Tag: joe caldwell

Episode 250: A servant’s name

Maggie Evans, the Nicest Girl in Town, has been the prisoner of vampire Barnabas Collins for some time. At rise, she is in front of her mirror, struggling to remember who she is. Her name and her father’s come back to her, but then the music box Barnabas gave her starts playing, and she begins to believe that she is Barnabas’ long-lost love Josette. This scene takes about a minute more than is necessary.

She renews the struggle later, and this time overcomes the hypnotic power of the music box. She decides to pretend that she believes that she is Josette in order to trick Barnabas and Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie into giving her enough freedom to escape. She fools them, only to hear Barnabas tell Willie that her compliance means that the time has come for the final part of his plan.

Maggie hears carpentry work, and sneaks down to the basement. She finds Barnabas watching Willie build a coffin. It sits next to the coffin in which Barnabas spends his days. It becomes clear that once Maggie is fully Josettified, she will be a vampire as well. Unfortunately, Jonathan Frid has a great deal of trouble with his lines in this scene. I don’t usually mind Frid’s bobbles, but his line troubles here take us out of what needs to be a terrifying moment.

In the morning, Maggie goes back to the basement. Willie finds her there. He is not convinced that she believes she is Josette. He presses her, and she finally breaks down and gives up the act.

Maggie shows Willie the diamond necklace Barnabas gave her as a present for their wedding, and tells him it will be his if they destroy Barnabas and escape. Willie’s fascination with jewels was what led him to undertake the grave-robbing expedition that freed Barnabas in the first place, and the necklace does distract him for a little while. But then he hears Barnabas’ heartbeat. He heard that sound before, in #208, #209, #210, and #217, but in those episodes no one else could hear it. Maggie can, since Barnabas has been drinking her blood too, but she can still resist the vampire’s spell. She is holding a large awl, ready to drive it into Barnabas’ heart, but Willie cannot overcome his urge to protect his master. He disarms Maggie.

We see Maggie in her room and hear Barnabas’ voice on the soundtrack going over what she heard him say in the basement. This is the first time an interior monologue has played quotes from another character. They aren’t the lines Jonathan Frid actually delivered, but cleaned-up, intelligible lines, presumably the ones that were in the script.

As sunset nears, Willie takes Maggie back to the basement. He leaves, telling her that she and Barnabas must be alone when he completes “the ceremony.” She finds the awl, picks it up, and opens the coffin. Before she can drive it into Barnabas’ heart, he awakens and shows his fangs. She screams and presses herself against the brick wall behind her.

Back to the wall

This is the second episode credited to writer Joe Caldwell, and is certainly the best teleplay Dark Shadows has seen since Francis Swann left the show in November of 1966. Like Swann and Art Wallace, Caldwell understood what actors could do and knew how to give them a platform to show their stuff.

Aside from Frid’s one bad scene, the actors excel. In 1967, Kathryn Leigh Scott was already a highly trained actress. Maggie Evans, on the other hand, has never acted before. When Maggie is pretending to believe she is Josette, Miss Scott shows her giving a crude imitation of Barnabas’ high-flown style, mixed with some prancing movements you might see from a little girl playing the princess in a school play. Barnabas is so desperate to believe that his lunatic scheme is working that he falls for it completely. When he and Maggie are in the front parlor together, he responds to her amateur performance as a sign that she is matching his pomposity, which of course thrills him.

When Willie and Maggie are in the basement, John Karlen plays his earthy skepticism with a simplicity that makes Maggie’s pretending look ridiculous. When Maggie gives up her act and whispers a plea for Willie to help her, Miss Scott matches the force of Karlen’s performance and the resulting encounter is as powerful as anything the show ever achieves.

The episode is good enough that we barely noticed some major lapses in story logic. If Maggie can sneak down to the basement to eavesdrop on Barnabas and Willie, why can’t she slip out the front door? She knows how to get from Barnabas’ house to the great house of Collinwood, where she has friends and there is a telephone to call the sheriff.

