lara parker – Page 3 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 581: Death and I are old friends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 545: Another living soul

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair has learned that Frankenstein’s monster Adam is hiding in a room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood. He materializes there and talks as if he’s trying to recruit Adam into a self-esteem cult. He says “You mustn’t worry about what other people think, Adam. And you needn’t always do what other people want you to do. You must learn to be a strong-willed individual.” In response, Adam carefully articulates the new vocabulary item: “In-di-vi-du-al.” It sounds like the big guy will be signing up for courses at the Nathaniel Branden Institute in no time.

Nicholas recruits Adam. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Later, we see Adam in the main part of the house. He has let himself into the bedroom where his patroness Carolyn Collins Stoddard, the acting mistress of Collinwood, is sleeping. He wakes her and tells her of Nicholas’ visit. Carolyn tells him to wait there while she goes to the drawing room and scolds Nicholas for wandering into parts of the house he had no permission to explore. Nicholas apologizes, and tells Carolyn her secret is safe with him.

In the final part of the episode, the wicked witch known variously as Angelique and Cassandra makes her way to Adam’s room in the west wing. She finds his door locked, and makes a graceful little hand gesture to magically open it. Standing over Adam while he sleeps, she decides that she cannot use magic to kill him, since Nicholas wants Adam to live and she would like him to believe that a human committed the murder. Therefore, she lifts an ax and is ready to chop into him when the episode ends. The ax wasn’t there earlier and she didn’t conjure it up; presumably she found it in “hammerspace,” the dimension where fans of animated cartoon say characters find whatever tools they need to do whatever the script calls for them to do at any given moment.

Adam’s residence in the west wing is a drab storyline, but longtime viewers will notice that it marks a change in the geography of Collinwood. The west wing was introduced as an area separated from the rest of the house, not only by a locked door, but some kind of metaphysical rift. In #14, well-meaning governess Vicki Winters saw the locked door inexplicably open and close itself; that was the clearest indication up to that point that in Collinwood, the word “ghost” referred to something more than unresolved conflicts among people. A reminiscence of that moment in #27 reinforced the suggestion that there was something supernatural about breaching the barrier between that wing and the main part of the house.

From #84 to #87, Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins, locked her up in a room in the wing; that was such an isolated place that it seemed Vicki might die before the family found her. Again, the distance was not only physical- while in captivity there she saw a full fledged ghost, a glowing figure dripping seaweed and singing to her. When sarcastic dandy Roger went to look for Vicki in #87, we saw him open the first of Dark Shadows‘ secret panels, a bit of the wall in the drawing room that opens to a long, dusty passage leading to the west wing. That was startling to see then, and we haven’t had a look at it since. Viewers who remember it have been looking at that spot on the wall ever since, wondering what worlds lie behind it.

Adam’s presence in the west wing fits in with its unearthly character, as do Nicholas and Angelique/ Cassandra’s activities there. But since those two witches live at Collinwood, the rest of the house has taken on that character as well. The separation of the west wing from the main part thus comes to lose its significance. Why shouldn’t Adam be able to visit the rest of the house, and why shouldn’t he know his way around well enough that he goes directly to Carolyn’s bedroom? Why shouldn’t unlovely ex-convict Harry Johnson, the most mundane character on the show now, have adventures in the west wing?

Angelique, the camera in front of her, the secret panel to the west wing behind her. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 540: Intervening factor

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair tells his subordinate, the wicked witch known variously as Angelique and Cassandra, that she has an hour to figure out why her recent attempt to turn Barnabas Collins back into a vampire failed. When she tells him that won’t be enough time, he suggests she spend the hour preparing for her final destruction. At the last minute, her stepson David tells Angelique/ Cassandra about an audiotape message that happens to give her exactly the information she needs.

Nicholas threatens Angelique. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Angelique/ Cassandra has been an extremely unsympathetic villain, so it is daring to have an episode mostly from her point of view which is suspenseful if and only if we want her to stay around. My wife, Mrs Acilius, says that might have been a reasonable bet when a character as dynamic as Angelique/ Cassandra is played by a performer as appealing as Lara Parker, but it doesn’t pay off today, for two reasons. First, the episode doesn’t have much of a plot. Second, returning viewers will be angry with Angelique/ Cassandra right now. She just subjected us to a three month ordeal called “The Dream Curse,” in which we saw the same dull sequence play out a dozen times, heard it described almost twice as many times, and then found out that there was no point to any of it. We know perfectly well that Angelique/ Cassandra is too interesting to stay off the show for long, so that the “final destruction” Nicholas is threatening will probably last for three weeks at most. But we really do want to see her punished for wasting our time.

