john and christine scoleri – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 897: Restore our flesh and bones

The Trouble with David

Yesterday we saw strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy) go to a mysterious cairn in the woods, the ceremonial center of the cult of the Leviathan people, and announce that he was now one of the cult. The cairn then opened, revealing a little gap. David crawled into the gap. The gap was not quite big enough for him, so that the episode ended with an extended sequence of David Henesy wiggling his rear end at the camera while he tried to wedge himself into place.

Today we learn that the carpenters were not the only ones who haven’t caught on that Mr Henesy isn’t nine years old anymore. David has followed the gap to an underground chamber with a steaming cauldron. He takes some vegetation out of the cauldron and recites a cryptic poem, all the while staring portentiously off into space. His manner, words, and actions would be effective as part of a creepy little kid sequence, but the thirteen year old Mr Henesy looks mature enough that we just chalk him up as one more member of the Leviathan cult.

The Trouble with Chris

Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard calls on drifter Chris Jennings in his cottage. They talk about someone named Sabrina who has told Carolyn that while Chris is a nice enough guy, he will, in spite of himself, kill her if she keeps hanging around him. Chris tells Carolyn that this is true and that he is “a monster.” He does not explain. She leaves, and he takes out a pistol. First-time viewers will wonder if Chris has a compulsion to fire his pistol at people. Regular viewers know that he is a werewolf, and that his particular case of lycanthropy is so advanced that he sometimes transforms even when the moon is not full. We can assume that he plans to use the pistol to put himself out of his misery.

Regular viewers also know that Chris was safely confined to a mental hospital until he checked himself out recently. When he returned to the great house of Collinwood, he told his psychiatrist, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, that he just couldn’t stand the conditions at the hospital. Since leaving the hospital means that Chris will resume killing at least one random person a month, this decision just about completely erased any sympathy we might have for him as a character. It also undercuts his motivation in this scene. If Chris really wants to stop killing, he is free to go back to the hospital at any time.

The ghost of Chris’ great-grandmother, Jenny Collins (Marie Wallace,) appears. She tells him not to commit suicide. Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in 1897 from March to November 1969; in those days, we got to know Jenny as “Crazy Jenny,” who played nothing but one mad scene after another. She was sane and well-put-together just once, when she appeared as a ghost in #810 and #811. In this second postmortem appearance, Jenny is extra mad, wearing a disheveled wig that reaches heights few hairpieces have dared. She does not tell Chris to return to the hospital, but to find his great-grandfather, Quentin Collins. She says that she cannot help him, but Quentin can.

This confirms what the show has been hinting, that Quentin is alive. Chris doesn’t know that, nor does he know of his relationship to Quentin. He is left bewildered and helpless by Jenny’s pronouncement. His response would no doubt be more complex if he were up to date, but he has been so ineffective at managing his curse and so irresponsible generally that we can’t imagine he would do anything constructive even if he knew everything we do. The character seems to have reached a dead end.

The Trouble with Barnabas

Upset by her conversation with Chris, Carolyn goes to her distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. She enters his home, the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, and finds the front parlor empty. She hears Barnabas’ voice coming from behind a bookcase, repeating over and over that “There is no margin for error. Punishment is necessary.”

Longtime viewers know, not only that a room is hidden behind this bookcase, but that Carolyn knows about that room. Her friend, David’s well-meaning governess Vicki, was held prisoner there by a crazy man in December 1966, several months before Barnabas joined the show. Carolyn is moving her hands, as if she is looking for the release that makes the bookcase swing open, when Barnabas comes downstairs.

When Carolyn says that she heard his voice, Barnabas explains that he was simply keeping busy by “conducting an experiment in electronics.” The candles around the room will suffice to show that the house doesn’t have electricity, and even if Barnabas weren’t so resolutely technophobic it would still require explanation that the text he set his speakers to reproduce over and over was “There is no margin for error. Punishment is necessary.” Moreover, Carolyn knows Barnabas well, and she can’t have overlooked that he is not his usual self these days. He is distant, calm, and utterly self-possessed, a far cry from the fussy, excitable chap who so often stumbles over his words. He remains formidably well-composed as he reiterates his position that Chris is a dangerously unstable person whom Carolyn should avoid, and that she has a bright future ahead of her. He gently but firmly guides her to the front door, and she is out of the house in record time.

Carolyn does not know that Chris is the werewolf, but at least she knows that there is a werewolf. She does not know that the Leviathan cult exists, and so it is understandable that she does not suspect that Barnabas is acting as its leader. But as the story unfolds, others will no doubt catch on that something is up, and so many people have spent so much time with Barnabas that it is difficult to see how they can all fail to notice the drastic change in his personality and to connect it with the strange goings-on. Putting him in this position makes it likely that the writers will have a harder time managing the story’s pace than they would if his involvement were more subtle.

Once Carolyn has exited, Barnabas opens the bookcase and reveals Philip Todd, antique shop owner. He rewinds a reel-to-reel tape and replays “There is no margin for error. Punishment is necessary.” Philip and his wife Megan are members of the cult, entrusted with the care of many of its most sacred items. Yesterday Barnabas found out that one of these, a book, had gone missing. He summoned Philip to the cairn, and it seemed he might be about to kill Philip. But now, he sends Philip off to administer the punishment to someone else, presumably Megan.

The Trouble with Megan

Megan (Marie Wallace) has been in an extremely overwrought state ever since she found that the book was gone. Today’s episode ends with a long scene in which she is alone in the shop, feeling that someone is coming to kill her, reacting sharply to every noise.

Danny Horn devotes most of his post about the episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day to reasons why this scene does not work, among them the fact that a depiction of a person descending into madness requires that the person start off as something other than over-the-top loony. Megan has been so frenzied for the last few days that Miss Wallace has nowhere to go when she hears the ominous noises. Moreover, her first two characters on Dark Shadows, fiancée of Frankenstein Eve and Crazy Jenny, were both intense, overbearing characters who were so inflexible that they had little opportunity to respond to anything their scene partners might do. Longtime viewers therefore expect to see Miss Wallace screaming and carrying on by herself, so nothing she does here will unsettle us. They lampshade this iconography problem by showing us Crazy Jenny’s ghost today, but that doesn’t help at all.