And when did she learn that you can destroy vampires by driving stakes through their hearts? She’s lived in Collinsport all her life, and no one in that town has ever heard of vampires. Granted, the show would move a lot faster and could have more layers of irony if the characters had read Dracula and seen movies from Universal and Hammer, but this is the first hint that any of them has.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, was very interested in the fact that Maggie calls herself “Maggie, or Margaret” in this one. First time we hear the name Margaret! I’m not sure why that impressed her so much, but she’s very bright, so I’m sure it’s important. All I can think of is that “Maggie” waits tables in the diner, cleans up after her Pop has had one drink too many, and is everybody’s pal, while “Margaret” is a saint’s name, and a queen’s name. So Margaret might have a bigger destiny than we’ve seen.

Episode 245: Microscopic views of hideous malignancies

Two of the best blogs about Dark Shadows share the same web address. One is Dark Shadows Every Day, a series of more than a thousand well-crafted, insightful, often hilarious essays by Danny Horn about episodes #210 through #1245 and related topics. The other is the group blog that Danny’s readers maintain in the comment threads under each of his posts. The commenters outdid themselves in their remarks on Danny’s post about this episode.

At the beginning of the episode, addled quack Dr Woodard has figured out that the two victims of vampire Barnabas Collins, sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie Loomis and missing local girl Maggie Evans, have something in common. He hopes that if he can compare a sample of Willie’s blood with Maggie’s he will figure out what that is. Willie is terrified that this will lead to the exposure of Barnabas. Puzzlingly, Barnabas is unworried and orders Willie to cooperate. Only after Willie has given the blood and the doctor has left do we learn that Barnabas switched Willie’s sample with a normal one. “DS Willie” comments:

Barnabas is seriously messing with Willie’s mind in this one. So much of what Barnabas says has double meanings, even triple. Of course he’s playing with Woodard too, but Woodard never realizes it.

For one thing, just after Willie’s blood is taken, Barnabas makes creepy blood comments, ending with “…surrendering your utmost self” and his next line “Now, you had no choice.” I suspect this is all meant more for Willie than for the doctor. Willie had no choice but to surrender his utmost self.

Barnabas delights in repeatedly demonstrating his control over Willie, all to the doctor’s approval. When Willie flares up momentarily at Dr. Woodard’s remark about understanding being frightened, Barnabas immediately brings Willie to heel with a harsh word and harsher look.

Later Barnabas jerks Willie’s chain some more, just because he can, and to tighten his control even more. It’s classic Stockholm syndrome type stuff. The victim is abused and in absolute fear for his life, and yet any lessening of the captor’s threats or violence can be perceived as mercy, bonding the victim to his captor.

His shirt in Barnabas’ menacing grasp, Willie swears he would never, never betray Barnabas. He is only thrown to the ground instead of being choked or beaten. Barnabas proceeds to make Willie feel stupid and disloyal and dishonorable and undeserving of future protection. Add enthrallment on top of that. Oh, and the police having Willie as their top suspect, and Jason having beaten and threatened to kill Willie, even though Willie was trying to protect him.

It is actually pretty amazing that Willie has held up under the strain. He is in full-on survival mode, and yet still has the decency to try to shield Maggie and others insofar as he can, given his powerlessness.

Hey, what was up with Barnabas saying Willie’s blood is a “delicate little flower painted on glass”? He says it twice (once to Woodard and once to Willie) while looking directly at the slide. That doesn’t come across as a remark about blood in general.

“DS Willie,” on Dark Shadows Every Day, 13 October 2018 at 12:38 AM Pacific time

He adds another comment:

Oh. Barnabas was using yet another method to get Willie under his thumb: verbally emasculating him with the “delicate little flower” reference to Willie’s blood on the slide. But I think Willie was so relieved that he missed the diss.

“DS Willie,” on Dark Shadows Every Day, 26 December 2018 at 5:57 PM Pacific time

I made a contribution of my own to the thread. In response to Danny’s unfavorable comparison of Dr Woodard with Bram Stoker’s Professor Van Helsing, I commented:

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

I don’t think Woodard is Van Helsing at all. He’s Dr John Seward, treating Lucy and Renfield and baffled by the whole thing until he calls in his brilliant old professor. The mysterious Hoffman, one of the best men in the field, that’s the expert who is going to shake things up.

Seward is young, dynamic, and ready for adventure, while Woodard is middle aged, pudgy, and ready for an afternoon tee-time at the local country club. But that change is necessary. Readers of the novel have plenty of time to think about the sort of group that might go on the expedition Van Helsing organizes, and will expect a bunch of high-spirited youths. On a soap, a character like Seward would be the heroine’s new love interest, and Dark Shadows is flailing about trying to figure out what to do with the love interests Vicki and Maggie have now. The last thing they want right now is another bold, handsome young man who is apparently under a vow of celibacy.

