Tag: jonathan frid

Episode 656: Mister Jonathan

The residents of the estate of Collinwood are under the impression that the mistress of the great house, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, is dead. Her brother, Roger Collins, is on a business trip to London, and cannot be reached, even by the executives of the business he is there to represent. Liz’ daughter Carolyn is her heir, but she is apparently too doped up on sedatives prescribed by permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, to take any part in the action of today’s episode. So it falls to Barnabas Collins, Liz’ distant cousin and the master of the Old House on the estate, to move in and start making decisions.

Barnabas is the show’s chief protagonist and its main attraction, and he ran out of story three and a half weeks ago. The ongoing plot-lines both involve Amy Jennings, a nine year old girl who is staying at the great house as Liz’ guest. Amy’s brother Chris is a werewolf, and she and strange and troubled boy David Collins are under the power of the evil ghost of Quentin Collins. The urgent thing is to make Barnabas responsible for Amy so that he can take the lead in addressing both Chris’ lycanthropy and Quentin’s haunting. To that end, it is key that he should be in charge of the great house for a while.

A stranger comes to the door and asks housekeeper Mrs Johnson if he can speak to “Mister Jonathan.” Without batting an eye, she leads him to Barnabas. This proves that Barnabas has become such a breakout hit that even the other characters know that he is played by Jonathan Frid. Perhaps we are to imagine them reading about him in the fan magazines.

The stranger is a mortician who received a telephone call about Liz’ death. Barnabas informs him that they have made other arrangements, and his services will not be needed. Barnabas and Mrs Johnson are puzzled as to who made the call. It turns out that David did it at Quentin’s bidding; how this advances Quentin’s purposes is not clear.

Amy and David’s governess, the well-meaning Victoria Winters, vanished into a gap in the space-time continuum the other day and is not expected to return. Liz hired Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, to replace her. Barnabas sticks up for Maggie when Mrs Johnson makes an unflattering comparison of her with Vicki, but he has evidently decided to eliminate her position almost immediately. He wants her to accompany him and the children on a trip to Boston where he will choose boarding schools for them to attend.

Barnabas has not spoken with Roger, who is David’s father. It is not clear who Amy’s legal guardian is. Her parents are dead, and her brother Tom was taking care of her before he died (the first time- he became a vampire and kept coming back.) Chris was away spending the nights of the full moon in the woods at that time, so Amy was sent to Windcliff, a sanitarium a hundred miles north of town. Julia is the nominal head of Windcliff and is Amy’s doctor, so it is possible she is Amy’s legal guardian. Julia is also Barnabas’ closest friend and most frequent accomplice, so it is possible she has agreed to his plan.

Even though Maggie’s job may not last for more than another week, she still needs a place to stay. So she, Mrs Johnson, and Barnabas clear Vicki’s stuff out of her room. Barnabas was hung up on the idea that he and Vicki might someday fall in love, an idea he did remarkably little to put into practice, and so he finds it distressing to be around her clothes. He demands that Mrs Johnson destroy them all. This shocks her. She finds an antique music box, and asks what to do with that. Barnabas orders her to destroy that too. Maggie takes the music box, listens to it for a second, grows wide-eyed, then hurriedly hands it to Mrs Johnson.

I can name that tune in three tinkles. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This moment amounts to a programmatic statement. In May and June of 1967, Barnabas was a vampire and Maggie was his victim. He forced her to listen to the music box for hours on end, believing that it had a hypnotic power that would erase her personality and replace it with that of his lost love Josette. Several times it has seemed that her memory of what Barnabas was and what he did to her would come back, only for her to be subjected to one magical mind-wipe after another. That she is so quick to give Mrs Johnson the box when Barnabas has ordered her to destroy it, and that her relaxed and friendly attitude towards Barnabas does not change for one second, is a sign that the question “Will Maggie’s memory come back?” will not be coming up in Dark Shadows version 5.0.

Maggie looks for David and Amy and finds them in the drawing room. Amy is playing “London Bridge” on the piano. We have seen David interact with only one other child, the ghost of Barnabas’ nine year old sister Sarah. Sarah sang and played the recorder, and the only song she seemed to know was “London Bridge.” Evidently, David has a type.

Mrs Johnson can’t bring herself to destroy Vicki’s clothes. She tells Maggie she has closed them up in a storeroom in the basement. The only room we have heard referred to this way is the one that was kept locked for the first 54 weeks of the show because Liz was under the mistaken impression that the corpse of her husband Paul was buried there, so that must be the room she means. Longtime viewers will appreciate the reference; Vicki herself was intrigued by the room in the early days of the show, and now her things have found a home there.

They don’t stay there for long. Maggie goes to hang up her own clothes, only to find that Vicki’s are back in the closet. She asks Mrs Johnson what could have happened. In #69, her second appearance, Mrs Johnson declared that “I believe in signs and omens!” Ever since, she has shown an attitude that might be called superstitious in our world, but that in the universe of Dark Shadows is just plain common sense. She ends the episode with a monologue about how “no human hand” had moved the clothes, that it must have been some supernatural force announcing that Vicki will be coming back.

This is disappointing for a couple of reasons. First, the character of Vicki was played out at the end of #192, and the show refused to find anything interesting for her to do for the 90 weeks that followed. Alexandra Moltke Isles finally gave up and used her pregnancy as grounds to get out of her contract early, but they recast the part to continue wasting screen time on this exhausted figure. The second Vicki, Betsy Durkin, was condemned to be a fake Shemp, moping her way through utterly pointless activities unconnected with anything the audience could care about. It was a great relief when she finally vanished.

Second, the show has a poor record of using objects to evoke its themes. The music box was an exception, but most have been pretty bad. The most famous example is Burke Devlin’s filigreed fountain pen, which was the main focus of 21 episodes spread from August through November of 1966. It was supposed to be evidence in a homicide investigation and to suggest a number of things about Roger’s feelings towards his friend-turned-nemesis Burke, but at the end it was just a bunch of people looking for a pen. The most recent at this point was a wristwatch that fake Vicki gave to her husband shortly before his disappearance. It turned up after he was gone and would occasionally start ticking when his spirit was near. Miss Durkin had to play scene after scene with that watch as her main partner, and it is no reflection on her acting ability that the results were so uniformly dismal. There’s a definite sinking feeling when we see Vicki’s wardrobe presented as another symbolic object.

