lela swift – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 990: Nothing ever goes well in this house

Most of this one is taken up watching people argue with each other about whether they should hold a séance. This puts longtime viewers on familiar ground. We’ve seen fourteen séances on Dark Shadows over the years, and have heard about others. Many of those we’ve seen have been preceded by the sort of wrangling we see today. The most spectacular case was #365. That installment was structured just like this one, one quarrel after another about the idea of the séance, then in the final scene the séance is held and comes to a shock ending.

Episode 365 came at the end of a period when the show was as slow-paced as it ever would be, and when such story elements as they had were all coming to an end. The episode was surprisingly fast-moving and exciting, mostly due to the visual artistry of director Lela Swift. Not only did Swift use a visual strategy that told more of a story than you might have thought was available had you read the script, but her skillful blocking and fluid use of the camera allowed the actors to project a great deal of energy. The shock ending, which the ABC network had spoiled with a series of promos but which I don’t think anyone could have seen coming otherwise, was the show’s first trip back in time. At the climax of the séance, well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself transported to the year 1795.

Now, Vicki is long gone and mostly forgotten. The show has traveled in time again, not backward but sideways. We are in an alternate universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.” In this continuity, counterparts of familiar characters have different personalities and are arranged in different relationships than are the people we know.

The episode is much less effective than was #365, not so much from the absence of Vicki or the presence of any of the new characters, but because the director’s chair is occupied by the hapless Henry Kaplan. Kaplan stood at the opposite extreme from Swift. His idea of a well-composed sequence of images was one closeup after another, punctuated by extreme closeups showing us what an actor’s ear looked like when she was speaking a crucial line of dialogue. He takes the trouble to set up some two-shots and even three-shots today, but they put the actors in such cramped little frames that they don’t dare move without a furtive glance at the camera.

The master of the great house of Collinwood is drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins. His penniless siblings and permanent houseguests Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and Roger Collins have just come home from a trip out of town to find family friend Sabrina Stuart in the drawing room, demanding that they hold the séance that Quentin’s wife Angelique ordained for this night. They are shocked, because the night on which Angelique said there would be a séance fell six months before. Sabrina is having some kind of fit that causes her to be unalterably certain that this night is that one.

Angelique died of a stroke at that séance, and Liz and Roger are horrified at the idea of reenacting it. Sabrina’s fiancé, mad scientist Cyrus Longworth, says that she went through a traumatic experience the night before, when a strange man forced his way into her room and terrorized her. He then reports a conversation with a psychiatrist who suggests humoring Sabrina and holding another séance. Cyrus brings Bruno Hess, musician, lover of Angelique, and all-around sleaze to join in the reenactment.

While Roger and Liz were away, Angelique’s identical twin sister, Alexis Stokes, came to stay at Collinwood. Quentin neglected to inform even the people who were in the house at the time that this had happened, setting Alexis up for one terribly awkward encounter after another with people who thought she was her sister returned from the grave. Quentin and Alexis also got alarmingly cozy with each other, prompting his new wife, the former Maggie Evans, to walk out on him after barely a week in residence at Collinwood. So it is no surprise that he didn’t bother to telephone Liz and Roger and let them know they would see Angelique’s identical twin sister when they came home.

Roger is standing in Angelique’s old bedroom, holding a one-sided conversation with her portrait. We know that he is in the habit of doing this; it was what he was doing when first we saw him in #975. Quentin probably knows about it too, since several other people in the house have the same habit and even those who don’t spend a surprisingly large amount of time going in and out of Angelique’s room. Roger turns around and sees Alexis. Believing her to be Angelique redivivus, he nearly faints. She gives him her hand to assure him she is not a ghost, and he will later introduce her to Liz as Angelique’s sister.

Roger’s counterpart in the main continuity was Dark Shadows‘ first Big Bad, a charming, dissolute, narcissistic, cowardly, lecherous wastrel. That Roger Collins was supposed to be killed off when Vicki exposed his crimes, but Louis Edmonds made him such a joy to watch that this was out of the question. Dark Shadows had not yet figured out that a villain could be a permanent part of the cast, so when they decided to keep Roger around they nerfed him into a basically harmless supporting character. He developed gradually from the functional sociopath who in #68 coldly manipulated his own nine year old son David into a murder attempt on Vicki to the stoutly virtuous family man who made his final exit in #979 with a fatherly hand on David’s shoulder.