This is the first episode in which John Karlen reads the opening narration, and only the third episode in which any male performer reads it. Most cast members have read these narrations more or less in the characters they will play in that day’s episode; Karlen takes his place alongside Kathryn Leigh Scott as one of two who strive to invest the role of Narrator with its own personality.

This was the last of the five episodes credited to director John Weaver. It isn’t hard to find reasons why they wouldn’t have contracted him to do more. There are a number of moments when the action jolts to a standstill for no apparent reason, Humbert Allen Astredo as Nicholas never seems to know what direction he should be facing, and when Angelique/ Cassandra orders the bedraggled Willie Loomis to “Look into my eyes!” we get a shot of him looking past her.

Episode 504: A talent for making everyone feel guilty

Well-meaning governess Vicki was the main character of Dark Shadows for its first year, but has been receding further and further to the margins since. Today she returns after a 14 day absence, the first time she has been off screen so long.

Vicki is in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood with her employer, matriarch Liz. Liz is distraught because her daughter Carolyn has been abducted by a strange man. Liz fears that Carolyn is dead or dying; Vicki urges her to set those fears aside. The police telephone; they have captured the man, but Carolyn was not with him, and he has not answered any of their questions. Liz and Vicki set out for the gaol to see him.

They are accompanied by a sheriff’s deputy. The Collinsport police are exceptionally useless, but even by their standards this deputy is a low performer. Though the man is so strong that it took twenty men to subdue him and bring him in, the deputy enjoys taunting him. He sticks his service revolver in the cell; the man is shackled to the wall, but he is so tall he sweeps his hand into contact with the gun. If the script didn’t say otherwise, he could easily take it from the deputy. Liz orders the deputy to stand back out of the man’s line of sight. Since she owns most of the town, he grudgingly obeys.

The deputy puts his weapon within Adam’s reach.

Yesterday, Liz went looking for Carolyn at the Old House on the estate, home to her distant cousin Barnabas. She found Barnabas’ servant Willie on the ground, suffering from a fresh head wound. Willie told her that the man had been by a few minutes before, and that he had been carrying the unconscious Carolyn. He also referred to the man as “Adam.” When Liz asked him why he used that name, he denied that he did and began jabbering about some bad dream that had frightened him. Today, Liz addresses the man as Adam, and he responds, proving that Willie does in fact know more about him that he will admit.

Liz and Vicki tell Adam that they will treat him as a friend if he tells them where Carolyn is. Adam knows the word “friend.” He repeats it, and adds “food!” Again he says “Friend, food!” The women do not know what he is driving at. They give up and go home.

Returning viewers know that Adam has stashed Carolyn in an abandoned structure that looks exactly like Fred and Wilma Flintstone’s house, that he calls Carolyn “Friend,” and that he had gone out to look for food for her when he was captured. He is dejected when he cannot make it clear that she is hungry.

Liz and Vicki return to Collinwood. They spend several seconds taking off their coats in unison. In the early days of the show, there were a number of scenes designed to emphasize Liz and Vicki’s resemblance and to present each as the other’s reflection in support of a storyline that led us to believe that Vicki was Liz’ unacknowledged daughter. That storyline was forgotten long ago, and it isn’t entirely clear what director Jack Sullivan is getting at here.

Back in the drawing room, Liz tells Vicki her reasons for believing that Barnabas knows a great deal about Adam. Apparently the doors separating the drawing room from the foyer amplify sound, because as the camera takes us from the drawing room to the foyer Liz and Vicki’s conversation only becomes more audible. Liz’ new sister-in-law is in the foyer. This woman calls herself Cassandra, but regular viewers know that she is in fact wicked witch Angelique. Vicki knows that perfectly well. Vicki traveled back in time in #365 and spent nineteen weeks living under the same roof as Angelique while Angelique wrought havoc on the Collins family of the 1790s and framed Vicki for her crimes. Angelique’s only disguise as Cassandra is a black wig- otherwise, she looks, sounds, and moves exactly as she had when Vicki knew her in the eighteenth century. As a result, Vicki is very much on her guard around her.

Angelique/ Cassandra enters the drawing room. Liz excuses herself, and Angelique/ Cassandra demands to know why Vicki doesn’t like her. When Vicki says that she resembles someone she didn’t get along with, Angelique/ Cassandra proclaims that she isn’t that person, bursts into tears, and runs out. Vicki stays in the drawing room, but the camera follows Angelique/ Cassandra to the staircase, where we see her smile gleefully.