“Acilius,” on Dark Shadows Every Day, 19 May 2023 at 7:26 PM Pacific time

In response to Danny’s remark that Jonathan Frid’s bobbles make it hard to guess what lines the script originally gave vampire Barnabas Collins, commenter “TD” replies:

#1. “Now, in a way, isn’t that understandable?

#2. “After all, blood is the life force.

#3. “It reaches into the deepest recesses of both the heart, and the brain.

#4. “It is the familiar of our complete being.

#5. “To surrender even one drop of it is to suggest a partial surrender of one’s utmost self.”

I’m not so sure this is actual Fridspeak. Yes, it’s kind of gibberishy, but it does make grammatical sense and some sort of syntactical sense. Frid delivers it smoothly and with confidence, unlike his halting fumblings when he can’t remember his lines. When he says this, it’s in a close-up shot, and he’s looking down. My guess is that he is reading it directly from a script. Also, this is Joe Caldwell’s first script (or first credited script–he did some writing on earlier Ron Sproat scripts, if another website is accurate). Maybe this is Caldwell exhibiting the enthusiasm of a first solo outing. Dr. Woodard has a couple of hi-falutin’ and rhetorically “poetic” (and gibberishy) speeches of his own in this episode.

Also, might this episode be marked as the first one to demonstrate the “reluctant” or “sympathetic” vampire in Barnabas’s character? In this episode (in another speechy series of lines), when Dr. Woodard and Barnabas are discussing the “madman” who broke into Woodard’s office and stole the blood sample, we get this exchange:

Dr. Woodard: You know, it’s the peculiar magnificence of the human spirit that’s required to provide the potential for such corruption. [See? This is like the Barnabas “blood is the life force” speech–who talks like this???]
Barnabas: Yes, I know what you mean. Whoever he is, he must certainly be, at one and the same time, more than a man…and less than a man.
Dr. Woodard: You seem almost sorry for him.
Barnabas: Sorry? No, I’m not sorry. The truth is, I loathe him. I loathe him very, very deeply.

“TD” on Dark Shadows Every Day, 2 June 2017 at 11:06 AM Pacific time

I agree with “TD” that today’s dialogue is marred by purple passages; I would go so far as to say that none of the lines would have survived a rewrite. Not among the lines delivered by the human actors, anyway- our beagle was fascinated when the hound howled on the soundtrack.

I should mention that at least one perceptive critic of Dark Shadows disagrees with me and “TD” about the script. Patrick McCray’s Dark Shadows Daybook is in its own way the equal of the two blogs at Dark Shadows Every Day. Patrick wrote two posts about this episode. In one from 2016, he wrote that “The language is poetic and evocative. Barnabas has moments of self-loathing and ambiguity that are gorgeously, hauntingly phrased, and the same can be said for Woodard’s exploration of science and mystery.” In 2019, he went so far as to call it “the best written episode of the series.”

John and Christine Scoleri also include some interesting material in the post about this episode on their recap-heavy blog Dark Shadows Before I Die. I particularly liked the series of screenshots at the end of the post captioned with some of the purple prose from today’s dialogue.

Episode 232: One quick day

Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, has been sick in bed. As long as the sun is up, she is very weak, has no memory of what’s been going on, and can sleep. When darkness comes on, she has wild mood swings and has to be physically restrained from running out into the night.

Moreover, the people who have spent the most time trying to help Maggie have no idea what is wrong with her and don’t seem to be making any progress towards finding out. Her doctor is as ignorant of medicine as are the writers, which is to say completely. The parts assigned to her father Sam and her boyfriend Joe consist of variations on the theme of helplessness.

As this episode begins, Maggie is still in bed, Joe is still sitting with her, and they are still at a loss to understand the situation or develop any plans. After yesterday’s episode, in which the actors labored mightily to inject three minutes of nonverbal storytelling into the half hour window Dark Shadows filled, things are looking pretty grim for the audience.