The Quentin of the main continuity made his debut in #646 as a ghost bent on annihilating all of his surviving relatives. From #701 to #884, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in 1897, when we met Quentin as a living being. In those days, he was very much what Roger had been in 1966, only younger, sexier, and on a show that isn’t afraid to keep villains around indefinitely. He became a huge breakout hit, and a magic spell was cast that kept him from dying or aging. So when the show returned to contemporary dress at the end of 1969, Quentin was there, alive and intact.

Upon his arrival in 1969, Quentin found himself in the same position Roger had occupied two and a half years before. Everyone wanted him to be a big part of the show, but there was nothing for him to do. Unlike Roger, he was free to be evil, but also unlike him he had no connections to anyone who had anything he wanted to take. In some ways, Quentin is in an even worse position than Roger was. Even in his lovable gay uncle phase, Roger could admit to his sister Liz in #273 that he would have blackmailed her if he had had the chance, an admission that Quentin merrily echoed in #702 when he laughed at his sister Judith’s attempt to buy him off with $1500, boasting that he could blow through that much in a single night, even in a sleepy little place like Collinsport, and that he would shamelessly come back for more. He has no one to do anything like that with now.

Quentin can charm his way to an easy living. In December 1969, mad scientist Julia Hoffman and Broadway star Olivia Corey fought over which of them would get to pay Quentin’s hotel bill, a conflict that was motivated by some story points but that is the sort of thing that might happen to a man who looks like a young David Selby. On a fast-paced supernatural thriller, you have to be something a lot juicier than a mercenary Kept Man to count for much as a villain. No one in the Nixon era owes Quentin anything, so he can’t exploit anyone the way he did Judith and the rest of his immediate family. He has fallen into service as henchman to Julia and her best friend, his distant cousin vampire Barnabas Collins, but something big is going to have to change to find him another place at the center of the action.

Since that is the same problem that cost them Roger, it makes since that in this mirror universe Quentin’s counterpart and Roger’s are revisiting some stages of the development of the Roger from the main continuity. When Parallel Roger first appeared in #975 and #976, he seemed to be, if not the utterly depraved villain of the early days, at least the spineless, snobby, but amusingly sarcastic figure he was through most of 1967. Today he seems to be closer to the responsible family man he dead-ended into being.

This Roger is the first to articulate the reasons why it is inadvisable to reenact a ceremony that cost a life the last time it was attempted. Roger’s position recalls his role in #170, when he was the principal opponent of the first séance shown on Dark Shadows. In that, he was the unwitting stooge of his estranged wife, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, but the objections he came up with were all about the importance of social respectability and of refraining from doing the thing which is not done, fitting into the image of him as a shallow and unimaginative person. The fact of Angelique’s death gives his objections today a firmer footing and presents him as a representative of sober good sense, but does not make him seem any more dynamic than his counterpart in the main continuity did in #170.

Quentin learns of the proposed séance when Cyrus and Bruno enter the house. He is angry at the sight of Bruno, and reminds him he is not welcome there. Cyrus explains that Bruno is needed for the séance. This increases Quentin’s anger, and he tells Cyrus and Bruno to “go to another house and work your black magic, boys.” They insist on staying, and suggest that Alexis sit in Angelique’s place. After all, Bruno says, why shouldn’t she see exactly how her sister died, from her sister’s point of view. At this Quentin’s anger turns to total rage, and he has to be restrained from attacking Bruno physically. Alexis wants to hold the séance, though, and Quentin gives in. He refuses to participate, but allows the others to gather in the drawing room.

Alexis stops Quentin from attacking Bruno. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Roger was never given to violence that required his direct personal involvement. Quentin’s reaction to Cyrus and Bruno’s awful idea suggests that the writers are trying to find a way forward for his character. The well-justified repugnance he feels for Bruno, the grotesquely morbid nature of the proposed reenactment, and the breathtakingly irresponsible suggestion that Alexis do the very thing it killed her sister to do, all call for a forceful response. His lunge at Bruno is manful in the best sense, and leads us to wonder if they might try to develop Quentin’s vices into the basis of some kind of heroic action.

When he scornfully tells Bruno and Cyrus to go somewhere else with their “black magic, boys,” it is clear that the writers are thinking in terms of what is possible for Quentin. In 1897, the original Quentin and his fellow Satanist Evan Hanley would hang out in the cottage on the estate corresponding to the one where Bruno lives in this timeline and do all sorts of ill-intended mumbo-jumbo. They could easily have been called “The Black Magic Boys.” That Quentin stood at the opposite pole from this one. Perhaps as the story progresses, we will see these contraries fuse into something more sustainable.

