In #836, the ghost of maidservant Beth Chavez appeared to Julia Hoffman in the year 1969. Beth told Julia what happened on the night in 1897 when she shot the rakish Quentin Collins to death.
Regular viewers would have recognized the events Beth described as different from what would have happened when Quentin originally died in 1897. For the last 28 weeks, the show has been set in that year because Julia’s friend, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins, accidentally traveled back in time while trying to figure out why Quentin had become a ghost bringing death and misery to everyone on the estate of Collinwood. In 1897, Barnabas met the living Quentin and befriended him, but also changed the history of the period substantially. So a wicked witch named Angelique, who was not at Collinwood the first time through 1897, is there on this iteration of events. Beth’s night took the turn that would lead her to shoot Quentin when Angelique told her that her engagement to Quentin was off and that Angelique would be marrying Quentin instead.
After Beth told her what happened in the latest version of 1897, Julia herself traveled back in time, determined to rescue both Quentin and Barnabas. Once she got to her destination, she was too dazed to speak. But Quentin found a letter in her pocket that Barnabas had written, and it led him to Barnabas. Barnabas was able to tell Quentin that he was fated to be killed tonight, after his nephew Jamison rejected him. He had no more to tell him, nor could he restore Julia’s ability to speak.
We open today with Quentin holed up in his room, waiting for midnight to come and go. Sorcerer Count Petofi knocks on his door; Quentin jumps to the conclusion that it is Petofi who will kill him. In fact, Petofi has learned of Quentin’s current fate, and offers to help save him. Quentin has ample reason to distrust Petofi, and refuses the offer.
Jamison then knocks. Quentin lets him in; the two have a happy talk about how much they enjoy each other’s company, and Quentin decides he won’t stay in his room after all. This leads directly to the reenactment of the scenes Beth had described, including Beth’s conversation with Angelique, Jamison’s discovery of Beth in the act of attempting suicide, Jamison’s consequent rejection of Quentin, and Beth’s pointing a loaded pistol at Quentin while she declares that she has decided to kill him.
Quentin’s time in his room shows that his behavior afterward is the direct result, not only of Barnabas’ intervention, but of Julia’s as well. So what we are seeing today is not what happened the first time through 1897 or the second, but is yet a third version of events. It does end quite differently- Petofi turns up in the nick of time and prevents Beth from shooting Quentin. The whole basis of the fantasy of going back in time to change events is the experience of rewriting stories, of what fandoms call “retroactive continuity” (“retcons” for short.) In the contrast between the two versions of the night of 10 September 1897 that Dark Shadows shows us, and in the contrast between each of those and the original events that we never saw, the story merges into the process of writing the scripts, and the characters explicitly create their own retcons.
Petofi tells Beth that she ought to leave Collinwood at once and go as far away as possible, because “Your part in this drama is ended.” The incorporation of retcons as an overt story element shows that metatheatricality can be fun, but I have to say it was pretty cold of Dan Curtis to delegate the job of firing actress Terrayne Crawford to the character Petofi.
Count Petofi tells Terrayne Crawford she won’t be getting another contract.
Petofi then goes to Quentin’s room and tells him the price for his services- Quentin must betray Barnabas. Quentin resists this demand until Petofi shows what else he has already done for him. Petofi commissioned a portrait of Quentin. Quentin saw the portrait the other night when there was a full Moon, and he was horrified by what he saw. The portrait bore, not his usual features, but those of a wolf. Since Quentin is a werewolf, he thought the portrait was a cruel reminder of his curse. But when Petofi bids him look at the portrait again tonight, Quentin sees his accustomed face. Petofi explains that the reason Quentin remained human that previous night was that the portrait changed, and that as long as the portrait remains intact Quentin will be free of the effects of the curse. Quentin’s blissful reaction to that news suggests that Petofi was right to tell him that he belonged to him now and would be able to refuse him nothing.
Sadly, this episode marks the last appearance of the character Jamison Collins. David Henesy plays the same scenes with the same dialogue he had on Monday, but he did a great job then and does an equally great one today. He’ll be back tomorrow for a brief appearance as his 1960s character, David Collins, then will be absent from the cast for almost 11 weeks. We’ll miss him while he is away.
It is 8 September 1969, and the ghost of Quentin Collins has rendered the great house of Collinwood uninhabitable. The family, including permanent house guest Julia Hoffman, have been staying at the Old House on the estate while recovering vampire Barnabas Collins is on a trip back in time to 1897, when Quentin was killed and the trouble started. But Julia has received a letter Barnabas wrote to her in September 1897 indicating that, as of that date, his mission was about to end in total failure, and so she decides to take matters into her own hands. First, she must learn exactly how and when Quentin died.
Julia goes to the great house and follows the sound of Quentin’s theme song to the tower room. There, she finds the ghost of maidservant Beth, who was one of Quentin’s many lovers. When Beth is in a shadowy corner, she puts on a ghostly voice and tells Julia that her name would mean nothing to her. As soon as she comes into the light, Julia says that they’ve met several times, and soon she is calling her by name. Along with the fact that, as Beth, Terrayne Crawford is just standing there in the same light as Grayson Hall, with no practical effect whatsoever to suggest ghostliness, this deflates whatever feeling we are supposed to have that we are witnessing an encounter with the supernatural.
Julia insists Beth tell her how Quentin died. When the ghost of Barnabas’ nine year old sister Sarah Collins was on the show from June to November 1967, she would often insist on the Ghost Rules and vanish if people put direct questions to her. But Beth just wanders around a little, moans to Quentin that she has no choice but to tell Julia what she wants to know, and starts dishing. Again, they aren’t making ghosts like they used to.
Beth tells Julia that on 10 September 1897, she found out Quentin was going to marry a woman named Angelique. Quentin did not tell her this news himself; he left it to Angelique to do so, making the blow fall all the more heavily. This will remind longtime viewers of #392, when Barnabas could not bring himself to tell his ex-fiancée Josette that he was engaged to Angelique, leaving Angelique to tell Josette herself in #393. Josette waited until #425 to leap to her death from the cliff at Widows’ Hill, but things move faster now. Beth went straight from her conversation with Angelique to her room, where she had a bottle labeled “Poison.”
Sensible shopper that she is, Beth buys her poison in the Generic section of the murder weapon store. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Before she could do away with herself, Beth was interrupted by a knock on the door from twelve year old Jamison Collins. Jamison came in to show her a puzzle he had solved, then saw the bottle. He demanded to know what was going on, and she admitted that she was planning to kill herself because Quentin was going to marry Angelique. He stopped her doing that, but after he left to confront Quentin she took a loaded revolver out of her dresser.
