Tag: john karlen

Episode 485: His last night on Earth as himself

Mad scientists Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall) and Eric Lang (Addison Powell) are conferring in Lang’s lab. Lang is putting the finishing touches on a Frankenstein’s monster into which he plans to transfer the “life force” of recovering vampire Barnabas Collins. Julia, Barnabas’ best friend, has been opposed to this experiment, but now has accepted that she can’t stop Barnabas and Lang from going through with it. She volunteers to assist.

Lang is having trouble concentrating because of a nightmare he had last night. Unknown to him, the nightmare was part of the Dream Curse, a dead end storyline about wicked witch Angelique sending a dream that each of a series of people will have. When the last person has the dream, Barnabas is supposed to revert to full-on vampirism.

Lang tells Julia about his nightmare. He says that she was in it. When he tells her that she did not speak, she smiles comfortably and says that that was proof that it was a dream. This is not only a genuinely funny line as Grayson Hall delivers it, but it is an extraordinary moment of self-awareness from Julia, a character who usually exists at the outer edge of heightened melodrama. It’s a shame that Addison Powell doesn’t know how to get out of Hall’s way for the half second it would take for it really to land with the audience.

Barnabas and his ex-blood thrall Willie are at home in the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. Willie is smirking and Barnabas is rigid with embarrassment while the dogs howl outdoors. Willie laughs a little as he makes a remark about how Barnabas hasn’t changed as much as he thought he had. This exchange reminds us of the moment in #346 when Julia and well-meaning governess Vicki noticed that some fresh flowers Barnabas touched had died and shriveled up. Like the howling of the dogs when Barnabas feels bloodlust, the shriveling of the flowers was a consequence of his vampirism, effectively a bodily function that he cannot control. He squirmed when Julia and Vicki looked at him then, and he is stiff and flustered when Willie laughs at him now.

Willie is amused by Barnabas’ incontinence. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas orders Willie to take a letter to matriarch Liz at the great house on the estate. It will explain that he is going away on a long trip, and that Adam Collins, a young cousin from England, will be coming to stay in the Old House. Willie is alarmed by this.

Willie asks what Barnabas will do if Liz won’t let him stay in the Old House when he is in the form of Adam. Barnabas is sure she will, and dismisses Willie’s doubts. This is an interesting sequence to regular viewers. The show has never made it clear whether Liz still owns the house or has signed it over to Barnabas. A whole year ago, in #223, Liz was talking to strange and troubled boy David as if the Old House and its contents were Barnabas’ legal property. Since then, there have been moments that tend to confirm that impression, as when Barnabas takes Liz’ keys to the house away from David and does not give them back to her, and other moments that conflict with it. Willie’s question and Barnabas’ response would seem to prove that the house still belongs to Liz.

Another question we might ask is why Barnabas doesn’t go to Liz himself. Certainly she will be unhappy that he went away without saying goodbye to her. Moreover, when he showed up at the great house in April 1967, Barnabas told Liz that he was the only survivor of the English branch of the family. Liz will be skeptical if another member of this imaginary branch presents himself and expects to take possession of a big mansion on her property. She has had unpleasant experiences with Willie, so much so that a letter he delivers seems unlikely to allay that skepticism.

When Willie gets to the great house, Angelique herself opens the door. She is living there under the name Cassandra. She has cast a spell on Liz’ brother, sarcastic dandy Roger, and married him so that she will have a residence at Collinwood while she works to restore Barnabas’ curse to its full potency. Showing his typical degree of strategic ability, Barnabas has not bothered to tell Willie about any of this.

Angelique/ Cassandra ushers Willie into the drawing room, sits him down, and chats with him. Willie answers her questions about Barnabas, not realizing that he has any more reason to be discreet with her than with anyone else. He tells her that Barnabas has been spending his days with Lang. Angelique/ Cassandra already knows that it was Lang who gave Barnabas the treatments that put his vampirism into remission and that Lang is preparing further treatments for him. Barnabas should know that she knows this, since she went to Lang’s house and tried to kill him. Willie also tells her that sometimes Barnabas doesn’t seem to have changed as much as you might expect. Angelique/ Cassandra’s reaction makes it clear this is new information to her, and that it might help her in her efforts.

The scene raises yet another question. Barnabas had expressed the hope that once the experiment was complete, Angelique would see that his old body was dead, would assume that meant that he no longer existed in any form, and that she would then go away and leave him alone. But he knows that she knows about Lang, and now he is planning to come back to Collinwood, where she lives, as another “cousin from England.” The question is this- how dumb does Barnabas think Angelique is?

Back in the lab, Lang and Julia are preparing for the experiment. Barnabas shows up. When he talks with the doctors, his face is reflected in the mirror above Lang’s creature. Not only does this suggest the idea of his personality moving into the creature’s body, it also reminds us that until Lang gave him his first course of treatment, Barnabas did not cast a reflection. The whole idea of Barnabas’ reflection will remind longtime viewers of #288, when Julia first confirmed her suspicion that Barnabas was a vampire by peeking at the mirror in her compact and not seeing him. That draws a contrast between Lang, whose initial success with Barnabas appears to be leading to disaster because his impersonal, hyper-masculine approach leaves him unable to recognize the threat Angelique poses, and Julia, whose own attempts to cure Barnabas of vampirism did not match Lang’s spectacular results, but whose femininity, as symbolized by the compact, represents a fighting chance against the forces that really govern this universe.

Barnabas reflected above Adam. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas takes his place on a bed. He tells Julia he is glad she is with him, and she smiles at him with the sad tenderness of someone saying a final farewell to a loved one. As with her self-deprecating joke in the opening part of the episode, this smile shows a new side of Julia. For a time in October 1967 she tried to launch a romance with Barnabas, and he rejected her. Hall played Julia’s unrequited love in the same larger-than-life style that the rest of her action called for. Her feelings seemed to be an outgrowth of despair- she was by that point so deeply entangled with Barnabas that there was little hope she could ever make a life with anyone else, so even though he was an active vampire, she had little to lose by committing herself to him. But this sweet little exchange is played so gently that it opens a window on a more complex inner life for Julia.

As Lang starts the experiment, we cut to Angelique in the drawing room at Collinwood. She is talking to a clay figure, calling it “Dr Lang,” and saying that it cannot overcome her powers, for they were a gift to her from the Devil himself. She jabs at the clay figure. In the lab, Lang writhes in pain, interrupting the experiment.

It was not until #450 that Dark Shadows let on that there might be anything to Christianity. In that episode, good witch Bathia Mapes held Barnabas at bay by showing him a cross. Up to that point, Barnabas had many times strolled comfortably through the old cemetery north of town, where half the grave markers are in the shape of the cross, and they hadn’t bothered him a bit. The only representatives of the faith who figured in the story were repressed spinster Abigail Collins and fanatical witchfinder the Rev’d Mr Trask, both of whom were fools whom Angelique easily twisted to her own purposes. Now we have a character named Adam, a New Adam through whom a resurrection is supposed to take place, and he is wearing a headpiece that is photographed to look like a crown of thorns. Angelique’s reference to the Devil suggests that she can be defeated only through the aid of a being more powerful than the Devil, and since we haven’t heard about Ahura-Mazda or any other non-Christian deities who represented a supreme principle of good pitted against an otherwise irresistible evil, it looks like we’re drifting Jesus-ward.

