Tag: josette du pres

Episode 267: No one has clearly defined death

Reclusive matriarch Liz is standing on the edge of a cliff, staring out to sea. Her distant cousin, Barnabas the vampire, comes up stealthily behind her. He grabs her, and she screams.

The vampire approaches the lady. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

For months, Liz has been stuck in a go-nowhere storyline about blackmail. So it is exciting to see the beginning of a new story where she is under Barnabas’ power. Or it would be, if that were what was happening. Instead, we come back from the opening credits to find that Barnabas approached Liz that way only because he was afraid she might go over the cliff if he made a noise and startled her.*

As a result of the blackmail arc, Liz is suicidal. Barnabas fears that she may be trying to jump, and tries to cheer her up by spending several minutes delivering a semi-coherent oration about how wonderful it is to be dead.

The scene started with a disappointment, and the dialogue doesn’t make much sense, but it is always fun to see Jonathan Frid and Joan Bennett work together. Frid’s acting style was a bit of a throwback to the nineteenth century, which made him an ideal scene partner for a daughter of Richard Bennett.

In #264, Barnabas had made some remarks to Liz’ brother Roger about the importance of family. Barnabas had then gone on to bluster uselessly at Liz’ blackmailer, seagoing con man Jason. He later told his sorely bedraggled blood-thrall Willie that he might kill Jason soon. As a vampire, Barnabas is a metaphor for extreme selfishness, and his hostility to Jason fits into that- Jason does represent a possible inconvenience for him. But today, we see a hint that Barnabas might actually have some measure of concern for Liz and the rest of the Collinses. After he walks Liz home, he confides in the perpetually well-meaning Vicki that he was afraid Liz would jump off the cliff. He tells Vicki that she seems to be the person most able to help Liz.

Yesterday, housekeeper Mrs Johnson had grabbed Liz as she was about to plunge off the same cliff, and had told Vicki of the incident. But Mrs Johnson just thought Liz was fainting. Vicki had noticed yesterday that Liz was deeply depressed, but she is shocked and disbelieving when Barnabas breaks the news that she seems to be suicidal.

On his way into the house with Liz, Barnabas had seen strange and troubled boy David Collins. David had seen Liz, but Liz neither saw nor heard him- she walked silently away from him, even though he twice called out “Aunt Elizabeth!”

In #256, David had met a little girl wearing eighteenth century dress hanging around outside Barnabas’ house. Unknown to anyone but the audience, the little girl is the ghost of Barnabas’ sister Sarah. David told Willie about Sarah, and Willie himself saw her in #264 and told Barnabas about her. Today, Barnabas tells David that if he sees Sarah again he should tell her to stay away from his property.

Barnabas’ message to Sarah and David

David denies that Sarah is his girlfriend, and says that her habit of singing “London Bridge” gets on his nerves. Barnabas is startled by the mention of “London Bridge.” David says that he isn’t likely to see Sarah near the Old House again, because “I’m not allowed to play at the Old House.” He delivers this line with a pungency that led us to laugh out loud. The whole scene is a lot of fun.

“I’m not allowed to play at the Old House.” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Barnabas had turned his creepy, anachronistic charm on at full force when talking to Vicki, and was obviously disappointed when she told him she had a date with fake Shemp Burke Devlin. He politely responded to this news by describing Burke as “a very interesting man.”

We then go to the Blue Whale tavern, where we see that “very interesting man” drinking and smoking by himself for a minute and a half. He wanders from his table to the bar to get another drink, passing some people whom first-time viewers will believe to be suffering from spastic disorders, but whom regular viewers will recognize as Collinsport residents who think they are dancing.

Notice her right hand- she has her guard up in case the convulsions spread to his arms

Burke goes to the pay phone to call Vicki. She enters, and he tries to get his dime back. He takes the receiver off the hook, replaces it, probes around in the coin return, bangs the side of the phone, explores the coin return again, and sadly tells Vicki that he has lost his dime. She tells him that if the purpose of calling was to get her to show up, he got his money’s worth. He agrees, but keeps looking back at the phone with longing.

Burke and Vicki dance. She tries to take his mind off the lost dime by recapping the last couple of episodes, but too little of interest has happened to refocus his attention. Vicki gives up and says she’s going home. We don’t see Burke resume his battle with the coin return slot, I guess they decided they had already given us our thrill for the day.