Although we are in “Parallel Time,” a development like that might have good effects on the Quentin of the main continuity as well. Roger’s character changed massively after the flashbacks to 1795 and 1897, merging with the deeply flawed, yet sturdily upright family men whom Edmonds played in those periods. So if they can build a version of Quentin in this universe who is still narcissistic but also capable of saving the day, that might point the way to transforming the Quentin in the established “time-band” into a character who can carry the show as he did for so many months in 1969.

The séance goes forward. Cyrus conducts, and Sabrina goes into the trance. She shouts the word “murder” over and again, and breaks the circle of fingers to point at Alexis. Alexis passes out. That’s the closing cliffhanger. We can be sure Alexis is not dead- it wouldn’t leave the story anywhere to go. Besides, they commissioned a gorgeous full-sized portrait of Lara Parker as Angelique for this storyline. That thing must have cost at least $5000, maybe twice that, and they will never be able to use it again after they go back to the main continuity. There’s no way they are going to blow that much money on a set decoration unless they are planning to feature it in another couple of months of episodes.

Episode 985: She is not like others

This is the last script that will be credited to writer Violet Welles. Welles had done a substantial amount of rewriting on scripts attributed to her friend Gordon Russell before her name first showed up in the credits with #711, and she will do more ghosting for Russell later.

Danny Horn’s post about this episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day is a tribute to Welles; I recommend it highly. Welles was far and away the best author of dialogue among the nine writers credited through the show’s 249 weeks, so much so that her uncredited contributions are easy to recognize. I will mention a week very close to the end of the series in 1971, a long time after the wheels came off, when all of a sudden characters start making witty remarks and developing interesting relationships. Then it’s back to the dreariness of a bunch of go-nowhere stories.

Welles rated herself low as an inventor of plot-lines. I don’t know what went on during the long hours she spent in story conferences with Russell and Sam Hall, but it was when she was in the room that the most fertile planning sessions Dark Shadows ever had took place. They sketched out flimsies thirteen weeks at a time, and from the time Welles became a regular part of the staff until thirteen weeks after she left, the show was packed with more lively ideas than at any other time. So if she was correct in that harsh self-assessment of what she did in the writers’ room, it was only in the narrowest sense.

Welles also spoke disparagingly of herself as a designer of dramatic structure at the level of individual episodes, but today’s installment shows that this was simply wrong. There is a tremendous amount happening in these 22 minutes, it is crystal-clear throughout what is happening and why we should care, and the actors get to do some of the best work they ever did do. We see two stories, one a mashup of Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca with Edgar Allen Poe’s 1838 short story “Ligeia,”* the other a retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, also with a dash of “Ligeia.”

The episode is set in a different universe than the one in which the first 196 weeks of Dark Shadows took place, and most of the characters are “Parallel Time” counterparts of those we met in the main continuity. In the Rebecca/ Ligeia mashup, we today see Quentin Collins, master of the estate of Collinwood, owner of Collinsport Enterprises, and gloomy drunkard; Quentin’s new wife, Maggie Evans Collins; housekeeper Julia Hoffman, fanatical devotee of Quentin’s late first wife Angelique; and Alexis Stokes, Angelique’s freshly arrived identical twin sister. The bit from the Jekyll and Hyde story features scientist Cyrus Longworth and attorney Chris Collins. Angelique comes up in Cyrus and Chris’ conversation, and she is emerging in the role of Ligeia. Like the eponymous character in Poe’s story, she is a celebrated beauty who is dead but expected to return. Alexis herself brings up yet another reference. She wears a short bluish gray suit and chignon hairstyle with a tight spiral twist at the back, the look that the mysterious Madeleine wore and her impostor copied in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

Jekyll and Hyde Meet Ligeia

I’ll start with the Jekyll and Hyde story, since it is the simpler one today. Chris is the estate manager at Collinwood, and his responsibilities include custodianship of Angelique’s personal effects. His friend Cyrus has called Chris to his basement laboratory to ask for a favor. Angelique had told him about a chemist in Boston who could help him with some obscure formula he needs for his current experiments. She gave him the man’s contact information, but he lost it, and he wants to look for it in Angelique’s address book.

Before they start talking about the address book, Cyrus tells Chris that he saw Angelique in town today. He tells him he was driving past the drug store and saw her walking down the street. He called to her and she did not answer, but he is certain it was she. Chris does not yet know that Angelique’s identical twin sister is in town, so he does not tell Cyrus about Alexis. He starts with a philosophical approach, then veers towards the explanation medical:

CHRIS: Cyrus, you’re a scientist. A scientist deals in established principle and fact. One thing we have to accept is that death is the end.