The New Adam, in whom all are made alive, wears his crown. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

It is daring to take that direction, even if it is only for a little bit. Vampire legends are pretty obviously an inversion of the Christian story, in which a man comes back from the dead, not having destroyed the power of death once and for all, but only to die again every time the sun rises. While Jesus feeds us with his body and blood in the Eucharist and thereby invites us to share in his eternal life, the vampire feeds himself on our blood and thereby subjects us to his endlessly repeated death. That’s why Bram Stoker’s Dracula has all those crosses and communion wafers, because it is a religious story of the triumph of the promise of resurrection in Christ over the parody of that resurrection that the vampire has settled for. It also explains why Dark Shadows so studiously avoided Christian imagery for so long. Christianity is such a powerful part of the culture that once you let any of it in, it tends to take over the whole story.

There are many reasons the makers of the show would want to avoid that fate. Not least is the tendency of religions to fracture and stories based on their teachings to become sectarian. Dracula itself is an example of that; the vampire is a Hungarian nobleman from Transylvania, connected with the Szekely clan. There really was such a clan, and like other Hungarian nobles in Transylvania its members were Calvinists, supporters of the same version of Christianity that Abigail and Trask represented. Stoker was a Roman Catholic from Ireland, a country where most Protestants are Presbyterians, a tradition that grew out of Calvinism, and so his depiction of the vampire is clearly driven by sectarian animus. The Collinses have an Irish surname, settled in New England when that region was officially Calvinist, and did very well there. So it would be easy to present their troubles as a cautionary tale about Calvinism. That would seem to be a surefire way to shrink the audience drastically. Not only are there millions of Calvinists whom it would offend, there are billions of people to whom Calvinism means nothing at all, and they would be utterly bored by a denunciation of it.

The episode is daring in several other ways as well. When Barnabas and Willie were first on the show, ABC-TV’s office of Standards and Practices kept worrying that viewers might interpret their relationship, which was founded on Barnabas’ habit of sucking on Willie and swallowing his bodily fluids, as somehow homosexual. Not only is the scene between them at the Old House reminiscent of the scenes that attracted memos from that office in the spring and summer of 1967, but the whole idea of Barnabas draining his “life force” into the body of Adam would seem to invite the same concerns.

The experiment scene would only intensify such concerns. The experiment is a medical procedure that is supposed to bring a new life into the world, which by 1968 was how Americans usually thought of the process of birth. Barnabas is the patient, he is lying down, and the doctors sedate him. Thus he takes on all the medicalized marks of a mother-to-be. Julia asked Lang if the process would be painful for Barnabas; he does not disappoint, but ends the episode screaming in response to labor pains. Not only does turning Barnabas into Adam’s mother invert the expected gender performance, but it also introduces a homosexual side to Barnabas’ relationship with Lang, who is Adam’s other parent.

Somebody ought to be there telling Barnabas he’s doing great and urging him to push. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Christian imagery and gender-nonconformity would have been rather a queasy combination for most Americans in 1968. That’s unusual, in historical terms. Before modern times, Christians didn’t hesitate to discuss ways that familiar gender roles break down in the relationship of humans to Christ. The “Fathers of the Church,” the prominent Christian intellectuals of the fourth and fifth centuries, talked about that all the time, going into depth not just with the image of the Church as the Bride of Christ but of each human soul, whether male or female, as one of Jesus’ wives, and of the physical contact between humans and Jesus in the Eucharist as a consummation of their marriage.

For their part, Calvinists tended to be skeptical of the physical aspect of the sacraments, but that didn’t mean that they shied away from conjugal metaphors to describe the relationship between the soul and Jesus. John Donne, like most priests in the Church of England in the 16th and early 17th centuries, was basically a Calvinist, yet his sonnet “Batter my heart, three-person’d God” is one of the most vivid and uncompromising statements of the ancient idea of an erotic dimension to Christian life that transcends the binaries between masculine and feminine, male and female. That tradition makes today’s conjunction of Christian and homoerotic themes all the bolder- imagine if Dark Shadows wrote itself into a corner where they had no choice but to explain nuptial imagery and mystical eroticism in the writings of Saint Ambrose. The whole audience could fit into a seminar room.

Closing Miscellany

Lang and Julia wear white lab coats. This is the first time Julia has worn a white coat. Her previous lab coat was light blue, which looks white on the black and white TV sets most households had in 1968, but now that the show is being produced in color they are buying costumes and props for color televisions.

The idea of a machine that would cause a person to go to sleep in one body and wake up in another was a big deal on TV in the 1960s. Just today I saw this screenshot from The Avengers on Tumblr:

This episode marks the first appearance of Robert Rodan. When Adam was a nameless heap of flesh under a blanket, he was played by a stand-in named Duane Morris. Rodan had a few small parts on TV shows in 1963 and 1964 and was in a couple of commercials between 1964 and 1968. Adam was his first, and last, recurring role on a series. In 1969, he appeared in a little-seen feature film called The Minx, then spent the rest of his life selling real estate in Southern California.

Episode 483: The three faces of Willie

In April 1967, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis inadvertently freed vampire Barnabas Collins to prey upon the living. Barnabas made Willie his blood thrall, and reduced him to a sorely bedraggled state. As spring turned to summer, Barnabas added Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, to his diet. When Barnabas first held her captive in his house, Maggie was dazed and submissive, but as he tried to brainwash her so that her personality would disappear and that of his lost love Josette would take its place, she began to rebel. Maggie and Willie formed a strange friendship as he did what he could to protect her from Barnabas. Eventually she escaped, and mad scientist Julia Hoffman erased her memory of what Barnabas did to her. When Willie tried to warn Maggie that Barnabas might attack her again, the police jumped to the conclusion that it was he who had abducted her. They shot him. He was declared insane and sent to Windcliff, a mental hospital of which Julia is the director.

A few weeks ago, another mad scientist, Eric Lang, gave Barnabas a treatment that put the symptoms of his vampirism into remission. At the time he was feeding on two women, heiress Carolyn and well-meaning governess Vicki. When Barnabas gained the ability to go around in the sunlight, cast a reflection, and eat solid food, Carolyn and Vicki’s bite marks disappeared. It is unclear whether either of them remembers that Barnabas was a vampire, but their personalities certainly went back to what they were before he bit them. That leaves us wondering about Willie. When Barnabas responded to Lang’s treatment, did Willie revert to the violent personality he had in his first full week on the show, when on Tuesday he menaced Maggie in a barroom, on Wednesday he cornered Vicki in the study at Collinwood, and on Thursday would have raped Carolyn if she hadn’t drawn a gun on him? Did he become some version of the deeply troubled young man who was desperate to help Maggie but powerless to resist Barnabas? Or did he become something else entirely?