Jamison found Quentin in the drawing room, in Angelique’s arms. Angelique at first dismissed Jamison, saying that his uncle was too busy to speak with him, but Jamison held his ground and insisted on seeing Quentin alone. Quentin obliged, but would answer Jamison’s questions only with airy assertions that he is too young to understand the situation. Jamison is so composed and forceful, and Quentin’s behavior is so flagrantly irresponsible, that we might expect Jamison to ask to be spared lectures on maturity from a man so much more childish than he. Instead, Jamison simply becomes angry and tells Quentin that after what he has done to Beth, he wants nothing more to do with him.
In #767, Jamison had a dream in which Quentin’s ghost said that his death was preceded by three events. The first two events happened shortly after. The third event was that Jamison rejected him. This has now happened, and in the dream Quentin said that once that took place “There was almost no time left for Quentin Collins.” Indeed, shortly after Jamison stalks off Beth shows up with her revolver and shoots Quentin. He staggers from the drawing room and goes upstairs. Since the staircase is made of eleven steps and is eight feet tall, that’s some pretty fancy staggering for a man who has just taken a round to the midsection. Quentin keeps staggering all the way to the tower room, where Beth shoots him a few more times.
We cut back to 1969, where Beth tells Julia she killed herself the day after she killed Quentin. She doesn’t seem to be done talking when Julia excuses herself. Say what you will about Sarah, she always left them wanting more.
Julia finds twelve year old David Collins, Jamison’s grandson, in the drawing room with Quentin’s ghost. Since Barnabas took us back in time with him in #701, we’ve got to know the living Quentin quite well, and he is a charming rascal who has very little in common with the silent, family-annihilating ghost we saw late in 1968. Beth’s story does very little to explain how the one turned into the other. The ghost has been draining the life from David; Julia orders David to come away from him, and he does. David lies down on the couch, and Julia examines him. She finds that he is weak, but resting comfortably.
Occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes enters. Quentin’s ghost has vanished. Stokes calls Julia by her first name, something he had not done prior to this episode, and asks after David. She at first says he will be all right, then checks on him again. She cannot find a pulse, and declares him dead. Julia has performed wonders in her work as a medical doctor, but her death pronouncements are so often wrong that this does not give much grounds for alarm. However, we then hear Quentin’s voice laughing maniacally, darkening David’s prospects.
Terrayne Crawford seems to be such a nice person that it distresses me to point out that she was not a very good actress. But in this one, Beth’s lack of supernatural quality and Julia’s bland reaction to her make it seem like writer Gordon Russell and director Lela Swift were conspiring to vent their exasperation with Miss Crawford’s limits. She can play one emotion at a time, so that when Beth is shocked to learn that Quentin is going to marry someone else she is only and entirely Shocked. When Beth is suicidal, she is only and entirely Sad; when she decides to take Quentin’s life instead of her own, she is only and entirely Gleeful; when she tells Julia that her vengeance did not relieve her sorrow over Quentin, we can see that’s true, because she is only and entirely Sorrowful. The result is like looking at a series of wood block cuts illustrating various emotions. It’s all very clear and quite vivid, but there’s no sense of development from one scene to the next. Had Miss Crawford been able to lay one emotion over another and play two or more of them at a time, the grin on Beth’s face when she kills Quentin would have shown us that all the layers of complexity of feeling had finally been stripped away and only hatred was left. That would have been a tremendous climax for the character. But since there was never any such complexity to start with, it’s just another block cut.
Often when I see disappointing performances on Dark Shadows, I think of other actors in the cast and try to imagine what they would have done with the part. Gail Strickland, like Miss Crawford, is a tall, thin woman whose chin juts out on a horizontal line, and she was on the show as doomed schoolteacher Dorcas Trilling for a couple of episodes in May. Dorcas’ role would have been well within Miss Crawford’s competence, and in her long and distinguished career Miss Strickland proved she could do just about anything. So on a day like this, I envision a different, much more nuanced Beth. The episode in my imagination is really stellar, I wish you could see it.
Today, David Henesy plays both his 1897 character Jamison Collins and his 1960s character David Collins. He is not credited for either of those roles, but for Daniel Collins, whom he played when the show was set in the 1790s back in late 1967 and early 1968.
The dramatic date is 28 August 1897. On 23 July, in #803, sorcerer Count Petofi cast a spell on stuffy Edward Collins. Ever since, Edward has believed he was a valet recently separated from the service of the Earl of Hampshire. This led Edward’s brother, the rakish Quentin, to follow the Collinses’ long-established procedure for responding to mental illness and lock him up in the room on top of the tower in the great house of Collinwood.
In #816, broadcast on 11 August 1969 and therefore set on 11 August 1897, Petofi brought something even stranger on Edward’s twelve year old son Jamison. He called the spirit of Jamison’s grandson David to project itself from 1969 and to take possession of Jamison. In 1969, David is deathly ill because Quentin’s ghost had besieged him and everyone else at Collinwood. Now, Jamison too is dying, and in the moments he has been able to speak he has let the living Quentin in on the fact that he will eventually become a family-annihilating ghost.
Wicked witch Angelique has made a bargain with Quentin. She will try to restore Jamison and Edward to their usual selves, and if she succeeds Quentin will marry her. We see her beside Jamison, talking earnestly with him, praying loudly to “the Master of Darkness” to cure him and Edward so that she and Quentin can devote themselves to the service of that supernatural personage. In 1968, when the show was in contemporary dress, Angelique and others used a lot of euphemisms like “Master of Darkness,” but lately the ratings are high enough that the ABC network’s office of Standards and Practices has been letting them say the name “Satan.” I suppose Angelique’s persistence in the former phrasing shows that she’s still devoted to the old time religion.
Satan comes through, and Jamison and Edward are freed. This leads to a bit of awkwardness in each case. Quentin and Edward’s step-niece Charity Trask has lost her personality as the result of another of Petofi’s spells, and is now hosting that of the late Pansy Faye, Cockney showgirl and onetime fiancée of Quentin and Edward’s late brother Carl. Charity/ Pansy is exploring the great house when she comes to the locked door of the tower room. She hears Edward inside calling for help. He is still in his valet persona, and he is delighted with her when she promises to get a key and let him out. Edward returns to himself, with no memory of anything that has happened since 23 July, while Charity/ Pansy is away. When she comes back up and opens the door, she finds that he is in a foul mood and that he disapproves of her intensely. She is understandably miffed at his apparent fickleness and ingratitude.
For his part, Jamison’s quite different experience has left him with some memories. He tells Angelique of images that are floating around in his mind. She recognizes them as things associated with Petofi, and is distressed. She tells him he is better off not knowing what they are. Quentin is more distressed when Jamison looks at him and asks why he is trying to kill David Collins. Jamison can’t explain who David Collins is or how he learned that Quentin was trying to kill him, but this does confirm everything Quentin has gathered about his post-mortem destiny.