Many fans compare this scene to episode #361. Most of #361 is devoted to a one-woman drama in which Julia is tormented by sights and sounds in her bedroom, suggesting that her mind is collapsing. I don’t think that episode is a success, but because Julia had always been in control of herself up to that point we can see what is supposed to be at stake in it. That’s more than we can say for Megan’s fearful turn.

In John and Christine Scoleri’s post about the episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, Christine points out the prominence of the taxidermied animals in the background, and speculates that the scene is an homage to The Night of the Living Dead. I wouldn’t have guessed that director Lela Swift or writer Violet Welles would have studied that film, but Christine provides screenshots from it and from the episode, and the parallels are so striking that I can’t see how she could be wrong.

Closing Miscellany

I think the tape recorder is the same one we saw in the summer of 1968, when it was part of the Frankenstein story. It also appears to be the one that parapsychologist Peter Guthrie brought to Collinwood early in 1967.

Her haunting of Chris marks Jenny’s final appearance. Miss Wallace reprised the role decades later in a couple of the Big Finish audio dramas.

During Megan’s big scene, the camera swings a bit to the left and we can see beyond the edge of the antique shop set. We get a good look at a tree that stands near the cairn in the woods. Making matters worse, when they turn the camera away from the tree they go too far right, showing a stage light on the other side.

The antique shop and the cairn. Screenshot by Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day.

As the opening credits begin to roll, the camera is pointed a bit too far to the right and a stagehand is visible, adding dry ice to the steaming cauldron in the underground chamber.

Closing credits blooper. Screenshot by Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day.

Episode 856: Like a new man

Evil sorcerer Count Petofi has cast a spell causing his mind to take over the body of rakish Quentin Collins, while Quentin is confined to Petofi’s own body. So David Selby begins playing a youthful and handsome Petofi, while Thayer David plays an aging and pudgy Quentin.

In their post about the episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri use a wide variety of expressions to refer to the characters Thayer David and David Selby play today. I will just call Thayer David’s character P-Quentin and David Selby’s Q-Petofi.

Both of those actors give superb performances today; David Selby makes Q-Petofi’s preening arrogance suitably repellent, while the 42 year old Thayer David shows us P-Quentin reduced to the total helplessness of a despised man in extreme old age. There is a scene that Mrs Acilius and I found particularly hard to watch when Q-Petofi’s henchman Aristide takes the thick glasses without which P-Quentin is effectively blind and holds them away from him.

Q-Petofi and Aristide’s gleeful cruelty to P-Quentin make us wonder how the count and his henchman feel about the body they are looking at. The show’s earlier body swap story, in which vampire Barnabas Collins had hoped to die and come back to life in the form of Frankenstein’s monster Adam, led Adam to ask Barnabas in #587 “How could you hate yourself so much that you wanted to change your body?” We hadn’t known that that the count hated himself at all until we saw this scene, but he must have done to take such delight in tormenting P-Quentin, and Aristide’s revelry shows that he, too, harbors more hostility to his master than he ever dared expose.

Q-Petofi taunts P-Quentin. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

P-Quentin staggers away from the lair of Q-Petofi and Aristide and meets broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi in the woods. He tries to explain his true identity to Magda, who has experience with magic and has for some time now been his ally. But Magda’s fear of the count keeps her from listening to the far-fetched tale, and she rushes off.

P-Quentin makes his way to the door of his home, the great house of Collinwood. He stands there, and we hear his thoughts, in David Selby’s voice. He tells himself he cannot go in, because no one there would believe him if he told them who he was. He slinks off to the caretaker’s cottage, where he meets maidservant Beth, who is his sometime fiancée. He tries to tell her the story, but she too is terrified of the count. When Q-Petofi shows up, she leaves with him.

Magda is a wonderful character, and what we have seen has given us every reason to hope she will be a substantial part of the show for a while yet. Unfortunately, this is her final on-screen appearance. We will hear her voice once more, six weeks from now. The show has always been visually ambitious, and lately they’ve managed to pull some neat tricks with videotape that led me to hope we would see at least one scene in which Grayson Hall appears opposite herself as both Magda and time-traveling physician Julia Hoffman. When Hall appeared in the 1970 film End of the Road, she said that it was a relief from playing Julia, to whom she apparently referred as “that tight-ass doctor.” Magda is earthy enough that it would have been fun to see how Hall would have used her to demonstrate the same attitude towards Julia, even if she had to stick to words approved by the ABC network’s Standards and Practices office, and Julia’s reaction to Magda would doubtless have been just as much fun.

Episode 851: Common cause

Rakish libertine Quentin Collins races to the train station to meet his fiancée, the lovely and mysterious Amanda Harris. He thinks he sees her, but it is actually another young woman wearing a remarkably similar outfit. She tells him the train to New York City left a few minutes ago; Quentin knows Amanda was on it, and that she thinks his absence means that their relationship is over. The young woman was quite miffed when Quentin first approached her, but by the time he offers his second apology her look has gone from indignant to concerned to yearning. The guy’s got game, you have to grant him that.

It’s been less than a minute since he made a bad first impression on her, and she’s ready to run off with him. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin was detained by a fistfight with a repulsive little man called Charles Delaware Tate. Tate is an artist whose works sometimes have magical powers. His portrait of Quentin, for example, keeps Quentin from turning into a werewolf and ensures him against physical harm. Since Tate is obsessed with Amanda, he stole the portrait from Quentin when he learned Amanda was planning to leave with him. Quentin dared not leave without it, and went to Tate’s studio to demand its return. He very satisfyingly beat Tate senseless, but he did not find the portrait, and now he fears he has lost Amanda forever.

We cut to Tate’s studio. Tate is lying on the floor where he fell when Quentin finished hitting him. Unfortunately, he gets up. Sorcerer Count Petofi, who granted Tate the power to make magical artworks some years ago, enters. He tells Tate that it was stupid to steal Quentin’s portrait. Tate pretends not to know what Petofi is talking about, irritating him and us. Petofi says that he will have to be punished. After he forces Tate to draw a sketch of a pretty woman, he squeezes his wrists, helps himself to Quentin’s portrait, and says what sounds very much like a final goodbye. He exits, and Tate sits down with his pad and pencil. He discovers that he is no longer able to draw, not even a straight line.