Liz returns, and Vicki tells her she may have misjudged Cassandra. It doesn’t speak well of Vicki’s brainpower that a single display of crocodile tears would override the memory of their long and painful acquaintance, but since Barnabas and the others who are doing battle with Angelique/ Cassandra refuse to accept Vicki’s help, she may as well forget everything she knows. Liz tells her that she doesn’t think she misjudged Cassandra, and says she doesn’t trust her either.

Back in the gaol, the idiotic deputy goes back to Adam’s cell to taunt him some more. When Adam protests, the deputy opens the door and waves his baton at him. He places himself within easy reach of Adam, who grabs him and knocks him unconscious.

Yesterday, the high sheriff said “I’m not a stupid man.” He may not have been as stupid as is this grinning imbecile, but it is on his responsibility that he has a badge and a gun.

Another deputy enters. He sees his moronic colleague on the floor, the bars twisted in the window, and no sign of Adam.

Adam is 6’6″, so it’s difficult to see how he could fit through this opening. Perhaps he is not only tremendously strong, but is also a contortionist.

Episode 499: Fair warning

From #133, artist Sam Evans was compelled to paint a series of pictures that explained the evil intentions of undead blonde witch Laura Murdoch Collins, estranged wife of sarcastic dandy Roger Collins. In #146, Laura put a stop to Sam’s work by starting a fire that burned his hands so badly it seemed for a time he might never be able to paint again.

Sam shares his home, the “Evans cottage,” with his daughter Maggie, who is The Nicest Girl in Town and a waitress at the diner in the Collinsport Inn. Between her earnings there and the paintings Sam sells, the Evanses make a living, but it isn’t such a grand living that he can turn down any commissions, even very eccentric ones. Moreover, his work space entirely dominates the interior of the cottage. In the early days of the show, Sam’s old friend Burke Devlin often stopped by, and the conversation always turned to reminiscences of Burke’s youthful days of honest poverty. Nowadays the most frequent visitor is Maggie’s fiancé, hardworking fisherman Joe Haskell. Sam is delighted with the prospect of this upwardly mobile laborer as a son-in-law. When a representative of the moneyed world visits Sam or Maggie at home, as New York art dealer Portia Fitzsimmons did in #193 and old world gentleman Barnabas Collins did in #222, the contrast between their manner and the humble surroundings is meant to jolt us. The Evans cottage is therefore our window on the working class of Collinsport. When the troubles of the ancient and esteemed Collins family have an effect there, Dark Shadows is telling us that the whole town is dependent on the businesses they own and suffers as a result of their problems.

Yesterday, Barnabas came back to the cottage and brought Sam a very odd commission indeed. He presented a painting of a lovely young woman in eighteenth century garb and offered Sam $500* to paint over the image so that before morning the woman would look to be “about 200 years old.” Sam wasn’t in a position to refuse that much money, even though Barnabas wouldn’t explain why he wanted him to do such a thing.

If Sam knew what the audience knows, he would likely have turned the job down even if Barnabas had offered $500,000,000. The woman in the portrait is Angelique, and like Laura she is an undead blonde witch. In the 1790s, Angelique cursed Barnabas and made him a vampire. In #466, Barnabas’ vampirism went into remission. Shortly thereafter, the portrait made its way to the great house of Collinwood, where Roger became obsessed with it. In #473, Roger returned from an unexplained absence with a new wife. She is Angelique, wearing a black wig and calling herself Cassandra. From #366-#461, Dark Shadows had been a costume drama set in the 1790s; during this segment, we saw that Angelique was a far more dynamic and brutal menace than Laura ever was. Sam would hardly want to involve himself in a battle with this wiggéd witch.

For his part, Barnabas first appeared on camera in #210 and #211. But his portrait was first seen hanging in the foyer at Collinwood in #205, having been prefigured in #195. Dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis became obsessed with the portrait of Barnabas. Willie could hear a heartbeat pounding from the portrait in #208 and #209, and followed its sound to the crypt where Barnabas was trapped in his coffin. As Roger’s obsession with Angelique’s portrait would bring her back to the world of the living, so Willie’s obsession with Barnabas’ portrait led to his return.

In the opening teaser, we see Sam working on the painting. He tells it that he can’t understand why Barnabas would want to disfigure such a pretty face, then resumes his task. The camera zooms in on the painting, as it had zoomed in on Barnabas’ portrait in #208 and #209, and the soundtrack plays the same heartbeat. Sam doesn’t react- he can’t hear it. It is addressed to the audience, especially to those members of the audience who remember the show as it was 13 months ago.