While Edward comforts Jamison in the study, Quentin and Angelique meet in the drawing room. She asks if he will honor his end of their deal; he says that he will, though he makes abundant protests about his reluctance to do so. Charity/ Pansy eavesdrops at the door. She has decided that she will marry Quentin, and is horrified to hear this conversation.
Edward enters and asks Angelique to excuse him and his brother. She exits, and Edward declares that the first order of business must be to hunt and destroy vampire Barnabas Collins. Quentin is appalled at this. He tries to tell Edward that Petofi is their most immediate threat; after he explains who Petofi is, Edward agrees that they will get around to fighting him at the appropriate time, but he insists that Barnabas is their main concern.
Edward exits, and Charity/ Pansy enters. She tells Quentin that she overheard his conversation with Angelique. She says that he will not marry Angelique. Quentin bitterly responds that he will, and that there is nothing she can do to stop it. At this, Charity/ Pansy picks up a knife and tries to stab Quentin. Quentin holds her at bay, and Edward enters in time to see what is happening and to get Charity/ Pansy off of Quentin. Quentin says that Charity/ Pansy’s condition is further evidence of the need to focus on fighting Petofi, but Edward will not swerve from his determination to concentrate on Barnabas. Moreover, he decides that he will now quiet Charity/ Pansy himself. He sends Quentin out of the room and prepares to give Charity/ Pansy a stern talking-to.
Charity/ Pansy’s attempt to prevent Quentin’s marriage to Angelique by stabbing him is of a piece with her attempt to break up Quentin’s relationship with maidservant Beth in #823/824 by poisoning Beth’s brandy. The original Pansy, whom we saw as a live person in #771, was not exactly nice. She was cold, hard, and cynical, trying to exploit the childlike Carl. But she didn’t seem to be bent towards physical violence. That appears to be Charity’s contribution to the composite being that the two of them now make up.
Before Edward can deliver whatever lecture he had planned to give Charity/ Pansy, she goes into a trance. The live Pansy had done a stage act as a “mentalist” and fortune teller, and was astonished in #771 when she tried to do her act at Collinwood and found herself actually channeling spirits from the great beyond. Now Charity/ Pansy routinely acts as a medium.
Charity/ Pansy announces that something terrible will happen on 10 September. Countdowns don’t usually work as a source of suspense on soaps. They might be all right in a play or a feature film, where we know that there will be a final curtain or a last frame after which the imaginary universe will cease to exist, but so long as the series is scheduled to come on every weekday at 4 PM, we know that there is always going to be room to move any deadline a little further out. Besides, since Dark Shadows was done virtually live to tape, they could rarely predict with any accuracy just how many ticks of the clock it would take to get all the movements made and dialogue spoken before the crisis is supposed to be reached. But “10 September” is in a slightly different category. Quentin explicitly says on screen that today is 28 August, which was indeed the original broadcast date in 1969. And when Edward says that his last memories are of 23 July, he is indeed referencing the original broadcast date of #803. So when Charity/ Pansy says “10 September,” she is committing the show to something in the real world. We may well sit up and take notice.
Charity/ Pansy has a vision of what will happen on that date. She sees Angelique looking at a portrait of Quentin in the drawing room. Red paint is dripping from the figure’s chest into a pool on the floor. That pool is next to a trail of other drops of red. In her mind’s eye, Charity/ Pansy follows the drops into the foyer, up the stairs, and into the tower. There, she sees Angelique opening the door to the tower room and finding Quentin sprawled, a sheet of red plastic, or perhaps construction paper, on his chest. Charity/ Pansy screams and runs out. From the dramatic music and Charity/ Pansy’s agitated reaction, I take it the object lying on Quentin’s chest is meant to suggest blood.
The acting is all very strong today. I was fascinated with Nancy Barrett’s use of her face to highlight Charity/ Pansy’s makeup. She relaxes her jaw muscles slightly more than usual, causing the dark treatment around her eyes to stand out. That in turn creates a visual metaphor labeling Charity/ Pansy a “painted lady.”
My wife, Mrs Acilius, was particularly impressed with Louis Edmonds’ realization of Edward. When the spell breaks and he becomes himself again, Edward is alone in an empty room. He has no dialogue, no props, and no scene partner to work with. Yet he instantly conveys what has happened. Even first time viewers will understand that the obliging servant has now become a stuffy authority figure.
Edward’s towering indignation when Quentin first tells him he was the one who locked him in the tower room gives way instantly when Quentin explains that he was under a delusion at the time. Edmonds executes that transition so smoothly that first time viewers will not notice the oddness of it, but longtime fans who remember the many previous occasions when the Collinses locked each other there as a response to mental illness will chuckle.
One of the prominent features of Edward’s personality is his warm relationship with his children. This sets him apart from the first two characters Louis Edmonds played on the show, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins and haughty overlord Joshua Collins. Edward’s dialogue in his scene alone with Jamison involves several discrete points of information, and it would have been understandable if the affection he displays for Jamison while he getting all of those words across had been either perfunctory or mawkish. But he and David Henesy get the emotions exactly right while also delivering the lines very clearly.
Edward’s preoccupation with Barnabas is a delicious little bit of commentary on the show itself. Dark Shadows‘ ratings, chronically low during its first 42 weeks on the air, perked up when it added Barnabas to the cast in April 1967. That summer, schoolkids curious to see a vampire on daytime TV made it into a hit, and not long after Barnabas became one of the pop culture sensations of the 1960s, instantly recognizable to many millions of people who never watched the show. To this day, people who have heard of Dark Shadows are likely to refer to it as “the vampire soap opera from the 60s.” It was Barnabas who took us with him to 1897, when he traveled back in time in the course of his attempt to rescue David from Quentin’s ghost, and for the first months of the 1897 storyline he was the only character who knew what was at stake for the 1969 version of the Collinses in the events going on around him.
But now Barnabas is on the fringes of the story, and Quentin, Angelique, and Petofi all know about 1969. Edward’s idea that the action has to focus on Barnabas is evidence that he hasn’t been watching the show. Petofi is the principal antagonist now, Quentin the chief protagonist, and Barnabas can be absent for weeks at a time while they and others find all sorts of things to do. This represents, not Barnabas’ failure, but his ultimate success. Before he was introduced, every story revolved around well-meaning governess Vicki, the main character. A soap opera can’t really have a main character. It needs to keep multiple storylines running at once, occasionally intersecting with each other, often running for long periods with little or no interaction. When one person had to be at the center of every development, the result was slow and claustrophobic.