Episode 600: A woman does not like to be thought of in those terms

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair is entertaining two guests in his home. They are Frankenstein’s monsters. The man is named Adam; in the 22 weeks since he came to life, Adam has learned to speak fluent English, to play chess, and to discuss the writings of Sigmund Freud, but he is still very unsure in his dealings with other people. Desperate to be loved but quick to resort to violence, he always winds up taking orders from someone or other.

The woman is named Eve. Created to be Adam’s mate, she came to life only in #596, but has all the memories and personality of Danielle Roget, a homicidal maniac who lived in France and America in the late eighteenth century. Her connection to Danielle was the result of Nicholas’ doing; when he learned of Adam’s existence, Nicholas decided to use him to found a new humanoid species, a race who would owe their existence to Satan rather than to God. In furtherance of that plan, Nicholas said in #575 he wanted to infuse Adam’s mate with the spirit of “the most evil woman who ever lived,” and he settled on Danielle as that woman.

We see today that Nicholas has over-egged his pudding. The thoroughly sincere Adam bores Eve/ Danielle to tears. She can barely stand to look at him while he tries to woo her, and sends him off to bed. She approaches Nicholas and suggests that he become her lover, preferably after she has killed Adam. Nicholas is amused by the idea, but tells Eve/ Danielle that unless she sticks with Adam, he will kill her. If Nicholas wants the two of them to found a whole new breed of creatures who will subdue the Earth for the Devil, he probably should have picked a woman whose vices ran less to violence and more to lust.

Shortly after Eve/ Danielle came to life, a wind blew into the room where she was staying, indicating that a ghostly visitor had come to her. She addressed it as “mon petit” and said “I will not go back.” Today, the same visitor appears at the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, home of recovering vampire Barnabas Collins. The ghostly wind knocks a book off Barnabas’ shelf written in 1798 by one Philippe Cordier. Occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes is visiting Barnabas and Barnabas’ inseparable friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Stokes decrees that the three of them must hold a séance at once.

When there is a séance on Dark Shadows, there are three indispensable roles. There must be someone who gives instructions and supervises the proceedings, usually with considerable gruffness. The first time a séance was held in this room, using this table, was in #186, back in March 1967. Well-meaning governess Vicki was the supervisor that time, and it was startling to see her cast aside her demure manner to take the same gruff tone others would adopt in that role. It is not unusual for Stokes to be gruff, but since Julia and Barnabas have both attended multiple séances before, his tone will strike regular viewers as unnecessary.

The second indispensable role is that of medium. That role falls to Barnabas today. He passes out and starts moaning. At this point the third role comes into play. It is Julia who must express alarm and try to break the trance. As supervisor, Stokes must then sternly rebuke her and insist that the dead be allowed to speak through the medium.

Ready for yet another séance. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas speaks a few phrases in French, as Vicki had spoken in French when the spirit of the gracious Josette possessed her in Dark Shadows’ very first séance, in #170 and #171 in February of 1967. He also speaks English with a French accent. Some fans like to poke fun at Jonathan Frid for the French accent that comes out of Barnabas’ mouth today, as indeed some liked to poke fun at Alexandra Moltke Isles for the accent that came out of Vicki’s. To those people I can only say, if those accents sound funny to you, just go to France- you will laugh all day long, because that’s how French people actually talk.

Through Barnabas, Philippe Cordier says that he has been lonely since Danielle’s spirit left him to return to the world of the living. Combined with Eve/Danielle’s refusal to “go back,” this implies that Philippe is Danielle’s boyfriend in Hell. He vows to kill “the man who says he loves her,” viz Adam, which seems illogical- if he wants her to leave the upper world and come back to him in Hell, he could achieve that simply by killing her. If he wants to punish the person who took her away from him, again Adam is the wrong target- it was Nicholas who picked Danielle. Adam had nothing to do with it. But Philippe, even though he was a published author when he was alive, is not an intellect now, only a spirit seeking vengeance. He is raw energy untrammeled by mind, and there is no reasoning with him.

Frid’s turn as Philippe is impressive. We’ve seen Barnabas in many moods, but he always has something to lose and almost always has something to hide. Frid often said that he played him as, first and foremost, a liar. But there is nothing disingenuous about Philippe. He is pure rage. In this tiny performance, Frid embodies that rage, and does not at all remind us of Barnabas.

Adam and Barnabas have a mystical connection that gives them a Corsican Brothers relationship. So far we have only seen this in action twice, both times when Barnabas was suffocating and Adam had trouble breathing. It does not work consistently, and it is not clear if Barnabas will suffer any of Adam’s pain. Indeed, when Adam fell off a cliff and nearly died, it didn’t bother Barnabas a bit. But apparently the bond does in fact go in both directions. When, after the séance, Philippe goes to Nicholas’ house and starts strangling Adam, Barnabas also starts choking.

In February and March of 1967 Dark Shadows was still aimed mostly at an adult audience made up of people who were impressed that the cast included Joan Bennett. But this episode demonstrates how completely it has since become a kids’ show. The first two séances resulted from long preparation, involved great effort, and produced tantalizingly vague, elusive messages. But this time around, the characters see signs of a ghost, Stokes immediately declares it’s time for a séance, and within two minutes Philippe Cordier is complaining about how he has to put himself back on the dating market of the damned. My wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out that this is like something you would see in a story written by a small child. If the barrier between the dead and the living is inconvenient to the progression of the story, then you throw it out the window and proceed as if you could call up a ghost and have a conversation any time you wanted.

Episode 570: Are you being profound?

When we first met Willie Loomis in March 1967, he was a dangerously unstable ruffian who came to the town of Collinsport and eventually to the great house of Collinwood in the train of seagoing con man Jason McGuire. Willie was such a violent and unpleasant fellow in those days that it was difficult to see why even a villain like Jason would choose to be associated with him.

The next month, Willie inadvertently freed vampire Barnabas Collins from his coffin. Barnabas bit Willie and transformed him into a sorely bedraggled blood thrall. That version of the character was so heavily beaten down and so sincerely remorseful that it was easy to wish him well, but he was so thoroughly dominated by Barnabas that no one else could get close to him.

In March 1968, Barnabas’ vampirism went into remission. His other victims regained their old personalities and apparently forgot about their time under his power. It is unclear just what effect Barnabas’ re-humanization has had on Willie. In #483, his first episode after Barnabas’ cure, Willie ran through the whole range of behavior he had shown in the preceding year. For a time, it seemed he might not remember that Barnabas had been a vampire. During that period, Barnabas assumed that Willie remembered everything, treated him as if he did, and after a couple of weeks of that treatment Willie and Barnabas were having the same kinds of conversations they had in the old days. Perhaps Barnabas accidentally gave Willie the therapy he needed to get his memory back.