Angelique/ Cassandra is in the gazebo on the grounds of Collinwood. She is wearing a hooded cloak to conceal the aging she has already experienced as a result of Sam’s work. Her cat’s paw Tony Peterson, a local attorney, shows up, responding to her psychic summons. She entrances him with a flame and he tells her that the artist who has been in touch with the Collinses most frequently of late is Sam Evans. From this she concludes that Sam is aging her portrait at Barnabas’ bidding. Before Angelique/ Cassandra and Tony can go their separate ways, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard comes upon them.

Tony and Carolyn met in #357. In that episode, he was an instance of Jerry Lacy’s Humphrey Bogart imitation. A hard-boiled materialist, Tony had grown up in Collinsport as a working-class boy. He resented the Collinses and attributed all of their unusual characteristics to their wealth and social prominence. At that time, Barnabas was still a vampire and Carolyn was under his power. As a blood thrall, she knew that there was more to life than could be explained by Tony’s reductive logic, but she wasn’t free to offer any explanations. When Tony saw Barnabas biting Carolyn in #463, he interpreted their embrace as a sign of a sexual relationship.

Now their roles are reversed. It is unclear what Carolyn remembers from her time under Barnabas’ control; Nancy Barrett often plays the character as if she remembers everything, but the dialogue doesn’t give her much support for that, and in this scene she is as this-worldly as Tony was in the Autumn of 1967. She interprets Tony and Angelique/ Cassandra’s meeting at the gazebo as proof positive of an adulterous liaison, and declares she will report it to Roger. When Tony tells her that Angelique/ Cassandra has some mysterious power, Carolyn is dismissive, declaring that the Collinses are the ones who have all the power in this town. Tony tries to explain that the power Angelique/ Cassandra has is of an entirely different order from the power their ownership of capital gives the Collinses, and Carolyn responds with unconcealed contempt.

Angelique/ Cassandra knocks on the door of the Evans cottage. Sam opens the door. She ignores his objections and enters. While he keeps ordering her to get out of his house, she stands next to the portrait as he has aged it and points out her resemblance to it. He is astounded, but keeps telling her to leave. She says that she has no grievance against him and that no harm will come to him if he hands the painting over to her. He refuses. She heads out.

Angelique/ Cassandra and her portrait. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Angelique/ Cassandra has barely closed the door behind her when Sam has trouble seeing. After a moment, he realizes he has been struck blind. She comes back in, takes the painting, tells him she warned him, and leaves.

Sam realizes he is blind. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Closing Miscellany

Over the years, several members of the cast said on the record that Sam’s blindness was actor David Ford’s idea. He thought that if he could wear dark glasses it wouldn’t bother the audience that he read all his lines off the teleprompter.

In 2022, a commenter on Danny Horn’s post about this episode on his blog Dark Shadows Every Day identified the portraits of Angelique as the work of ABC Art Department specialist Joseph Guilfoyle:

You asked if anyone knew who painted these portraits. I can verify that the portraits of Angelique were painted by Joseph Guilfoyle. He was an artist in the Art Department at ABC. He was my Godfather and his daughter remembers this very well as it made her a bit of a celebrity at the time. Portraits were not commissioned out but instead were created in the Art Department as it was filled with many talented artists.

“Erin Allan,” posted at 5:55 PM Pacific Time 26 February 2022 on “Episode 499: A Senior Moment,” Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn, 10 October 2014

Also worthy of note are the two facial makeups representing Angelique’s aging. It’s no wonder they didn’t have the personnel to make David Ford’s fake mustache look convincing when they were lavishing all the work on turning Lara Parker into two quite distinct old crones.

The costumers were involved in a famous production error in the final scene. Angelique/ Cassandra’s hooded cloak cuts off above her knees. There is no old age makeup on her legs, which are featured from every angle, making a ludicrous contrast with her face and wig.

*In 2024’s money, that’s $4544.17.

Episode 486: Endless corridors of trial and error

Today’s cast includes a vampire, a wicked witch, two mad scientists, a Frankenstein’s monster, and an irritable housekeeper. The deadly menace turns out to be the housekeeper.

In a laboratory in a house by the sea, mad scientists Eric Lang and Julia Hoffman are trying to transfer recovering vampire Barnabas Collins’ “life force” into the body of the creature Lang has built for the purpose, a creature Barnabas has named Adam. In the drawing room of the great house atop Widow’s Hill, wicked witch Angelique disrupts that attempt by sticking a pin into a clay figure that she addresses as “Dr Lang.” It is unclear how Angelique attached the clay figure to Lang, though since it has roughly the same acting ability as Addison Powell the pairing seems natural enough.