These days, Dark Shadows is a costume drama set in 1897. Most of the time between 1966 and 1968, it took place in a contemporary setting. In those days, the set now used as Tate’s studio was the Evans cottage, home to artist Sam Evans, a drunken sad sack, and his daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. In December of 1966 and January of 1967, the ghost of the gracious Josette compelled Sam to paint alarming images of Laura Murdoch Collins.

It turned out Josette was doing this because she knew the characters were not all that bright and she had to literally paint them a picture to explain that Laura was an undead fire witch bent on incinerating her young son David. Laura tried to thwart Josette’s plan by harming Sam. In #146, Laura caused a fire at the Evans cottage that burned Sam’s hands, temporarily depriving him of the ability to paint. Petofi’s disabling of Tate on the same set will bring this incident back to longtime viewers. Especially so, since Josette is in the air at this point in the show. In #844, a character named Kitty joined the cast. She keeps having mental flashbacks to things only Josette would remember, and Josette’s music box appeared on Kitty’s table at a time when Josette’s ghost seemed to be the likeliest agency to have put it there. Perhaps she will insert herself into Tate’s story for some reason.

When we were watching the scene between Tate and Petofi, my wife, Mrs Acilius, said that she very much wished someone else were playing Tate. Violet Welles’ script gives whoever is playing Tate a lot of opportunity to show what he can do in that scene. Roger Davis is a highly trained actor who has a long list of stage and screen credits, but he is almost always very unpleasant to watch on Dark Shadows, and he wastes the potentially fascinating dialogue Welles gave him. When Mr Davis is particularly trying, I usually try to make the scenes bearable by imagining what Frederic Forrest, who was a featured background player in #137, would have done in his place. But the echo of the story about Sam makes me wonder what David Ford would have done as Tate. Ford was in his forties, smallish and pudgy, so a David Ford Tate could not believably have had a fistfight with a character played by the very tall and fit 28 year old David Selby. But he might have been a subtle enough villain that such an exchange would not have been called for. Moreover, the incestuous undertone of Tate’s desire for Amanda, who is the product of one of his magical paintings and therefore a kind of daughter to him, would have been all the more disturbing had Tate been played by the man we knew as Maggie’s father in the 1960s and, when the show was set in the 1790s, as Josette’s.

Back home at the great house of Collinwood, Quentin receives a visit from Tim Shaw, Amanda’s ex and a would-be sleazy operator. He demands Tim tell him what he knows about Amanda’s life in New York before they came to Collinwood. Tim declares he will tell him nothing, to which Quentin responds by choking him and flinging him to the floor. Tim then burbles out everything he knows, which turns out to be nothing of the slightest use. Quentin picks Tim up and throws him out the front door in the most humiliating possible way. We cheer this on almost as joyously as we cheered Quentin’s beating of Tate Friday, but for the opposite reason. Mr Davis is a genuinely disagreeable person who ruins episode after episode, and it was him we were angry with. We chanted at the screen, not “Quen-tin! Quen-tin! Quen-tin!,” but “Da-vid! Da-vid! Da-vid!” hoping Mr Selby would pay him back for all his on-screen assaults on the women and children in the cast. But Don Briscoe was as nice a guy as Tim has become despicable, and he and Mr Selby enjoyed working together. You can see Briscoe’s joy in performance in the way he holds on to a little yellow piece of paper representing a note from Amanda all through the beating Quentin administers. Even the shot of Quentin shoving Tim out with his buttocks prominent is the product of Briscoe’s enthusiastic use of his body to demonstrate Tim’s total defeat.

Quentin throws Tim’s sorry ass out the door. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin’s other fiancée, wicked witch Angelique, comes downstairs to ask what the ruckus was about. Quentin makes up a transparent lie about having a financial interest in some firm in Boston, and says that he and Tim were quarreling about the details of it. Angelique lets him go on with this for a while and to say that he is leaving for Boston, then insists that they set a date for their wedding. He begs off, claiming not to know how long he will be away.

Petofi enters, and tells Angelique about Quentin’s plan to go to New York and look for Amanda. He also tells her that they now have a common cause, and proposes an alliance. Each of them is so powerful, and so evil, that this is a sobering prospect.

When Quentin returns to the foyer, it is his turn to be alone with Petofi. Quentin knows that Petofi gave Tate both the power to create the portrait that freed him of his curse and the commission to do so, and that he is therefore beholden to Petofi for his continued humanity. Part of his motivation for fleeing to New York with Amanda was his hope that he could escape the slavery Petofi has imposed on him as the price of that benefice. When Petofi tells Quentin he has come to see him before he goes, Quentin is momentarily stunned, and then makes a brave little noise to the effect that Petofi can’t stop him. Petofi assures him that he does not want to stop him. It doesn’t matter in the least to him where Quentin is- he can control him from anywhere.

Petofi calls on Tim at his room in the inn. He deepens Tim’s misery by pretending he doesn’t believe what Tim told him about Tate’s magical powers. As he leaves, he takes a brooch that belonged to Amanda.

Quentin is at the train station. Angelique appears there, and tells him not to go. He says that he doesn’t care if she kills him. It will be consolation enough to have died walking away from her. She says that she will not harm him in any way. This causes him to open his eyes wide in terror as it dawns on him what she means. She produces Amanda’s brooch and a doll. She positions the pin of the brooch over the doll’s chest and says that no matter where Amanda is, she will die a horrible death when the pin impales the doll.

Closing Miscellany

The actress who plays the young woman Quentin meets at the train station is billed in the credits as “Amy Yaekerson,” the only person known to Google ever to be called “Yaekerson” and known only for this appearance. But in a comment on Danny Horn’s post about the episode at his great Dark Shadows Every Day, a commenter known as “miles” pointed out that there are lots of people named “Yakerson.” He went on to identify an Amy Yakerson born in New York City on 1 April 1946, and to find a 1966 notice of a play featuring an actress of that name and probably of that age in the New York Daily News. I followed that up with some Googling of my own; the only Amy Yakerson I can find who is online today was born in Connecticut in 1954, so I don’t know where Amy Yakerson, star of stage and screen, is now.