Today, we open with Barnabas and Willie bickering in the front parlor of Barnabas’ house. They have been out hunting Tom Jennings, a vampire who has been feeding on Barnabas’ friend Julia. Willie says Barnabas has a reason for being so concerned about Julia, and Barnabas says that of course he does. He describes Julia’s current functions in the plot, and Willie says that isn’t what he’s talking about. Barnabas gets flustered, then asks “Are you being pro-fouuuund?”

Jonathan Frid lingers on the second syllable of “pro-fouuuund” until the whole audience is likely to be laughing. The whole scene is funny, because it shows us sides of Barnabas and Willie that we always suspected existed, but that we never expected to see. As my wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out, Barnabas has been so phenomenally selfish for so long that it is excruciatingly difficult for him to admit that he is willing to put a friend’s interests ahead of his own. And seeing Willie tease him about his feelings shows that the former slave and master are now buddies. Willie is neither menacing nor cringing, but is sympathetic enough and self-confident enough that anyone could enjoy his company. At long last, we know why Jason fell in with him, and what Willie lost, at first by his descent into criminality, and later as Barnabas’ victim.

Willie needles his old pal Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

An unexpected visitor drops in. It is Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, mistress of Collinwood and escaped mental patient. Liz tells Barnabas that she saw Julia in a room with a coffin. Barnabas takes a while to put the pieces together, but it finally dawns on him that Liz is describing Tom’s lair. He goes there, and finds Julia unconscious on the floor next to the coffin.

Barnabas carries Julia into his house. Liz announces that Julia is dead. Barnabas assures her that she is still alive. Even though she is clearly breathing, Liz refuses to believe him.

Later, Liz goes up to Julia’s bedroom. She sits by Julia and tells her that she knows she was part of the conspiracy to bury her alive, but that she forgives her. The whole story of Liz’ fixation on this supposed conspiracy is pretty dull, but Joan Bennett was an extraordinary talent. When she has a scene like this, she can sell Liz as effectively as if she were at the center of an exciting arc.

Just before dawn, Barnabas and Willie go to Tom’s coffin with a mallet and stake. Willie keeps pointing out that the sun isn’t up yet, but Barnabas opens the coffin anyway. It’s empty. Willie panics and runs off. It’s unclear why Barnabas opened the coffin- maybe he turned in early in his time as a vampire, and assumed Tom would do the same. At any rate, the episode ends with a lot of rather awkward stage business as Barnabas and Tom wrestle and Tom bares his fangs. This poorly choreographed fight scene leaves us with a laugh as sour as the laughs from the intentionally funny scene between Barnabas and Willie at the opening were sweet.

Episode 557: Unannounced visitors

Act One consists of recovering vampire Barnabas and mad scientist Julia standing around Barnabas’ front parlor recapping various ongoing storylines.

Danny Horn devotes his post about this episode to a detailed analysis of this scene. He shows that Jonathan Frid’s performance and Grayson Hall’s are open to many objections. They fall short in such technical categories as “knowing their lines” and “standing on their marks” and “having the slightest idea what is going on.” But they are fascinating to watch nonetheless. Danny declares that “[t]he point of these scenes is to see how long two adults can stand around in a room saying preposterous things to each other.” Frid and Hall operate at such a high level of tension that the prospect of either of them breaking character generates enough suspense to keep us on the edge of our seats.

Patrick McCray wrote two separate posts about this episode. In the one that went live 13 September 2017, he too focuses on the performances in Act One. He writes:

Poor Jonathan Frid. He must have had a rough night. I am usually oblivious to his infamous (and completely understandable) line trouble, but in this one, it is so palpable that I totally understand why he retired from TV after DARK SHADOWS left the air. In his early dialogue with Grayson Hall, you can see sheer terror in the eyes of both performers as Barnabas haltingly recalls a trip to the hospital. This is followed by the “Frid Surge,” where Barnabas becomes far more committed and energetic when he turns to face the teleprompter. Of course, this gives him that great sense of vulnerability that was the secret to Barnabas’ success. 

Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: August 13,” posted on the Collinsport Historical Society, 13 September 2017.

This is the only post on the Collinsport Historical Society tagged “Frid Surge”; that’s too bad, I’d like to see that phenomenon tracked throughout the series. I should also mention that Patrick goes on in this post to express his “confidence that Frid could have acted the doors off the collected ensemble had the poor guy just been given another frickin day to study his sides.”

Barnabas and Julia’s recap scene ends when an unexpected visitor barges in. He is an unpleasant man named Peter, who prefers to be called Jeff. Peter/ Jeff is fiancé to well-meaning governess Vicki, whom Barnabas and Julia know to have been abducted by Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Adam came to Barnabas’ house yesterday and threatened to kill Vicki unless Barnabas and Julia created a mate for him.

Peter/ Jeff was assistant to Eric Lang, the mad scientist who created Adam, and he knows that Barnabas and Julia were connected to the experiment. He does not know for sure that Adam is Lang’s creation, that Barnabas and Julia brought Adam to life after Lang’s death, or that Adam has abducted Vicki. He does, however, have grounds to suspect that each of these things might be true. In this scene, he announces his suspicions to Barnabas and Julia. They huddle in one corner of the room while he shouts his lines in his singularly irritating voice. They deny all three of his points. One of the commenters on Danny’s post, “Straker,” summed up their reaction admirably:

Frid and Hall were too professional to show it but I sensed they were both annoyed when Roger Davis marched in and started yelling. It’s kind of like how you feel when you’re at a party and the host’s five year old son throws a tantrum. Sort of an embarrassed tolerance.

Comment left by “Straker” at 6:21 am Pacific time 31 July 2020 on “Episode 557: A Race of Monsters,” by Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day, 1 January 2015
Roger Davis as Peter/ Jeff, in one of the most subtle moments of his performance. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

After Peter/ Jeff’s scene, it is Barnabas’ turn to be an unwelcome guest. He calls on occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Barnabas and Julia suspect that Stokes may be the evil mastermind who has turned the previously gentle Adam toward evil plans. When Stokes hears Barnabas knocking on his door, he looks up and rasps to himself “Go away… No one is home…” This is one of my favorite lines in the whole series. Stokes was quite cheerful when he first involved himself in the strange goings-on, but as he has found himself drawn deeper and deeper into the unholy world of Collinsport he has come to regret his decisions.