Lang gasps for air. Julia helps both him and Barnabas. Barnabas gets up from the operating table and declares he will go to the great house and stop Angelique. Lang tries to tell Julia how to carry on his work, but keeps breaking down. While Julia is out of the room getting some heart medicine, Angelique removes the pin from the clay figure. During that moment of relief, Lang is alone in the lab. He turns on his tape recorder and says that if both Barnabas and Adam live, Barnabas will be free of the vampire curse. Adam will drain it from him, but will not suffer from its symptoms. If Adam dies, Barnabas will revert to active vampirism.

Angelique resumes tormenting Lang as Julia returns to the laboratory. Lang cannot keep his breath long enough to tell Julia his message or make it clear that she should listen to the tape. Angelique says that Lang has suffered enough for tonight, and that she will put the pin away. As she is about to do so, the door to the drawing room opens and housekeeper Mrs Johnson comes in. Mrs Johnson startles Angelique, who inadvertently drives the pin through the clay figure, killing Lang.

This is the second death to which Mrs Johnson has contributed. The two cases are very similar. She unknowingly gave undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins the information she needed to cast the spell that killed parapsychologist Dr Peter Guthrie. Guthrie resembled Lang not only in holding a terminal degree, studying the uncanny, and doing battle with an undead witch, but also in his use of a tape recorder. In #170 and #171, Guthrie recorded the audio of a séance; in #172, Laura erased the recording and replaced it with the sound of fire; and in #185, he was on his way to get his tape recorder to use at another séance when Laura cast the spell that killed him. Mrs Johnson is a menace to a very specific kind of person.

Barnabas comes to the great house and threatens Angelique, calling her by the name “Cassandra,” the alias under which she has married sarcastic dandy Roger Collins and found a place in the house. At first he says he will burn her if Lang dies. She pretends not to know what he’s talking about, and says that she will expose him as a madman. He looks at her neck and leans in, a sign that his vampire urges are coming back. The telephone rings, and Mrs Johnson enters. Angelique/ Cassandra explains their compromising position by claiming that she was fainting; with that, she shows that her threat to air her complaints is a bluff, since she could easily have demanded Mrs Johnson call the police.

Barnabas is getting thirsty. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Mrs Johnson says the call is for Barnabas. It is Julia reporting Lang’s death. Barnabas makes some grim remarks to Angelique/ Cassandra, then goes back to the laboratory and talks with Julia. She is distraught, but agrees to pick up where Lang left off.

We end with a dream sequence. Angelique has loosed a “Dream Curse” on the people of Collinsport. One after another, they have the same basic dream, in each case beginning with an appearance by the next person to have the dream beckoning them into a haunted house attraction and ending with a door opening to expose something the previous dreamers didn’t see. Julia’s dream begins with Mrs Johnson, telling us she will be the next up. It proceeds with her walking through a foggy room, including a clear shot of the fog machine. It ends with the sight of a skeleton wearing a wedding dress and the sound of Angelique’s distinctive laugh, telling us that the position Angelique has gained by marrying Roger is particularly dangerous to Julia. Since Julia lives in the same house as Angelique and they know all about each other, this is not exactly a major revelation.

Featuring a very special appearance by the fog machine. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The dream involves the beckoner’s voice reciting a little bit of doggerel. As it goes on, some beckoners say “through endless corridors by trial and error,” others say “through endless corridors of trial and error.” I prefer “of trial and error.” That implies that the corridors are themselves made up of decisions people have made and of the consequences of those decisions. Saying that the characters are moving through the corridors “by trial and error” means that the corridors exist whether anyone engages with them or not. We saw Angelique start the curse, so we know it isn’t something that has been out there in reality all along, and it expresses itself in dreams, not in anything that persists when people stop paying attention to it. Besides, the whole idea of drama is to show decisions and their consequences, so “of trial and error” is better on every front.

Episode 478: Carried on the wind

Soap operas usually have multiple more or less independent storylines going simultaneously. Dark Shadows had trouble keeping that up, usually having an A story with all the action and a B story that never got off the ground and eventually dried up altogether. Now, in the spring of 1968, they have several equally dynamic arcs going at once. As a result, today’s episode is a bit of a jumble, as we catch glimpses of several loosely related events.

For the nineteen weeks stretching from #365 to #461, well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself trapped in the 1790s. In that period, she met many people, among them gracious lady Josette and wicked witch Angelique. In the 1960s, one of Vicki’s closest friends is Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. Like Maggie, Josette is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott. When Vicki saw Josette, she realized that Maggie had some kind of metaphysical connection to her. This was a daring move on the part of the show, since it means that vampire Barnabas was onto something in the summer of 1967 when he abducted Maggie and tried to brainwash her so that her personality would vanish and Josette’s would appear in its place.