CYRUS: I often wonder. People used to believe that the world was flat. They believed that, that the sun revolved around the earth, and these were facts to them.

CHRIS: Uh, what are you saying?

CYRUS: I’m saying that I saw Angelique. I saw her walking down the street.

CHRIS: Well, I wish to submit that there’s an explanation for it. All of this.

CYRUS: What do you mean by that?

CHRIS: You’ve been working yourself too hard. You’ve been locked in this laboratory for over a year. Whatever you’re doing it can’t be worth your health and your peace of mind. It might even damage your mind.

Cyrus tells Chris what he is trying to do:

CYRUS: Let me begin by saying that, that man is chemical in his composition. Now, if the proper compound was distilled, and administered to a human being, this chemical composition could be radically changed, radically altered, and I’ve been working on this composition.

CHRIS: Why, why alter a human being?

CYRUS: Now let me also say this. That man is not one person, he is two. One is good, and the other is, oh, let us say for scientific conversation, the other is evil. Now, these two people are within each of us, and they are always fighting against each other. But if these elements could be separated, just imagine the possibilities. Evil could go its own way, completely free of any aspirations or remorse that are foreign to it. And good, good can have its own life, free of any struggle against, against evil impulses or hostile thoughts. My god, just imagine what a person…

Chris is horrified by this idea, and is glad to be an obstacle to it. Director Lela Swift reinforces Chris’ conviction that Cyrus is destroying himself by placing Christopher Pennock next to a mirror during the most perfervid part of his mad scientist’s programmatic statement, a visual metaphor telling us that Cyrus is splitting himself in two.

Chris is worried that his friend is going to pieces. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Chris tells Cyrus that he won’t help him bury himself even more deeply in the strictly private world he has created. Cyrus says that it is not private, that it is something he shares with Angelique:

CYRUS: Angelique believed in this theory. She believed it could be done. And she was the one who started me on, on all these experiments. Separating good and evil.

CHRIS: (sourly) There is no doubt in my mind which of the two appealed to her.

Chris tells Cyrus that he has been anxious to see him. He has heard that he presented a paper on black magic to a scientific society, and that the news led him to fear that Cyrus’ mind is becoming unbalanced:

CHRIS: I admire your devotion, Cyrus, but not your direction. It can only lead to trouble.

CYRUS: It can only lead to glory. And it will. Very fast, if you’ll just give me the name of that chemist.

CHRIS: No. I’m sorry to withhold it from you, but it’s the only way I can stop you. And I think I have to stop you. I desperately think that.

Angelique was not only a great beauty and a gracious matron, but was also a scientific mind who inspired Cyrus to pursue his scheme. She could introduce an experimenter to chemists whose specialties are so obscure that they cannot be found in any published directory, and her influence leads to the study of black magic and a skeptical view of the finality of death. In these matters, Angelique recalls Ligeia. The unnamed narrator of Poe’s story, Ligeia’s widower, says of her:

I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was immense –such as I have never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she deeply proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault. Indeed upon any theme of the most admired, because simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudition of the academy, have I ever found Ligeia at fault? How singularly –how thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife has forced itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! I said her knowledge was such as I have never known in woman –but where breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the wide areas of moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw not then what I now clearly perceive, that the acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to resign myself, with a child-like confidence, to her guidance through the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily occupied during the earlier years of our marriage. With how vast a triumph –with how vivid a delight –with how much of all that is ethereal in hope –did I feel, as she bent over me in studies but little sought –but less known –that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path, I might at length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to be forbidden!

At the end of Poe’s story, the narrator’s second wife appears to die. Her body is eventually reanimated with the personality and even in the likeness of Ligeia. Cyrus’ un-nuanced belief that the woman he saw was Angelique come to life suggests that he expects her to follow in the footsteps of that other learned woman.

There is a poignancy now in seeing Don Briscoe play Chris’ concern for Cyrus. Briscoe suffered from bipolar disorder, and was at this time trying to self-medicate with street drugs. After he was violently mugged while trying to score a fix late at night in Central Park, he wound up leaving acting and moved into his parents’ house in Tennessee. He died there, morbidly obese, at the age of 64. I suppose what Dr Jekyll wanted was to come up with a drug that could sort the contents of the mind into orderly batches, so that people like Briscoe could live the lives they deserved to live.