Stokes is quite impatient with Barnabas’ demands that he tell him what he knows and his refusal to reciprocate with information about himself. It is only because Vicki is in danger that Stokes tells Barnabas anything at all.

Stokes already knows how Adam came into being, and Barnabas tells him about Adam’s conversation with him. This brings up a question about the scene with Peter/ Jeff. Why couldn’t Barnabas and Julia have trusted Peter/ Jeff with as much information as Barnabas here gives Stokes? Peter/ Jeff can no more go to the police than Stokes can, he will not tell Vicki anything about Lang’s experiment, and Barnabas and Julia have no reason to suspect him of being behind Adam’s turn to evil. These questions don’t come to mind during the scene with Peter/ Jeff, partly because he is so disagreeable a presence that we want him off screen as soon as possible, and partly because it has long been Barnabas’ habit to tell his enemies everything he knows while he zealously guards his secrets from potential helpers.

Patrick McCray’s second post about this episode, published 30 July 2018, includes an analysis of Thayer David’s portrayal of Stokes:

Professor Eliot Stokes gains fascinating dimension in 557. Normally, jovial and helpful, we see his protectiveness of Adam reveal an irascible and sternly just man within. Anton LaVey extolled “responsibility to the responsible,” and there are few other places where Barnabas gets both barrels of that. Stokes is perhaps the most inherently good man in Collinsport since his fellow freemason, Bill Malloy, took his last diving lesson. (Ironically, at the hands of Thayer David’s first character.) Stokes’ prime reason for siding with Adam and not Barnabas? The former vampire and Julia have withheld vital information for months. Yes, they have necessary trust issues, but this is Stokes we’re talking about. Adam may be a wildly unpredictable man-beast, capable of leveling Collinsport to sand before breakfast, but he’s also (until later in the episode) a prime graduate of Rousseau’s Finishing School for Noble Savages. He’s nursed greedily on the milk of morality that spurts abundantly from the ripe and straining teat of of Eliot Stokes’ moral tutelage. It takes a Nicholas Blair — so often Stokes’ foil — to teach him the less savory lessons in humanity. Stokes knows that there’s only so much danger in which Adam can find himself… Victoria Winters is another matter.

Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: Episode 557,” published on The Collinsport Historical Society, 30 July 2018

Barnabas passes the baton to Stokes, who becomes the third character in the episode to pay an unwelcome visit. He goes to Adam. He asks the big guy who has taught him to be cruel and amoral, and gets nothing but lies in return. He tries to persuade him that he must not hurt an innocent person, and Adam angrily declares that it is “fair” for him to make Barnabas watch him kill Vicki if Barnabas will not make a mate for him.

In Patrick McCray’s 2017 post, he praises Robert Rodan’s performance as Adam:

Robert Rodan issues a highly cerebral, emotionally packed performance. Rodan never receives the credit he deserves. Much of Adam’s stint on the show finds him equipped with an eloquent, even sesquipedalian command of the language. His inner conflict is as existential as it gets… Where do you turn? Rodan balances this absurd chimera of conflicts with effortless aplomb that makes Cirque du Soleil look as clumsy as a Matt Helm fight scene.

Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: August 13,” posted on the Collinsport Historical Society, 13 September 2017.

Patrick amplifies that praise in his 2018 post:

Robert Rodan is an unsung hero of an actor, delivering his existential angst with passion and truth. It’s a shame that his identification with an eventually unpopular character was probably a factor in Rodan not being recycled by Dan Curtis, despite being the dark-haired, blue-eyed “type” that typified the ruggedly handsome, DS norm (such as Selby, Lacy, Crothers, George, Ryan, Prentice, Storm, Bain, etc.)

Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: Episode 557,” published on The Collinsport Historical Society, 30 July 2018

While I always found the sight of Conrad Bain a guarantee of a fine performance, I can’t say it ever occurred to me to class him as “ruggedly handsome” in the way that one might class the other men Patrick lists. There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose.

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 477: Beware of dreams

The more efficient a means of communication is, the sooner it is likely to be choked with unwanted messages, some of them harmful to recipients who engage with them. We describe this tendency by saying that eventually, everything turns into email.

One of the most potent means of communication on Dark Shadows have been dream visitations from supernatural beings. As early as #10, matriarch Liz, who in waking life resolutely denied that any paranormal phenomena could be found on the estate of Collinwood, writhed as she slept in her armchair, muttering about ghosts. Since then, we’ve seen undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins and the spirit of the benevolent Josette send competing dreams to influence strange and troubled boy David; the mysterious Widows have beckoned Liz to a watery grave; the ghost of little Sarah Collins visited David and told him all about her big brother, then-vampire Barnabas; revenant Jeremiah Collins and phantom Nathan Forbes have given important information to well-meaning governess Vicki; and several characters have had vivid dreams of unspecified, but obviously supernatural, provenance.

Today, wicked witch Angelique visits Barnabas in a dream and tells him that she is launching a malware attack on the dreamers of Collinsport. It’s going to be sequential; it will take over each user’s wetware in turn, compelling them to forward it to someone else. With each iteration, the worm will become more complex, until it reaches Barnabas in a dream of his own. When he accesses it, he will revert to vampirism.

Angelique explains her hack. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

On his Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn made a detailed comparison of Angelique’s explanation of the Dream Curse with the introduction to the 1931 film Frankenstein. He’s convinced me that the reference was intentional. Since there is a version of Frankenstein playing out on Dark Shadows right now, they are assuring us that the Dream Curse storyline will intersect with that one.

Angelique’s explanation only takes up the last act of the episode. There is a lot of other good stuff in the earlier parts, most revolving around Jerry Lacy’s character Tony Peterson. Tony was first introduced as a showcase for Mr Lacy’s famous Humphrey Bogart imitation; he has discarded that now. He still wears a brown suit and a tan overcoat, but sounds like Jerry Lacy.

Tony quarrels with heiress Carolyn about her relationship with Barnabas. She tells him that she and Barnabas have no romantic interest in each other, and tells him to go ask Barnabas if he doesn’t believe her. He goes to Barnabas’ house, and gives Jonathan Frid a rare opportunity to play intentional comedy.