Angelique has followed Vicki to 1968. She calls herself Cassandra, wears a black wig, and has married sarcastic dandy Roger, thereby securing residence in the great house of Collinwood. Vicki and Barnabas recognize Angelique/ Cassandra, and each knows that she is a deadly threat to everyone in and around the estate. For her part, Vicki is trying to hide her knowledge from Angelique; Barnabas has taken a different tack, and the other day let Angelique into his house where he proceeded to give her all the information she could possibly need to realize her evil intentions towards him. This is not because Barnabas cannot keep a secret. Vicki has tried to enlist him in the battle against Angelique, but he, now in recovery from the vampire curse Angelique placed on him in the 1790s, does not want Vicki to know the truth about him, and so he will not cooperate with her in any way. It’s only his enemies with whom Barnabas compulsively shares damaging intelligence.

Maggie comes to the great house to have a tea party with Vicki today. Angelique/ Cassandra opens the door, and cannot hide her shock at Maggie’s resemblance to Josette. She so blatantly stares at her that she has to admit that she is unnerved because Maggie looks very much like someone she knew a long time ago.

Vicki comes in, and Angelique/ Cassandra asks her, not in her usual mid-Atlantic accent, but in Lara Parker’s sweetly musical Tennessee voice, if she and Maggie are planning to use the drawing room. Vicki at once offers to use a different space, not only as would be correct for a member of the household staff speaking to one of the family, but in a relaxed and friendly way that betrays nothing of her knowledge of Angelique/ Cassandra’s true identity. While returning viewers know that Angelique/ Cassandra remembers Vicki from the 1790s, the Southern accent is so much more natural than her usual way of speaking that it suggests Vicki has managed to get her to let her guard down to some degree.

While Vicki and Maggie settle into the drawing room, Angelique/ Cassandra goes to a portrait of Barnabas that hangs in the foyer of the great house and delivers a speech to it. She tells the portrait that Maggie is the very image of Josette, and will therefore be the first victim of her latest evil plan. She is going to spam people’s dreams with a series of nightmares, and when the last person has had the nightmare Barnabas will be a vampire again. Evidently the dreamers of Collinsport didn’t have anti-virus programs installed in their brains, because Angelique/ Cassandra expects them all to be helpless before this morphean malware.

In the drawing room, Maggie is too preoccupied with Angelique/ Cassandra’s strange reaction to her to hear when Vicki asks her how she takes her tea. When she tells Vicki that Angelique/ Cassandra was shocked by the sight of her, Vicki amazes her by saying that she is sure she did react that way, and giving her the details of the reaction before Maggie reports them. Maggie asks Vicki to explain how she knew and what it means. Vicki explains nothing.

This is something of a reversal. In #1, Vicki met Maggie. Vicki had just arrived in Collinsport, and went to the diner where Maggie was the waitress. While Maggie served Vicki, she told her that Collinwood was haunted and that it was unwise to go there. Vicki did not at that time believe in ghosts and told Maggie so. Now, Vicki is the one serving the tea, and she is the one who knows far more about the supernatural than does Maggie. At least, far more than is in Maggie’s conscious mind- she has amnesia about her experience as Barnabas’ victim.

Maggie is far more upset by Angelique/ Cassandra’s reaction to her than circumstances would appear to warrant. Vicki’s reticence is understandable, given the extreme complexity and improbability of her story, but she has always been so forthcoming with her friends that when Maggie asks why she is being so mysterious it seems quite likely that Vicki will tell her everything. Together, these two facts suggest to regular viewers that Maggie will eventually hear herself compared to Josette, that the comparison will jar loose the memory of what Barnabas did to her, and that she will go to the authorities. As an audience, we hope Barnabas will get away with his crimes, because the show is most fun to watch when he does. Now that Angelique has come to 1968, we have a morally defensible in-universe reason for this hope. Angelique is even more evil than Barnabas is, and without his active participation there is no hope she can be stopped.

Vicki’s reticence brings up another question. In the months before her journey to the past, she saw a great deal of evidence that Barnabas was a vampire. While in the eighteenth century, she saw so much more that upon her return Barnabas was certain she must have figured out his secret, and bit her to keep her quiet. When his vampirism responded to medical treatment, the symptoms of his bite went away. We wonder what Vicki knew at each stage of the story, and what she remembers now.