We saw some of Sam’s paintings in Tate’s studio Friday and today, twenty-some years before Sam was born. Tate hides the portrait of Quentin behind one of Sam’s seascapes, and Sam’s portrait of Maggie’s mother is on the floor next to him when we see him lying there in the aftermath of the fight. John and Christine Scoleri have the details in their post about Friday’s episode at Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 734: After school detention

Until November 1967, Dark Shadows was set in contemporary times. So when #283 was shown in July 1967, we could assume that its dramatic date more or less matched its broadcast date.

In that one, psychiatrist Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall) brought her patient Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott) to the old cemetery north of the village of Collinsport, Maine. When Maggie reacted to one or another of the sights of the cemetery with a particularly strong emotion, Julia pressed closer to it. This technique led the two women to a mausoleum. Once inside the mausoleum, Maggie had the strongest reaction of all. Julia was trying to break through Maggie’s amnesia. She did not yet know that vampire Barnabas Collins had held Maggie prisoner, and that there was a secret room hidden in the mausoleum where he once tortured her.

Now, the dramatic date is 1897. Broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi (Grayson Hall) brings neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond (Kathryn Leigh Scott) to the old cemetery north of the village of Collinsport, Maine. Rachel’s position as governess in the great house on the estate of Collinwood has been eliminated, and she is terrified that she will have to return to Worthington Hall, a hideously abusive school where she was forced to spend a miserable childhood as a pupil and an equally miserable first part of adulthood as a teacher. The headmaster of Worthington Hall, the evil Gregory Trask, is demanding Rachel return to his school-cum-cult, extorting her with threats of false criminal charges against her and her one friend from the school, fellow student-turned-teacher Tim Shaw. Magda takes Rachel to the same mausoleum we saw in #283, because she knows about the secret room and has decided it is the perfect place for Rachel to hide from Trask.

Meanwhile, Tim is on the job at the school, shaking his head at Rachel’s former charge, twelve year old Jamison Collins. Tim is played by Don Briscoe, who when the show was set in 1968 and 1969 played cursed brothers Tom and Chris Jennings. The Jenningses were supposed to be bad-boy sex symbols, and Briscoe often seemed stiff and uncomfortable when he had to take his shirt off or be aggressive. But as a beaten man who takes refuge from his guilt in pomposity, he’s just terrific. They found the perfect part for him.

On Dark Shadows Before I Die, Christine Scoleri says that she finds Tim Shaw the fretful schoolteacher to be “Totally hot!” Evidently Don Briscoe didn’t have to play a troubled bad boy to be a sex symbol for some people.

Jamison hasn’t done his schoolwork, and Tim is keeping him after class. Trask enters, and asks why Jamison is in detention. Tim claims that Jamison is not being punished, but that the two of them are just talking. Trask is displeased with that hint of friendliness, and before long he finds a reason to lock Jamison in a storage closet. Jamison objects to this confinement, prompting Trask to gleefully declare that “there are worse punishments! Much worse!” When Jamison lets himself out of the closet, he finds Trask waiting for him, grinning. Trask says that they will spend the day together tomorrow, and that in the course of their time together he will ordain Jamison’s further punishment.

Trask sends Tim to Collinwood to fetch Rachel. He makes a show of resistance before going. At first he has trouble finding her; he goes back to the school and reports to Trask that he has failed. Trask refuses to accept this, and sends him back. Tim meets Magda and persuades her that he is Rachel’s friend. She leads him to the secret room, and leaves him alone with Rachel. When Rachel and Tim leave the room, Trask is waiting for them.

Episode 682: He killed me

Governess Maggie Evans saw the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins yesterday, and she tells housekeeper Mrs Johnson about it today. Mrs Johnson saw Quentin a few days ago; she and Maggie are the only adults in the great house of Collinwood who know that Quentin exists, and not even they know his name. Quentin is gradually taking control of Maggie’s charges, nine year old Amy Jennings and twelve year old David Collins. Yesterday, David led Maggie and his aunt, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, to the room in the long deserted west wing where Maggie saw Quentin. There is a mannequin there wearing a coat like Quentin’s; David says that he and Amy call it “Mr Juggins,” and Liz chooses to believe that Mr Juggins is what Maggie saw.

We see Maggie in bed. She gets up, goes back to the room, and sees Mr Juggins. We dissolve to a shot of Quentin in Mr Juggins’ place. Horrified, Maggie watches Quentin approach with a length of fabric. He chokes her with it. She falls to the floor. She is lying there when we cut to commercial. Maggie was introduced in #1 and has for long stretches been a central character, one of the most recognizable on Dark Shadows. Kathryn Leigh Scott tells a story of going to a wilderness area in Africa when the show was a hit and being greeted with cries of “Maggie Evans!” For the moment, it looks like they have decided to kill her off in the middle of a Tuesday episode.

Of course they haven’t. We come back from the break to hear Maggie telling old world gentleman Barnabas Collins about the dream in which she was strangled. She is surprised that Barnabas believes her story about seeing the man when she was awake, shares her suspicions that David and Amy are connected with the man, and is open to the idea that the dream is “a warning.” Barnabas tells Maggie that he and his inseparable friend, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, saw a woman dressed in clothes of the same period as Quentin’s clothes, that the woman’s presence could not be explained, and that she led them to Amy’s brother’s Chris at a moment when Chris needed medical help to save his life. Barnabas has concluded that the man and the woman are ghosts and that they represent something very dangerous.

Barnabas enlists the aid of occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes agrees to conduct a séance in the drawing room in the hopes of contacting Madame Janet Findley, a psychic researcher whom he brought to the house in #647 to investigate the early signs of Quentin’s haunting. Amy and David tricked Madame Findley into going to Quentin’s stronghold in the west wing in #648, and she did battle with him there in #649. After that confrontation, Madame Findley appeared at the head of the stairs in the foyer and tumbled down them, dead.