Angelique, who, under the name Cassandra, has married sarcastic dandy Roger Collins and is living with him in the great house at Collinwood, steals Tony’s lighter and uses it to cast a spell on him. She needs a helper, and has decided to enslave Tony. Mr Lacy and Lara Parker are such fun together that, decades after the show, a company called Big Finish brought them back as Tony and Cassandra in a series of audio dramas. Called The Tony and Cassandra Mysteries, they were among the most popular of the Dark Shadows-themed plays Big Finish put out. I haven’t heard any of them- I’m too stingy to pay $37.41 to download an audio file- but if the scene the two of them play in the gazebo at Collinwood today is any indication, I’m sure they’re wonderful.

The very beginning of the episode is good too. Carolyn is coming back from a trip and has her hands full of luggage, so she knocks on the front door of the great house rather than look for her key. Angelique/ Cassandra answers. Carolyn has no idea who she is. When Angelique/ Cassandra identifies herself as Roger’s wife, Carolyn is shocked that Roger has remarried. She is even more shocked when Angelique/ Cassandra says that she and Roger had known each other only a day when they were married. Nancy Barrett is a high-energy actress, and a tightly-focused one. Her reactions to Angelique/ Cassandra’s successive announcements are like a laser light show on the theme of stunned disbelief.

Carolyn mentions that David decided to stay on in Boston for a few days. Since David is about ten years old, we might expect some explanation as to his lodging, but none is forthcoming. Some time ago we heard about an “Aunt Catherine” in Boston; I suppose he might be at her house, but hey, if the alternative is Collinwood he wouldn’t be any less safe if he were roughing it around Mass and Cass.

Episode 473: And that’s all I want to say.

Dark Shadows‘ first supernatural menace was undead blonde witch Laura Murdoch Collins, estranged wife of sarcastic dandy Roger. Laura was on the show from December 1966 to March of 1967. During that time, Laura tried to rebuild her relationship with her son by Roger, strange and troubled boy David. David’s well-meaning governess Vicki at first encouraged her charge to go to his mother, but eventually figured out that Laura posed a deadly threat to him. Vicki formed a coalition of characters to help her fight Laura, and eventually rescued David from his mother’s clutches at the last minute.

Now, Roger has come home to the great house of Collinwood after an unexplained absence that had Vicki, his sister Liz, and his distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas, terribly worried. Roger happily announces that he has taken a new wife, and presents her to the family.

As it turns out, Roger has a definite type. His new bride is also an undead blonde witch, though at the moment she is wearing a black wig that doubles as a physical representation of the concept “1968.” Her name is Angelique, although she pretends it is Cassandra.

Some critics say that the film 2001: A Space Odyssey would more aptly have been titled 1968: A Bad Year for Hats. As you can see, however, headwear in general was passing through a time of trial in that period. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Vicki and Barnabas recognize Angelique immediately. Vicki came unstuck in time in #365, finding herself in the year 1795, and didn’t make it back to the 1960s until #461. During her nineteen weeks in the late 1790s, Vicki got to know the people who lived at Collinwood in those days, among them Barnabas and Angelique. She saw many horrible things happen to them, and only after being blamed for those catastrophes herself would she realize that they were the consequences of spells cast by Angelique. Due to Angelique’s curse, Barnabas would be a vampire from 1796 until the week after Vicki came back to 1968. Vicki has decided to believe that Barnabas is not the same person she knew in that period, but rather that he is the descendant of that Barnabas Collins. He does not want her to know that he ever was a vampire, and she has resolved not to know that either, even though he used to bite her on the neck and suck her blood.

The battle against Laura was a fairly exciting story, at least in its latter stages. Angelique is a far more dynamic adversary than Laura, and Dark Shadows is much faster-paced and better written than it was then, so a reprise of the structure of that conflict in this new setting would likely be very exciting indeed.

To wage such a battle, Vicki and Barnabas can have no secrets from each other. Many who have been with Dark Shadows from the beginning have been hoping that its original protagonist will eventually become aware of the principal storylines, and this is one of the obvious ways to do it. Vicki can learn that Barnabas was a vampire, can find out that he was the one responsible for all the terrible crimes committed against the women and men and cows of Collinsport in 1967, and can still align herself with him, because she needs his support against Angelique, a more urgent threat. By the time they have vanquished her, not only will the idea of handing Barnabas over to the authorities have lost its salience, but Vicki will doubtless be facing another urgent threat requiring Barnabas’ assistance.

Nothing we see today suggests that such a development is on the horizon. The episode began with Vicki, Barnabas, and Liz worrying about Roger. A couple of weeks ago, Vicki brought a portrait home from an antique store and it had bizarre effects on Roger. The other day, he took the portrait and disappeared.

We can tell that today is not going to be a win for the female characters when Barnabas reacts to Liz’ expression of concern by dismissing her from his presence and she leaves, even though he is in her house. Vicki can tell Barnabas knows more about the situation than she does, and each time he condescends to mete out a little information in response to one of her questions he ends by turning his back to her and explicitly refusing to share anything more.

When Liz first leaves him alone with Vicki, Barnabas sourly remarks “I try to remember… that I must not reproach you for the reasons you’ve given not to marry me.” As Danny Horn shows in a series of screenshots in his post on Dark Shadows Every Day, their body language does not at any point support the idea that Barnabas wants to be with Vicki and she does not want to be with him. Quite the contrary; he withdraws from her, turns from her, and puts physical objects as barriers before her, while she looks at him, follows him, and leans towards him.

This has been Barnabas and Vicki’s dynamic for a long time. By #285, she went so far as to invite herself to a sleepover at his house. Barnabas was a vampire then; he entered the bedroom while she slept and bared his fangs, but couldn’t bring himself to bite her. Time and again, Vicki would all but draw a circle on her neck with the words “Mr Vampire, Bite Here!,” and Barnabas would tremblingly open his mouth, then recoil at the last moment. In #462, he finally sampled her bloodstream. By the end of #466, Barnabas’ vampirism had gone into remission, and that little storyline had evaporated. Now Vicki is vague and confused about what happened between her and Barnabas, and he is afraid he will relapse and bite her again.

Vicki is trapped between two blank walls. On one side Barnabas is excluding her from his life and therefore from active participation in the A story. On the other, she keeps having scenes with her old boyfriend from the 1790s, an unpleasant man named Peter who keeps demanding, for no apparent reason, that she call him Jeff. That habit of his was dead on arrival as a story point, and now that Angelique will be trying our patience by insisting her name is Cassandra, it will become impossibly tedious to have a second character doing the same pointless schtick. As long as she is in this position, Vicki’s prospects for contributing interesting material to Dark Shadows belong to a very low order of probability.

