazing light” is the Sun, which vampires cannot withstand.

Of the ten characters who had the dream before Vicki, only strange and troubled boy David, her charge and dear friend, was able to walk through any of the doorways. In his case, he walked into a gigantic spider web and was caught there, just a few feet beyond the entry. But Vicki is on the path that “leads to the point of return,” and she goes to a different set altogether.

Had Barnabas’ introduction not brought a new audience to the show, Dark Shadows would probably have been canceled in June 1967. In that case, the final episode would have been #260, and it surely would have ended with Vicki, who was in those days the show’s main character, driving a stake through Barnabas’ heart. That she and the Sun overlap in the same space on the screen suggests that by passing the dream to Barnabas she will fulfill her original destiny and become his destroyer.

When Vicki looks into the parlor and sees Barnabas bloodied and lying on the floor by his desk, we are reminded of #405. In that episode, we saw that Angelique originally turned Barnabas into a vampire by sending a bat to bite him in this room. At that time, he fell, not by his desk, but by the staircase. That’s very close to where Joe was lying for the first half of the episode, so they have to do some rearranging to avoid suggesting an identity between them. Barnabas’ vampirism is so much the foundation of the show’s success that virtually everyone in the audience expects him to relapse sooner or later, but they are being careful not to raise the question of whether Joe will also join the ranks of the undead.

Until the dream, the episode is made up of long scenes with a great deal of dialogue. That isn’t unusual for Dark Shadows. It is unusual that the scenes play out with very little background music. I wonder if director Jack Sullivan decided that a spare sound design would set the right mood for the very ambitious dream sequence. I think it paid off- the dialogue scenes felt slow, but Vicki’s dream achieves the surrealistic quality it needs.

One of the main themes Danny Horn developed on his blog Dark Shadows Every Day was his ridiculously exaggerated impatience with the character of Vicki and his severe bias against Alexandra Moltke Isles’ acting. That gave me something to talk about in his comments section, and was part of the reason I started this blog. Danny’s post about this episode very nearly makes up for his incessant Vickiphobia. He alternates stills of Vicki with epigrams written in her voice, and the result is just magnificent, worth anyone’s while to read.

Episode 504: A talent for making everyone feel guilty

Well-meaning governess Vicki was the main character of Dark Shadows for its first year, but has been receding further and further to the margins since. Today she returns after a 14 day absence, the first time she has been off screen so long.

Vicki is in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood with her employer, matriarch Liz. Liz is distraught because her daughter Carolyn has been abducted by a strange man. Liz fears that Carolyn is dead or dying; Vicki urges her to set those fears aside. The police telephone; they have captured the man, but Carolyn was not with him, and he has not answered any of their questions. Liz and Vicki set out for the gaol to see him.

They are accompanied by a sheriff’s deputy. The Collinsport police are exceptionally useless, but even by their standards this deputy is a low performer. Though the man is so strong that it took twenty men to subdue him and bring him in, the deputy enjoys taunting him. He sticks his service revolver in the cell; the man is shackled to the wall, but he is so tall he sweeps his hand into contact with the gun. If the script didn’t say otherwise, he could easily take it from the deputy. Liz orders the deputy to stand back out of the man’s line of sight. Since she owns most of the town, he grudgingly obeys.

The deputy puts his weapon within Adam’s reach.

Yesterday, Liz went looking for Carolyn at the Old House on the estate, home to her distant cousin Barnabas. She found Barnabas’ servant Willie on the ground, suffering from a fresh head wound. Willie told her that the man had been by a few minutes before, and that he had been carrying the unconscious Carolyn. He also referred to the man as “Adam.” When Liz asked him why he used that name, he denied that he did and began jabbering about some bad dream that had frightened him. Today, Liz addresses the man as Adam, and he responds, proving that Willie does in fact know more about him that he will admit.

Liz and Vicki tell Adam that they will treat him as a friend if he tells them where Carolyn is. Adam knows the word “friend.” He repeats it, and adds “food!” Again he says “Friend, food!” The women do not know what he is driving at. They give up and go home.