This is the tenth séance we have seen on Dark Shadows. They usually come with four roles to be filled. In all séances, someone acted as organizer and leader. In eight of the first nine séances, someone else objected to the idea of a séance, but reluctantly took a place around the table. In seven of the nine, someone went into a trance, becoming a medium. Every time the trance began, someone grew alarmed at its first signs and tried to end the séance before the dead could speak; that drew a stern rebuke from the leader. The medium then spoke, more often than not passing out after struggling to utter a few mysterious words.

The roles of reluctant participant and objector are often combined. Today, Mrs Johnson is the first to combine the role of reluctant participant and medium. This is also the first time the trance does not draw an objection from someone wanting to stop the séance. Mrs Johnson does pull her hands back early on, breaking the circle of contact, and Stokes delivers the requisite stern rebuke. But no one speaks up when she starts to moan. As Madame Findley, she at first produces the usual jumble of words (“The children! Panel! Room!”) She manages to cry out “He killed me! He killed me!” before collapsing face first onto the table in the orthodox manner.

In their post about this episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri compare Mr Juggins with Otto the Automatic Pilot from the 1980 film Airplane! Perhaps inspired by the dissolve from Mr Juggins to Quentin today, they go on to Juggins-ize Otto:

The Scoleris also list all the séances on the show up to this point. They name the leaders and mediums, but not the reluctant participants or the objectors. I have added those:

Dark Shadows Before I Die Séance Tracker

Episode 170/171: Dr. Peter Guthrie conducts; Carolyn, Vicki, Roger and Laura Collins participate; Josette speaks through Vicki in French; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Roger and Laura join reluctantly; Carolyn objects]

Episode 186: Vicki conducts; Sam and David participate; David Radcliffe speaks through David; held in the drawing room at the Old House [Sam is both reluctant joiner and objector]

Episode 280/281: Roger conducts; Liz, Vicki, Burke, Barnabas, Carolyn participate; Josette speaks through Vicki; held in the drawing room at the Old House [Liz, Burke, and Barnabas are reluctant; Barnabas objects]

Episode 365: Roger conducts; Liz, Julia, Vicki, Carolyn and Barnabas participate; Sarah Collins speaks through Vicki after Carolyn pretends Sarah is speaking through her; Vicki is transferred to 1795; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Liz and Barnabas are reluctant; Liz objects]

Episode 449: Countess duPrés conducts; Joshua Collins participates; Bathia Mapes shows up, claiming she was called; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Joshua is reluctant; no trance]

Episode 510/511: Professor Stokes conducts; Julia and Tony Peterson participate; Reverend Trask speaks through Tony Peterson; the basement wall breaks open to reveal his skeleton; held in the basement at the Old House [Tony is reluctant, Julia objects]

Episode 600: Professor Stokes conducts; Barnabas and Julia participate; Phillipe Cordier speaks through Barnabas; held in the drawing room at the Old House [No conspicuously reluctant participant. Julia objects]

Episode 640: David conducts; Amy participates; unsuccessful attempt to contact Quentin Collins; held in Amy’s bedroom at Collinwood [Amy is reluctant; no trance]

Episode 642: Professor Stokes conducts; Liz, Vicki, Carolyn, Chris participate; Magda speaks through Carolyn; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Chris is reluctant and is objector]

Today’s episode: Professor Stokes conducts; Barnabas, Maggie and Mrs. Johnson participate; Janet Findley speaks through Mrs. Johnson; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Mrs Johnson is reluctant; no objector]

This is Maggie’s first séance, and they’ve been spending a lot of time lately showing us that she is unsure of herself. So it would have been expected for her to become frightened and try to stop the séance when Mrs Johnson goes into the trance. Maybe that’s why they left it out- it was too obvious a move. But the pattern is so familiar now that it feels like they’ve forgotten something when they leave the objection out.

Episode 667: The idea of leaving Collinwood

Time-traveling fussbudget Barnabas Collins has completed the task he set for himself when he went to the year 1796, and has to find a way to return to 1969. He decides to deliberately subject himself to the process by which he was originally transferred from the 1790s to the 1960s. He is, at the moment, a vampire. He orders his servant Ben to chain him in a coffin hidden in the secret room in the back of the Collins family mausoleum, and hopes that he will be released from it in a period when he is human again.

On a sunny morning in 1969, Barnabas’ former blood thrall Willie and his best friend Julia have figured out his plan and gone to the secret room. Julia is a medical doctor; she is at once the best physician in the world, capable of assembling a human body from dead parts, bringing it to life, and thereby lifting the effects of the vampire curse from Barnabas, but simultaneously very unsteady on the question of whether any given patient she is examining is alive or dead. For example, matriarch Liz is entombed at the moment because Julia mistakenly declared her dead twice in a couple of months. Once he has opened the coffin, Willie demands Julia examine Barnabas’ body and tell him whether he is alive, and therefore human, or dead, and therefore condemned to rise at nightfall and prey upon the living. Before she can answer Willie’s question, Julia has to spend quite a bit of time going over Barnabas with a stethoscope, during which time we see his eyelids flutter and his chest move.

While Julia is trying to determine Barnabas if is alive, he sits up and starts talking. Julia and Willie urge him to lie back down, apparently concerned that if he is too active Julia won’t be able to arrive at a clear result. After a break, we see him out of the coffin, telling them about his experience in 1796. After quite a bit of back and forth, they arrive at the collective decision to continue the conversation back home, in the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood.

Barnabas, Julia, and Willie have emerged from the secret room into the publicly known part of the mausoleum and are starting to close the panel behind them when they hear the voices of people approaching. One might expect them to finish closing the panel and to greet whoever is coming as fellow pilgrims paying homage at the graves of Joshua and Naomi Collins and their daughter Sarah. After all, everyone knows that Barnabas is a direct descendant of Joshua and Naomi, that Julia has a lively interest in the past of the Collins family, and that Willie is Barnabas’ servant. They have as much right to be there as anyone.