Episode 460: Lies beyond the grave

In #365, well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795. Now, Vicki is about to be hanged for witchcraft, and the last of the story threads that have been playing out around her are about to be tied up.

Yesterday’s episode ended in the study at the great house of Collinwood, where naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes shot a wooden bolt from a crossbow into the chest of vampire Barnabas Collins. At the top of today’s episode, Barnabas pulls the bolt out, telling Nathan that the bolt didn’t hit him. Barnabas’ voice is dubbed in over this, clarifying that Nathan missed his heart. We then switch to Nathan’s point of view and see Barnabas approaching for the kill.

After the opening title, we see that Barnabas is still in the study. Time has apparently passed. Barnabas’ father Joshua enters. Barnabas asks him if Nathan has been buried. Joshua says that he has, and lists the stories that he will tell to cover up all the deaths that Barnabas has been involved with over the last few months. Barnabas wants Joshua to shoot him through the heart with a silver bullet right now and destroy him forever. Joshua cannot do that, but he promises that he will put Barnabas out of his misery come daylight, when he is in his coffin. Barnabas asks two more favors of his father, that he free much put-upon servant Ben and that he prevent the execution of the wrongly convicted Vicki. Joshua promises to do these things as well.

Joshua and Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Throughout this scene, actors Louis Edmonds and Jonathan Frid hold back tears. Patrick McCray remarks: “Crying is not the most powerful thing an actor can do on stage. Rather, it is the attempt not to cry that seizes audiences. In these moments, Frid and Edmonds seize. In a medium of love scenes, there is none more poignant.”

The performers have a powerful theme to work with, one that Danny Horn explicates when he considers the question of why Joshua is still alive at the end of this storyline. When she made Barnabas a vampire, wicked witch Angelique decreed that everyone who loved him would die. Yesterday, Joshua confessed that he feared he was incapable of love, and Barnabas told him that such a disability might save his life. But when we see Edmonds and Frid struggling against the urge to weep, we know that Joshua loves Barnabas very deeply indeed, as we have in recent weeks seen that he loved others he has lost. Danny explains:

The reason why Joshua is spared from the curse is that the love he feels for Barnabas isn’t the kind of love that Angelique recognizes, and so he slips under her radar.

Angelique’s love is selfish, and spiteful. She uses it as a convenient excuse for running over anyone who gets in her way. She doesn’t understand love that arises from respect, and strength of character. And she will never feel the kind of deep, honest love that Joshua now realizes for the first time that he is in fact capable of.

Danny Horn, from “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves,” posted on Dark Shadows Every Day 16 August 2014

Danny goes on to explain that, while others had love for Barnabas that included a selfless element, there was also something in their feelings that Angelique could recognize, while Joshua’s love for him comes entirely from this higher plane. The portion of Dark Shadows set in the years 1795-1796 turns out to be The Tragedy of Joshua Collins, not only because Joshua has the highest social status among the characters, makes the most important decisions, and is played by one of the best actors, but because he grows into the sort of person who is governed by this kind of love. When the world around him is being ground down into dishonesty and cheapness, largely due to the consequences of his own misguided actions, Joshua discovers a new kind of strength within himself. Even amid the ruins of a world he himself did as much as anyone to wreck, Joshua represents the hope that something better might yet come into being.

After daybreak, Joshua stands beside Barnabas’ coffin in the secret chamber hidden inside the Collins family mausoleum, the pistol in his hand. Joshua cannot bring himself to fire the silver bullets into his son’s heart. Ben enters. Joshua orders him to affix a silver crucifix to the inside of the coffin to immobilize Barnabas there, and then to chain the coffin shut. Joshua and Ben assure each other that Barnabas will never be released. Later, we see Ben in the chamber, alone with the chained coffin. He looks at it and says “Goodbye, Mr Barnabas, goodbye.” Thayer David delivers that line with an unforgettable simplicity.

Returning viewers know that Joshua’s plan to keep Barnabas confined will work only until April of 1967, when Barnabas will be freed to prey upon the living once more. That July, in #276, Barnabas will stand in the hidden chamber and say that, while in chaining the coffin rather than destroying him his father “thought he was being merciful, what he did was no act of mercy.” This remark, combined with a story he told Vicki in #214 about his conflict with Joshua, just may have been the germ from which the whole story of Joshua grew. At any rate, the promise ABC-TV made to its viewers when it aired this promotional spot in November 1967 has been fulfilled:

Back in the study, Joshua frees Ben and gives him a severance packet of $100, worth about $2500 in 2024 dollars. When Ben thanks him for his generosity, Joshua denies that he is being generous. I have to agree with Joshua there- that amount might get a fellow out of town, but he’d have to find a new job pretty fast if he wanted to stay in the habit of sleeping indoors.

Another servant brings a note while Joshua and Ben are in the study. The governor has refused Joshua’s plea that Vicki’s execution be stayed. She will be hanged tonight.

At the gaol, Vicki’s boyfriend, an unpleasant man named Peter, is brought to her cell. The gaoler tells them they have five minutes before Vicki will be taken to her death. It is little wonder Vicki’s last request was to have time with Peter. Spending five minutes with him is like living to a ripe old age. Peter vows to overcome death and reunite with her. The last time we heard that was when Barnabas died the first time. In #409, he used his dying breaths to ask gracious lady Josette to wait for him to return to her. Fool that she was, Josette did, leading to disaster for her. Returning viewers may well wince, not only at the ominous parallel with Josette’s grim fate, but also at the memory of the many tedious scenes in which Josette at first insisted that Barnabas was coming back and was then at a loss when asked to explain herself. Besides, we don’t want to see any more of Peter.

The scene of Vicki’s hanging is quite elaborate by Dark Shadows standards. They’ve built a fairly realistic gibbet, hired several extras, put hats on them, and given them burning torches to hold. They test the equipment with a heavy sack, slowly lead Vicki to the place of honor, ask her if she wants a mask, and command the Lord to have mercy on her unrepentant soul. The camera drifts up to the top of the rigging, leaving Vicki out of the shot. When the time comes, we hear the drop and see the rope tighten.

Swing time for Vicki. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This marks the end of the 1795 flashback, but not necessarily of Dark Shadows 3.0. In #437, Vicki told Peter that she often had nightmares in her childhood, so often that she became a connoisseur of nightmares. She would stay asleep throughout the whole process, waking up only at the very moment she was about to be killed. That was a rather heavy-handed way of telling the audience that Vicki would ascend the gallows, put her head in the noose, and find herself back in the 1960s. Once she is back in her own time, what she has learned in the 1790s will have consequences for what she does next. So we can expect an epilogue of some kind before Dark Shadows 4.0 begins.