But then we get a sign of hope. Joe calls well-meaning governess Vicki and asks her to sit with Maggie. At the end of #229, Vicki realized that Maggie’s condition is the same as that which befell the luckless Willie Loomis a few weeks back. Moreover, Vicki is our point-of-view character, and she has consistently been the first to catch on to information after it has been shown to the audience. In the storyline centering on blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, Vicki led the team that opposed Laura’s attempt to burn her son David to death, and ultimately rescued David as Laura vanished in the flames. So if a battle is going to be waged for Maggie’s sake, we expect Vicki to be a central figure in it.

When Vicki takes Joe’s call, she is in the foyer of the great house of Collinwood. Seagoing con man Jason McGuire is in the same space, and asks her about Maggie. Vicki hates Jason, who is flagrantly blackmailing reclusive matriarch Liz. Vicki keeps trying to excuse herself without answering his questions, and won’t make eye contact with him. But Jason insists, and she tells him enough that he, too, recognizes that Maggie is suffering from the same thing that happened to Willie.

If we remember the ending of #229, this is a poignant moment. If Vicki and Jason could work together, they could solve the puzzle and discover that the mysterious Barnabas Collins is in fact a vampire who has enslaved Willie and is preying on Maggie. But Vicki’s eminently justified loathing of Jason, combined with Jason’s own shortcomings, makes this impossible. As a result, Barnabas is free to go on wreaking havoc.

While Vicki makes her way to Maggie’s house,* Jason goes to the Old House on the grounds of Collinwood to call on Willie. He finds that his onetime henchman’s face is badly bruised and scraped. Regular viewers know that Barnabas used his heavy cane to give Willie a beating the other day, and these disfigurements confirm that Barnabas is quite uninhibited in his use of violence.

Jason discovers Willie’s wounds

Jason reminds Willie that he has found him a couple of times in Eagle Hill cemetery.** After one of those visits, Willie turned up very sick, with two little punctures in his skin and a great loss of blood. Though he was desperately weak during the day, at night he gained strength and ran out. Now, Maggie Evans has been found wandering in the same cemetery, and she exhibits the same symptoms.

Jason tells Willie that he won’t tolerate anything that might bring the police to Collinwood, and demands to know what is behind the troubles he and Maggie have had. Willie tells him it isn’t wise to probe into that matter. When Jason says that sounds like a threat, Willie replies that it is simply a warning. “Threat or warning, I don’t need either from you!” Willie has a strange faraway look as he replies “OK… but, at the moment, it’s all I have to give.” Willie then says “You’ll have to excuse me, but Mr Collins doesn’t like my entertaining guests.”

The reluctant host

The dialogue between Jason and Willie in this scene is spare and elegant, without a wasted word. The actors match it, giving delicate performances of a sort the scripts rarely support.*** As Willie, John Karlen begins it trying to conceal his wounds from Jason and scampering about the set looking for a place to hide. As Jason, Dennis Patrick begins in a stern but solicitous manner. When Jason cannot get Willie to tell him how his face was hurt, Jason finally declares “I’m not going to concern myself with what happened to you.” He then becomes more directly menacing, but with a faint undercurrent of panic as his fear that whatever is happening with Willie will upset his own plans grows. He loses his advantage, and Willie stops trying to hide. By the time the scene ends, Willie is in control. Jason promises to find out what Willie is up to, and Willie replies “Fortunately, you’re not a man who keeps his promises. Fortunately for you, that is.”

The scene is not only an improvement over the repetitious jabbering we heard in the episode Malcolm Marmorstein wrote yesterday, but such a departure from the usual standards of the show in this period that it’s hard to believe it was actually written by Ron Sproat, as the credits say it was. Joe Caldwell has been making uncredited contributions to the scripts for months now, and I believe this scene must have been one of his.

Vicki doesn’t know about Willie’s connection to Eagle Hill. She also doesn’t know that it was Willie who called to tell her where to find Maggie, something Jason figures out in his scene with Willie. Again, if it were possible for Vicki and Jason to pool their knowledge, things would start moving very quickly.

Back in the Evans cottage, Joe tells Vicki that Maggie is not herself. “I was in that room with her most of the day. I never missed her so much in my life.” I think that line was also one of Caldwell’s. Sproat was capable of writing the occasional lapidary epigram, as indeed was Marmorstein, but neither of them had much feeling for what the actors could do. So few people could deliver that line in as natural a tone as Joel Crothers achieves that it must have come from a writer who had Crothers’ voice in his head.