Barnabas blew that confining structure open, because as a vampire his function in the story was not to solve problems, but to create problems for other people to solve. So no matter how much time they spent focusing on him, he always directed our attention towards everyone else. We wondered who would catch on to his secret, who would fall victim to his malign intentions, who would find a way to fight him, etc. When a mad scientist managed to free Barnabas of the effects of the vampire curse, he retained his function as a problem-maker, even when he set out to be a problem solver. Every time he announced that he had a plan, we looked forward to seeing how the rest of the cast would react to that plan’s rapid and catastrophic collapse.
Barnabas is as hapless in 1897 as he has been in every other time period, as witness the fact that he has been exposed as a vampire and driven into hiding. But he isn’t even the show’s Screw-Up-in-Chief now. That title belongs to broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi. In #807, Petofi compelled Magda to review the preceding 22 weeks of the show and admit that she had precipitated every plotline. The first of those was the release of Barnabas into the world of 1897, so that his crimes and misadventures are just a subcategory of hers. Since Magda is played by Grayson Hall, who in her original role of Julia Hoffman is waiting for us in 1969, we can be confident she won’t be coming back to contemporary dress with us, but for the moment she has relegated Barnabas to the status of a secondary character.
In 1897, King Johnny Romana is the hereditary chieftain of a Rroma tribe that has long been at war with ancient sorcerer Count Petofi. King Johnny is at the supreme moment of his destiny, standing over Petofi with his scimitar raised, ready to deal the ultimate blow, when a creepy little guy ruins it all for him. Petofi’s henchman Aristide throws a knife and catches King Johnny in the back. Aristide has a dagger with a curved blade that he sometimes calls “The Dancing Girl,” other times “The Dancing Lady”; he makes a big deal of it, the thing fascinates him. But when he kills King Johnny, Aristide doesn’t even use his special knife. It’s a brutal anticlimax for King Johnny.
King Johnny does live long enough to tell Petofi that he isn’t safe yet. After nine days pass, he will appear to another Rroma, somewhere in the world, and will pass on to that person his immunity to Petofi’s magical powers and his mission to kill him. After Aristide buries King Johnny, he finds that the scimitar has vanished. Evidently it will go to the new avenger.
Meanwhile, at the great house of Collinwood, twelve-year old Jamison Collins is dying. Petofi cast a spell causing Jamison to be possessed by the spirit of his grandson David Collins, who will live in 1969. But David won’t live at all unless the spell is broken, because it is killing Jamison. Jamison’s devoted uncle, rakish libertine Quentin Collins, makes a deal with wicked witch Angelique. He will marry her if she manages to break Petofi’s spell and save Jamison. They made a similar bargain previously, but that time her magic failed.
Petofi senses that his spells are being challenged. He marches to Collinwood and orders Quentin to make Angelique stop what she is doing. Angelique herself enters; she and Petofi confront each other, then she goes back to the study to resume her attempts to free Jamison. We end with Petofi preparing to cast a spell against her.
Petofi confronts Angelique in the drawing room at Collinwood while Quentin looks on. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
This is an entertaining, fast-paced episode. It’s too bad it is the final appearance of actor Paul Michael in the series. He played the most unpromising part of King Johnny so skillfully that we barely noticed he was little more than a menacing pose, an evil laugh, and an ethnic stereotype. He does return with a small part in the feature film House of Dark Shadows, but it would have been fun to see what he could do with a really meaty role.
From December 1968 to through February 1969, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy) and his friend Amy Jennings (Denise Nickerson) were falling under the power of the malign ghost of Quentin Collins. Occasionally the children were possessed by the spirits of David’s grandfather Jamison and great-aunt Nora; at other times they were possessed by Quentin’s own spirit and that of Quentin’s sometime lover, maidservant Beth. In those same days, Amy’s brother Chris (Don Briscoe) was suffering from a curse that made him a werewolf.
As Quentin’s power over David and Amy grew, so did the frequency and duration of Chris’ spells in lupine form. By #700, Quentin so dominated the great house on the estate of Collinwood that its residents fled to the Old House on the estate, home of their distant cousin Barnabas Collins. David, entirely possessed by Jamison, was close to death. For his part, Chris was stuck in wolf form, apparently permanently, and Barnabas had locked him in a secret room in the old Collins family mausoleum.
Desperate to remedy the situation, Barnabas and his associate, occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes (Thayer David,) searched Quentin’s old room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house. They found some I Ching wands there. Under Stokes’ direction, Barnabas threw the wands, meditated on them, and found himself transported back in time to 1897. In that year, Quentin, Beth, Jamison, and Nora are alive, and Barnabas is a vampire.
Barnabas had no idea what led Quentin to become a malevolent ghost or what first brought the werewolf curse on Chris, but he had reason to believe that 1897 was an important year in the events leading up to both of those unhappy circumstances. So once he arrived in that period, he spent his nights meddling in all the affairs of the Collins family he found there. Vampires are not problem-solvers; their function in a story is to create problems that other characters will have to solve. So all of Barnabas’ well-intentioned interventions backfired badly. Even disregarding the many murders he committed for his own selfish ends, including the murder of Quentin’s brother Carl Collins, his trip would by any standard have to be considered a disaster.
Now, evil sorcerer Count Petofi (Thayer David) has found that Barnabas is a visitor from the future and is determined to go with him when he returns to 1969. When he demanded Barnabas tell him his secret, Barnabas quite truthfully told him he had no idea what was going on when he found himself transported from one period to another. Petofi did not believe him, and is trying to extort the information he wants by summoning the spirit of David to come from 1969 and possess Jamison (David Henesy) in 1897.
Not only is this an intriguing reversal of the 1968-1969 story in which the ghost of Quentin caused Jamison’s spirit to possess David, it also picks up on some recent hints that they might retcon the whole “Haunting of Collinwood” story to put Quentin’s ghost under the control of Petofi. Even if he can’t hitch a ride with Barnabas, perhaps Petofi will find a way to use Quentin to go back to 1969 with us.
Nora (Denise Nickerson) is with her brother Jamison when the possession takes hold. She is puzzled that he insists on calling her “Amy” and himself “David” and that he tells her to call Quentin on the telephone, even though he is in the house. When Quentin shows up, he recognizes the name David Collins from something Barnabas has told him about the future. But Barnabas has not told Quentin that he is fated to become a family-annihilating ghost, and so Quentin cannot understand how David knows who he is.
Meanwhile, a man named Tim Shaw (Don Briscoe) comes to the house and visits Nora in her room. Tim is Amy’s former teacher, and she considers him a friend. She does not know that since she first knew him, he has lost his moral compass, found the severed Hand of Count Petofi, stolen it, and used its magical powers to make a small fortune in New York City. Evidently all working-class Collinsport boys get rich quick when they go to NYC. In 1961, ex-fisherman Burke Devlin got out of prison and went to that city. By the time he returned to Collinsport in 1966, Burke was a big-time corporate raider who had to think for a moment when David Collins asked him if he’d already made his first $100,000,000. He answered “Not yet.” If he’d had the Hand, no doubt he would have passed that milestone long before.