Episode 459: The means to destroy ’em

Like every episode of Dark Shadows, this one begins with a voiceover by a member of the cast. Unlike all the preceding voiceovers, this one is delivered by a man. Thayer David does the honors.

We open in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. For the first time in months, Barnabas Collins is there. Barnabas died and rose as a vampire in January, and has been concealing his existence since. But now his secret is known to several people in the house. One of those, his mother Naomi, reacted to the knowledge by taking poison. In his agony, Barnabas is pacing the floor, complaining to his friend, much put-upon servant Ben, that the doctor hasn’t come. Barnabas’ father Joshua comes downstairs and announces that there is no longer any need for a doctor- Naomi has died.

Joshua brings the ill-tidings. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Joshua dismisses Ben and talks with Barnabas. He confesses his doubts that he is able to love anyone. Barnabas tells him that such a disability might save his life- the curse wicked witch Angelique placed on him means that everyone who loves him will die. Joshua says that he must end the curse, and will do so by destroying Barnabas. Barnabas asks if he will drive a stake through his heart. Joshua replies that he found a book in Boston that tells of another way. Come morning, he will fire a silver bullet through Barnabas’ heart.

This is the first we have heard that silver bullets will kill vampires. There is some lore that suggests vampires avoid silver, but we know that doesn’t apply to Barnabas- one of his chief trademarks is a cane with a mostly silver handle. The 1941 film The Wolf Man established silver bullets as a means of killing werewolves, and the Lone Ranger fires silver bullets to knock the guns out of the bad guys’ hands, so I guess they might have come to mind in the 1960s if you were thinking of exotic weaponry.

Barnabas has plans for his final night. It was naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes who led Naomi to discover Barnabas’ secret, and who is to that extent responsible for her death. Ben enters to inform Joshua and Barnabas of another item to add to the list of Nathan’s misdeeds. Nathan has evidently apprehended bewildered time traveler Victoria Winters and taken her into town, where she faces death on the gallows after being unjustly convicted of witchcraft. The Collinses knew Vicki to be innocent and had been harboring her since shortly after she escaped from gaol. Joshua and Barnabas are certain that Nathan turned her in solely to collect the reward that has been posted for her capture. Barnabas vows to kill Nathan, and Joshua can’t talk him out of it.

We cut to Nathan in the Eagle tavern, where he is spending the money he sold Victoria for. The Eagle has changed pretty dramatically in the last several weeks. In #419, bartender Mr Mooney greeted a female patron with the announcement that the Eagle did not admit unaccompanied women. Since the Eagle is a public house on the waterfront, the management evidently thought this policy was necessary to keep the place from becoming a headquarters for the sex workers of Collinsport.

Now Mr Mooney is nowhere to be seen, and the only person in the barroom with Nathan is identified in the closing credits as “Barmaid.” She is played by Rebecca Shaw, whom we saw the other day as a streetwalker whom Barnabas was about to bite when good witch Bathia Mapes summoned him away with a magical incantation. She is sitting with Nathan, drinking with him, and flirting with him pretty heavily. A bat squeaking at the window frightens her, and when she catches her breath she announces that she will be leaving him alone in the bar for a bit while she lies down. Nathan replies to that by saying he will see her soon, and she turns to take a look at him, apparently expecting him to follow her to bed. It seems possible she is the same character who was working the docks, now employed in a similar capacity in the Eagle. If this is the person who has taken over from Mr Mooney, the management must have given up the hopes it formerly had for its reputation.

Nathan and the friendly Barmaid. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Once the woman leaves Nathan alone, Barnabas appears. He confronts Nathan about his many crimes. Nathan pulls a gun and tells Barnabas he will take him to the constable and turn him in as the Collinsport Strangler. Barnabas jeers. Nathan shoots, and Barnabas keeps standing there. He declares that Nathan cannot kill him, because he is already dead. He then informs Nathan that he will wait until 9 pm to kill him. Since it is now 8:30, this does not give Nathan a great deal of time.

At 8:45, Nathan appears at Collinwood. He finds Joshua and Ben in the drawing room, and tells them what has happened. They are neither surprised nor sympathetic. Joshua leaves the room, explaining that he would prefer not to see a gruesome murder. Ben is willing to stay for a while. When Nathan asks how Barnabas can be destroyed, Ben decides to have a little fun. He tells him that if he finds Barnabas resting in his coffin after sunrise and drives a wooden stake through his heart, that will take care of it. Ben is quite jolly when he points out that Nathan will be dead long before sunrise, so that this information would seem to be of little practical use to him. Ben then decides that he doesn’t want to watch the murder either, so he also takes his leave of Nathan.

With five minutes to go, Nathan tells himself that Barnabas will not kill him if Joshua is in the room. He finds Joshua in the study. He begs Joshua to stay. As Joshua is refusing, Nathan looks at the wall and sees a crossbow mounted there, with three wooden bolts next to it. Suddenly his cowardice gives way to wild hope. He tells Joshua he will wait in the study for Barnabas. Joshua goes.

Nathan takes a practice shot at the door, then stands waiting. Barnabas does open the door, Nathan does release another bolt, and does strike him in the chest, a bit to the left of the sternum. Barnabas cries out in pain, and as the episode ends it looks very much as if Nathan may have managed to stake him.

Barnabas takes a bolt to the chest. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas is the reason the show is a hit, so we can be quite sure he won’t actually die. Still, the episode is good enough that it feels for a moment that he might. The contrast between the prospect of Joshua killing Barnabas in the stately manner he described earlier in the episode and the idea of Nathan killing him is instructive. Had Joshua carried out his plan or even attempted it, the result would have been what Aristotle was talking about in his Poetics when he described the majestic terror of tragedy. It would have been at once horrifying and awe-inspiring to see a father duty-bound to kill his son. But Nathan is a cheap bum, trying only to save himself so that he can live to abuse and exploit more people. When we root against Nathan destroying Barnabas, we do not want only to continue the pleasure of watching the show. We are rejecting a resolution that would be unworthy of what we have seen so far.