One possibility is that she has known everything all along. That would put Vicki in an intriguing position if Maggie’s memory does come back. Vicki originally represented the audience’s point of view; if she turns out to have been aware of Barnabas’ crimes from the beginning, she will put us in the uncomfortable position of wondering what it tells us about ourselves that we are consistently on the vampire’s side.

Vicki changes the subject to her boyfriend, a man named Peter. Vicki met Peter in the 1790s, and like Angelique he has followed her into her own time. Also like Angelique, he keeps insisting that he has a different name. He wants to be called Jeff. Unlike Angelique, Peter/ Jeff is amnesiac, is under the control of mad scientist Dr Lang, and brings the show to a screeching halt every time he is on screen. Vicki asks if Peter/ Jeff can rent the spare room in the cottage Maggie shares with her father. Maggie has never met or heard of Peter/ Jeff, and wants more information before she commits to living with him. Vicki doesn’t have anything to tell her, inflaming Maggie’s curiosity to the point where she exclaims “I can’t stand it!”

Peter/ Jeff telephones from Lang’s laboratory, and Vicki gets Maggie to agree to meet him at her house in an hour. Unknown to Vicki, Lang is building a Frankenstein’s monster, and plans to download Barnabas’ personality into the body once it is completed. Peter/ Jeff has dug up graves and fetched body parts for Lang to use, but is tired of that sort of work and is eager to make a fresh start. Unfortunately for him, Barnabas requested that the body look like Peter/ Jeff. So Lang persuades Peter/ Jeff to call Vicki back to say he won’t be available to meet her and Maggie today after all. He then gives Peter/ Jeff a shot to knock him out, straps him to a table, and sets about cutting his head off. Peter/ Jeff comes to and complains about this; Lang, irritated, tells him he can’t very well have expected him to let him live, knowing what he knows.

Maggie has the dream Angelique has sent. It begins with Peter/ Jeff calling on her. Since they went out of their way to tell us Maggie has never seen Peter/ Jeff, this tells first time viewers that this sequence, as is typical of dream sequences on Dark Shadows, comes not from the character’s mind, but is the product of a supernatural agency. In the course of the dream, Maggie hears the sound of Josette’s music box; Barnabas made her listen to this when he was holding her prisoner. This again raises the prospect that Maggie’s memory will return. The rest of the dream is a concerto for fog machine. Technical director Lou Marchand is credited today; presumably he was the soloist. The fog immerses everything so completely that it is anyone’s guess what exactly Miss Scott is doing for most of the sequence.

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 474: A Collins does the unexpected

Wicked witch Angelique (Lara Parker,) pretending to be named Cassandra, met sarcastic dandy Roger Collins (Louis Edmonds) one day and married him the next. Roger’s sister, matriarch Liz (Joan Bennett,) confronts Angelique/ Cassandra. Liz tells her that Roger has not been well and urges her to annul their marriage.

In the course of her confrontation with Liz, Angelique/ Cassandra reveals that she is not all-knowing. She thinks that Roger owns the great estate of Collinwood and the family’s business. Liz quickly explains that Roger owns nothing. He lives as a guest in her house and works as an employee of her company. Angelique/ Cassandra takes this in stride, and stands up to Liz’ insistence that the marriage must end. The only sign that Liz’ words are having an effect on anyone at all comes in the very last syllable of the scene. Unfortunately for Liz, it is not Angelique/ Cassandra who is intimidated by her, but Lara Parker who is intimidated by Joan Bennett. Angelique/ Cassandra’s mid-Atlantic accent vanishes and the purest musical note of Parker’s native Tennessee sounds as the word “you” emerges as “yeww.” If there had been another page or two of dialogue, she might have ended with a honeyed smile and a lethal “Bless your heart!”

From #395 to #461, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late 1790s. In that segment, Angelique came to Collinwood as a servant girl and used her magical powers to manipulate scion Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) into marrying her. Barnabas’ parents, Joshua (Louis Edmonds) and Naomi (Joan Bennett) were unhappy about the marriage. Joshua demanded that it be annulled, as Liz today demands Roger and Angelique/ Cassandra’s marriage be annulled. Naomi took a more conciliatory approach. Advocating Joshua’s position and but showing Naomi’s temperament, Liz combines two challenges Angelique has already shown herself able to overcome easily. Returning viewers will therefore have little hope that Liz will be able to stave off the disasters Angelique has in mind for the Collinses.