Instead, they scurry back into the secret room and shut themselves in. They are a bit too slow. Entering are heiress Carolyn and child Amy. Amy sees the panel swinging shut. Carolyn, behind her, did not see this happen, and dismisses Amy’s claim that she did. They tap on the panel, and Amy decides that it is so solid that she may have been mistaken. The mausoleum is so dim that one can imagine a trick of the light causing a person to believe that the wall had moved, so this reaction of hers is plausible enough.

Dimness is not an exclusive property of the outer part of the mausoleum. The trio hiding in the secret panel embody dimness as they do an outstanding imitation of the Three Stooges. Willie is Larry, the universal victim; Julia is Moe, the self-appointed leader who is as lost as either of the followers; and Barnabas is Curly, the chaos agent. Willie left his bag of tools perched precariously on the steps immediately behind the panel; after Amy and Carolyn tap, the bag falls and makes a sound. Julia does not address Willie as “ya porky-pine!” and poke him in both eyes, but it would fit with the flow of the action if she did.

Carolyn and Amy both hear the sound. They puzzle over it. Carolyn suggests that the wind must be blowing a limb from a nearby tree against the outer wall. Amy can’t think of anything else it could be, and accepts the suggestion. They leave, having placed flowers on the sarcophagi.

The flowers are themselves interesting to longtime viewers. Early in the episode, we saw Carolyn arranging them on the writing table in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. The last time we saw someone handling flowers over that table was in #346. Barnabas grabbed those flowers out of Julia’s hand. In those days he was still a vampire, and they were enemies. After a few seconds in his grip, the flowers died. When Julia and well-meaning governess Vicki saw this, Barnabas looked embarrassed, for all the world as if he had broken wind. The analogy tends to raise a laugh, but it is apt- when he was a vampire, it was a natural function of Barnabas’ body to do things like that, and he would be expected to control that function so that others would not be aware of it. So when they show us flowers on this spot, they are telling us we ought to be in suspense as to whether Barnabas will be a vampire again.

Carolyn and Amy go back to the great house, where strange and troubled boy David is sulking. Again, longtime viewers might find this suspenseful. David found his way into the secret room in #311 and in #334 tried to show it to some adults. Barnabas had locked the panel, so they disbelieved him. If Amy tells David what she saw, he may well put two and two together and revive the stories that were in progress in those days.

But Amy doesn’t breathe a word of it, and David isn’t interested. He is preoccupied with the evil spirit of the evil Quentin Collins, who is gradually and evilly taking possession of him and Amy and, evil as he is, driving them to do something or other that has not yet been explained, but which will undoubtedly turn out to be evil. Quentin is still confined to a small room hidden in the long-deserted west wing of the house, and can only take full control of one child at a time. Today it is David who is acting as his agent; Amy flatly refuses when David tells her that Quentin wants them to “play the game.” In response, he twists her arm. Carolyn walks in on that act of violence, and orders David to go to his room and stay there for the rest of the day.

Amy speaks up for David and even asks to go to his room with him, but Carolyn stands her ground. She does leave the children alone together while she goes to tell housekeeper Mrs Johnson to take David’s meals to him on a tray.

David fumes and tells Amy that it is her fault that they won’t be able to “play the game” today. He is declaring his intention to “get even with Carolyn!” when Barnabas appears in the doorway.

Evidently David’s declaration did not bother Barnabas, because his only response is “Why so serious?” Barnabas has been pushing a plan to send David and Amy to boarding schools in Boston. Under Quentin’s influence, they have tried to thwart this plan by pretending to be all for it but secretly hanging clothes in the wrong closets. This apparently foolproof method has somehow failed, so they resort to another expedient. They tell Barnabas they would rather not go. He says that’s fine with him, and drops the whole thing.

Alone in his room, David looks angry. He throws a book to the floor. Carolyn comes in, and David tells her that he is sorry and she is right to punish him. She sees immediately that he is lying, and tells him so. The resulting brief scene is far and away the best of the episode.

Later, Amy slips in, and finds David sitting in a chair in a dark corner. In their post about the episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri point out that the effect of this shot of David is a bit different on an audience now than it would have been before 1972, since it makes David look very much like Don Vito Corleone in the opening scene of The Godfather.

“Shouldn’t I be holding a cat?” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

David is still furious about the whole situation. He tells Amy that they will “play the game” after all, and that Carolyn will play with them. The ominous music on the soundtrack is enough to tell us that this means they will try to kill Carolyn.

This episode shows something about the importance of directors in television drama. Actor Joel Crothers appeared on Dark Shadows for the last time yesterday; in an interview he gave to a fan magazine shortly after leaving the show, he complained that the directors had become so busy managing the special effects and practical effects that they didn’t have time to work with actors. Furthermore, the show never had more than three writers on staff, so scripts were sometimes delivered too close to taping for the actors to do much rehearsal on their own.

Today, each actor finds a note and sticks with it, but few performances mesh with each other sufficiently to seem to be part of the same scene. Denise Nickerson is calm and relaxed even when Amy’s arm is being twisted, David Henesy is angry and confrontational even when Barnabas is falling for David’s pretense that everything is normal, and Nancy Barrett is stern and impatient even when Carolyn is taking Amy’s claim to have seen the panel move seriously. Each of these performances is good, and Mr Henesy stands out when he gets to play “creepy.” But clearly no one gave them an idea of what they should work together to get across to the audience.

Aside from the scene where Carolyn sees that David is lying, there are just two exceptions, and they don’t really help. Committed fans may find it endearing to see the preposterous threesome hiding in the secret room of the mausoleum, but first-time viewers are likely to be put off by that scene of low comedy in the midst of an otherwise heavy and somber melodrama. Jonathan Frid is warm and inviting with the children, which does make sense when Barnabas is talking with the relaxed Amy, but their two-scene about whether he will ask Carolyn to let David out of his room is such a low stakes affair that unexcited actors cannot hope to hold our attention.

The director today was executive producer Dan Curtis. Curtis was a titanic personality and would later direct many TV movies and some features, but he seems never to have directed as much as a school play when he first took the helm of Dark Shadows for a week in 1968. This stretch of episodes marks his second time in the director’s chair. His extreme inexperience as a director of actors may well explain why the cast does not come together more cohesively.