A couple of days ago, Tim asked Nora to hide a box for him. Unknown to her, the box contained the Hand. Tim asks Nora to return the box to him. She tells him Jamison has it, and he flies into a rage. He gets very rough with her. Briscoe and Nickerson were both good actors, and we’ve seen them share tender moments both as Nora and Tim and as Amy and Chris, so the resulting scene is as uncomfortable as it needs to be to show us that Tim is no longer the long-suffering nice guy we once knew. Moreover, longtime viewers who recognize Tim’s echo of Burke and remember that Burke, though sometimes villainous, was always good with David, will be shocked that Tim does not mirror the earlier character’s consistent soft spot for children.
Tim goes downstairs and sees Quentin coming out of the drawing room. He demands to see Jamison. Quentin tells him that Jamison is ill, and it will be impossible for anyone to talk to him. Tim starts to get ugly about it, and Quentin cuts him off, saying that Jamison doesn’t have the Hand. Tim is shocked that Quentin knows about the Hand, but recovers sufficiently to ask who does. Quentin cheerfully tells Tim that if he goes to the abandoned mill at the end of the North Road, he will find his onetime acquaintance Aristide, and that Aristide will direct him to the man who has the Hand.
Tim knows Aristide only slightly, but he has a grudge against him. Aristide attacked Tim’s girlfriend Amanda and demanded she tell him where the Hand was. Even after he realized Amanda did not know what he was talking about, he beat her and threatened to kill her, forcing her to tell him whatever she did know that would help him retrace Tim’s steps. When Tim found Amanda, Aristide had left her unconscious, and Tim feared at first she might be dead.
We cut to the hideout in the mill, where Tim is waiting with a pistol and thinking that he would be justified in killing Aristide for what he did to Amanda. When Aristide comes, Tim holds him at gunpoint and demands the Hand be returned to him. Aristide tells him that is not possible. They quarrel until another man enters. It is Petofi, who shows Tim that the Hand has resumed its place at the end of his right arm.
That suffices to show Tim that the Hand is no longer available to him. Petofi tells him he should consider himself lucky that the Hand, which followed no one’s commands, chose to make him rich and happy. Tim says he is not happy, and will not be until he can take revenge on the hypocritical Rev’d Gregory Trask and lawyer/ Satanist Evan Hanley. This again reminds longtime viewers of Burke, whose original goal in returning to Collinsport was to wreak vengeance on Roger Collins. As Trask and Evan involved Tim in a homicide when he was not in his right mind and tried to make him alone pay the legal penalty for it, so Roger killed someone with Burke’s car while Burke was passed out drunk in the back seat and saw to it that the court concluded that Burke was driving.
Petofi laughs and congratulates Tim on his choice of enemies. Tim brightens and asks if Petofi will join with him in bringing Trask and Evan down. Petofi explains that he does nothing without a price. Tim says he has a lot of money, and Petofi says he doesn’t have any use for money. Petofi brings up Amanda, only to say that he doesn’t have a use for her either, at least not at the moment. He sends Tim along his way.
Aristide is talking when Petofi dismisses him. He tells him that two visitors are coming, and that he wants to be alone when they arrive. He will not explain further, and so Aristide is in rather a huff when he leaves.
The visitors are Quentin and Jamison/ David. Quentin is carrying his nephew/ great-great-nephew. He demands that Petofi cure Jamison of the possession, which seems to be killing him. Petofi refuses. When Jamison/ David calls Quentin by name, Petofi asks him how a boy who lives in 1969 knows who he is. Quentin’s bewildered reaction leaves us wondering how he will respond if Barnabas ever tells him just why he went to the past.
In the opening teaser, Petofi stood over the coffin in which he has trapped Barnabas. He told Aristide that he and Barnabas have been at war for what even he, at his immense age, considers to be a very long time. He says that they are now engaged in the final battle of that war.
Petofi’s remarks make absolutely no sense whatever in the context of what we have seen. It has been clear so far that Petofi’s presence at Collinwood is an accident, that Barnabas never heard of him before, and that Petofi only just learned that Barnabas has traveled through time. Many of the oddest dead ends on the show were left over from advance plans that hadn’t worked out; so when they were drawing up broad outlines six months before taping, or when they were writing episode summaries (called “flimsies”) thirteen weeks before, they would often include ideas that depended on story points that they never got around to making happen or characters who never worked out. Once in a while, the writers tasked with filling in the flimsies wouldn’t be able to make up a complete 22 minute script without incorporating some of this irrelevant material. So perhaps at some point in the planning process they meant to have stories about Barnabas going back to the eighteenth century and fighting Petofi there. They may still have been kicking that idea around when they shot this installment.
If Dark Shadows has offended, Think but this, and all is mended — That you have but slumbered here While these visions did appear. And now, a word from All Temperature Cheer.
Danny Horn, “Episode 816: Midsummer,” posted 1 February 2016 at Dark Shadows Every Day.
One night in 1797, nine Rroma men trapped sorcerer Count Petofi in the forest of Ojden. They amputated his right hand, and with it took most of his magical powers. Some time after, Petofi learned that he had exactly one hundred years to reattach the hand. If he managed it within that time, he would become immortal. Otherwise, he would die on the anniversary of the amputation.
Now that anniversary has come, and Petofi has succeeded in regaining his hand with only minutes to spare. Time-traveling vampire Barnabas Collins and his distant cousin, desperately handsome werewolf Quentin, have decided that because Petofi’s spirit is in possession of Quentin’s twelve year old nephew Jamison and Jamison is as close to death as is Petofi himself, only by surrendering the hand to Petofi can they save the boy. Barnabas did get Petofi’s servant Aristide to promise to free Quentin of lycanthropy once he has the hand back, but he put little faith in that promise.
Now Petofi is jubilant and Jamison is still sick. Barnabas tells Petofi about the deal Aristide made, and also says that he wants Jamison and the rest of the Collinses to be freed from the ill effects Petofi has had on them. Petofi could not be less interested. Instead, he wants Barnabas to tell him how he traveled in time from 1969 and how he will travel back there.
Petofi lets slip that he is anxious to go to another period of history because he is afraid of the Rroma people who are still after him. We know, not only that it was Rroma who cut off his hand, but that when Petofi saw a young Rroma woman in a tavern in #794 he couldn’t get out fast enough. While it may have taken nine Rroma men to take his hand, evidently a single Rroma woman, and a tiny one at that, is capable of doing him considerable harm. Barnabas has a Rroma friend, broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, who has considerable magic powers of her own, and he knows of a Romany band currently camped near Boston. So Petofi’s apparently well-founded ziganophobia is a sign that Barnabas may be able to defeat him, even though Petofi’s powers were formidable even before he was reunited with his hand.