Today, in furtherance of Lang’s evil plans, Barnabas wants to free Willie from Windcliff and bring him back to his house on the great estate of Collinwood. Julia has become Barnabas’ best friend, but she is firmly opposed to his association with Lang. So Barnabas lies and tells her that he wants to free Willie because his conscience is plaguing him. Julia knows that isn’t true, and points out that he never visited Willie at Windcliff. Barnabas replies that when he was in the full grip of the curse, he could move about only after dark, and says that he could hardly show up at the hospital to visit Willie in the middle of the night. Julia says that she would have arranged it had he asked. He doesn’t have an answer to this, and she doesn’t fall for any of Barnabas’ other fabrications. But she can’t figure out what he really is doing. She plays along with him, and the two of them go to see Willie at Windcliff.

This is the first time we have seen Barnabas outside of a little orbit composed of Collinwood, the village of Collinsport, and the cemetery north of town. Not only was Barnabas’ ability to travel limited while the symptoms of the curse were manifest, he often lost interest in people when they left the area. So in the fall of 1967 he was obsessively hostile to strange and troubled boy David and obsessively indecisive about Vicki until the two of them went to Boston, at which point he seemed to forget they existed. It’s too bad the set representing the waiting area at Windcliff isn’t more visually striking- Barnabas’ first trip out of the Collinsport area marks a significant change in the character’s possibilities, and it would be good if it came with an image that would stick with us.

While Barnabas waits, a glossy magazine catches his attention. He picks it up and leafs through it. Since we are about to see Willie for the first time in several months, there is a good chance that this little bit of stage business will remind regular viewers of a peculiar remark Barnabas made shortly before the last time we saw Willie. Shifting the blame for his own crimes onto Willie, Barnabas planted Maggie’s ring in Willie’s room. When he came up with this plan, Barnabas remarked that the cheaper sort of tabloids say that criminals sometimes hold onto morbid mementos of their crimes, prompting us to picture Barnabas reading a cheap tabloid. That incongruous image comes to life here:

Julia joins Barnabas in the waiting room. They talk for a moment, then a nurse ushers Willie in.

At first, Willie is silent, a confused look on his face. He walks slowly towards Barnabas. Barnabas asks Willie if he recognizes him. In this moment we pick up exactly where we left off in #329, when Willie was a patient in another hospital and did not remember who Barnabas was.

This time Willie does recognize Barnabas. But as he did at the end of #329, he seems happy and untroubled. He is positively childlike in his eagerness to go back to Barnabas’ house and work for him again. He says that he and Barnabas were friends and that he always enjoyed their time together, a statement that dumbfounds Julia, as it dumbfounds anyone who remembers the show from April to September 1967. Even when Barnabas wasn’t bashing Willie across the face with his cane, Willie was miserable beyond words and hated everything Barnabas forced him to do.

Julia sends Willie back to his room, and Barnabas proclaims that Willie is entirely cured. Julia sarcastically thanks him for his diagnosis, calling him “DOCTOR Collins!” This too harks back to #329, which ended with Willie asking Barnabas if he were a doctor, to which Barnabas replied, “That’s right. I am a doctor!”

Barnabas takes Willie back to his house and tells him that for the time being, he must not so much as go outside by himself. Willie accepts Barnabas’ explanation that many people in the area will have to be prepared for his return before they see him. Willie gladly agrees to stay in the house. Barnabas leaves him alone, and he immediately slips out. He is heading for Maggie’s place.

Maggie’s father Sam is a painter, a fact advertised by the canvases around the cottage they share. When we cut to the cottage, she is making a frame. This is rather an obvious visual metaphor. The last time Willie came to the cottage, he inadvertently framed himself for Barnabas’ crimes against Maggie.

Of course Maggie is horrified to see Willie at the door; of course she demands he leave; of course she threatens him with her hammer when he insists on staying and telling her he is innocent; of course she cries for help when her boyfriend Joe comes to the door; of course Willie runs off when Joe enters. Willie puts himself in the frame again, this time as an ongoing threat to Maggie and all the women of Collinsport.

Joe goes to Barnabas’ house and demands to see Willie. At first Barnabas plays dumb, but Joe doesn’t give an inch. Barnabas then admits that he persuaded Julia to let Willie out of the hospital, but assures Joe that Willie is no longer dangerous and tells him that he will see to it that Willie behaves himself. Joe says that Barnabas has already failed in his responsibility, since Willie just went to Maggie’s house and scared her. Joe says that he will kill Willie if he goes near Maggie again. He repeats that assurance, and his voice is pure steel.

Joe exits the house. We see him outside, walking away. Willie emerges from the shadows with a rifle. He takes aim at Joe and squeezes the trigger. The gun isn’t loaded, so Willie makes nothing more than a click. Apparently that was enough for him. He grins maniacally.

On their Dark Shadows Every Day, John and Christine Scoleri point out that the the gleeful face Willie flashes after he clicks his rifle at Joe is the same expression he showed in the frenzied crimes he committed before he came under Barnabas’ power. They back this observation up with a pair of screenshots, one of Willie immediately after he pretended to kill Joe, one from his last moment before he released Barnabas and lost his freedom:

Indeed, the whole episode replays Willie’s character arc from April to September in reverse. He starts as the crushed little thing we had seen at the end of #329, becomes Maggie’s tormented and misunderstood would-be protector, then ends as the dangerously unstable ruffian who followed seagoing con man Jason McGuire to town. If the episode were a few minutes longer, John Karlen might have had to take a break and let James Hall play the last scene. This recapitulation heightens the initial suspense generated by the question of how Willie would be after Barnabas had lost his vampire powers. Whatever effect the change in Barnabas has had on Willie has certainly not made him less complex or more predictable. We can’t tell when he is being sincere and when he is faking. Based on what we see today, it’s possible he is being sincere the whole time, but that he is just extremely impulsive, and equally possible that everything he does and says is a fake meant to cover up something we don’t yet know enough to guess at.

The actors are uniformly excellent today. John Karlen has to recreate the three faces of Willie in quick succession, and executes each of them clearly and memorably. Almost all of Grayson Hall’s dialogue is expository, but while delivering it she shows us all of Julia’s complicated feelings about Barnabas and lets us into her attempt to solve the riddle of his plans for Willie. Kathryn Leigh Scott is only on screen for a few minutes, beginning with her absorbed in carpentry and proceeding directly to screaming and running around and clutching at her male scene partners, but still makes it clear that Maggie is a strong and level-headed person who has been forced into frantic behavior by circumstances no one should have to face.

In the confrontation with Barnabas, Joel Crothers shows us a new side of Joe. Always loyal, always honest, always hardworking, Joe has up to this point been soft-spoken and self-effacing, deferential towards members of the ancient and esteemed Collins family. The only time he broke that deference was when he spoke some harsh words to matriarch Liz in #33, and he had to get thoroughly drunk to manage that. There is no trace of drink in him now, and he does not regard himself as anything less than Barnabas’ equal. For the first time since Burke Devlin lost his connection with the plot and shriveled so drastically that he ceased to be Mitch Ryan and became Anthony George, Dark Shadows has a plausible action hero in its cast.

The part of Barnabas is especially challenging today; he tries and fails to fool Julia in the beginning and Joe at the end, and in between may or may not have fooled Willie. So Jonathan Frid must show us what it looks like when Barnabas does an unsuccessful job of acting. He chooses to do that by having Barnabas overact. My wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out that Frid’s own performance in the role of a man who is severely overacting is in fact exceptionally restrained and precise. Frid bobbles his lines as he usually does, but never makes a wrong physical move, and not for one second does he miss the perfect tone for Barnabas’ lines. The result is simply outstanding.

Episode 329: The truth about Willie

We open in the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, home to courtly gentleman Barnabas Collins. In a bedroom there occupied by Barnabas’ servant Willie, Sheriff George Patterson and artist Sam Evans have found evidence that convinces them they have solved the case of the abduction of Sam’s daughter Maggie. They found Maggie’s ring hidden in a candlestick. The room is in Barnabas’ house and he has unlimited access to it. Further, the house is the only place Willie could possibly have kept Maggie if he had held her prisoner. But for some unexplained reason, they are sure that the ring proves that Willie and only Willie abducted Maggie. When Barnabas says that he feels somehow responsible, Sam rushes to tell him that he mustn’t blame himself.

The sheriff says that he will be going to the hospital, where Willie is recovering from gunshot wounds the sheriff’s deputies inflicted on him when they were looking for a suspect. Barnabas hitches a ride with him.

At the hospital, Willie’s doctor, addled quack Dave Woodard, is conferring with his medical colleague Julia Hoffman. When he steps out of the room for a moment, we hear Julia’s thoughts in voiceover. She is thinking about killing Willie before he can regain consciousness and tell a story that will make it impossible for her ever to practice medicine again. She thinks of Barnabas’ voice demanding that she kill Willie. She is reaching for the catheter through which Willie is receiving fluids when Woodard comes back in. She tells him she was checking it, and he is glad when she confirms it is working correctly.

Returning viewers know that Barnabas is the one who abducted Maggie and committed the other crimes of which Willie is suspected, that he is a vampire, that Julia is a mad scientist trying to cure him of vampirism, and that in pursuing her project she has become deeply complicit in Barnabas’ wrongdoing. We also know that she has several times told him that she will draw the line at killing anyone herself, but that she has involved herself in so many other evil deeds that it was just a matter of time before she found herself on the point of crossing that line.

Barnabas and the sheriff arrive at the hospital. In the corridor, Barnabas is bewildered to find that the sheriff will not allow him to be present while he questions Willie. The sheriff has been so careless about treating miscellaneous people as if they were his deputies- for example, enlisting Sam yesterday to help him search Willie’s room- that Barnabas’ puzzlement is understandable. The conversation goes on for quite a while.

Note the poster that reads “Give Blood.” That’s a message Barnabas could endorse. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The sheriff enters Willie’s room, and greets Julia as “Dr Hoffman.” Woodard thinks Julia has come to Collinsport to investigate Maggie’s abduction, and so he has agreed to keep her professional identity secret from most people in town, including the sheriff for some reason. Therefore, she is startled at this form of address. Woodard explains that now that Maggie’s abductor has been identified, he doesn’t see a point in keeping law enforcement in the dark.

Julia meets Barnabas in the corridor. When she tells him that she didn’t kill Willie, he fumes and calls her a “bungling fool.” He says he will do the job himself, but Julia points out that Woodard and the sheriff are in the room with Willie now. They wind up staring at the clock for hours.

Willie regains consciousness. He doesn’t recognize Woodard. When the sheriff shows him Maggie’s ring, his eyes gleam and he claims that it is his. Returning viewers will remember that before Willie ever met Barnabas, he was obsessed with jewelry. He is terrified when he learns that it is night-time, and says that he knows why he is afraid.

The sheriff and Woodard go out into the corridor to talk with Julia and Barnabas. Woodard tells Julia that she was right- Willie is hopelessly insane. Apparently when they asked him what he was afraid of, he mentioned “a voice from a grave. Nothing else made more sense than that.”

Julia and Barnabas go into Willie’s room. He looks at Barnabas and asks “Who are you?” Barnabas shows surprise that Willie doesn’t know him. Willie asks if he is a doctor. “Yes,” replies Barnabas. “I am a doctor.”

Sheriff Patterson is played by Dana Elcar today. It is Elcar’s 35th and final appearance on Dark Shadows. He would go on to become one of the busiest and most distinguished character actors of his generation.

Elcar had his work cut out for him with the part of Sheriff Patterson. If a police officer on the show ever solved a case, or followed any kind of rational investigative procedure, or interpreted a clue correctly, the story would end immediately. So all the sheriffs and constables and detectives have to be imbeciles. Elcar reached into his actorly bag of tricks almost three dozen times, and always came out with some way to make it seem as if something more was going on in Sheriff Patterson’s mind than we could tell.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, exclaimed “I’m so glad Dana Elcar is playing this scene!” when Barnabas and the sheriff had their long conversation in the hospital corridor. This week’s episodes were shot out of sequence, so yesterday’s was made after Elcar had left. It featured Vince O’Brien as Sheriff Patterson. O’Brien was by no means a bad actor, but he didn’t make the character seem any smarter than the script did. Elcar seems so much like he has something up his sleeve that Jonathan Frid’s insistent pleading makes sense as a cover for a mounting panic. Without Elcar to play against, it might just have come off as whining.

With the conclusion of Willie’s story, this is John Karlen’s last appearance for a long while. Beginning shortly after Barnabas’ introduction to the show in April, his conversations with Willie have been the main way we find out what he is thinking and feeling. More recently, Willie and Julia have been having staff conferences in which they come up with new ideas and add a new kind of flexibility and dynamism to the vampire storyline. From time to time, Willie’s conscience gets the better of him, and he adds an unpredictable element to the story as he tries to thwart one of Barnabas’ evil plans. For all these reasons, removing Willie from the show drastically reduces the number of possible outcomes in any situation they might set up involving Barnabas. His departure, therefore, seems to signal that some sort of crisis is at hand.

In fact, Karlen wanted to leave Dark Shadows because he had a better offer from a soap called Love is a Many Splendored Thing. But the producers knew that no one else could play Willie after the audience had got used to Karlen, and so they wrote the character out until they could get him back. Still, losing Willie puts Barnabas’ story on a much narrower track. So far, each development has led us to speculate about an ever-growing list of directions the story might possibly take. From now on, we are entering a phase where we will often be stumped as to what might be coming next.

Episode 314: Bordering on the supernatural

Willie Loomis, sorely bedraggled blood thrall of vampire Barnabas Collins, is in the woods looking for strange and troubled boy David Collins. The strains of “London Bridge” play on the soundtrack, announcing the presence of Barnabas’ little sister, the permanently nine year old ghost of Sarah.

Sarah and Willie look at the Old House. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Sarah and Willie have a friendly little chat. He tells her that everyone wants to see her, which comes as news to her. He tells her that Barnabas is particularly eager to see her. This is the first time we have seen Sarah hear Barnabas’ name. She excitedly says that she wants to see him, too.

Willie offers to take her to Barnabas, but she says that she has to look for someone else. Willie asks if she is looking for David Collins. This is the first time we have seen Sarah hear that David’s last name is the same as hers. She replies, “Yes, David.”

Sarah explains that she doesn’t quite know where David is. This is surprising- he is trapped in the secret chamber of the Tomb of the Collinses, a chamber she herself showed him in #306 and where in #311 he heard the strains of “London Bridge” after realizing he had gotten locked in.

Willie asks if David is a good friend of hers, and she says they like each other and both know a lot of games. She also says that she tells David her secrets. “Big secrets, little secrets.” She alarms Willie when she adds that she has told him the biggest secret she knows. Willie fears that she means that she told David that Barnabas is a vampire. He presses her with more questions. She refuses to answer and protests that she doesn’t like questions. She tricks him into looking away from her for a few seconds, and when he looks back she is nowhere to be found.

Danny Horn devotes a sizable portion of his Dark Shadows Every Day post about this episode to complaining about what Sarah doesn’t know:

This is basically a repeat of what Sarah said when Maggie was taken away to Windcliff Sanitarium. At the time, she told David, “Sometimes I almost know where she is, but then it all fades away, and I begin to cry again.”

That scene actually meant something — Maggie was quickly spirited away, far outside Sarah’s usual territory. You could imagine Sarah standing near the Old House, listening, trying to tune into some kind of psychic radio signal from far away.

But you can’t just take that scene and copy it into a new episode like this, because she knows exactly where David is. She has to. If we’re really supposed to believe that Sarah can’t find David — in her own crypt, where she left him — then this is all mouth noises and nothing but.

Sarah’s character has never been particularly well-developed, but these days it’s flying to pieces every time she opens her mouth.

Danny Horn, “Episode 314: A Logical Explanation,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 23 January 2014

I don’t entirely disagree with his critique of Sarah’s lines, but I can’t go along with a complaint that her “character has never been particularly well-developed.” She’s a ghost, after all- the whole idea is that her existence is an intermittent thing. She doesn’t relate to time or space as we do. We don’t know what, if anything, her intentions are, and we can never be quite sure what she remembers from one apparition to the next. It’s true that the more we see of her, the more she tends to assimilate to the human characters. That happened during the 14 weeks of the storyline centering on undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, when both Laura herself and her great adversary, the ghost of Josette Collins, began as wispy, diffuse presences and ended with recognizable personalities. Sarah is some way down that road, but they’ve still managed to keep us guessing.

In particular, when Sarah told David “the biggest secret” she knows, she told him that there was a secret chamber in the tomb, how to get into it, and that the coffin there once had a body in it, but that the body “got up and left.” At times she has thwarted Barnabas’ evil plans, suggesting that she knows all about him. But only suggesting it- she didn’t name Barnabas when she told David about the coffin, which would seem to be a bigger secret than any she shared. And when Willie tells her that he represents Barnabas, she responds far more merrily than we would expect if she knew he was the servant of a vampire.

The scene between Sarah and Willie reminds me of a video clip in which Sharon Smyth Lentz reminisces about John Karlen sitting down with her one day in the studio. He wanted to talk to her about her process in developing a character. At nine, she had no idea what he was talking about. Sarah doesn’t have a process either, and she is great on the show as long as they don’t put her in a position where she would need one.

Willie rushes to the great house of Collinwood, where he has an emergency conference with Barnabas’ co-conspirator, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. He tells her that if Barnabas finds out that Sarah has been telling David her secrets, he will kill the boy. Julia frets that such a murder would “ruin everything” she is trying to accomplish by trying to cure Barnabas of vampirism, and commands Willie to lie to his master.

Soon Julia has another emergency meeting. Her old acquaintance, addled quack Dave Woodard, has shown up with a doll Sarah left behind. He tells her that he now believes Sarah is a supernatural being, because the doll is in mint condition even though it is of a type that has not been manufactured in over 150 years. To which I say, so what? They know that Sarah’s clothes are in equally an pristine state even though they are extremely old-fashioned; Sarah’s bonnet was in the house for a while, where Julia and well-meaning governess Vicki examined it and concluded that it must have been handcrafted as a replica of a period piece. So that would seem to be an equally likely explanation for the doll. That makes Woodard’s declaration that the doll is in an old style but a new condition into a thudding anticlimax.

Episode 221: A new Collins in Collinsport

Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is closing up shop in the restaurant at the Collinsport Inn. A stranger startles her. He is the mysterious Barnabas Collins. Barnabas recently left his long-time residence in the cemetery five miles north of town and has been hanging around the great estate of Collinwood, but this is the first time we’ve seen him in Collinsport proper.

In the opening months of Dark Shadows, the restaurant, like the rest of the inn, was coded as the base from which dashing action hero Burke Devlin mounted his campaign to avenge himself on the ancient and esteemed Collins family. As the Revenge of Burke Devlin storyline ran out of steam, the restaurant emerged as a neutral space where new characters could be introduced without defining their relationships to the established cast all at once. In that period, Maggie was Collinsport’s one-woman welcoming committee.

Now, even Burke has given up on his storyline. The only narrative element of the show with an open-ended future is Barnabas, and once the audience has figured out that he is a vampire there’s no such thing as a neutral space where he is concerned. So it is not clear what, if any, role the restaurant will have from now on.

Barnabas asks if it is too late to get a cup of coffee. Maggie tells him it is, but relents after about a minute and reopens to serve him. She is charmed by his old-world manners and excited to learn that “there is a new Collins in Collinsport.” He tells her he is staying at the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of Collinwood, prompting her to marvel at the idea of someone living in a dilapidated ruin that is probably haunted. When she admires his cane, he explains that it is not only quite valuable, but is also a family heirloom and on that account his most prized possession.

Barnabas appears to drink the coffee, as he appeared to drink the sherry his distant cousin Roger served him when he visited Collinwood in #214. Usually vampires are supposed to limit their diet strictly to human blood, but just a few weeks ago Dark Shadows wrapped up a long story about Laura Murdoch Collins, a humanoid Phoenix, who raised everyone’s suspicions by never being seen to eat or drink. So they may have thought that it would be repetitious to follow the Laura arc so closely with another undead menace who betrays himself with the same sign.

Barnabas kisses Maggie’s hand in farewell

Maggie’s boyfriend, hardworking young fisherman Joe, comes bustling into the restaurant seconds after Barnabas leaves. Maggie is surprised that Joe and Barnabas didn’t pass each other, and puzzled when Joe tells her there was no one in sight anywhere near the inn. Neither of them had heard of Barnabas before.

Joe tells Maggie that a woman named Jane Ackerman had an unpleasant run-in with a man she couldn’t see earlier in the night. The fellow retreated before doing her any serious harm, but Joe seems fairly sure that whoever it was is a real threat to the women of Collinsport. So he wants to keep Maggie company. Maggie doesn’t seem worried, either for her own sake or for Jane’s. She’s just happy to see Joe, and gladly agrees when Joe suggests they go to the local tavern, the Blue Whale.