Back in the house, Liz is sitting in front of a table on which there is an open book. She is staring blankly into space. David enters the room. He greets her. She smiles vaguely, mumbles “Oh, David,” then gets up to leave. When Vicki comes in and says hello, Liz mutters “Hi, Vicki,” but doesn’t turn her head to look at her.

David calls Vicki’s attention to the book. It is the Collins family Bible, and was open to some plates that have been inserted bearing birth-dates for Liz and other members of the family. That’s the end of the episode. I must say, it’s quite an anti-climax after Burke’s attempt to retrieve his lost dime.

Closing Miscellany

Bob O’Connell is not on hand to play Bob the Bartender at the Blue Whale today. Instead, the bartender is Tom Gorman, who played the same role in #104 and will reprise it again in #607.

The birth-dates in the Collins family Bible are:

Roger Collins, 14 September 1925

Elizabeth Collins, 28 February 1917

Carolyn Stoddard, 16 July 1946

By comparison, the actual birth-dates of the actors were:

Louis Edmonds, 24 September 1923

Joan Bennett, 27 February 1910

Nancy Barrett, 5 October 1943

So it looks like they adjusted Edmonds’ and Bennett’s birth-dates by a few days plus a few years in setting their characters’ births, but ignored Miss Barrett’s actual birth-date in setting Carolyn’s. Maybe she refused to tell them what it was!

The show has been hinting heavily that Vicki is Liz’ biological daughter. A birth-date of 16 July 1946 for Carolyn would tend to pull against that- Vicki had apparently just turned 20 when the show started late in June 1966. Unless they were twins, one or the other of those characters is going to have to have her birth-date adjusted if they are going to resolve the question of Vicki’s origin that way.

*That’s a concern we’ve heard several times on this set- in #2, Roger introduced himself to Vicki by startling her as she stood at the edge of the cliff, and in #75 Vicki did the same thing to Roger. In #139, David was at the edge of the cliff when his mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, surprised him; the episode ended with a literal cliffhanger after Laura made a move David wasn’t expecting. We’ve heard many times that the legendary Josette Collins was “the lady who went over the cliff,” as artist Sam Evans calls her in #185. It’s unclear why she did- maybe someone startled her.

Episode 238: This place is becoming a prison

Well-meaning governess Vicki goes to the front door of the great house of Collinwood and brings in an afternoon paper dated 16 April 1967. There is the headline on the front page: “Pfizer Dropping Its Patent Suits on Tetracycline.” Right next to it, “Factory Labor Costs Reached Five Year High Relative to Output in October, Agency Says.” The New York papers had these stories on 24 November 1966, and ran them in the business sections. Apparently Collinsport’s afternoon paper doesn’t believe in rushing into print. There’s also some stuff there about the disappearance of Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town.

The Collinsport Star, 16 April 1967

Vicki looks directly at the paper for less than four seconds, yet when reclusive matriarch Liz asks her if the articles about Maggie provide any new information, she says no. Speed reading courses were a big fad in the 1960s, evidently Vicki must have taken one. Liz forbids Vicki or flighty heiress Carolyn to go out after dark until Maggie is found.

As soon as Liz leaves the room, Vicki suggests to Carolyn that they go for a walk to the Old House on the grounds of the estate. She wants Carolyn to see the restoration work that has been done since the courtly Barnabas Collins and his irritable servant Willie Loomis have moved in. Carolyn reluctantly agrees. We see a video insert of the women walking through the woods towards the house, with audio of their voices dubbed over it. I believe this is the first new exterior footage we have seen since #174, and the first to include actors since #130.

We see the women from an increasing distance, so that they appear to shrink; then through foliage, so that they appear to be in a trap; and finally from a high angle, as if they are small and weak. Since we know that Barnabas is a vampire and they are on their way to enter his lair, this is effective visual storytelling. In fact, it is the only good scene in the episode.