Angelique/ Cassandra is eager to get to work on the evil plans she has for the people at Collinwood, and so she is trying to stop Roger taking her on a honeymoon. She contrives to injure her ankle. We see permanent houseguest/ medical doctor/ mad scientist Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall) in the bedroom Angelique/ Cassandra will be sharing with Roger, bandaging her ankle. Angelique/ Cassandra asks a series of questions about old world gentleman Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid,) making Julia visibly uncomfortable.

Barnabas is the same man Angelique married in the 1790s. He is here in 1968 because she turned him into a vampire then. He was relieved of the symptoms of vampirism only a couple of weeks ago. He and Julia are becoming fast friends, and on Tuesday he told her all about Angelique. He identified her as the woman in a portrait that has obsessed Roger, and expressed his belief that Roger’s obsession was a sign that Angelique herself was returning to Collinwood. Julia can see how strongly Cassandra resembles the portrait, and knows that Roger’s obsession led directly to his marrying her, so she really ought to have figured out by now that she is Angelique.

Like the scene between Angelique/ Cassandra and Liz, the scene between her and Julia makes an instructive comparison with the parts the same actresses played in the 1790s segment. Angelique was originally lady’s maid to the Countess DuPrés. We saw her helping the Countess put herself together in a bedroom that was a different dressing of the set on which Julia is now attending to her foot. This apparent reversal of roles illuminates the extent to which Angelique’s command of black magic always made her a mightier figure than her nominal mistress. As a mad scientist, Julia is far more formidable than was the countess, but this scene leaves us wondering if she will be able to stand up to Angelique for any longer than could her counterpart.

Well-meaning governess Vicki (Alexandra Moltke Isles) had traveled back in time and was at Collinwood through the 1790s segment. She recognizes Angelique, knows well how dangerous she is, and is desperate to stop her. She tries to tell Liz about the situation, but Liz has a very limited tolerance for information about the supernatural. Vicki later meets Julia at the gazebo on the grounds of the estate and shares her information with her. Julia knows as much as anyone about the strange goings-on, and what Vicki tells her confirms what she already has reason to suspect. However, Julia pretends to have trouble believing Vicki.

This pretense enables Julia to probe the limits of Vicki’s own knowledge. Barnabas and Julia do not want Vicki to know any of Barnabas’ secrets. Julia incredulously asks Vicki if she thinks the Barnabas Collins of 1968 is the same person she knew in the eighteenth century. Vicki turns away from Julia, looks troubled, and says that she does not believe this. Vicki has encountered plenty of evidence to that effect, not least when Barnabas bit her and sucked her blood, and the audience wonders what she knows. We see Julia studying her, trying to find the answer to the same question. In the first year of Dark Shadows, Vicki represented the audience’s point of view, the resolutely normal outsider getting to know the Collinwood crazies. In this moment, we see Vicki through Julia’s eyes. We identify, not with any sane person from the world of sunlight and natural laws, but with a mad scientist who has cast her lot with a vampire.

Vicki thinking about Barnabas, with a facial expression straight out of MAD magazine. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Angelique/ Cassandra and Roger chat in their bedroom. He seems utterly delighted to be married to her, until she slips something into his drink. Suddenly he starts having doubts. Nothing we have seen leads us to expect she would want him to feel this way. The scene leaves us scratching our heads.

We end with Angelique/ Cassandra alone in the foyer of the great house, looking at the portrait of Barnabas that hangs there and vowing to restore the curse that had made him a vampire. We know that she is Angelique and that such is her goal, so her speech doesn’t set up any new story points.

It does give us some world-building information. Angelique says that the only way she knew that Barnabas was walking among the living in the 1960s was that Vicki had traveled back in time to the 1790s and told her. That explodes a theory some fans like that Angelique herself called Vicki back in time. When Vicki left the 1960s in #365, it was quite clear that the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah was sending her on the journey. Sarah has been fading steadily from our awareness, not least because child actress Sharon Smyth aged out of the part, and so it is not surprising that people expect a retcon to attribute the time travel story to a different force. But not only does Angelique rule herself out with this line, Sarah’s name comes up in the conversation between Julia and Vicki, reminding regular viewers of the original explanation.

More importantly, it confirms that once one person has made a wrong-way journey through time, a gate opens through which other unexpected things may come. To some extent we saw this when Barnabas himself was released from his coffin and Sarah’s ghost began showing up around the estate. The cosmological point will become extremely important for the rest of Dark Shadows, as one time-travel story keeps leading to another. Dark Shadows is often described as the story of the house, and so I can’t resist an inelegant metaphor from the building trades. It’s as if Vicki wrecked the plumbing of the universe when she went through the pipes backwards and then abruptly forward. Time will never flow the right way again.

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.