Returning viewers know that Adam has stashed Carolyn in an abandoned structure that looks exactly like Fred and Wilma Flintstone’s house, that he calls Carolyn “Friend,” and that he had gone out to look for food for her when he was captured. He is dejected when he cannot make it clear that she is hungry.

Liz and Vicki return to Collinwood. They spend several seconds taking off their coats in unison. In the early days of the show, there were a number of scenes designed to emphasize Liz and Vicki’s resemblance and to present each as the other’s reflection in support of a storyline that led us to believe that Vicki was Liz’ unacknowledged daughter. That storyline was forgotten long ago, and it isn’t entirely clear what director Jack Sullivan is getting at here.

Back in the drawing room, Liz tells Vicki her reasons for believing that Barnabas knows a great deal about Adam. Apparently the doors separating the drawing room from the foyer amplify sound, because as the camera takes us from the drawing room to the foyer Liz and Vicki’s conversation only becomes more audible. Liz’ new sister-in-law is in the foyer. This woman calls herself Cassandra, but regular viewers know that she is in fact wicked witch Angelique. Vicki knows that perfectly well. Vicki traveled back in time in #365 and spent nineteen weeks living under the same roof as Angelique while Angelique wrought havoc on the Collins family of the 1790s and framed Vicki for her crimes. Angelique’s only disguise as Cassandra is a black wig- otherwise, she looks, sounds, and moves exactly as she had when Vicki knew her in the eighteenth century. As a result, Vicki is very much on her guard around her.

Angelique/ Cassandra enters the drawing room. Liz excuses herself, and Angelique/ Cassandra demands to know why Vicki doesn’t like her. When Vicki says that she resembles someone she didn’t get along with, Angelique/ Cassandra proclaims that she isn’t that person, bursts into tears, and runs out. Vicki stays in the drawing room, but the camera follows Angelique/ Cassandra to the staircase, where we see her smile gleefully.

Liz returns, and Vicki tells her she may have misjudged Cassandra. It doesn’t speak well of Vicki’s brainpower that a single display of crocodile tears would override the memory of their long and painful acquaintance, but since Barnabas and the others who are doing battle with Angelique/ Cassandra refuse to accept Vicki’s help, she may as well forget everything she knows. Liz tells her that she doesn’t think she misjudged Cassandra, and says she doesn’t trust her either.

Back in the gaol, the idiotic deputy goes back to Adam’s cell to taunt him some more. When Adam protests, the deputy opens the door and waves his baton at him. He places himself within easy reach of Adam, who grabs him and knocks him unconscious.

Yesterday, the high sheriff said “I’m not a stupid man.” He may not have been as stupid as is this grinning imbecile, but it is on his responsibility that he has a badge and a gun.

Another deputy enters. He sees his moronic colleague on the floor, the bars twisted in the window, and no sign of Adam.

Adam is 6’6″, so it’s difficult to see how he could fit through this opening. Perhaps he is not only tremendously strong, but is also a contortionist.

Episode 498: One step closer to the dream

Sarcastic dandy Roger Collins has remarried. His previous wife, undead blonde witch Laura Murdoch Collins, was Dark Shadows’ first supernatural menace, posing a threat to the life of their son David from #123 until she vanished amid a cloud of smoke in #191. The ghost of gracious lady Josette joined in the battle against Laura. Among other things, Josette compelled artist Sam Evans to paint a series of pictures warning of Laura’s evil plans. Laura responded to those paintings in #145 and #146 by causing a fire that burned Sam’s hands so badly it seemed he might never again be able to paint.

Roger’s new wife is also an undead blonde witch, though she wears a black wig all the time. This wiggéd witch calls herself Cassandra, but is actually Angelique, who in the 1790s killed many of Roger’s ancestors and turned his distant cousin Barnabas into a vampire. Angelique/ Cassandra has returned to the world of the living because Barnabas’ vampirism is now in remission, and she is determined to restore it.