Petofi says that he will cure Jamison only if Barnabas explains how he traveled to 1897 from 1969. Barnabas tells Petofi he has no idea how he made that journey. This is so. He meditated on some I Ching wands, a process which he was told might have any of an infinite number of effects, and found himself in 1897. Nor does he have any idea how to get back. He might have enlarged on the theme of his complete lack of useful knowledge in this area. In 1968, Barnabas traveled back to his original era, the 1790s, by going to the grave of a man named Peter Bradford on the anniversary of Bradford’s death. Bradford’s ghost had been haunting him, and Barnabas called for Bradford to take him back to the year 1796. After he did so, Barnabas found that he could return to the 1960s only by having himself sealed in his coffin and waiting inside it for 172 years until friends let him out. He doesn’t tell Petofi about that incident, but it does not seem likely to be of any more help to him than the story about the I Ching would be.
Petofi does not believe that Barnabas is so hapless. First he squeezes Barnabas’ hand, depriving him of the power to dematerialize. Then he opens a cupboard and tells Barnabas to look in it. It takes a while to warm up, but eventually it gets an ABC affiliate showing Dark Shadows. Barnabas sees the parlor of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood in 1969. His best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD, is sitting there reading a book. We haven’t seen Julia since #700, but she might be on our minds today. At one point Aristide lights his cigar on a candle burning in a large candelabra. In #296, Julia very memorably did the same thing with her cigarette.
Barnabas sees strange and troubled boy David Collins come staggering downstairs, raving deliriously about Quentin. Julia tells him to reject Quentin, who in 1969 is a ghost haunting Collinwood and draining the life from David. David passes out, and Julia injects him with a powerful sedative, as you do with unconscious children.
The cupboard loses the channel, and Barnabas asks Petofi what else is happening in 1969. Petofi cannot answer any questions; it quickly becomes clear that he couldn’t see or hear the scene. Barnabas is intrigued to learn of another of Petofi’s weaknesses, and walks out.
Aristide then speculates that Barnabas might be telling the truth. Petofi rejects this at once, reveals more of his cupboard’s limitations:
No, he’s not a fool, Aristide. He thinks he can win, accomplish whatever he wants to do here, and disappear without me…
Had Petofi ever seen even one episode of Dark Shadows, it would not occur to him to say that Barnabas is “not a fool.” Nor would he surmise that Barnabas is pursuing a plan that includes a plausible method of escape. If Barnabas had a plan of any kind, Petofi would know all about it, since it would have failed spectacularly the moment he took the first step towards putting it into effect.
Petofi and Aristide then go to the Old House. They find Magda there. At the moment, she is under Petofi’s power. Like Julia, Magda is played by Grayson Hall. We may have thought the glimpse into 1969 was a videotaped insert, but evidently it was done live, because Magda is not wearing her usual heavy brownface makeup. She may have a bit of an artificial tan, but Julia’s blue eyeshadow is clearly visible through it.
Magda, looking more like an actual Rroma woman than she ever has before.
Petofi forces Magda to lead her to Barnabas’ hiding place. He has a cross and Aristide has a chain and a padlock. Petofi puts the cross inside the coffin, and orders Aristide to chain the coffin closed. Petofi declares that Barnabas is in for a long journey.
One night in 1797, nine Rroma men trapped the sorcerer Count Petofi in the forest of Ojden and cut off his right hand. With it, the count lost most of his magical powers. Sometime after, Petofi learned that he could live for exactly one hundred years without his hand. If he was reunited with it in that time, he would become immortal; if he was not, he would die.
Now, it is 1897, and the hundred years are almost up. Petofi has vacated his body and has for some weeks been operating in the person of twelve year old Jamison Collins. He has regained the hand, but as Petofi is dying, so is Jamison. Jamison/ Petofi collapses in the woods carrying the hand back to the place where his servant Aristide is waiting with Petofi’s own body. Jamison/ Petofi passes out shortly after Jamison’s uncle, the rakish Quentin Collins, catches up to him. Quentin carries Jamison/ Petofi and the hand to the caretaker’s cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, where he confers with his distant cousin, Barnabas Collins the vampire.
Quentin and Barnabas decide that if Petofi dies, Jamison will die as well. Therefore they have no choice but to take the hand to Aristide. Barnabas does get Aristide to promise that once Petofi has the hand, he will use his powers to cure Quentin’s werewolf curse, but no one seems to regard Aristide’s word as valuable. Barnabas makes a menacing move towards Aristide; Aristide wards him off with a cross. Aristide puts the hand on Petofi’s chest, says some magic words, and waits a little over an hour. During this time, he needles Barnabas by offering him tea, which he must know is not part of a vampire’s diet. Then Petofi comes out of his room, laughing his evil laugh and showing off his reattached hand.
“At last my arm is complete again!” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die. (Caption by Stephen Sondheim.)
In #767, Jamison had a dream in which Quentin told him that his doom was sealed when the one person he truly loved turned against him. It was already clear at that point that this person was Jamison, but today Quentin tells Jamison in so many words that he is the only person he ever really loved. So we can take this as an announcement that the climactic crisis of the part of Dark Shadows set in 1897 is approaching.
This is the first episode to feature a scene in the restaurant at the Collinsport Inn since #227 in May 1967. The show was in black and white then; apparently the restaurant set cannot be seen in color, since this one, set in the year 1897, survives only in kinescope.
Aristide, Tim, and Jamison/ Petofi in the restaurant at the Collinsport Inn. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Schoolteacher turned adventurer Tim Shaw is at a table in the restaurant when he is joined by twelve year old Jamison Collins, a former student of his. Unknown to Tim, Jamison’s body is currently a vessel for the spirit of 150 year old sorcerer Count Petofi. Tim is startled to see Jamison, and tells him he had heard he was ill. Jamison asks where he heard this. Tim pauses, then claims that he telephoned Jamison’s home, the great house of Collinwood. He says that Jamison’s nine year old sister Nora answered the phone and told him of his illness. Tim tells Jamison that he is waiting for a young lady, and that after she arrives he would like to be alone with her.
A man enters and talks with Tim. After he goes, Jamison asks who he is. Tim says he has only met him once, and that he knows almost nothing about him beyond the fact that his name is Aristide. We have seen Aristide in the woods with Jamison/ Petofi, and know that he is Petofi’s servant. Jamison/ Petofi told him in that scene that he felt weak and had only a few hours left if he did not recover “The Hand.”
We also saw Aristide in Tim’s room with Amanda, the young lady Tim is waiting to meet. He confronted Amanda, roughed her up, and threatened her with a prop representing a dagger with a curved blade. He wanted Amanda to tell him where “The Hand of Count Petofi” is. Amanda asked if “The Hand of Count Petofi” was a piece of jewelry or something. She had no idea it is literally a severed hand, cut from the wrist of Count Petofi 100 years ago. Aristide questioned her and learned that Tim took a box from the Inn earlier that night and returned without it.
Tim excuses himself, saying that he will go to the front desk to ask if Amanda left a message there explaining why she is so late. Jamison/ Petofi meets Aristide back in the woods. When Aristide tells him that Tim took a box from the Inn and returned without it, he remembers that Tim said he had talked on the telephone with Nora. He deduces that Tim actually talked to Nora in person when he took the box to Collinwood and enlisted Nora’s help hiding it there.
Jamison/ Petofi goes to Nora’s room and wakes her. He tricks her into telling him that Tim was there, but she refuses to tell him where the box is. He twists her arm until she does so. In the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s, David Henesy played strange and troubled boy David Collins, and Denise Nickerson played nine year old Amy Jennings. David and Amy were intermittently possessed by Jamison and Nora in late 1968 and early 1969, and when Amy/ Nora resisted David/ Jamison in #667 and #679, he twisted her arm. When we see the same violent act here, we see a dramatization of a cycle of abuse. We may also wonder if they are going to retcon that “Haunting of Collinwood” segment to include Petofi as a driving force.
Jamison/ Petofi takes the box from Nora’s armoire, opens it, and holds up the Hand. Regular viewers can expect Petofi to return to his own physical form, reattach the Hand to his wrist, and increase his magical powers greatly.
All of the male cast members have trouble with their dialogue today, even the usually line-perfect David Henesy. I wonder if writer Gordon Russell was late finishing the script. Mr Henesy and Michael Stroka manage to give good enough performances that their bobbles don’t really matter, but Don Briscoe is just bad today. When Tim is talking with Nora in the teaser, his intonations are bizarre, and in his later scenes he is flat and lifeless, including a long stretch when he is openly reading off the teleprompter. Perhaps that’s because of his acting style- he worked from the inside out, finding his character’s motivations and developing those first, adding the dialogue last. Give an actor like that less time than he needs, and he might not have anything at all to offer.
One unfair criticism that Briscoe gets from many of the fans who post comments online is that Tim does not have romantic chemistry with any of the women he is paired with. He isn’t supposed to have romantic chemistry with them! At first we see him linked with neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond. Tim and Rachel were students together at the boarding school run by the sadistic Gregory Trask. When Jamison and Nora are sent to the same school, Tim and Rachel illustrate the horror that lies in store for them. If Tim and Rachel were a hot and exciting couple, they would send the message that kids subjected to Trask’s abuse can grow up to be happy adults, muffing the whole point of the story.
The second woman attached to Tim was Trask’s daughter Charity. Nora points out to Jamison today that Tim and Charity never got along with each other, and regular viewers remember that this is true. Trask forced them to get engaged, a situation that made them both miserable, and then led them both to believe that Tim had murdered Charity’s mother. Again, the whole point of the relationship is to demonstrate how cruel Trask is.
Now Tim is traveling with Amanda. We met Amanda yesterday, and saw that she is impatient with Tim and tolerates him only because he has a lot of money and keeps spending it on her. As possessor of the Hand of Count Petofi, Tim has managed to get rich quick and turn into a tragic version of the character W. C. Fields played in vaudeville routines and stage plays and films set in the Gay Nineties. Amanda is the sort of woman Fields’ characters invariably failed to impress. Again, the last thing you would want would be for Amanda to seem actually to be attracted to Tim.
Though Michael Stroka, in spite of his line bobbles, does a good job as Aristide, there is one moment today when he does make a bad mistake. Aristide makes a big deal out of his dagger, which he initially called “The Dancing Girl.” The prop is obviously just a flat piece of wood, which we might be able to accept if we don’t have to look at it for an extended period. But when he is threatening Amanda today, he holds “The Dancing Girl’s” blade in the palm of his hand, squeezes it, rolls it around, and caresses it. If there were a sharp edge anywhere on it, his hand would be bleeding profusely. They really are not making it easy for us to believe Aristide is going to cut anyone.
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.
Charity Trask finds Quentin Collins unconscious and disheveled in the woods. She kneels beside him in a show of concern, then notices a woman on the ground near him. The woman’s face is covered with what on a black and white television look like slash marks and her clothing is badly torn. She regains consciousness just long enough to say Quentin’s name. Charity notices that Quentin is holding a scrap of cloth that matches the woman’s dress, and realizes that he is the werewolf who has been terrorizing the area.
Quentin comes to, and Charity tells him they must get help for the injured woman. Quentin’s response is to threaten to kill Charity if she says anything to anyone about what she has seen. He says that he will look after the woman, and repeats his death threats to Charity.
Charity goes home to the great house of Collinwood, where her father, the overbearingly evil Gregory Trask, orders her to marry Quentin by the end of the week. She is horrified and tells him she will not. She cannot explain why. Before Gregory can corner Charity and force her to give him information, twelve year old Jamison Collins enters. Jamison reports seeing the injured woman in the woods, and says that Gregory must go to her at once if she is to survive. Gregory dismisses this as a “tall tale” and says he will not be distracted from punishing Jamison for his long unexplained absence from the house. Charity, on the point of sobbing, urges Trask to take Jamison seriously, and he reluctantly goes to see if there really is a woman in the woods.
We know more than do Charity or Trask. We saw Jamison meet Quentin in the woods next to the woman’s body, and talk to him in an amiable and condescending tone about the possibility of turning this unfortunate incident to their mutual advantage. He also makes it clear that, despite his appearance, he is not simply Jamison. He is a sorcerer named Count Petofi, in possession of Jamison and acting through his body. When Charity asks Jamison/ Petofi if the woman was alone when he found her, he replies that of course she was. Smiling, he asks who she thought he might have seen. Terribly agitated, she soon excuses herself and goes into the foyer. Jamison/ Petofi looks directly into the camera and smiles. David Henesy was the first actor on Dark Shadows to use this technique, back in 1966 when he was playing strange and troubled boy David Collins. He’s been doing it a lot lately, and is still very good at using it to unsettle the audience.
He looks young for 150, but he’s grown quite a bit since 1966. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Quentin comes down the staircase, wearing a tidy new suit. Charity is shocked that he did nothing to help the injured woman; he resumes his menacing tone and demands to know whether she kept her side of the bargain. He eventually deduces that she did not tell what she saw, and allows her to go upstairs to her bedroom. Quentin is usually charming, often funny, and occasionally aligned with good against evil, but even before he became a monster he was established as a homicidal maniac. When we first met Quentin, he was a ghost haunting Collinwood in the late 1960s and he kept killing people there. The first week of our trip back in time to 1897, we saw him trying to strangle his grandmother in her bed. And his sister-in-law turned him into a werewolf as revenge after he murdered his wife Jenny. Since we are focused on the horror of Charity’s situation as her father is pressuring her to marry Quentin, of course his bloodthirstiness is the aspect of his personality we see most clearly today.