Ligeia at Manderley

Meanwhile, at Collinwood, Quentin has been extremely stingy with information Maggie should know, and has neglected to tell her that Angelique had an identical twin. Hoffman and others on the estate are convinced that Angelique will somehow come back to life, and in their obsession with this idea they have made Maggie exceedingly uncomfortable in her imposing new home. Making matters worse, night before last Maggie heard a voice that she can believe to have been part of a prank played on her by Quentin’s son, strange and troubled boy Daniel, but which Daniel and we have reason to believe was actually Angelique’s ghost. So when Maggie opens the doors to the drawing room and sees Quentin giving a glass of sherry to a woman who, to all appearances, can only be Angelique, she flees in panic.

Quentin goes to Maggie in her bedroom. He explains that the woman she has seen is Angelique’s twin Alexis. At first he is relaxed and soothing, as charming as the Quentin of the main continuity has always been, almost as charming as David Selby is. But as Maggie insists on being left alone, his mood darkens. Alexis sticks her head in and suggests they should clear things up right away; Quentin asks her to wait downstairs. When Maggie refuses to be formally introduced to Alexis and play hostess to her, Quentin becomes stiff, grouchy, and patronizing, ordering her to do her duty as mistress of the house. She does not bend, and he leaves the room in a huff.

Back in the drawing room, Alexis tells Quentin she ought to leave rather than go on upsetting Maggie. Quentin dismisses Maggie’s concerns and proclaims that he alone makes decisions at Collinwood. Alexis is visibly startled by Quentin’s claim to autocracy, and doesn’t know where to look or what to do with her hands as she stammers out “Of course… you… make the decisions.” She goes along with Quentin’s decree that she will stay in the house starting tonight, before she can get her luggage back from the inn in the village.

Hoffman enters. At the sight of Alexis, she gasps “It- it’s you!” Hoffman composes herself quickly, and says that Angelique often spoke of her sister. She asks Alexis if she received the letter she sent her when Angelique died. Alexis says she missed it. Hoffman had sent it to her address in Tangier, but Alexis had moved from there to Florence by that time. Alexis does not seem to be in any particular business, and she describes her decision to return to Collinsport as motivated by a vague feeling of personal obligation, so we can assume that her long stays in these famous cities are a sign that she and Angelique have private resources that amount, if not to a fortune, at least to a competence. Hoffman suggests that Alexis stay in Angelique’s old room. Quentin does not object, and Alexis agrees.

Alone in the drawing room, Quentin wishes Alexis did not resemble Angelique so uncannily. In a gruff tone, he tells himself “I’m as bad as Maggie, I’m behaving like a frightened child.” Quentin’s attitude when he was lecturing Maggie about Alexis had indeed been that of an impatient adult ordering a child to stop having an inconvenient emotion. Since he does not believe he handled that exchange badly, it’s jarring to hear him say explicitly that he saw it that way. He pours himself a stiff drink.

In Angelique’s room, Hoffman tells Alexis she doesn’t have to lie to her. She may have her reasons to pretend with the others, but with her she can talk openly about the fact that she is Angelique risen from the grave. Alexis is thunderstruck by this, and tries to reason with her:

ALEXIS: You thought Angelique would come back? But that’s impossible, she’s dead.

HOFFMAN: She is not like others.

ALEXIS: She certainly wasn’t like anyone else. Nevertheless, she is dead. Do you hear me? She’s dead, and I’m her sister.

Hoffman tries to trip Alexis up by asking which nightgown she would like from Angelique’s dresser. Alexis points out that she has never seen any of them, so she can’t very well answer. Hoffman starts to apologize for her bizarre conduct:

HOFFMAN: I’m sorry, Miss Stokes, I’m sorry if I’ve said anything–

ALEXIS: It’s perfectly all right. I can understand how much you must miss her. But I wouldn’t intimate such a thing to anyone else if I were you. They might be very distressed by it, and so might you.

This exchange is very effective, particularly for regular viewers. Up to this point, Lara Parker has been playing Alexis quite differently than she played Angelique. Even when Angelique had been defeated in a conflict or was trying to seem like a wounded innocent, she always maintained eye contact with her scene partners and found a way to put a little more drama into her voice than any other performer would have thought to do. But Alexis looks down when she is confused, talks in a soft and casual tone when she thinks she understands what’s going on, and asks questions to which she obviously does not already know the answer. We can believe she really is a different character. But her last two sentences to Hoffman are exactly what Angelique would have said. When Alexis lifts her head and delivers them with her right eye fixed on Hoffman, we are suddenly in suspense as to whether Ligeia has already returned.