Before he met Angelique/ Cassandra, Roger became obsessed with a portrait of her. Barnabas concludes that this portrait is essential to her power. He orders his servant Willie to steal it from the great house of Collinwood. Barnabas takes the portrait to Sam and commissions him to paint over it so that Angelique will look tremendously old. He doesn’t offer Sam any explanations, but we heard him tell Willie his theory that what happens to the painting will also happen to Angelique. If her likeness is aged to reflect her actual years, then she will vanish from 1968 and be confined to the past. At the end of the episode, Angelique’s hands have aged dramatically, suggesting that Barnabas is correct.

This is David Ford’s first appearance on the show since December, and he had shaved his mustache in the interim. The fake is not up to the makeup department’s usual standards. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Portraits have been a very prominent part of the visual composition of Dark Shadows from the beginning, and a battlefield on which supernatural combat could be joined for almost as long. So it is hardly surprising that the show would eventually get around to doing a story based on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

It would seem Barnabas has little time to lose. Angelique/ Cassandra has distributed some malware to the minds of the people around Barnabas by means of a dream that one person after another will have. The first dreamer is beckoned into a Haunted House attraction by someone, opens some doors behind which there are scary images, is terrified, and cannot find relief until telling its details to the beckoner. That person then has the dream, changed in only two particulars, the identity of the beckoner and the image behind the final door. When everyone’s brain has been hacked, this worm is supposed to reset Barnabas as a vampire.

Yesterday, David had the dream, and Willie was his beckoner. Today, we open in Barnabas’ house, where Willie is paralyzed with fear. David has already told him the dream, and Willie knows he will have it. With all the previous instances of the dream, the audience had to sit through a highly repetitious dream sequence, then a scene in which the character agonizes about whether to tell the dream to the next person, and finally a speech repeating all the details of the dream. At least this time we skip the second and third of those rehashings.

Since Willie is so close to Barnabas, it seems likely that he will be the last to have the dream before it gets back to Barnabas and makes him a vampire again. So it’s no wonder that Barnabas decides it’s time for the high-stakes gamble of a burglary at Collinwood.

There’s also a scene in Barnabas’ basement. Barnabas’ vampirism is in remission because some mad scientists created a Frankenstein’s monster, whom Barnabas named Adam. They connected Barnabas to Adam in a way that drains the symptoms of the curse from Barnabas without manifesting them in Adam. Barnabas has no idea how to raise any child, let alone a 6’6″ newborn with the strength of several grown men, and so locks him up in the prison cell where he used to keep Sam’s daughter Maggie.

The imprisonment of Maggie was a dreary, unpleasant story, but Adam’s time in the cell is even harder to take. Maggie was established as a strong, intelligent person who knew her way around, she could speak, and she had many friends who cared about her. So we never quite gave up hope that she would get away and be all right in the end. But Adam has none of that. As a result, his scenes in the basement are a tale of extreme child abuse, made all the harder to watch by Robert Rodan’s affecting portrayal of the big guy’s misery.

Moreover, Maggie was a major character, introduced in the first episode and connected to everyone else. It’s unlikely they would kill her off unless the show had been canceled and they were going out with a bang. But only the people holding Adam prisoner know who he is, and Frankenstein’s monsters meet their deaths practically every time they feature in a story.

Worst of all, the show is basically very silly right now. A story about a child locked in a cell from birth can be made bearable only by joining it to some kind of deep insight into the human condition, and there is little prospect that anything like that will crop up among all the witches and vampires and other Halloween paraphernalia. My wife, Mrs Acilius, watched the whole series with me in 2020-2021. She was avidly rewatching it with me this time. But when they took Adam to the cell, she suggested I start watching it on days when I get home from work before she does. I’m sure she isn’t the only Dark Shadows fan who takes a pass on the Adam story.

This is the first episode credited to director Jack Sullivan. Lela Swift and John Sedwick took turns at the helm until #450, when executive producer Dan Curtis tried his hand at directing a week of episodes. Swift and Sedwick then returned to their usual pattern. Sedwick will be leaving in a few weeks; Sullivan, who has been with the show as an associate director since the third week, will be Swift’s alternate until November, and from #553 on will be credited as Sean Dhu Sullivan.