Nathan, indeed, is unworthiness incarnate. When he was first on the show, Nathan was a likable rogue, but in recent weeks he has become both cruel and dreary. So cruel that he has tried to arrange the murder of an eleven year old; so dreary that he works through a conspicuously dim-witted, relentlessly unappealing henchman. Many fans complain about Nathan’s turn, and some speculate that the show just ran out of villains sinister enough to be worthy of Barnabas’ vengeance. On that theory, Nathan’s grave crimes are a last-minute, slapdash invention.

I don’t agree. We met Nathan before Angelique came to Collinwood. In those days, there was room for light comedy, for grand gestures, for dashing heroism, for fairy tale whimsy, and for tender romance. But as her curses have done their work, everyone and everything has been ground down. The ceiling has been lowered, and there is no longer space for the bouncy good cheer of the Old Nathan, much less for the Satanic majesty of villains like Angelique or that Rev’d Mr Trask. The whole world is pervaded by cheapness and sordidness now, and growing more so by the minute.

The only grandeur left is in The Tragedy of Joshua Collins. Were Nathan to destroy Barnabas, that grandeur would vanish, not in sublime pity, but with a taunt. That would be a harsh ending indeed.

Episode 450: That man who says he is Barnabas

Haughty overlord Joshua Collins and his long-term house-guest the Countess DuPrés have summoned good witch Bathia Mapes to lift the curse that has made Joshua’s son Barnabas a vampire. Meanwhile, Barnabas has bitten his second cousin Millicent and gone to the waterfront to find another victim. Bloggers Danny Horn, Patrick McCray, and John and Christine Scoleri have said so much so well about this episode that I have only a few points to add.

Millicent tells Joshua that it is wrong of him to have “that man who says he is Barnabas” in the house when he does such frightful things. Nancy Barrett’s performance as a woman made insane by her encounter with the undead is achingly beautiful. And her idea that Barnabas is an impostor is an intriguing one. Should Bathia succeed, Barnabas will need a story to account for the several sightings people made of him when he was cursed. That success seems unlikely- if Barnabas is freed from the curse now, what will we find when Dark Shadows stops being a costume drama set in the 1790s and returns to a contemporary setting? But it is something to file away for future use…

Bathia summons Barnabas away from the docks, where he is about to kill a prostitute, by sending the flame from a candle to him. The movement of the flame is an interesting effect, but what most held my attention was the scene between Barnabas and the woman he almost victimizes. Jonathan Frid and day player Rebecca Shaw play this scene in silence, with exaggerated movements, against a heavy musical score. The resulting balletic interlude is a striking departure from Dark Shadows’ previous form.

Barnabas disappoints his partner at the end of the ballet sequence. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Bathia keeps Barnabas in place by showing him a cross from which he recoils. This is the first time we have seen this reaction. Barnabas routinely comes and goes through a cemetery where many of the grave markers are in the shape of the cross, and they don’t bother him a bit.

Not only is it the first time this particular symbol has been a problem for Barnabas, it is the first time Dark Shadows has suggested there might be something to Christianity. The representatives of the faith we have seen so far in the 1790s have been Barnabas’ Aunt Abigail, a disastrously repressed spinster; the Rev’d Mr Bland, of whom the best that could be said was said by the doomed Ruby Tate when she described him to Barnabas as the preacher who looked like a duck; and the Rev’d Mr Trask, a fanatical witchfinder who inadvertently became the handiest tool wicked witch Angelique had at her disposal. The 1960s characters, aside from one fleeting mention of the word “Christmas” in 1966, have not betrayed any awareness that there is such a thing as Christianity.

Bathia commands the spirit of Angelique to speak to them through Barnabas. When Angelique was first on the show, she very conspicuously kept doing many of the weirdest things Barnabas was in the habit of doing in 1967. So Barnabas exasperated his henchmen by fixating on well-meaning governess Vicki but refusing to bite her, insisting that Vicki would eventually come to him “of her own will.” Angelique exasperates her thrall, much put-upon servant Ben, by casting spells on everyone but Barnabas when her goal is to win Barnabas’ love, insisting that Barnabas would eventually come to her “of his own will.” When in 1967 Barnabas sends his thrall Carolyn to steal an incriminating document and she asks what will happen if she is caught, he replies “See that you don’t get caught.” When Angelique sends Ben to steal a hair ribbon from Abigail and he speaks of what will happen if he is caught, she replies “See that you don’t get caught.” Moments like these suggest that the vampire Barnabas is not simply cursed by Angelique, but possessed by her. Perhaps it was Angelique, wearing Barnabas’ body as a suit, that we saw in 1967, not the son of Joshua and Naomi at all.

Jonathan Frid as Angelique . Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This fits with the general idea of the supernatural developed in the first 73 weeks of Dark Shadows. The first supernatural menace on the show was undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, who was on from December 1966 to March 1967. Laura was a complex of beings, made up of at least two material bodies and an indeterminate number of spirits, some of which seemed to be unaware of the other parts of the system and pursuing goals incompatible with theirs. From June to November of 1967, the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah kept trying to contain the damage her big brother was doing to the living characters. Sarah too turned out to be a complicated sort of phenomenon, and the form in which she visited people when they were awake was unaware of and at odds with the form in which she visited them in their dreams. If we go by Laura and Sarah, we would have to assume that supernatural beings are multifarious and fissiparous. So perhaps each time Angelique casts a spell, she splits a bit off of herself and the fragment springs up as another version of her, functioning independently of the rest. In that case, the vampire Barnabas is an avatar of Angelique. When Bathia compels Angelique to speak, she is compelling one of the Angeliques to drop a mask.

The given name “Bathia” is rare; the only person with it who ranks higher in Google search than Bathia Mapes is a musicologist named Bathia Churgin. Professor Churgin was born in New York in 1928, went to Harvard, and taught in the USA until she moved to Israel in 1970. So it is possible that someone connected with Dark Shadows may have heard of Professor Churgin and named Bathia Mapes after her, either as a tribute or just because the name stuck in their mind.

The surname “Mapes” is somewhat less rare; apparently “it is borne by around one in 903,601 people.” In 1963 and 1965, Frank Herbert published two novels that were later issued together under the title Dune; there is an elderly woman with a mystical bent named The Shadout Mapes in those. I’ve never taken much interest in Dune, and owe my awareness of this to comments on Danny Horn’s blog (from Park Cooper here and from “Straker” here.) There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that Bathia’s family name is a nod to The Shadout Mapes; whether it was Sam Hall or another of the writers or someone else who worked on Dark Shadows or one of their kids who had read Dune, I cannot say.