As Dark Shadows’ principal representatives of Collinsport’s working class, Maggie and Joe illustrate the point the opening voiceover made when it said that people “far away from the great house” of Collinwood would soon be “aware of” Barnabas and of “the mystery that surrounds him.” As a name we have never heard before and are unlikely to hear again, “Jane Ackerman” reminds us that there is a whole community of people for Barnabas to snack on.

As Joe and Maggie are heading out of the restaurant, she notices that Barnabas left his precious cane behind. She wants to go straight to the Old House to return it to him. Joe would rather wait until morning, but Maggie explains that she doesn’t want to be responsible for it overnight. This is a bit odd- they are in a hotel, after all, a business that specializes in keeping valuable property safe while its owners sleep.

Perhaps Maggie wants to see the Old House. Joe has been there many times. When we saw him there with Burke, searching for well-meaning governess Vicki in #118, he mentioned that when he and flighty heiress Carolyn were children, they would occasionally play there. He returned there during the Laura storyline. Even Maggie’s father has visited the Old House, participating in a séance there in #186 and #187. Maggie has never been there at all. So perhaps she just feels left out.

Maggie and Joe knock on the doors of the Old House. No one comes. As they turn to go, there is a closeup of the door knobs turning. Maggie and Joe hear a door open, and go in. They don’t see anyone, but candles are burning and Joe remarks that the front parlor has been fixed up. Joe goes upstairs and leaves Maggie behind, explaining that he knows his way around the place and it isn’t safe up there for someone who doesn’t.

Once Maggie is alone, Barnabas appears next to her. She is startled and cannot see how he could have got there without her knowing. He apologizes for once more catching her unawares. He seems surprised that she is not alone. When Joe comes downstairs, he is exceedingly polite to both of them.

After Maggie and Joe excuse themselves, Barnabas’ blood-thrall, the sorely bedraggled Willie Loomis, appears. With obvious difficulty, Willie forces out one word after another, and manages to ask Barnabas what he plans to do to Maggie. Barnabas is displeased with Willie’s presence and with his presumption that he has the right to question him. He climbs the stairs and looks down at Willie, full of menace and demanding that he go out and do the work Barnabas has ordered him to do. Willie tries to refuse, but cannot stand the look Barnabas is giving him.

Barnabas gives Willie his orders

During this staring contest, Barnabas and Willie are standing on the spots where strange and troubled boy David Collins and Barnabas had stood when we first saw Barnabas in the Old House in #212. In that scene, David and Barnabas were more or less eye-to-eye, and for a moment it seemed that Barnabas was contemplating violence against David. In this scene, Barnabas shows how committed he is to violence. He has a power over Willie that he gained by the extreme violence of drinking Willie’s blood, and Willie’s inability to resist Barnabas’ stare shows that power in use. Willie’s horror at the task Barnabas has assigned suggests that it also is violent.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, believes that the confrontation between Willie and Barnabas solves one of the behind-the-scenes mysteries about Dark Shadows. Why was James Hall replaced by John Karlen in the role of Willie? She points out that Hall, while he is a fine actor, had a lot of trouble with Willie’s lines, particularly in the long he shared with Dennis Patrick’s Jason McGuire. By the time Willie was recast, Jonathan Frid had been attached to the role of Barnabas for some days, and Frid never made it a secret that he was a slow study. So if there were going to be a lot of long conversations between Willie and Barnabas, Willie had to be played by an actor who could get his dialogue letter perfect day after day. That was John Karlen.

After Willie scurries off to do whatever evil chore Barnabas has ordained for him, Barnabas wanders over to the window. On his way, we see that the portrait of Josette Collins is no longer hanging in the spot over the mantle where we have seen it since our first look at the Old House in #70. At the end of that episode, Josette’s ghost emanated from the portrait and danced around the outside of the house. From that point, the Old House was chiefly a setting for Josette. Crazed handyman Matthew Morgan learned that to his cost when he tried to hold Vicki prisoner there and Josette and other ghosts ganged up on him and scared him to death in #126. Laura knew that she was entering the territory of a powerful enemy when her son David took her to the Old House in #141, and when Vicki had formed a group to oppose Laura’s evil plans she and parapsychologist Dr Guthrie went there to contact Josette. In #212, Barnabas addressed the portrait and told Josette that her power was ended and he was now the master of the house. Removing the portrait tells us that Barnabas is confident that he is not only a new Collins in Collinsport, but that he is now the Collins at Collinwood.

Barnabas then does something Laura did several times- he stares intently out his window. When Laura stared out her window, David would be violently disturbed, no matter how far away he was or how many obstacles were between him and his mother. These incidents were a big enough part of Laura’s story that regular viewers, seeing Barnabas stare out the window, will expect someone at a distance from him to react intensely.

We cut from Barnabas to Joe and Maggie at her house. Joe asks what time he should pick Maggie up tomorrow, and Maggie suddenly becomes disoriented. Kathryn Leigh Scott has a sensational turn playing that moment of lightheadedness, creating the impression that she is having a scene with Barnabas. As she recovers, she explains to Joe that she has the feeling she is being stared at. Then we dissolve to Barnabas in his window. Barnabas may not be Maggie’s mother, but apparently there is some kind of link between them. Perhaps kissing Maggie’s hand in the restaurant was enough to give Barnabas the power to creep her out even when he is miles away from her.

Episode 215: Play the mystery man

In episode 1 of Dark Shadows, dashing action hero Burke Devlin returned to his home town, the isolated fishing village of Collinsport, Maine. He’d left Collinsport in poverty and disgrace, and returned as a millionaire many times over, the master of a financial empire. He had vowed to use his great wealth to exact vengeance on the ancient and esteemed Collins family. In #201, he gave up his quest for revenge, which had never been very interesting to watch anyway, and now is unconnected to any storyline. He’s still in town though, spending his evenings in The Blue Whale, a waterfront tavern where he has appointed himself to act as bouncer.

In #207, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis was rude to some other patrons at the Blue Whale. Burke defeated Willie in a fight and ordered him to leave town. Today, Burke comes back to the tavern. No one has seen Willie for a week or so, but neither is it clear that he has left Collinsport for good. Burke is looking for Willie, planning to beat him up again if he finds him.

When Burke enters, he sees Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, sitting alone at a table. While she waits for her boyfriend, hardworking young fisherman Joe, Maggie talks with Burke about not knowing where Willie is.

Willie’s associate, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, comes into the tavern. Burke goes up to him. They also talk about not knowing where Willie is.

Joe shows up. He’s been helping his uncle search, not for Willie, but for a missing calf. They found remains of the little guy, far from the farm and completely drained of blood by some mysterious process. They are baffled by this development.

Willie drifts in. He sits down at the bar and starts drinking. Burke goes up to confront him, but is confounded by Willie’s broken demeanor. After a few moments, his hostility gives way to compassion, and he speaks gently to Willie.

Burke puzzled by Willie’s meekness. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Jason returns, and Burke tells him he’s worried that Willie seems to be very ill. Jason then confronts Willie, and is astounded when Willie tells him he doesn’t want the $500 in cash Jason is holding for him. Jason also notices that Willie has some bloodstains on his sleeve.

Everything I have to say about the acting in this episode I said in a long comment I left on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day in December 2021. Here it is:

I like this one. Sure, the writing has its flaws, and there are a couple of shots where it’s hard to tell what the visual composition was supposed to be. And Mitch Ryan is obviously drunk. But they rise beyond all that.

Kathryn Leigh Scott plays Maggie throughout as an understated version of her original wised-up conception, very apt for the barroom setting and a fine offset to the intensity all the male characters have to show this time. She doesn’t have many lines, but she has everything she needs to keep the show on track.

Dennis Patrick’s face and voice show at least two emotions in every shot, and he and Mitch Ryan do a terrific job as two men who don’t like each other but can’t help getting absorbed in a puzzle that fascinates them both. The music that builds throughout that scene and reaches its crescendo as Jason leaves the bar matches the complex emotional palette with which the actors are working; it doesn’t sound anything like the usual Dark Shadows music, and I don’t think we ever hear it again.

Joel Crothers’ turn as the messenger announcing the tragedy of the calves is as tense as the dialogue between Patrick and Ryan, but his studiousness and deliberation change the pace sufficiently to keep the scenes from blurring together. Ryan and Scott deliver their responses to him with a calm intelligence that emphasizes those qualities and makes Willie’s stumbling entrance a real surprise.

Ryan’s scene with John Karlen is a turning point in the series. Burke’s shift from a menacing demand that Willie leave town to an alarmed concern for his well-being marks the end of Scary Violent Willie and the arrival of Wretched Broken Willie, and his conference with Jason confirms that change. Everything Karlen does on the show from this point on, right up to his performance as Kendrick, begins with this scene.

If that looks familiar, it may be because I linked to it on tumblr.

I should also link to a characteristically insightful post in which Patrick McCray explains how this episode, in which Barnabas Collins is neither seen nor mentioned, contributes substantially to the sense of danger surrounding him. The story Joe tells about his uncle’s calf is the show’s first reference to blood-sucking, and it comes after we’ve started to wonder whether Barnabas really is a vampire, or is some less familiar type of hobgoblin.

Episode 208: From generation to generation

Friday’s episode ended with an important scene. Strange and troubled boy David Collins cheerfully escorted dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis around the great house of Collinwood, giving him little lectures about the portraits of the Collins ancestors. David pointed to a portrait in the foyer and spoke a name we hadn’t heard before, identifying it as Barnabas Collins. Willie, then played by frenzied Mississippian James Hall, became fascinated with the jewels Barnabas wore, so much so that for the first time on Dark Shadows his thoughts became audible as a recording playing on the soundtrack. After Willie left the house, we heard a heartbeat coming from the painting and saw Barnabas’ eyes glow.

When Willie’s associate, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, first entered Collinwood in #196, an optical trick made it look like a portrait was hanging on the spot where Barnabas’ portrait is now. While the face on the painting would have to wait until the actor was cast, the rest of the work on it was already done at that point, so that trick, inconspicuous as it would have been to the audience, was a sign that the production staff had decided that Jason’s role on the show would be to precipitate the introduction of Barnabas. And the opening voiceover of #2o2, the episode in which Willie joins Jason as a houseguest at Collinwood, referred to Willie as “one who is to awaken and unleash a force that will affect the lives of everyone.” The special effects surrounding Willie’s first encounter with the portrait would suggest that Barnabas represents that force, and that the portrait is a means by which that force is expressed.

Today’s episode begins with Willie taking another look at the portrait, and will end with him staring at it again. In between these two sessions, we learn that among the many impulses Willie is unable to control is a fascination with shiny objects.

We also see the ninth and tenth iterations of Dark Shadows’ dreariest ritual, in which seagoing con man Jason McGuire makes a demand of reclusive matriarch Liz, Liz resists, Jason threatens to expose her terrible secret, and Liz gives in. The first time comes after the opening credits. In the pre-credits teaser, they raised our hopes that we might see a conversation between them which does not conform to this pattern. Liz tells Jason that Willie can no longer be a guest in the house, and Jason agrees. But as soon as we return, he demands that she give Willie a parting gift in the form of $1000 cash. She refuses, and says she will call the police rather than bribe Willie to leave her home. After Jason threatens to send her to prison and lowers his demand to $500, she capitulates.

When Jason breaks the news to Willie that he is to leave immediately and take $500 with him, Willie notices a diamond-encrusted emerald pin and slips it in his pocket. Minutes later, Liz finds the pin missing and tells Jason she will have to call the insurance company. Jason confronts Willie in the kitchen and demands he hand the pin over. After a tense moment, Willie admits that he took the pin, not because he thought he could get away with stealing it, but because it was so pretty. He goes on about how supremely beautiful fine jewels are, saying that he can judge the beauty of a gem simply by touching it. He begs Jason to let him touch the emerald again. After Jason leaves him alone in the kitchen, Willie looks like he has had a new idea and is resolved to act on it.

Willie’s compulsion to touch the emerald creeps Jason out

Willie starts the scene with angry defiance, proceeds to humiliated dependence, and ends with a look of brisk resolve. John Karlen takes Willie through all of these emotions without any apparent discontinuity of feeling. He is still the defiant man even while he is begging, and still the begging man even while he is making up his mind to follow his new plan. That is as different as can be from Hall’s interpretation of Willie, who frightened us largely because of his extremely mercurial temperament. His moods shifted so wildly from second to second that you had no idea what he might do. It is remarkable that two performances can be so utterly unlike each other in every way, yet be equally effective at conveying menace and equally exciting to the audience wondering what comes next.

Jason tries to convince Liz that Willie didn’t take the pin, but that it simply fell to the floor. This effort collapses immediately. Liz is no longer disposed to give Willie any money; she is planning to call the police and let the chips fall where they may. Jason does not believe Willie will go quietly unless he gets a substantial sum of cash, and is afraid of the trouble Willie can make. So he again threatens Liz, this time focusing on the effect of a potential scandal on her daughter Carolyn and on David. Liz looks away in despair, unable to refuse Jason’s demand.

Willie depresses some characters and enrages others. The only exception is David, who brightens and chatters gladly when he sees Willie. David leads Willie into the study, where he shows him pictures of the Collins family’s eighteenth century ancestors and goes on about their fabulous jewels. He identifies one ancestor as his “great-great-grand-uncle.” “Grand-uncle” is a bit of Collinsport English that we will hear again later in the series. David suggests that some very valuable items might be found buried in out of the way places around town. David’s tales send Willie back into the foyer to stare longingly at the jewels in Barnabas’ portrait.

As we heard Willie’s interior monologue on the soundtrack while he stared at the portrait Friday, so today we hear a recording of Willie’s speech to Jason about his love of jewels while he studies the jewelry in the portrait. As his words come to an end, the heartbeat plays again and the eyes glow again. This time, Willie sees and hears and reacts. He has found his destiny.

Episode 206: Hey, it’s Big Man

Villains on soap operas can never be quite as destructive as they at first seem they will be, and heroes can never be quite as effective. To catch on, villains and heroes have to seem like they are about to take swift action that will have far-reaching and permanent effects on many characters and storylines. Yet the genre requires stories that go on indefinitely, so that no soap can long accommodate a truly dynamic character.