The beginning of the walk- Carolyn and Vicki at their largest
Approaching the house, they reach their smallest size
On the porch, behind the branches
At the bottom

Carolyn says that it is much colder around the Old House than it is at the great house, and Vicki mentions that they are closer to the ocean. This is something of a retcon. When strange and troubled boy David first took Vicki through the woods to the Old House in #70, not only was it news to her that the place existed, but the trek was a long one, suggesting it was far inland, deep into the grounds of the estate. That impression was reinforced a number of times, and Vicki’s remark is the first to contradict it. Apparently the writers are planning some story point that will require the Old House to be by the shore.

Vicki knocks on the door several times without an answer. As she and Carolyn turn to go, we see the doorknob turn and the door open. When the women see that no one is in the front part of the house, Vicki guesses that her knocking loosened the door. What we saw of the doorknob tells us that some agency opened it. It is still daylight, so Barnabas’ powers are unlikely to be at work, and it doesn’t seem that he would want people wandering into his house.

The Old House has also been the abode of the benevolent ghost of Josette Collins, and it is possible Josette might want Vicki and Carolyn to figure out what Barnabas is up to. But nothing they do today gives them a clue about him, and since it is almost nightfall it is extremely dangerous for them to be there. Josette would be unlikely to put them in that situation without good reason.

That leaves us wondering what other supernatural beings might be operating in and around the Old House. The first time Dark Shadows told a story that was modeled on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it centered on blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. In the first weeks of that arc, it seemed that Laura was not simply a single physical body, but that she was a whole complex of material and immaterial presences, some of them working at cross-purposes to each other.

Now we are using another set of ideas from the same book. Barnabas is more dynamic than Laura was in those early days, but he too seems to have brought company with him, perhaps including companions he does not know about and whom he does not control. This is most obvious when he is planning some evil deed and the dogs start howling. Occasionally the dog-noise helps him by intimidating his victims or scaring away their would-be protectors, but more often it gets in his way by acting as a warning that trouble is brewing. If an unknown force that upsets the dogs emerged when Barnabas rose from his tomb, then perhaps still another force has appeared that is fiddling with the doors to the Old House.

Over Carolyn’s objections, Vicki insists on exploring the Old House. Carolyn protests that this is trespassing. They have been confusing about the legal status of the place. In #220, they said explicitly that Liz would continue to own it and would let Barnabas stay there. There hasn’t been any indication since that Barnabas has paid Liz anything or that she has done any paperwork. If the house belongs to Liz, Carolyn, as Liz’ daughter and heir, would be speaking figuratively when she uses the word “trespassing.” But in #223, Liz talked about the house as if it and its contents were Barnabas’ property. So who knows, maybe she signed the place over to him when the show was busy with a day of recapping.

Whether Barnabas is the proprietor of the house or a guest there, Vicki and Carolyn are certainly intruding on his privacy when they go upstairs and examine the bedrooms. Carolyn at least has the presence of mind to point this out, but Vicki just keeps repeating that Barnabas once told her she was welcome to come over any time and she interprets this to mean that she can go anywhere in the house whether he’s there or not. This is one of the most sustained, and most bizarre, of all the Dumb Vicki moments we’ve seen so far. Alexandra Moltke Isles usually tries to find something to put behind her eyes during these scenes to suggest Vicki has a thought we will find out about if we keep watching, but Vicki’s behavior today is so senseless Mrs Isles just grins and looks off into the middle distance like a crazy person. Who can blame her, really.

They find the bedroom of Josette all appointed as if Josette herself were living there, complete with jasmine-scented perfume. The door mysteriously closes, trapping them inside. Again, no one we have met, either living or ghostly, would have any motive to do this. After a moment, Willie comes to the door and demands to know why they are there. Vicki asks about the room and complains about Willie’s manners, as if she had a right to be there.

Downstairs, Vicki asks Willie to tell Barnabas how impressed she and Carolyn are with all the work that has been done. Barnabas shows up and is extremely gracious to the women. After they leave, he scolds Willie for his unfriendliness to them. Maybe he does want visitors letting themselves in and roaming freely about the house while he’s resting in his coffin and keeping a girl prisoner, who knows. That would seem foolish, but no more so than Vicki’s activities today. It was the 1960s and people’s blood had a lot of lead in it. Maybe that’s getting to Barnabas.

Vicki and Carolyn go back to the great house and tell Liz what they saw at Barnabas’. Liz is annoyed that they went to a place where they were likely to see Willie, whom she remembers from his pre-blood thrall days, when he was dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis. She wonders why Barnabas has chosen to restore Josette’s room.

We return to the Old House, where the episode ends with its only scene not including Vicki. Barnabas stands before a small table in the parlor. It is set for a dinner for two. There are two plates, and two glasses. Barnabas has appeared to drink coffee at the restaurant in the Collinsport Inn, Amontillado in the study at the great house, and some kind of booze at The Blue Whale tavern. These glasses also seem to hold something other than human blood, indicating that Barnabas is not sticking strictly to the diet of his people. He tells Willie to bring their guest. Maggie enters, wearing Josette’s bridal gown and offering her hand when Barnabas addresses her as Josette.

It is by no means clear where Maggie has been up to this point. She wasn’t in Josette’s room, and doesn’t seem to be coming from the basement. The secret chamber behind the bookcase is no secret anymore, least of all from Vicki, who was held prisoner there by crazed handyman Matthew Morgan. Perhaps we are to think that her entrance, along with Barnabas’ insouciant attitude towards unexpected visitors, implies that there are spaces in the house only Barnabas can find.

Episode 233: Very clever girl

Well-meaning governess Vicki and flighty heiress Carolyn are in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood talking about how nervous the electrical storm outside is making them. Vicki describes her reactions while driving a car a few moments before. This deepens a mystery that opened yesterday- what car? They’ve so often made a point of having Vicki ask to borrow Carolyn’s car, or accepting rides from people, or catching the bus, or walking much further than people thought was sensible that you’d expect them to have mentioned something if she got a car of her own.

The lights go out, and the women get even more nervous. A figure appears in the doorway and frightens them. They are relieved to discover that it’s just cousin Barnabas. Barnabas is getting to be such a familiar presence that one suspects they might have been relieved to see him even if they knew he is a vampire.

Barnabas looks out the window at the storm and talks about how fierce the storms are on the hilltop Collinwood occupies. He mentions something we haven’t heard about for months, the “Widows’ Wail.” The wind makes a peculiar sound as it blows over Widows’ Hill, and there is a legend that it is really the disembodied voices of the widows whose menfolk died on the fishing boats of the cruel Collins family. We heard the sound effect several times in the first ten weeks of the show, and the legend often came up in those days.

Barnabas then goes on at great length about a woman who leapt to her death from the cliff on Widow’s Hill well over a century before. He makes it clear that the woman was alone with her lover, then describes particular words and gestures in such detail and with such feeling that only the lover himself could provide them. He assures the women that “every word” of his account is true, including the parts about the woman unable to face a future in which she would be transformed into something she found intolerable, the lover putting his lips on the woman’s neck, her growing faint as a result, her finding a last burst of energy to fling herself to death on the rocks below, and her body found bloodless, but with a look of serenity on her face.*

Carolyn was on edge to start with, and the story deepens her anxiety. She excuses herself to go to bed. Vicki was even more anxious than Carolyn before Barnabas started his tale, but as he goes on her fear vanishes. She tells Barnabas that she wonders if there is a connection between the “bloodless” body and the recent incidents of blood loss involving cows, Barnabas’ servant Willie, and Maggie Evans, the Nicest Girl in Town. Barnabas reminds her that his story took place in an earlier century. She says she knows that, but that she is thinking that the ordinary logic of the natural world may not be enough to solve the ongoing mysteries. Regular viewers will remember that Vicki has had extensive experience with the paranormal, and have been expecting her to be the first to consider the possibility that Willie, Maggie, and the cows have encountered something that is not subject to the same laws that describe ordinary phenomena.

Vicki updates Barnabas on her thinking. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Barnabas squirms, and at one point drops his “cousin from England” mask altogether. As Vicki is explaining her thinking, he says in a bland voice that she is a “very clever girl” and should be careful lest the same thing happen to her that happened to Willie, Maggie, and the cows. Then he looks up and starts to walk away from her, leading to an ominous music sting and a commercial break.

After the break, we see that Barnabas is still in the drawing room with Vicki. She looks startled, and asks him what he meant by his remark. He says that he merely meant that whatever happened to them might happen to anyone. If that is intended to retroactively veil his unveiled threat, it fails miserably- it sounds even more menacing.

Among the representatives of the show’s supernatural back-world whom Vicki has already met, none is more important than the ghost of Josette Collins. The woman Barnabas is describing threw herself to her death off Widow’s Hill in a previous century while wearing a white dress, as Josette did. Other women have jumped from there in the years since, but Josette is still the most famous. When Maggie’s father, artist Sam Evans, saw the portrait of Josette in #185, he asked if she was the lady who went over the cliff. Vicki’s excited reaction to the story suggests that she thinks Barnabas might be talking about Josette.

If he is, it is a major retcon. When we first saw Barnabas in the Old House in #212, he told strange and troubled boy David Collins that she was “our ancestor,” meaning a forebear both of David’s branch of the family and of “the original Barnabas Collins,” that is, himself. After David left, he told the portrait that the house was his now, and that the spirits of his father Joshua and of Josette have no more power there. When he refers to Josette as his ancestor and brackets her with his father, he implies that she sided with his father against him. Since we know that Joshua’s wife, Barnabas’ mother, was named Naomi, and that Josette’s husband was named Jeremiah Collins, the likeliest explanation of these lines would be that Josette was Barnabas’ grandmother. Just a few weeks later, they seem to have reinvented her as his lover.

Barnabas’ story is also a bit of a departure from the usual depiction of vampires. Bram Stoker’s Dracula may have been a revenant form of Vlad III of Wallachia, but he doesn’t mope around obsessing over the good old days in the fifteenth century when he could stay up all day impaling people to his heart’s content. He is entirely focused on the task before him. Dracula’s colleagues in film and on stage had likewise tended to be killing machines, not given to nostalgia or introspection.

Barnabas’ claims to be a devotee of the late eighteenth century have so far been a technique for shifting the conversation from current events, of which he is after all comprehensively ignorant, to the deep past, in discussion of which he can show that he knows so much about the Collins family that he must be a member of it. Even when he gets carried away, as in #214 when he was telling Vicki about the construction of the Old House and started laughing maniacally about the word “death,” it’s a reminder that the events he is talking about seem quite recent to him, since he emerged from his coffin not long ago. But today, he seems to be brooding over the past in a way that has less to do with previous vampires than it does with the character Boris Karloff played in The Mummy (1932). Indeed, Jonathan Frid’s voice and movements are so strongly reminiscent of Karloff that one wonders if Barnabas will turn out to be a merger of Dracula with Imhotep.

Seagoing con man Jason McGuire enters. Vicki hates Jason, who is flagrantly blackmailing reclusive matriarch Liz. She likes Barnabas, but the encounter with him is getting extremely awkward. She quickly excuses herself to go to bed. When Barnabas says that he too must be going, Jason insists that he stay.

Barnabas’ reaction to Jason is pretty funny. When Jason says he wants to discuss something with him, Barnabas tenses and rolls his eyes. Suddenly the drawing room is the scene of a drawing room comedy, and Barnabas is the classic snob forced to deal with an uncouth bounder. For regular viewers, their scene is not just a well-played, if not particularly well-written, specimen of this genre. Barnabas is the latest of the supernatural beings who have been driving the action of the show for six months, while Jason is a throwback to the days when Dark Shadows was a noir-ish crime drama centered on the search for Burke Devlin’s fountain pen. Barnabas’ disdain for Jason mirrors our lack of interest in reviving that phase of the show.

Jason reveals to Barnabas that he had seen Willie earlier that night, that he suspects Willie is involved somehow in the troubles afflicting Maggie, and that he knows Willie has been visiting Eagle Hill cemetery. All of this is unsettling to Barnabas. He goes home to the Old House on the estate, shouts “Willie!,” and raises the cane he had earlier used to give Willie a severe beating.

*John and Christine Scoleri transcribe Barnabas’ whole story in their post about this episode on their Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 1238: The Mystery of Melanie’s Mother

I mention that actresses Mary Cooper and Kathryn Leigh Scott looked alike; argue that the makers of Dark Shadows resolved “the mystery of Melanie’s mother” in the only uninteresting way available; and am puzzled as to why they wanted to resolve all the storylines before the end of the series. 

Episode 1238: The Mystery of Melanie’s Mother