Episode 581: Death and I are old friends

Vampire Angelique wants to take part in an experiment. The experiment is modeled on one in Hammer Studios’ 1967 film Frankenstein Created Woman. A mate will be created for patchwork man Adam by a process that involves draining the “life force” from a person into a female body made up of parts salvaged from several cadavers. Angelique wants to be the “life force” donor.

Angelique knows that when Barnabas Collins donated his “life force” to Adam, he not only survived the process but emerged cured of the vampire curse she had herself placed on him 172 years before, when she was a wicked witch. She is hoping that if she follows his lead, she too will be freed to walk in the daylight.

Angelique has been snacking on an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Peter/ Jeff is working on the experiment as a lab tech. She keeps demanding that he run the experiment with her as the “life force” donor. He keeps explaining that he’s just there to set up the equipment and has no idea how to operate it. The only person qualified to do that is mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Angelique says that no one else must be involved, and gives Peter/ Jeff 24 hours to become an expert on the process.

Meanwhile, Adam visits heiress Carolyn in her bedroom. He describes their relationship in terms that show a far greater maturity than she has seen from him before, and she calls him an “amazing creature.” The word “creature” wounds him. We hear his thoughts in a voiceover monologue, the first time Dark Shadows has used this device in mid-conversation. It is quite unnecessary; Robert Rodan’s face tells us everything we need to know about Adam’s feelings. Carolyn certainly sees that she has hurt Adam, and scrambles to make up for it.

Carolyn gives Adam a bright green sweater, and he bursts into tears. He says that no one has ever given him a gift before. Carolyn does not know about Adam’s origin, and is puzzled by this remark. He tells her no one is as nice as she is, that he wants to be her friend forever and never to hurt her, and rushes out of the room, overwhelmed by his emotions.

The experiment to build a female Frankenstein’s monster began after Adam told Barnabas that if he were not given a mate, he would murder everyone in the great house of Collinwood, including Carolyn. The scene in Carolyn’s room shows that this threat is a hollow one. On Friday, Adam dropped in on suave warlock Nicholas, who put him up to extorting Barnabas and Julia, and told him he loved only Carolyn and was ready to tell Barnabas to forget about the experiment. Nicholas talked him out of that, promising him that he would make it possible for him to have both his mate and Carolyn if only he would do everything he told him to do.

Angelique returns to the lab. Peter/ Jeff isn’t there, but Adam is. She tells Adam that he is breaking his word to Nicholas. Nicholas did not in fact tell Adam to stay away from the lab, but he did give Angelique that command. Adam is skeptical of Angelique, but he has no reason to stay in the lab or to throw her out. So he leaves her there.

Soon Peter/ Jeff is back. He keeps trying to explain to Angelique that he has no idea what he is doing, but she puts herself on the table and insists he start right away. While he throws switches, she moans.

Danny Horn’s post about this episode on Dark Shadows Every Day details the similarities between this scene and the way TV variety shows of the period presented “psychedelic” rock and roll acts such as The Doors. Danny’s commenter “PrisoneroftheNight” (a.k.a. Marc Masse of the intermittently available blog Dark Shadows from the Beginning) points out that The Doors themselves were likely aware of the similarity, as witness a voice that can be heard at the eight second mark of track 11, disc 2, of the CD release of The Doors in Concert calling similar visual effects “Dark Shadows time!”

Danny doesn’t say anything about Lara Parker’s rendering of Angelique’s experience on the table. On Dark Shadows Before I Die, John Scoleri says that Angelique “seemingly enjoys the experiment (because we’ve seen her shriek in pain, and this definitely was not the same),” to which his sister Christine adds that Peter/ Jeff “seemed to be pressing all the right buttons.” When we were watching the episode, Mrs Acilius noticed Peter/ Jeff’s uncomprehending reaction to Angelique’s moans and remarked “Yeah, yeah, we know you’ve never heard a woman make those sounds.”

Angelique beside herself. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Two of the four actors in this episode, Nancy Barrett and Roger Davis, are still alive as of this writing. I believe it is the first episode to have a cast that all survived as late as 2021. Robert Rodan died in that year, and Lara Parker in 2023. I don’t know if there are any episodes that still have all-surviving casts. (UPDATED: #751 does!)

Episode 574: Another girl

When Dark Shadows began in June of 1966, hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell was dating flighty heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard. The two of them were bored beyond words with each other. They only kept going out because Carolyn’s mother, reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, was determined that they should get together, and neither of them wanted to disappoint her. For months, we were subjected to one scene after another of Joe and Carolyn having nothing to say to each other while we waited for Liz to give up on them.

Joe and Carolyn finally called it quits in #84, and shortly afterward Joe started seeing Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. The audience has been rooting for Joe and Maggie ever since, but because there are too few obstacles to their romance for them to have a storyline of their own, we sometimes go months at a time without seeing them together.

Now, Joe has become the blood thrall of vampire Angelique, and Angelique’s master Nicholas has designs on Maggie. If Nicholas and Angelique were ordinary criminals and she were blackmailing Joe or had hooked him on drugs, this would be an archetypal soap opera situation. The supernatural twist makes it specific to Dark Shadows among the daytime serials of its period, but the story is still so deep in the genre’s wheelhouse that it is no wonder they’ve spent three days in a row luxuriating in it.

There’s a lot of emphasis on bachelor’s quarters this time out. Maggie lives alone, but we see so much of and hear so much about her late father’s paintings today that it feels as if the Evans cottage is still his house and Maggie is still his little buddy. That makes her relationship with Joe feel all the more urgent. She is waiting to make a home with him so that her adult life can begin.

We see Joe’s apartment as well. It is apartment 24, the default number for a Collinsport bachelor pad. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin lived in suite 24 at the Collinsport Inn in the first year of the show, and Humphrey Bogart-esque lawyer Tony Peterson lived in apartment 24, presumably in some other building, in the fall of 1967. Joe is sitting in his apartment 24 and staring at a glass of booze when Maggie knocks on the door. She tells him that his boss called her at home and told her that Joe hasn’t shown up at work lately. If Joe doesn’t call soon, he’ll have to fire him. Joe says he won’t call the boss, since he can no more explain the nature of his trouble to him than he can to Maggie.