When Maggie was alone with Joe, she yelled at him to go away and never come back. Then, she sounded like a sick person who didn’t know what she was saying. With Vicki, she says very calmly that she and Joe must never see each other again as long as she lives. It leaves no doubt that she is protecting him, wanting him to stay away from her as she is absorbed into Barnabas’ world of the undead. That was clear enough to the audience yesterday, when she found herself receiving a transfusion of Joe’s blood and screamed that she didn’t want anyone’s blood, especially not his. If Vicki were able to add Jason’s information about Willie to what she already knows, she might begin to suspect something like it.

The thunder roars, the french windows swing open, and an ominous silhouette appears in the lightning. It is the figure of a man in a cape, holding a cane in his left hand.**** Vicki stifles a scream. The lightning illuminates the night again, and the figure is gone. Vicki rushes to close the windows, ignoring Maggie’s plea to leave them open.

Now you see him
Now you don’t

After closing the windows, Vicki turns to Maggie, bends over, and creaks out in a frightened voice “Ma-a-aggie!” Maggie responds “It’s all right… it’s all right now… it’s all right.” We cut to the closing credits, wondering just how wrong Maggie’s version of “all right” has become.

*How, I’d like to know? It’s unlikely she walked- Collinwood is miles from town, it’s a dark and stormy night, and several local women have been attacked by an assailant who is still unidentified and at large. But she doesn’t ask anyone to lend her a car, as she always has when she has wanted to go anywhere in previous episodes. Joe doesn’t say anything about coming to get her. And there hasn’t been any indication that she herself has acquired a car, or a bicycle, or a pogo stick.

**The show is still equivocating on the name of the cemetery. When it was first mentioned in #209, it was called “Eagle’s Hill.” Vicki and Sam still call it that, but the other characters who have mentioned it call it “Eagle Hill.” Eventually that latter form will become usual.

***John Karlen uses a vaguely Southern accent at some moments today. The first Willie Loomis, James Hall, is from Mississippi, and Karlen sometimes tries to make his version of the character sound like he also came from that part of the world. Eventually he will give up on that, and Willie, like Karlen, will be a native of Brooklyn.

****As a private joke,amusing only to me, I think of this as “Barnabas Collins #4.” Before the part was cast, producer Robert Costello was the model in the first stages of the painting of the portrait of Barnabas. Then stand-in Timothy Gordon played the hand that darts out of Barnabas’ coffin and grabs Willie’s throat in #210. Jonathan Frid first appeared in #211, making him Barnabas Collins #3. Today, stand-in Alfred Dillay becomes Barnabas Collins #4.

Episode 214: Nothing lasts forever

For the first 20 weeks of its run, Dark Shadows developed its story at a stately pace. When writers Art Wallace and Francis Swann were replaced by Ron Sproat and Malcolm Marmorstein, stately became glacial, and at times ground to a halt altogether. For the last few months, Joe Caldwell has been making uncredited contributions to the writing. While Caldwell is probably responsible for some of the glittering moments of witty dialogue and intriguing characterization that have cropped up, everything is still taking a very long time. And this is the second episode in a row in which nothing at all happens to advance the plot.

There are a few interesting moments. We begin with well-meaning governess Vicki entering the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood in search of her charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins. The doors swing shut, and she cannot open them. The recently arrived Barnabas Collins comes down the stairs, startling her. He opens the doors easily.

This may not sound like a big thrill, but regular viewers will remember that doors swung open at the approach of the previous supernatural menace, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. When characters who did not know that Laura was anything other than a woman saw that happen, they didn’t react- it was a small enough thing that they could fail to notice it, and a weird enough thing that it didn’t register. So we have been prepared to watch for tricks with doors as a sign of the uncanny.

Barnabas’ big challenge today is a job of acting. He has to convince the residents of Collinwood that he is a living man from the twentieth century, not a reanimated corpse come to prey upon the living. He has trouble staying in character. When he tells Vicki that once, centuries ago, a father and son had a quarrel in the Old House that led to the son’s death, he starts laughing and repeats the word “death.” Vicki looks at him like he’s a lunatic. He gets it back together fairly quickly, but when Vicki goes back to the great house on the estate she will tell flighty heiress Carolyn that Barnabas is kind of strange.