Trask returns, carrying the injured woman. Quentin asks if she was conscious. Trask says she is not conscious. Quentin specifies that he wants to know if she has been conscious at any point while with Trask. This arouses Trask’s suspicions; Quentin protests that it is information he will need when he telephones the doctor. Trask says that she was not, and carries her upstairs.
Quentin goes to the drawing room. Jamison/ Petofi is there, and has some business to discuss. Quentin is too unsettled by the fact of the possession to talk candidly. Jamison/ Petofi decides to humor him. “I’ll become that beautiful child you so want to see… Can we play a game, Uncle Quentin?” Quentin is stunned by Jamison/ Petofi’s sudden change of tone and bearing. It is indeed impressive to see David Henesy drop his mimicry of Thayer David as Petofi and resume his usual approach to the role of Jamison. We’d forgotten just how deeply he had come to inhabit that imitation.
Jamison/ Petofi declares that they will have a treasure hunt. He gives Quentin a series of clues in the form of cryptic rhymes. Quentin is completely stumped by all of them. Finally Jamison/ Petofi just points at the desk drawer he wants Quentin to open and tells him there is a document in it that he can use against Trask. Quentin opens the drawer and pulls out heap after heap of paper, then declares “There’s no paper here!”
Quentin is not especially brainy; much of his appeal comes from the joy David Selby, Ph.D., took in playing a character who at no point says or does anything to demonstrate intellectual prowess. But we are not supposed to believe that he is stupid, at least not so stupid that it is plausible that “There’s no paper here!” was the scripted line. Maybe it was a blooper for “There’s no paper like that here!” or “There’s no paper here I haven’t seen before!” or something like that.
A document bearing a wax seal and a couple of signatures materializes on top of the papers Quentin has pulled out of the desk. He reads it, and sees that it is a full confession to the murder of Trask’s first wife, signed by Trask and lawyer Evan Hanley. All Jamison/ Petofi has to say is “It can be very useful, can’t it? Especially since it’s true… Aren’t games fun, Uncle Quentin?” and Quentin catches on that the document gives him power he can use against Trask.
Meanwhile, the injured woman has briefly regained consciousness in the upstairs bedroom where Trask and Charity are attending her. She spoke Quentin’s name, and Trask sent Charity to fetch him. Trask confronts Quentin about this. Quentin says that the woman’s name is Tessie, that he talked to her a couple of times when they ran into each other at the Blue Whale tavern, and that he knows nothing more about her. He admits he didn’t call the police after he called the doctor; he claims he simply forgot, in the confusion of the moment. Trask says that he will go and make the call. In an accusing tone, he asks “Most unfortunate, isn’t it, that you were the one who forgot?” He leaves Quentin alone with Tessie.
Tessie regains consciousness, looks at Quentin, and reacts with dismay. He tells her he didn’t mean to do it. She moans and dies. As she flops over, her right breast comes perilously close to springing out of her décolletage. When he realizes she has died, Quentin says “Tessie!” with a note of exasperation, as if she’s always doing inconvenient things like that. Mrs Acilius and I laughed out loud.
Downstairs, we see that Trask did not call the police after all. Charity is doing it from the telephone in the drawing room. Quentin enters through the secret panel behind her. We first saw him use this panel in #685, when it was 1969 and he was a silent but peculiarly corporeal ghost. He let himself into the drawing room and strangled silversmith Ezra Braithwaite, played by Abe Vigoda. A bit of an eldritch moment that the killer of Tessie is also the killer of a character played by the actor who would go on to play Tessio in the 1972 film The Godfather.
In Vigoda’s last scene in that movie, Tessio and Corleone Family consigliere Tom Hagen are at pains to assure each other that Tessio’s impending murder and the events that led up to it were strictly business, and that Tessio and his murderers still have the warmest regards for each other. Quentin’s attempt to deny his guilt to Tessie is of that same sort- he didn’t have any hostility towards her, his nature as a werewolf simply required that he kill the nearest person.
By contrast, Quentin’s interaction with Charity is intensely personal and intensely unpleasant. He takes the telephone out of her hand, something that men often do to women on Dark Shadows when they are trapping them, and moves deep into her personal space as he demands to know why she would want to call the police. She tells him her father ordered her to make the call; he says that Tessie will tell the police nothing now, because she is dead. Charity shouts that he killed Tessie, and that she will tell everything.
Danny Horn devotes much of his post about the episode at his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day to the absurdity of Quentin making a date with Tessie on a night when the Moon was full. In a comment, I pointed out that we have no reason to think he did make a date with her:
I don’t think it’s so hard to explain why Tessie was in the woods at dawn, though it does require a little fanfic.
Charity was in Quentin’s room in 806, inviting him to go for a walk on the beach when he’s busy getting drunk and listening to the same dreary little waltz over and over. To get Tessie into the woods, all we have to do is assume that shortly after that scene Quentin ran out of booze before he was drunk enough to stop caring about the upcoming full moon. Not wanting to deal with the Trasks, he didn’t go to the mansion’s liquor pantry, but staggered down to the Blue Whale.
There, Quentin met Tessie. She was upset with him for missing several dates in the last few days. He can’t very well explain what he’s been doing lately, and his refusal to answer Tessie’s questions angers her. She’s about to give Quentin a piece of her mind when he realizes that it will be dark soon, and rushes from the bar.
Now Tessie is really furious. She follows Quentin to the estate. Once there, she sees him change into the werewolf, and hides in terror for most of the night. Shortly before dawn, she thinks he is gone and leaves her hiding place. The werewolf appears and slashes away at her for a few minutes before changing back into human form and collapsing beside her.
And that’s when Charity finally takes her walk, and finds out.
Comment left 17 November 2020 by “Acilius” on Danny Horn, “Episode 808: Twice Burned,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 18 January 2016
Tessie is played by Deborah Loomis, and is the earliest screen credit on her IMDb page. Her next role listed there was in Hercules in New York, a 1970 film which also featured fellow Dark Shadows day player Erica Fitz Mears, who appeared in #594 and #595 as Leona Eltridge. Neither Miss Loomis nor Mrs Mears stuck with acting after the middle of the 1970s, but the two top billed members of the cast worked steadily for some years after. The first name in the credits was comedian Arnold Stang, who was best known at the time for a series of TV commercials for window screens ending with the tag “Arnold Stang says don’t get stung!” Second billed was Arnold Strong, a bodybuilder from Austria making his acting debut. Under his birth name of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnold Strong would go on to roles in several later films. I know of no evidence he ever auditioned for a part on Dark Shadows.
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