This point was dramatized in Friday’s episode. The chief villain of the moment, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, stood in front of some candles, placed to make him look like he was the Devil with long, fiery horns. Seconds after this image of Jason, his henchman Willie loses interest in him and wanders off, first listening to a lecture from a nine year old boy, then becoming obsessed with an oil painting. They aren’t making Devils the way they used to.

Jason and Willie look at the portrait of Jeremiah Collins

Today, dashing action hero Burke Devlin goes to the great house of Collinwood and confronts Willie. Well-meaning governess Vicki asks Burke why he wants to defend the ancient and esteemed Collins family from Willie and Jason if the Collinses are his enemies. He gives a flip answer to her, and is equally unable to explain himself to reclusive matriarch Liz. Regular viewers remember that the “Revenge of Burke Devlin” storyline never really led to anything very interesting, and that last week the show formally gave up on it. Without it, Burke has nothing to do. So, if the character can’t keep busy as the Collinses’ nemesis, he may as well try to justify his place in the cast with a turn as their protector.

In the foyer of Collinwood, Burke orders Willie to leave Vicki alone. Willie taunts him, and Burke picks him up and holds him with his back against the great clock. Vicki and Liz become upset, demanding that Burke let Willie go. Willie himself remains collected. After Burke releases him, Willie goes to his room, and the ladies scold Burke further. He doesn’t appear to have accomplished a thing.

Willie, off his feet but undisturbed

This is John Karlen’s first episode as Willie Loomis. His interpretation of the character is poles apart from that of James Hall, who played Willie in his previous five appearances. When I was trying to get screenshots to illustrate the moods of Hall’s Willie, I found that I had an extremely difficult task on my hands. His face would fluctuate wildly, showing a mask of calculated menace for a few seconds, then a flash of white-hot rage for a tenth of a second, then sinking into utter depression for a moment before turning to a nasty sneer. These expressions followed each other in such rapid succession it was almost impossible to catch the one I set out to get. The overall impression Hall creates is of a man driven by desperate, unreasoning emotions, lashing out in violence at everyone around him because of the chaos inside himself.

Karlen’s Willie is just as dangerous as Hall’s, but he is as composed as Hall’s Willie was frantic. At rise, he is staring at the portrait of Barnabas Collins, studying the baubles Barnabas is wearing. When housekeeper Mrs Johnson enters, Willie asks her about the Collins family jewels. When she uncharacteristically manages to be less than totally indiscreet, he shows considerably more cleverness and infinitely more calmness than Hall’s Willie ever did in maneuvering her to the subject again. If Hall’s Willie was a rabid dog charging heedless in every direction, Karlen’s is a deliberate hunter, acting coolly and undaunted by resistance.

Hall played Willie with a lighter Mississippi accent than he uses in real life, while the Brooklyn-born Karlen assumes a vaguely Southern accent in parts of this episode. That trace of Hall’s influence will remain for some months- eventually Willie will become a Brooklynite, but between now and then Karlen’s accent will go to some pretty weird places.

This was also the first episode of Dark Shadows which ABC suggested its affiliates broadcast at 3:30 PM. It would not return to 4:00 until 15 July 1968. When the core demographic of the show’s audience shifts from housewives and the chronically ill to school-age kids, as will happen quite soon, this earlier time slot will present a major problem. Those kids are now in their 60s, and they usually begin their reminiscences of Dark Shadows with “I used to run home from school to see it!” If school let out at 3:00 and the TV set at home took as long to warm up as most of them did in those days, you’d have to run pretty fast to be sure to catch the opening teaser even if you lived nearby.

Episode 36: Politeness is a passing phase

The actors all go big in this one. Marc Masse calls it “The David Ford Effect” and concentrates on Louis Edmonds’ thunderous performance in Roger’s confrontation with Liz, but since the entire cast has turned up the volume, I think it is more likely a response to direction coming from the people who hired David Ford (and, to be seen in a couple of days, Thayer David) than to David Ford himself.

Masse isn’t the only commentator who tends to ignore the directors and producers as influences on the acting. Perhaps that tendency goes back to an interview John Karlen gave in which he says that he doesn’t recall ever getting any direction at all on Dark Shadows. His first day, Lela Swift said “Go!” and that was it, he just did whatever he wanted for the next four years. On the other hand, Joel Crothers said that he left the show because the directors were so busy with special effects they no longer had any time to work with actors, implying that they had worked with them at one point. Since Crothers was there from the beginning and Karlen joined the cast ten months in, I can only assume that it was during these first months that the directors told the actors what they wanted.

Why would Lela Swift and the other masterminds behind the scenes start hiring actors like David Ford and Thayer David and tell the existing cast members to start hamming it up at this point? Well, the saga of the bleeder valve has wrapped up, and there is no other story going on that wasn’t there in episode 1. Some of those stories are starting to look pretty pointless. There’s “The Revenge of Burke Devlin”- they haven’t told us what exactly he wants revenge for, but if he ever takes it we will see either the death of Roger, which would have the disastrous effect of requiring Louis Edmonds to leave the show, or Burke taking control of the Collins family assets, which will bring the equally disastrous requirements of a showing a bunch of episodes about various forms of debt and building a new set for Joan Bennett to play her scenes on. So we’re starting to suspect that Burke will just keep going in circles. Roger’s angry scene with Sam in this episode is fun to watch because Edmonds and Ford play well off each other, but as part of The Revenge of Burke Devlin story it doesn’t take us to any new ground.

There’s “Vicki Seeks Her Origin.” We might expect that one to lead somewhere, eventually, but if that happens it won’t be for a good while. In this one, Vicki tells Liz that she’s decided she can’t help David and replies to Liz’ plea with her to stay with “Why am I so important?” She doesn’t renew her inquiries into how Liz knew about her and why she hired her. Of course not- that was getting tedious. So Alexandra Moltke Isles and Joan Bennett just emote furiously while exchanging lines that don’t add up to much.

We don’t see Carolyn or Joe in this one, but their romance is another dead end. Joe is a nice guy who wants to get married, Carolyn is a rich girl who doesn’t. There aren’t that many ways to make a story out of that.

The one story that works in the first 42 weeks is the growing friendship between Vicki and David. Right now there isn’t much to do with that one, either. David has just been caught trying to murder his father- he isn’t going to be particularly reachable. Today, he openly threatens Vicki at the beginning of the episode, then comes out of hiding after Liz persuades her to stay and declares that he doesn’t want her to stay. We have to see them at rock bottom today for the gradual rise in the months ahead to grip us the way they will, but not a lot happens while you’re at rock bottom.

So, maybe the producers and directors decided to dial the acting up to 11 because they knew they didn’t have much of a story to tell. This is Art Wallace’s final week as the sole credited writer on the show; I don’t know how much help he had in those first eight weeks, how much involvement he really had in episodes attributed to him in the nine weeks after, and whether anyone is already around whose name will be printed on the screen in that period. But they don’t have a story to tell right now. So it falls to the cast to distract us while they wait for the next phase.