“Death Ha Ha!” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Barnabas gives Vicki a long, flowery speech about the building of the house, one with no apparent motivation and many logical stopping places. Marmorstein has been giving these overheated orations to actor after actor, defeating them all. As Vicki, Alexandra Moltke Isles came the closest to selling one of them, at the beginning of #167, but she needed maximum support from the director in the form of close-up shots and lighting effects, and even then it was a relief when it was over.

Barnabas’ entire part consists of such speeches. Jonathan Frid stumbles over his lines quite a bit today, as he will do henceforth. No wonder- not only was he dyslexic, but at this point they were shooting seven days a week to make up for production time they lost in a strike late in March. That left him with precious little time to memorize the pages and pages of purple prose they kept dumping on him.

Listening to Frid struggle through his dialogue today, we discover the first reason why Barnabas became such a hit. In his voice, through his mannerisms, Marmorstein’s gibberish sounds gorgeous. Sometimes Frid’s struggle to remember what he’s supposed to say is a problem for the character. Since Barnabas is himself an actor essaying a demanding role, it gets confusing to see Frid’s own difficulties laid on top of his. But even at those times the sound of his voice is so appealing that we root for him to recover and deliver more of his ridiculous lines.

In his speech to Vicki about the building of the Old House, Barnabas mentions that the foundations were made of rocks deposited by glaciers. Any reference at all to glaciers is pretty brave, considering the rate at which the story has been moving in the Sproat/ Marmorstein era. It also raises a question about Barnabas. He is the man who posed for a portrait done in an eighteenth century style, and David told dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis stories about Barnabas’ mother Naomi that would place her towards the middle of the eighteenth century. We’ve also glimpsed a plaque on Naomi’s tomb that gives her dates as 1761-1821, but that prop hasn’t received anything like the screen time the portrait of Barnabas has had, and must have been made long before David’s lines to Willie were finalized. So the trend is to regard Barnabas as someone who was confined to a coffin from the eighteenth century until Monday night. When he starts talking about the rocks laid down during the Ice Age, an event unknown until the mid-nineteenth century, we wonder which night this week he spent updating his understanding of geology.

In the great house, high-born ne-er-do-well Roger comes home from a business trip to Boston. Before updating him and the audience on recent plot developments, Carolyn reminisces about her childhood, when he used to bring gifts to her when he would come home from business trips. She tells him he was the only father she knew. This is a retcon- up to this point, they’ve taken pains to make it clear that Roger and David only moved into the house a few weeks before Vicki’s arrival in episode 1.

Vicki and Barnabas enter the great house. She introduces him to Carolyn and Roger. Roger quickly escorts Barnabas to the study where the two of them talk alone. Roger mentions that a vineyard in Spain that had been in the family in the eighteenth century was still theirs until shortly before World War Two. Barnabas does not react to the phrase “World War Two” at all. Whether this is because he has been studying history as well as geology, or because he was simply overwhelmed with so much new information, is not explained.

While Roger and Barnabas are in the study, Vicki tries to explain to Carolyn why she thinks Barnabas is a bit odd. Carolyn doesn’t want to hear it. She explains the basis of the Collins family’s attitude towards Barnabas when she says it’s a relief just to meet someone friendly after the rough time they’ve had lately. Viewers who have been watching from the beginning will understand how strong that sense of relief must be, and will know that Barnabas is in a position to ride it right into a permanent billet on the estate.

Barnabas leaves, and Roger shows Vicki and Carolyn the portrait. He points out that Barnabas is wearing the same ring as its subject. He does not point out that he is also carrying the even more distinctive wolf’s-head cane.

While those three talk about the wealthy and genial visitor from England Barnabas appears to be, we wonder what he really is. Barnabas first appeared as a hand darting out of a coffin, he has shown up only at night, he lived hundreds of years ago, and he is played by an actor who bears a noticeable resemblance to Bela Lugosi. So we assume that he is a vampire. But so far, there hasn’t been any direct evidence of blood-sucking. During the months Laura was on the show, they made a point of not assimilating her to any familiar mythology. So for all we know, he might be something we’ve never heard of.

The final shot before the credits roll is in the outdoors, where Barnabas is standing perfectly still, surrounded by shrubbery, and with a big smile on his face. Perhaps that shot is telling us that Barnabas is not the vampire we might assume he is, but that he is in fact an undead garden gnome.

Barnabas the lawn ornament. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Episode 146: Laura Collins exists mostly in your imagination

At the end of yesterday’s episode, Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, and her boyfriend, hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell, had gone out to look for Maggie’s father, drunken artist Sam Evans. Maggie and Joe wound up carrying Sam home from the tavern.

Joe left the Evans cottage, Maggie went to the kitchen to brew up some coffee, and Sam lit a cigarette and passed out. The cigarette fell on some newspapers and started a fire.

While the fire began, the face of blonde fire witch Laura Collins was superimposed on the image of Sam. Some mysterious force has compelled Sam to paint pictures of Laura naked and in flames. Laura objects to these portraits. She came to the Evans cottage the afternoon before the fire and told Sam she would find a way to stop him painting any more of them. Her face appearing over the fire, along with spooky music and everything else the show has told us about Laura, demonstrates that she is casting a spell on Sam with the intention of making good her threat.

Today, Sam regains consciousness and sees the fire. He tries to put it out with his hands, burning them badly. Maggie comes running and beats the flames out with a rug.

The current storyline hinges on the idea that Laura’s supernatural powers make her a deadly threat to her son, strange and troubled boy David Collins, and perhaps to others as well. The outcome of this spell creates suspense as the audience wonders if Laura is mighty enough to keep the narrative arc going. After all, causing Sam to pass out and mess himself does not take much. There’s no suggestion that any magical abilities reside in Bob the bartender, yet he manages to do that just about every night, and he collects a paycheck for it to boot. For all we know, Laura’s spell might have been a total failure- it might be a sheer coincidence that she was trying to make him pass out and drop a lit cigarette when that’s what he was going to do anyway.

Maggie scolds Sam for his drinking. To Maggie’s exasperation, he raves that Laura started the fire. As he goes on and on about an unnamed power that has been controlling his behavior, Maggie responds “I think they call it alcohol.” Yesterday, Maggie was talking to Joe about laying aside her role enabling her father’s alcoholism and leaving the town of Collinsport altogether. Regular viewers will remember that conversation today, when she tells Sam that she is approaching the limit of what she will take from him. Sam loves Maggie more than anything, and he desperately tries to convince her that he is telling the truth. She sees his desperation, and we see her struggle to make herself say that nothing can convince her of a story like the one he is telling her.

As the voice of correction, Maggie is perfectly reasonable, perfectly justified, and perfectly mistaken. Sam is indeed the plaything of uncanny powers. A couple of weeks ago, they gave us scene after scene full of sound and fury, repeating the point that some spiritual force was making Sam paint Laura’s picture. We see today how little of that was necessary- Laura’s likeness and the theremin music are plenty to show us that the fire is in line with a spell she is casting. But Maggie, while she has often said that she wants to avoid the estate of Collinwood because she believes the stories that ghosts and ghouls haunt it, refuses to entertain the idea that there is anything unearthly at the root of Sam’s troubles. She says that she has to have evidence she can look at out in the open, and that she isn’t going to listen to Sam’s talk about unseen and unknowable powers. Although we know that Sam is right and Maggie is wrong about the particulars of this incident, to the extent that Maggie is speaking to her father as an adult child of an alcoholic she is the voice of the audience.

Meanwhile, Laura is sitting by the hearth in the drawing room at the great house of Collinwood. She is casting her spell on Sam. Reclusive matriarch Liz enters and tries to get Laura’s attention. When Laura finally looks up, her face is contorted in an unattractive expression. Liz remarks on it, and Laura asks if she looked ugly. Liz says yes, then for a fraction of a second looks embarrassed when she realizes that she told another woman that she was ugly. She quickly makes some meaningless remarks in a courteous voice. It is a small moment, but Joan Bennett extracts the jewel of comedy from it quite deftly.

Laura interrupted in mid-casting. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Laura has come to Collinwood to re-establish a relationship with David. After years away, she wants to take David and leave. David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, is all for this plan, but Liz is determined to thwart it. As the only male of his generation in the family, David represents the sole hope that the name of Collins will continue. As the custodian of the family’s past and future, Liz wants to be the chief maternal presence in David’s life. Besides, she never leaves the estate, so she needs all the company she can get.

Liz tells Laura that, while she had agreed that Laura could take David if their relationship were to make the right sort of progress, she is not at all satisfied that such is happening. Her objections don’t make much sense, and if the audience hadn’t been informed that Laura is an uncanny being whose plans will likely lead to David’s death we would probably be appalled at how unfair she is.