We also see Nicholas’ house. Even though he is keeping Angelique on the premises, Nicholas is very much a bachelor. He peers into his magic mirror and sees Willie Loomis, servant to old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. Willie is asleep in his room in Barnabas’ house. The only other time we saw Willie’s room was in #328, when Barnabas framed Willie for terrible crimes he had himself committed against Maggie. Now, Nicholas uses his mirror for a magical video call with Willie. He interrogates Willie about an evil plan of his that is playing out in Barnabas’ house.

Willie in Nicholas’ mirror. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

On Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri caught this screenshot of Nicholas making an unfortunate gesture while he is telling Maggie what he thinks of Willie:

Nicholas is not impressed with Willie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Every Day.

Episode 567: You will help me

A tall, strange man named Adam is taking a stroll outside the great house of Collinwood. On the terrace, he meets well-meaning governess Vicki and Vicki’s fiancé, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Vicki recognizes Adam as the man who recently kidnapped her, and Peter/ Jeff tries to fight him. Adam is much stronger than Peter/ Jeff, so he flings him to the ground, where his head smashes against the pavement. Adam runs off.

Recovering vampire Barnabas and mad scientist Julia happen by. They know what Vicki does not and Peter/ Jeff only suspects, that Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster. They brought him to life after the death of the originator of the experiment, a doctor named Lang. Now Adam is threatening to kill Vicki and every other resident of Collinwood unless Julia and Barnabas make a mate for him. When they hear Vicki and Peter/ Jeff’s story, they go back to Barnabas’ house in case Adam checks up on their progress.

We cut to the laboratory in Barnabas’ basement, and see that Adam is already there. He startles himself when he bumps his head on some equipment. Coupled with the head wound he inflicted on Peter/ Jeff, this amounts to a minor theme in the episode.

Barnabas and Julia enter, and Adam confronts them. He demands to know why the procedure is taking so long. They try to explain that building a human body from dead parts and bringing it to life takes at least four weeks, but he is unimpressed. Finally Julia volunteers that she is under the weather and claims that the procedure is on hold while she recuperates. Adam agrees to wait four weeks before he starts murdering everyone. Barnabas says that it would help if he would stay away; Adam refuses to do so, and says he will pop in occasionally.

We might think it would be to Barnabas and Julia’s advantage for Adam to stay and watch the whole procedure, so that he can see just how difficult and time-consuming it really is. But they have another problem he knows nothing about. There is a vampire on the loose, and he bit Julia the night before. Barnabas has decided to lock Julia up in the house and use her as bait to draw the vampire in. He declares that he will be ready to destroy the vampire when he comes.

After Adam goes, Barnabas sits down and talks about his plans. Julia puts her hand on his shoulder and looks at him sadly. It is as tender a moment as the two of them have shared, and it makes us feel what Julia has missed because Barnabas does not requite her romantic feelings for him. As Christine Scoleri puts it on Dark Shadows Before I Die, “Poor Julia. At long last, Barnabas says he’s going to take her and lock her up in the Old House and she’s unable to appreciate it.”

An affectionate moment. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Meanwhile, Peter/ Jeff has called the police, and they have agreed to send six men to the estate to search for Adam. Peter/ Jeff asks Vicki to wait in the great house while he goes off to check on a hunch. He makes his way to Barnabas’ house. He gets there just in time to see Adam exiting the front door.

Peter/ Jeff finds the door locked, but lets himself in through the window in the parlor that so many uninvited visitors to Barnabas’ have used. He goes to the basement. Lang had forced him to assist with his project, so he recognizes the equipment. He raises the blanket that covers the cadaver Julia is using for materials and reacts with horror. Barnabas enters and confirms that he and Julia are going to “create another one.”

Episode 558: Talking of right and wrong

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair is lounging in his living room, blissfully contemplating the imminent success of all his evil plans. An unexpected visitor arrives. He is Adam, a Frankenstein’s monster whom Nicholas has been teaching to adopt a cruel and amoral code of extreme egoism. Adam is under the mistaken impression that recovering vampire Barnabas Collins created him, and he wants Barnabas to create a mate for him. Much to Nicholas’ approval, Adam abducted well-meaning governess Vicki Winters and told Barnabas he would kill her unless he gave in to his demands. Nicholas has Vicki stashed in a room in his attic.

Adam is bringing news Nicholas does not welcome. Adam’s former mentor, Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, visited him in his hiding place. Barnabas had told Stokes of Adam’s threats against Vicki. Stokes tried to talk Adam into letting Vicki go. His last appeal was to ask the big guy to imagine how he would feel if someone were holding his favorite person, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, and threatening to kill her if his demands weren’t met. That got through to him. He has come to tell Nicholas that they must release Vicki.

Nicholas asks Adam why he finds Stokes’ arguments convincing. Adam finally says that by making the comparison between Vicki and Carolyn, Stokes made him feel bad. Nicholas seizes on this, and says that those bad feelings are not evidence of any truth about the situation, but are just something Stokes imposed on him by trickery. Nicholas’ dismissal of conscience as a product of other people’s influence rather than an intuitive source of knowledge sounds rather like one of the crass immoralists Socrates shoots down in Plato’s dialogues, or like a simplified version of the criticisms of conventional morality with which thinkers like Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud scandalized the late nineteenth century.

Old Nick wins Adam over. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Adam goes back to Barnabas’ house and repeats his demand. Barnabas and his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, waver. Barnabas finally agrees to try to build a woman for Adam, but only after he sets Vicki free. The big guy thinks about it for a moment, then agrees. He tells Barnabas that if he backs out of his part of the bargain, he will not only find Vicki again and kill her, but that he will murder everyone who bears the name of Collins. Since that includes Carolyn, it would seem that Nicholas’ teachings have had a very profound influence on him indeed.

Christine Scoleri of Dark Shadows Before I Die dramatized Stokes’ and Nicholas’ competing attempts to influence Adam with this image: