A mysterious woman appears at the front door of the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. She introduces herself to the master of the house, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, under the name Leona Eltridge. The door opens further and we see that Leona is accompanied by Frankenstein’s monster Adam. She tells Barnabas that she has come to donate her “life force” to an experiment meant to create a bride for Adam. Barnabas has many questions, none of which Leona will answer. Adam orders Barnabas to find mad scientist Julia Hoffman and ushers Leona to an upstairs bedroom.
Erica Fitz as Danielle/Leona. Some participants on message boards think she looks masculine. Those people are very confused. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
There, Adam tells Leona that he doesn’t know any more about her than Barnabas does. She tells him that he doesn’t need to know more, and reminds him that they must not let Barnabas or Julia know that they met for the first time this night. Moreover, no one must know that she has any connection with suave warlock Nicholas Blair.
Julia shows up with occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Barnabas tells them about Leona, and Adam enters, demanding she start the experiment at once. Julia goes to the basement laboratory, and Stokes goes to question Leona.
Leona tells Stokes that she was in love with Adam’s creator, the late Dr Eric Lang. She also claims to be suffering from a terminal illness, and to have only a short time before she will die a painful death. She therefore wants to continue Lang’s work, and has no fear of the danger involved in the experiment.
Stokes, Julia, and Barnabas all regard Leona’s story as, in Julia’s words, “too pat and sentimental” to be true, but they have little choice but to comply with Adam’s demands. In fact, we know that Leona is really Danielle Roget, an eighteenth century homicidal maniac whom Nicholas conjured up yesterday. Nicholas himself has developed a crush on Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, which puts the lie to his pretense to be a stranger to human emotions. That Nicholas thinks anyone who knew the fiendish Lang would believe Danielle/Leona’s sappy story suggests that he might be an even bigger softie than his attraction to the magnificently wholesome Maggie would indicates.
Stokes figures out how the name “Eltridge” is spelled, which somehow means that he must hurry off to work on something or other. In the basement, Julia directs Danielle/Leona to the donor’s table. She offers her a painkiller, which she refuses. Adam watches the experiment. When Danielle/Leona flatlines, Julia pronounces her dead and says that the experiment has been a failure. Adam tells Barnabas and Julia that he ought to kill them. Barnabas disagrees. Before they can explore the issue in any depth, the Bride comes to life and Adam cheers up.
The opening voiceover says that if Barnabas realized that Danielle/Leona was “one of the living dead,” his reaction would be terror. Barnabas was himself a vampire for 172 years, so you might think he would be happy to meet someone with whom he had so much in common, but maybe not.
Frankenstein’s monster Adam has threatened to kill everyone in the great house of Collinwood unless old world gentleman Barnabas and mad scientist Julia create a mate for him. They are to do this by building a woman out of parts scavenged from corpses and draining someone’s “life force” into her. Adam has a crush on heiress Carolyn, so he insisted she be the “life force” donor. Under the influence of suave warlock Nicholas, Carolyn volunteered to serve in that capacity. On Monday, Adam figured out that Carolyn is in love with him, so he told her there was no need to complete the procedure. They could just marry each other. She reacted to that with evident confusion, her own feelings competing with Nicholas’ spell. Nicholas’ influence won out, and Carolyn insisted on going through with the experiment.
The experiment failed to bring the mate to life, and left Carolyn badly injured. After a soulful conversation with Adam in the upstairs bedroom, she lost consciousness. Julia pronounced her dead. Adam then went to Barnabas and declared that he would make good on his threat. He knocked Barnabas down and stalked out of the house. When Julia saw how badly Barnabas was hurt, she went back up to the bedroom to get her medical bag. She found that Carolyn’s body was gone.
Barnabas and Julia wonder where Carolyn’s remains could be and how they can prevent Adam killing everyone. Barnabas’ servant Willie returns to the house to tell them about another crisis. In May and June of 1967, when Barnabas was a vampire, Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town, was his victim. He imprisoned and tortured her. In August of that year, Julia abused her position as Maggie’s psychiatrist to hypnotize her so that she would forget all about her ordeal. Now Maggie’s memory has come back, and Willie is keeping her locked up in the hidden chamber of the old Collins family mausoleum. Willie tells Barnabas and Julia that Maggie has figured out how to get out of the chamber, and that she is staying there now only because he knocked her out with chloroform. It’s just a matter of time before she gets away.
Willie also says that he saw Adam a few minutes before. Adam was sitting quietly under a tree. He did not have Carolyn’s body with him. Julia wonders if that means that Adam has decided not to go through with his threats, but Barnabas is not so optimistic.
In the Mausoleum
We see Maggie awaken in the mausoleum. She goes to open the door, only to find Julia standing behind it. Julia blocks the exit and enters. Maggie is afraid Barnabas has sent Julia to kill her. Julia can deny that, but denies nothing else Maggie says. Maggie confronts her as Barnabas’ accomplice and walks toward her; Julia backs away, and Maggie chases her around the coffin in the center of the little space. Julia tells Maggie that she will never get out of the chamber unless she cooperates. Julia tries to hypnotize Maggie, but that only succeeds in reminding her of how Julia erased her memory before. Julia admits that she did that, and tells Maggie her only hope for survival is to let her do it again. Maggie says she would rather die than submit to such a thing. When we first met Julia, she was a doctor whose ambition to treat a vampire led her to betray a patient’s trust, but who could still tell herself that she was serving a greater good. Now, we see that she has lost her moral compass completely. This scene is a showcase for both Grayson Hall and Kathryn Leigh Scott.
A Fanfic Interlude
Julia has been inseparable from Barnabas long enough that it is possible for daily viewers to forget that she was introduced in scenes with Maggie, and that it was by betraying Maggie’s trust that she earned her place as a main character. This scene reminds us of that history, but it doesn’t really make sense. Julia must know that if she calls on Maggie in the hidden chamber where she is being held prisoner, it will be obvious to her that she is in league with her captors. If she wants Maggie trust her so that she can hypnotize her, she will have to deceive her in some way. Julia is the show’s most fluent and plausible liar, so you might assume she would have come up with an effective stratagem.
Mrs Acilius and I came up with a method that might have worked. Imagine an episode that opens with Maggie alone in the hidden chamber. The door opens, and Willie enters. Maggie confronts him with enough information to bring the audience up to date with her situation. Maggie hits him with something, stunning him momentarily. She is opening the door when he grabs her and puts a cloth over her nose. She passes out.
After the opening titles, Maggie comes to in her old prison cell in Barnabas’ basement. She finds that Julia is also there, chained to the wall. Julia tells her that she has only recently discovered the full truth about Barnabas, and that he locked her up to keep her quiet. Maggie knows how close Julia and Barnabas have been for the last year, and is skeptical. At the end of Act One, Maggie is still unsure whether she can trust her.
In Act Two, Barnabas comes in and threatens both women. He lets slip that Maggie found a way to escape from the cell in June 1967. By the time he leaves, Maggie believes that Julia is on her side. In Act Three, Julia asks Maggie how she escaped the year before. That part of Maggie’s memory hasn’t come back, so Julia offers to hypnotize her so that she will remember. Maggie agrees. Julia produces her medallion, and Maggie goes under. We dissolve to the aftermath of the hypnosis. Maggie is asleep on the cot in the cell; she is smiling. Julia is taking the fetter off; it was never locked. Barnabas and Willie open the door; Julia says that Maggie’s memory has been wiped clean again. She will be asleep for an hour, so they should take her home now.
That would not only remind us how Julia began, show us how she has turned out, and explain how Maggie lost her memory, but it would also give us a glimpse of the old, evil Barnabas who first made the show a hit. Barnabas spent his first year as a bloodthirsty ghoul pretending to be a kindly cousin from England; it would be interesting to see the humanized Barnabas pretending to be his old self.
Meanwhile, In the Episode They Actually Made…
Julia leaves the mausoleum and goes back to Barnabas’ house. She tells him the hypnosis failed. At that, Barnabas decides the time has come for him to go to the surviving members of the family in the great house and tell them the truth. Julia tries to talk him out of it, and he says he will do what he can to “exonerate” her from responsibility for the crimes they have committed together. But with Adam and Maggie both at large, he feels he can no longer keep secrets. Just as Julia has lost her conscience it seems that Barnabas, who earlier this week told Julia he would murder Maggie if she couldn’t keep her quiet, may at last have found his.
At the door of the great house, Barnabas wrestles with doubts:
I can’t go through with it. I can’t tell them Carolyn is dead. I’d be forced to tell them about the experiments, Adam, everything Julia and I have done. And if the truth starts to come out, where will it end? Where?… No. I can’t think about that. The family has to know that Carolyn is dead–how she died! I have to tell them no matter what happens to me. No matter what happens. I must tell them!
He finally knocks on the door, and is thunderstruck when Carolyn opens it, looking the picture of health. This might have been an effective surprise if Barnabas’ voiceover soliloquy hadn’t given us ninety seconds to think about who might open the door, and realize there is only one possible candidate.
Frankenstein’s monster Adam has demanded that old world gentleman Barnabas and mad scientist Julia build him a mate. The other day, he added a condition, specifying that heiress Carolyn must donate the “life force” that will animate this new woman. The body is constructed, the equipment is ready, and yesterday Carolyn presented herself as a volunteer. So we have every reason to expect today’s episode to end with the introduction of Adam’s bride.
That’s certainly what Adam expects. He lets himself in Barnabas’ house, finds Julia in the foyer calling servant Willie to join her on an excursion, and asks why she is not working in the basement laboratory. She makes up a story about having to go off and attend a patient; Adam is intelligent enough to know that Willie would be no help on a house call, and he forces her into an additional lie, claiming that she was going to drop Willie off in the village of Collinsport along her way. Barnabas comes upstairs and rails at Adam for a while.
Adam in charge. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
In fact, Julia and Willie were on their way to the hidden chamber inside the old Collins family mausoleum. Before Adam decreed Carolyn would donate the “life force,” Barnabas and Julia were planning to impose that task on Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. Willie has a crush on Maggie, so he took it on himself to abduct her before Barnabas and Julia could fulfill that evil intention.
Willie had drugged Maggie with chloroform when he took her from her bedroom. When she woke up in the hidden chamber, she started to remember what happened to her in May and June of 1967. Willie reacted to that with panic. In those days, Barnabas was a vampire. He took Maggie as his victim. He imprisoned her, tortured her, and tried to replace her personality with that of his lost love, the gracious Josette. After Maggie escaped from Barnabas, she fell into Julia’s clutches. Julia eventually hypnotized her so that she forgot all about her ordeal and thought that Barnabas was a swell guy.
Barnabas was cured of vampirism when he donated the “life force” that animates Adam. Repeating to Julia the news that Willie brought, he laments the unfairness of it all:
Can you imagine the police coming here now?
Now that I am free of my affliction,
and now to pay the penalty for those first months
at Collinwood?
I can’t, Julia. I won’t.
It would be interesting if Maggie were to reach the police. She could not only show them the hidden chamber and its secrets, including perhaps the body Barnabas and Willie buried in its floor in #276, but would also lead them to Barnabas’ basement. On their way to the prison cell where Barnabas locked Maggie up, they couldn’t help but notice the female cadaver constructed of parts salvaged from various corpses Willie dug up from their graves. Even investigators as maladroit as the Collinsport sheriff’s department would likely be able to think of some pointed questions to ask in the face of all that.
Barnabas demands that Julia go to the mausoleum and use her powers of hypnosis to re-erase Maggie’s memory. Julia says the experiment is at such a critical point that she can’t leave it. To that, Barnabas replies “If you will not silence Maggie Evans, I must.” Barnabas does not specify the means by which he will “silence” her, and he lost all his supernatural powers when he was freed of vampirism. So this would seem to be a declaration of intent to commit murder. It is no wonder Julia was prepared to try her methods if that was the alternative.
Barnabas has not told Adam about his former vampirism, and he doesn’t like to talk about what he did to Maggie. At one point today, he exclaims to Willie “Those days are gone! Anyone who remembers them should forget them now, including you!” Rather than bring Adam into his circle of confidence, he repeats Julia’s lies and adds a lot of bluster. That doesn’t move things along very effectively; it leaves time for Willie to run upstairs, get a rifle, and threaten Adam. Adam disarms him and uses the weapon to get Julia back to the lab.
The episode peters out in the basement with Julia still fiddling with knobs and Carolyn still upstairs taking a nap. Adam rhapsodizes about how beautiful his mate will be. She is being created by the same process that engendered him, and he is convinced that he is unbearably ugly, so it is unclear where he got this expectation. He says she will be as beautiful as Carolyn. He knows that Barnabas was his “life force” donor, and he doesn’t look anything like him, so her role in the experiment doesn’t explain it.
I usually have an intense dislike for dramas about people being held prisoner by intruders in their homes. Since Barnabas, Julia, and Willie are all violent felons who ought to be locked up, and since Adam spent the first weeks of his life as a recipient of shocking abuse at their hands, I can make an exception for this one.
In 1968, a drama about a home invasion in which the captor gets the best lines would have brought three films to mind for most of the adults in the audience: The Petrified Forest (1936,) in which Humphrey Bogart became a star in the role of the captor; Key Largo (1948,) in which Bogart cemented his troubled good-guy image as one of the captives; and The Desperate Hours (1955,) in which Bogart was again, and for the last time in his career, cast as a villain. Since this is so much a Humphrey Bogart situation, it is too bad the character of Tony Peterson is no longer on the show. Tony consisted primarily of Jerry Lacy’s Humphrey Bogart imitation, and it would have been neat to see him in this scenario.
In August 1967, Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, was about to expose old world gentleman Barnabas Collins as a vampire. In the nick of time, Maggie’s doctor, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, hypnotized her and blocked all memory of her time as Barnabas’ victim.
Today, suave warlock Nicholas puts a magical zap on the mind of heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard to induce her to take part in an experiment meant to produce a mate for Frankenstein’s monster Adam. All this mind control makes for a low level of suspense. If traumatic memories can be erased and personal motives overriden by whatever mumbo-jumbo is convenient, there is no reason to suppose that the story’s events will have consequences or that there is any point in getting to know the characters.
This episode includes a tacit acknowledgement of the problem. The other day, Willie Loomis, Barnabas’ bedraggled servant, overheard Barnabas and Julia discussing another evil plan for Maggie. Willie has a crush on Maggie, so he resolved to foil that plan. He has abducted Maggie and is holding her in the hidden chamber inside the old Collins family mausoleum. This turns out to be the worst possible choice of location. Barnabas tortured Maggie there when she was his victim, and in a series of dream sequences those events come back to her. At the end of this episode, Maggie exclaims “I know what Barnabas Collins is!”
Now, Barnabas is not in fact a vampire at the moment. An experiment involving the creation of a Frankenstein’s monster freed him from the effects of that curse. But it would cause a lot of trouble for Barnabas, Julia, Willie, and the plot if Maggie were to go to the police and identify Barnabas as the man who held her prisoner. So Maggie’s closing exclamation might encourage us to hope that the show will swear off its habit of turning its characters into each other’s puppets.
Recovering vampire Barnabas and mad scientist Julia are under pressure to create a female Frankenstein’s monster. The process they are using requires draining the “life force” from a woman into a constructed corpse. The other day, Barnabas announced they would force the role of donor onto Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town and one of his former victims. When Barnabas’ servant Willie heard of this plan, he was horrified. Willie has a crush on Maggie, and is determined to spare her this fate.
Now, Willie has abducted Maggie and is hiding her from Barnabas and Julia. Barnabas is worried about what will happen if they cannot find another woman to use in the experiment. Julia says “If worse came to worst, I could do it.” Barnabas points out that only she is prepared to operate the equipment, and that she could not do that if she were serving as donor. She makes a feeble suggestion that their onetime lab tech, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff, might run the equipment. Barnabas says that Peter/ Jeff does not have her training. In any case, Barnabas had to fire Peter/ Jeff because he had reason to believe he was trying to sabotage the experiment, so he can scarcely trust him now.
This is not the first time Julia has offered to solve a problem by destroying herself, only for Barnabas to turn her down. In #350, when Barnabas was still a vampire and was desperately thirsty for blood, Julia volunteered herself as his victim. Barnabas was sufficiently moved to address her for the first time as “Julia” rather than with a distinctly contemptuous pronunciation of the title “Doctor,” but he still said the reason he was refusing was that he had use for her medical expertise. Barnabas’ cruel plan for Maggie suggested that he isn’t really any nicer now than he was as a vampire; this echo of that moment would suggest that he hasn’t even stopped seeing Julia, who after all loves him, as a kind of higher servant.
Willie has taken Maggie to the hidden chamber inside the old Collins family mausoleum. It was in this chamber that Barnabas was trapped in his coffin from 1796 until Willie inadvertently freed him to prey upon the living in #210. When she was his prisoner in #248, Barnabas took Maggie to that chamber and shut her up in the coffin there. While Willie tries to assure Maggie that she will be safe as long as she is with him, the memories that Julia used her preternatural powers of hypnosis to erase start coming back.
We see a flashback, not to Maggie’s time at Barnabas’ mercy, but to #283, when she was Julia’s patient at Windcliff Sanitarium. Julia took her on a trip to the old cemetery north of Collinsport, and they went into the mausoleum. Julia did not know about the hidden chamber, and did not understand why Maggie became upset when they were in the publicly known part of the mausoleum. Maggie remembers visiting the mausoleum with Julia, and cannot remember why it frightened her to be there. But the fact that she recognizes the chamber as part of the mausoleum means that her memory of what Barnabas did to her is coming loose.
This creates a truly suspenseful situation. Maggie is an audience favorite with connections to several other characters, and so it seemed unlikely anything Barnabas and Julia did would result in her leaving the show. But if she remembers what they did to her and tells the police about it, they will go to prison. Since Barnabas and Julia are the source of all the action on Dark Shadows, that would mean the end of the series. So her memory coming back sets up a crisis that might be resolved with a significant change.
Perhaps Barnabas and Julia will force Maggie to donate her “life force” with the consequence that her body dies and she wakes up in the newly created woman, who just so happens to look exactly like her but to have a drastically different personality. That seems plausible, since the long-running storyline of her romance with hardworking young fisherman Joe seems to be over, the minor theme of her relationship with her hard-drinking father Sam had been resolved long before Sam died a few months ago, and we have reason to expect her to move out of her house, which has long served as our window into the working class of Collinsport. If Maggie is running out of story, they may very well decide to keep Kathryn Leigh Scott on as another character.
Closing Miscellany
The flashback is not made of tape cut from #283. It couldn’t be- the show was in black and white then, and is in color now. So they recreate it. It’s kind of adorable to see Julia in her old wig.
This was not the episode they intended to shoot. It was the dress rehearsal. Shooting the flashback scene put them so far behind schedule they didn’t have time to do the episode, and they had to send this footage to the network. I believe that is the only occasion they ever resorted to that desperate expedient. The camera is out of focus much of the time and occasionally does not seem to be pointed in the right direction, the microphones are misplaced so that it sounds at one point like Julia is referring to Maggie as “Greg,” booms and other equipment intrude into the shots, and the actors frequently blow their lines. In other words, it is in no way different from any other episodes.
Recovering vampire Barnabas Collins goes into his basement, where an experiment is being planned that is intended to bring a female Frankenstein’s monster to life. He finds lab tech Peter, who prefers to be called Jeff, running the equipment with electrodes attached to the constructed body. He demands to know what Peter/ Jeff is doing. Peter/ Jeff makes some lame excuses, and Barnabas fires him.
As it happens, Peter/ Jeff is under the influence of Angelique. In the 1790s, Angelique was the wicked witch who made Barnabas a vampire. Recently, she defied her master, suave warlock Nicholas. Nicholas punished Angelique by stripping her of her powers and making her a vampire. The Frankenstein experiment involves draining the “life force” from a person into the constructed body. Barnabas served as the “life force” donor in a previous experiment that brought a man called Adam to life, and was freed from vampirism as a result. Angelique is trying to force Peter/ Jeff into conducting the experiment with her as donor, hoping for the same result. She was in the lab, strapped to a table next to the one bearing the body, when Barnabas entered, but used her vampire powers to vanish before he could see her.
The mad scientist who is in charge of the experiment is Barnabas’ best friend Julia. Barnabas and Julia meet in the basement lab and puzzle over Peter/ Jeff’s conduct. Barnabas concludes that Peter/ Jeff was trying to destroy the body because he knew the failure of the experiment would set off a series of events that would put Peter/ Jeff’s ex-fiancée Vicki in danger, and Peter/ Jeff now hates her so much he wants her to be killed. Julia dismisses this idea as absurd, but Barnabas seems really to believe it.
Barnabas and Julia talk about their need for a woman to serve as the creature’s “life force.” Barnabas announces that he has chosen Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. In May and June of 1967, Barnabas was a vampire and Maggie was his victim. After Maggie escaped Barnabas, Julia hypnotized her into forgetting what he was and what he had done to her. Barnabas may no longer be bound by Angelique’s curse, but when he says that he has decided that Maggie is “the body” they will use, Julia responds that he still sounds very much like “the old Barnabas.” In a cold voice, Barnabas observes that “You don’t like to be reminded of him, do you.” She objects to the idea of forcing Maggie to take part in a procedure that may well kill her, but he tells her that he is sure she will agree with him once she has given it some thought.
My wife, Mrs Acilius, points out that Barnabas’ expectations of other people suggest that even though he is now a human being, he is still as alienated from others as he was when he was a vampire. Vicki broke her engagement with Peter/ Jeff, therefore it makes sense to him that he would want her to be brutally murdered. Julia abused her medical skills to cover up his crimes against Maggie, therefore he expects her to use them again to commit more crimes against the same victim. He has plans for Maggie; so far from trying to gain her consent, he calls her “the body,” as if she were a slab of meat. His sarcastic line to Peter/ Jeff, “Everything seems to be my fault now!,” drives this home for regular viewers. Almost every bad thing that has happened in and around the town of Collinsport for a very long time is entirely his fault, and he ought to know it.
Barnabas’ much-bedraggled servant, Willie, overhears this conversation. He has a crush on Maggie, and is horrified that Barnabas wants to endanger her life. He talks with Julia, pleading with her to refuse to conduct the experiment unless Barnabas chooses another woman. She will not agree. He tells her that she doesn’t know what it is like to think of someone you care about on that table; she tells him that he is wrong, because she watched Barnabas go through it.
Julia admits to Willie that she has feelings for Barnabas.
This is the first time we have seen Julia explicitly tell Willie that she has feelings for Barnabas. He looks stunned; she leaves before he can say anything else. If Willie were not caught off guard by Julia’s frankness, he might have said that it was different for Barnabas. He volunteered to be the “life force” donor, and laboring under the vampire curse he had little to lose even if the worst happened. But they do not plan to give Maggie a choice, and she is a healthy young woman with everything to live for.
The episode ends with Willie in the basement lab, raising a scalpel to stab the constructed body. This is a nice bit of ring composition, taking us back to the day’s starting point. But we saw Peter/ Jeff try to stab Adam with that same scalpel a few days ago, and that effort was a ridiculous failure. Moreover, the constructed body isn’t alive yet, and if Julia could sew it together from dead parts surely she could repair any damage Willie might do. So we don’t end with much suspense.
Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, was under the influence of vampire Barnabas Collins in May and June of 1967. At the beginning of that period, she spent her days sick in bed at home, and at night regained strength and insisted on going out. When her father Sam and her boyfriend Joe tried to keep Maggie in, her adorable personality vanished and she raged at them.
Maggie eventually escaped from Barnabas, and mad scientist Julia Hoffman erased her memory of the ordeal. Since then, Barnabas’ vampirism has gone into remission. Julia has taken up residence at the great house of Collinwood and has become Barnabas’ fast friend.
Julia drops in at Maggie’s house today. Maggie says she is worried about Joe. He has been standing her up for dates, hasn’t reported for work for three days, and won’t answer his phone.
After Julia leaves, Joe comes in through the back door. He is pale, sweaty, and wild-eyed, obviously ill. He faints for a second. Maggie goes to call a doctor. Joe protests against this idea, almost shrieking, and Maggie relents. He asks her to keep him in the house overnight no matter what he says or does; this is very much the sort of thing Maggie used to say when she was falling under Barnabas’ power. Also like Maggie in those days, minutes later Joe announces that he will be leaving the house and that Maggie has no right to keep him from going. Maggie tries to block the door; Joe grabs her, flings her aside violently, and rushes out.
Kathryn Leigh Scott and Joel Crothers do an excellent job with this last bit of business. Yesterday and the day before, there was a fight scene that was so poorly done I couldn’t get a screenshot that didn’t look like a joke. But the choreography is perfect here. The actors really make it look like Joe is throwing Maggie to the floor, and in her closeup at the end of the sequence Miss Scott convinces us Maggie is hurt.
The similarity between Maggie’s behavior in May 1967 and Joe’s now is no coincidence. He is the victim of Angelique, formerly a wicked witch, now a vampire under the control of suave warlock Nicholas Blair.
After he had asked Maggie to keep him in the house no matter what he said and before he told her he was going to leave no matter what she did, Joe talked to her about going away from Collinsport, far away, going anywhere at all, anywhere from which they would never come back. It’s a poignant moment. Once there were other places for Joe and Maggie, and once there were ways to go there. When art dealer Portia Fitzsimmons called on Sam in this room in #193, Dark Shadows had run out of story. For all we knew, Sam might have gone to New York and taken Maggie and Joe with him, and the show might have reinvented itself to follow them there. But Sam is dead now, Mrs Fitzsimmons is long forgotten, and outside Collinsport there is nothing but a mental hospital. Even Hell seems to be located in a corner of Barnabas’ basement, and Purgatory in the woods outside.
The House by the Sea
Nicholas lives in a house by the sea. Collinsport is a fishing village, so a lot of its people probably live in houses by the sea, but there are two that we have heard referred to as “The House by the Sea,” and this is the second of them.
Barnabas and Julia know that there is a vampire on the loose and are pretty sure that Nicholas is to blame for that fact. Maggie mentioned to Julia that Nicholas will be coming to her house at 5 PM to buy a painting, and so Julia suggests to Barnabas that they go to Nicholas’ at that time and search.
They find the door unlocked. The green screen behind them has an image that makes it look as if the house is floating in the sky. Maggie’s house has always been the place the show has taken us when it wanted to give us a feeling of realistic kitchen sink drama; the effect of this background outside Nicholas’ front door is to tell us that we are leaving that world behind and entering an exotic, paranormal space.
As they enter, Julia has second thoughts about trespassing. Now it is Barnabas’ turn to insist they probe forward.
They split up. Barnabas runs into Joe. The two men ask each other what they are doing there, and each tells a lie about having business with Nicholas. They then take turns ordering each other out of the house. We end with a view of Angelique’s coffin, its lid opening.
In #210, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis found an old coffin and broke into it, hoping to reap a harvest of hidden jewels. Instead a hand darted out, and Willie became the sorely bedraggled blood thrall of vampire Barnabas Collins.
The next person to open Barnabas’ coffin was Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Barnabas was keeping Maggie prisoner in his house on the great estate of Collinwood as part of his plan to persuade Maggie to forget her personality and turn into his lost love, the gracious Josette. In #250, Maggie decided to drive a stake through Barnabas’ heart, but had the bad luck to set to work a moment before sunset. He awoke, and spent the remaining two weeks of her captivity treating her even more cruelly than he had previously.
In #275, Willie’s onetime friend, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, made his way to Barnabas’ basement and found the coffin. As Willie had done 13 weeks before, Jason jumped to the conclusion the coffin was full of jewels. Willie tried to tell him this was not the case, but could not stop Jason looking inside. As when Maggie made her attempt to stake Barnabas, it is sunset. Again Barnabas’ hand darts forth; this time, he strangles Jason to death.
The first time someone opened Barnabas’ coffin during the day was in #289. Mad scientist Julia Hoffman had collected substantial evidence indicating that Barnabas was a vampire. As final confirmation, she slipped into his house one morning, made her way to the basement, opened the coffin, and reeled away, simultaneously shuddering and giving a look of triumph.
From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. In #410, wicked witch Angelique had just turned Barnabas into a vampire. She went to his coffin with a stake and mallet, regretting her curse and trying to cut its effects short. As Jason and Maggie would do in 1967, Angelique waited until sunset to open the coffin. Barnabas awoke, demanded to know what was going on, and killed her.
Since then, Barnabas’ vampirism has gone into remission and he and Julia have become fast friends. As we begin today, Barnabas is engaged in a desperate battle for Julia’s sake. The new vampire on the block, Tom Jennings, has been feeding on Julia. She is near death, and will herself rise as a vampire unless Tom is destroyed and she is freed from his influence. Barnabas has found Tom in a crypt next to a coffin, and the two of them have an embarrassingly awkward fight scene. The sun rises, and Tom has to leave Barnabas and get into his coffin.
Barnabas stands over Tom’s open coffin with a mallet and stake. He wonders if anyone ever looked down on him in his coffin when he was a vampire. He tells himself no one could have, for they would have destroyed him if they had. This is a strange thing for him to think. Julia eventually told him that she had sneaked a peek at him in his coffin, and he must remember Willie, Maggie, Jason, and Angelique.
Julia is back at Barnabas’ house. Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, mistress of Collinwood and escaped mental patient, is watching over her. She is telling Julia that Barnabas left her to die and that she will be dead any moment. This cheery behavior is the consequence of Liz’ fixation on death and her obsessive fear that Julia and others are part of a conspiracy to bury her alive.
As Barnabas drives the stake through Tom’s heart in the crypt, Julia cries out from her bed, then suddenly gains strength. She asks Liz to bring her a mirror; Julia is delighted to see that Tom’s bite marks are gone.
Barnabas comes back, sends Liz away, and tells Julia that she will be safe from Tom now. Barnabas and Julia are starting to get uncharacteristically mushy over each other when we cut to the downstairs, where Liz looks out the window and sees her brother Roger approaching.
Roger wants to send Liz back to the psychiatric hospital from which she escaped. Liz believes Roger is part of the conspiracy to bury her alive, and that sending her to the hospital will further that goal. So she hides behind an armchair.
Liz hiding.
In #10, Liz and Roger had a conversation in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood while Roger’s son David hid behind an armchair. In that conversation, Roger declared his belief that David should be sent to an institution, a plan which Liz forbade him to pursue. After Liz left the room, Roger caught David behind the armchair.
David found the prospect of institutionalization so terrifying that his next stop was the garage, where he tampered with the brakes of his father’s car in what very nearly turned out to be a successful attempt at patricide. Liz is too upset to develop such an intricate plan, and doesn’t seem to have David’s skills as an auto mechanic. But she shares her nephew’s horror of institutionalization. So after Roger and Barnabas have talked for a moment, she jumps up from behind the chair and starts making accusations.
Liz tells Roger and Barnabas that she saw Julia in a crypt in the family burial ground nearby, and that there was a coffin there. Barnabas is alarmed, since this is the coffin in which Tom’s staked remains now repose. Roger agrees to go to the crypt and to see if there is a coffin. Barnabas offers to go with him.
The suave Nicholas Blair shows up at the front door with a bouquet of flowers. We know that Nicholas is a warlock and that he is behind the renewed outbreak of vampirism, that he was watching while Barnabas staked Tom, and that he is also responsible for some other plots involving Barnabas and Julia. For their part, Barnabas and Julia have every reason to suspect that this is so, and have talked about their suspicions more than once. Nicholas tells Barnabas, Roger, and Liz that he has heard that Julia is ill and has come to visit her. At Liz’ insistence, Barnabas lets Nicholas see Julia while he and Roger go to the crypt.
Nicholas expresses his relief that Julia’s recovery will enable her to return to work soon. The only work Julia has done in the year she has been a houseguest at Collinwood has been in association with the supernatural goings-on she and Barnabas have been entangled in; currently, an agent of Nicholas’ is forcing them to build a Frankenstein’s monster. Nicholas may as well say explicitly that he is behind that scheme and the vampire troubles too. He tells Julia that he thinks he might fall ill and need her help as a doctor; she says that he seems indestructible, a word he receives with pleasure.
Barnabas comes back and tells Julia that the coffin has disappeared. He mentions that it is strange that Nicholas turned up when he did. Julia suggests that Nicholas may be the one who moved the coffin. All of a sudden Barnabas seems to forget everything he knows about Nicholas and dismisses that idea. It’s one of those frustrating moments when the characters seem to have the memory of a goldfish, and it ends the episode on a sour note.
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.
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.
When housekeeper Mrs Johnson was first on Dark Shadows in September 1967, she was hyper-intense, determined to exact vengeance on the ancient and esteemed Collins family for the death of her longtime employer, Bill Malloy. In #69, she told the Collinses’ nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, that “I believe in signs and omens!” and that the signs and omens she could see showed that reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her family had Bill’s blood on their hands.
“I believe in signs and omens!” Mrs Johnson with Burke Devlin in #69.
As the storyline centered on Bill’s death petered out, Mrs Johnson forgot about her hostility to Liz and her family, and became their devoted retainer. Her new personality was that of a friendly old busybody who kept advancing the plot by blabbing all the information she has to whoever can use it to make the most trouble. Since Mrs Johnson opened the front door to the great house of Collinwood in #211 and admitted Barnabas Collins, she has become an intermittent presence on the show, but Clarice Blackburn plays her with so much style that her occasional appearances are always a highlight.
Today, Mrs Johnson lets suave warlock Nicholas Blair into the house. She informs Nicholas that Liz has escaped from Windcliff, the mental hospital where she has been staying for the last nine and a half weeks. She gets very worked up as she declares that Liz’ aberrations are no ordinary psychiatric problem, but are the product of a hostile supernatural force that plagues the Collinses. Her voice is fearful and she shies away from eye contact with Nicholas, a contrast with the anger and boldness she had shown with Burke Devlin 100 weeks ago, but she again underlines her point with exaggerated hand gestures and facial expressions.
For regular viewers, it is surprising that Nicholas doesn’t seem to have known about the details of Liz’ trouble. His subordinate, the wicked witch known variously as Angelique and Cassandra, had sent Liz mad by placing a spell on her shortly before he arrived on the scene. He’s still keeping Angelique/ Cassandra around his house- he stripped her of her powers, turned her into a vampire, and has been using her to attack various men he wants to silence. You’d think he would at some point have asked her what happened to the lady who owns the town he has settled in. But, evidently his curiosity did not extend that far.
Liz’ brother Roger comes home and invites Nicholas to join him for a brandy. As they are headed for the drawing room, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman enters. She is pale, unsteady on her feet, and talking with great distress about her inability to find Tom Jennings. Roger points out that Tom is dead, and Julia faints.
Nicholas carries Julia to the couch in the drawing room. While she lies on it unconscious, he sneaks a peek under her scarf and finds bite marks on her neck. Thus he learns that Tom, whom Angelique turned into a vampire at his direction, has been feeding on Julia.
Liz has not been an active part of any major storyline since #272, when it turned out that her belief that she had killed her husband was mistaken and she did not in fact have any terrible secrets to conceal. So Nicholas’ lack of interest in her might just be a sign that he doesn’t want to waste time on irrelevant details. But Julia is indispensable to Nicholas’ plan to found a new race of artificially constructed human beings. She is a medical doctor, and is the only person Nicholas can coerce into building a mate for the Frankenstein’s monster she recently helped bring to life. She hasn’t been able to work on the project since Tom bit her, and apparently won’t be able to resume work until she is freed of his influence. If Nicholas lets his projects get in each other’s way to this extent, one can draw no conclusion other than that he is a bad manager.
Julia recovers and refuses to see a doctor. She goes to bed, and Roger tells Nicholas he thinks Liz might be on the grounds of the estate. The two of them go out to look for her. Of course Liz is there; of course she sees Tom; of course it is only when Roger and Nicholas approach that Tom vanishes and she is spared his bite.
It has been established that Windcliff is about 100 miles north of Collinsport; in #294, the ghost of Sarah Collins performed one of the most stupendous of her many feats when she transported Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, from Windcliff to Collinsport on foot in about an hour. Liz has had 24 hours since she went missing from her room, and people used to hitch-hike in those days, so it wouldn’t necessarily have required a supernatural agency to get her home in that time. It still would have been quite a trip for an escaped mental patient to make by herself, without bus fare, as the subject of a state police all points bulletin, on the roads running through the woods of central Maine.
Back in the house, Liz makes it clear that she is not herself when she only gradually recognizes Mrs Johnson. She is also obsessed with a fear of being buried alive. Roger concludes that she has to return to the hospital, and goes off to get the car. Julia comes downstairs, and Mrs Johnson asks her to keep an eye on Liz while she goes off to telephone the hospital.
Liz asks Julia, who is the nominal director of Windcliff and a qualified psychiatrist, to examine her and see that she is sane. As she is about to respond, Julia hears dogs howling outside and goes into a trance. She opens the window and stares out into the night, saying that the dogs are calling to her and that she must go to “him.” While she does this, Liz asks her what she’s talking about, but clearly still wants her to serve as the standard of sanity. The first time we saw Liz, in #1, she was standing where Julia stands in this shot, looking out the window with Roger behind her. Liz reprised that pose many times in the first year of the show, and it became her signature. It is incongruous to see Julia in Liz’ customary place as Liz looks on. The whole encounter is so funny that I suspect the humor must have been intentional.
Liz begins to doubt that Julia will be able to help her.
Julia rushes from the house; Liz follows her out. Julia goes to the crypt where Tom’s coffin is kept; evidently Tom’s hunger is getting the better of him, and he has decided to DoorDash it tonight. Liz follows her in. Julia sees Liz and demands that she leave. Liz sees the coffin and asks if it the one in which she will be buried alive. Julia tells her it has nothing to do with her, and repeatedly yells at her to “Get out!” She complies. Tom appears, and opens his mouth to bite Julia.
Julia’s expulsion of Liz from the crypt is an effective turn, but it is also a sad one for longtime viewers. When Dark Shadows started, the presence of Joan Bennett in the cast was probably its single biggest ratings draw, and all the way through her name appears at the beginning of the credits under the word “Starring.” But for a year now, the show’s whole attitude towards Liz has been one of active hostility. They simply will not let her be involved in the action. When Julia shouts “Get out, get out, get out!,” she is speaking with the voice of the story conference.
Danny Horn’s post about this episode on Dark Shadows Every Daydetails how Liz has been pushed to the margins and kept there as the show has evolved. Danny makes a point of not discussing the first 42 weeks, when Liz was enough of a part of the action that Joan Bennett had some chance to show what she could do, but in this post at least he seems to realize that the makers of Dark Shadows were squandering a considerable resource.
Dark Shadows Commentary 