Roger shows up and takes Laura’s side. While the two of them stand firm against Liz’ wispy arguments, a knock comes at the front door. It is Maggie. Laura is shocked to see her- apparently she had expected her spell to do enough damage to the Evans cottage that Maggie would be unable to go visiting tonight. Laura’s reaction is dramatic enough, and the music behind it is overstated enough, that we may think Laura expected to kill Maggie. Again, the indications of Laura’s failure lead us to wonder if she is enough of a witch to deliver the supernatural thriller we have been led to expect.

Maggie wants to tell Laura about Sam’s accident, and to lament that Sam’s obsession with Laura has led him to the idea that she somehow caused it. Roger is indignant that Sam would say such things about his estranged wife, and storms off to the Evans cottage to give Sam a piece of his mind. Liz, on the other hand, is intrigued by Sam’s ideas and wants Maggie to give as many details as possible about Laura’s visit to the cottage earlier that day.

When we were watching the episode, Mrs Acilius wondered if Liz’ interest in Maggie’s story was a sign that she had noticed something eerie about Laura during their previous acquaintance. My interpretation was that Liz is so desperate to find information she can use to present Laura as an unfit mother that she is ready to listen when the town drunk claims she cast a spell on him. As reasonable, justified, and wrong as Maggie was in her scolding of Sam, so unreasonable, unjustified, and right is Liz in her conversation with Laura.

When Maggie says that Laura had threatened to stop Sam painting pictures of her naked and in flames, Liz asks what threat she made. Laura answers that all she said was that she would find a way to stop him. With a look of suspicion on her face, Liz asks what she was planning to do when she said that. “Just what I did do,” Laura answers. After a pause, she specifies, “Turn the matter over to Roger.”

In the Evans cottage, Roger reads the Riot Act to Sam. Louis Edmonds was a master of sarcastic dialogue, and Roger’s lines in this scene give him many chances to shine. Indeed, he and David Ford have a blast playing Roger and Sam’s mutual hatred. When Roger ridicules his claim to be subject to mystic powers, Sam replies in a taunting voice that Roger is in as much trouble as he is. The two men jeer contemptuously at each other, and it is a wonder to behold.

Mrs Acilius was particularly impressed by the contrast between the opening scene with Maggie scolding Sam and the closing scene with Roger railing at him. Sam’s two interlocutors make the same basic point, but the differences between them as individuals and between their respective relationships to Sam tell us entirely different things. Sam hates Roger almost as much as he loves Maggie, and their hostility is as explosive as Sam’s scene with Maggie is poignant. Maggie’s lovable, down-to-earth persona makes her the polar opposite of Roger with his haughty manner, sharp tongue, and utterly debased moral stature. In her scene, Maggie was to an extent the voice of the audience; insofar as Roger is continuing the lesson Maggie began teaching Sam, he is taking over in that capacity. It is quite a different thing for us to relate to The Nicest Girl in Town as our voice than it is for us to see a virtueless snob like Roger in that capacity, and so Roger’s first moments berating Sam in the Evans cottage whip us around fast.

Sam confirms that he has been driven to paint another picture of Laura, and Roger announces that he will destroy it. Sam doesn’t object. When Roger goes over to the painting, he sees that most of it has already been burned away. Sam is shocked to see this- the fire was on the other side of the room, and nothing in the several feet between a burned spot on the carpet and the painting has been touched by the flames. With this, the suspense is resolved- we know that Laura’s fire magic did achieve a result that Sam’s drinking could not. So the show will have a story to tell after all.

The script is credited to Malcolm Marmorstein, who was by far the worst writer on Dark Shadows. It is difficult for me to believe that someone who delivered so many low points wrote a script this good all by himself. Joe Caldwell was making uncredited contributions to the writing by this time, and he was so much better than Marmorstein that I am inclined to suspect that he wrote this one.

I suppose Marmorstein might just have been having a good day. There don’t seem to be any surviving documents identifying those contributors to the writing whose names didn’t appear in the on-screen credits for any given episode, so we can only guess which ones Caldwell worked on in his first several months on the show. But the structure, dialogue, and pacing of this one feel a lot more like the ones with his name on them than they do like the general run of Marmorstein’s work.