On her way out of the room, Hoffman passes Maggie. Without turning to face her, she explains that Alexis is staying, at Quentin’s orders. This brief scene is blocked as an homage to Hitchcock, whose 1940 film of Rebecca will have come to mind when Hoffman mentioned Angelique’s nightgowns. The censors tried to prevent the release of that movie, because of a scene in which obsessed housekeeper Mrs Danvers took a nightgown out of a wardrobe positioned in the same spot of the late Rebecca’s room as is the wardrobe in Angelique’s. Mrs Danvers went on and on about how sheer the nightgown was, how “You can see my hand through the material,” etc. Dark Shadows isn’t quite as bold with the homoerotic subtext of Hoffman’s devotion to Angelique as Du Maurier and Hitchcock were with that of Mrs Danvers’ devotion to Rebecca, but the shot is so much in his style and the movie was so famous that a large percentage of the grownups in the audience would likely have picked up on the reference.

Without a Hitch. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Maggie goes to the drawing room, and finds that the decanter Quentin was drinking from is empty and lying on its side. She goes to Angelique’s room. She arrives just in time to see her obviously intoxicated husband in his first wife’s bedroom, with a woman who looks exactly like that first wife who is wearing a frilly nightgown, putting her hand on his shoulder, and saying in a soft voice “Perhaps we can comfort one another.” When we saw this, my wife, Mrs Acilius, said that she would not be especially pleased if she were to find me in such a situation.

Maggie and Quentin have a showdown about this in the drawing room. It’s a sensational scene, one of the best in the series. Selby plays Quentin as a drunken, condescending grouch, trying to tell Maggie she didn’t see what she clearly saw. Kathryn Leigh Scott is spellbinding as she plays Maggie’s rage. I think it’s her best moment since #265, when the Maggie of the main continuity was a mental patient and went completely nuts while singing “London Bridge.” That, I think, was the scariest scene they ever did, making us think our old pal Maggie was never going to be all right again.

This time Miss Scott doesn’t sound like any character we’ve heard her play before. In fact, she sounds more like a real person than anyone else ever does on Dark Shadows when Quentin has forbidden her to mention Angelique’s name and she responds “You forbid me! Forbid me like a child, and I am not a child, and I refuse to be treated like a child. Not by you or by anyone. I know what I heard and I know what I saw!” At that, Maggie Collins becomes a distinct character and the Parallel Time storyline jumps to a new level.

Quentin whines that Maggie isn’t giving him a chance, and she lets him have it:

MAGGIE: Nobody’s given me a chance. No. This is Angelique’s house, not mine, you’re Angelique’s husband, not mine.

QUENTIN: All right, if that’s the way you feel about it, get out of here!

MAGGIE: All right, Quentin.

QUENTIN: Leave Angelique’s house and leave Angelique’s husband!

MAGGIE: That’s exactly what I’ll do. That is exactly what I will do!

And to Quentin’s bewilderment, that’s exactly what she does. She rushes out the front door. After a bit, Quentin staggers after her. He looks outside. Alexis comes downstairs, in her sister’s frilly nightie, and asks what happened. Quentin frets that “She actually went out that door.” Alexis asks if he is going after her, and he says “No, why should I? She behaved like a child!” He’s still holding onto the idea that it is right and proper for him to regard his wife as a temperamental child. He wonders if perhaps Alexis is right, then hears Maggie drive away and announces that it’s too late to do anything. He wanders back towards the drawing room while Alexis looks on. We are left wondering if she is Angelique masquerading as her sister, or if Alexis, contrary to appearances, was actually the Evil Twin all along.

*I am indebted to Danny Horn’s commenter “Riccardo” for pointing out the connection to “Ligeia.”

Episode 931: Into strange rooms

Some invisible Elder Gods known as the Leviathans have taken control of a group of individuals in and around the area of Collinsport, Maine and formed them into a cult serving their plan to reclaim the Earth. Confusingly enough, the cultists are also known as Leviathans.

In 1949, deadbeat dad Paul Stoddard was leaving his family. On his way out of town, he stopped in a bar, where he ran into a Leviathan (whether one of the mortal or supernatural variety is never explained.) This being tricked Paul into selling his infant daughter Carolyn to the Leviathans. Late in 1969, Paul came back to town, where the leader of the new cult, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, explained to him what he had done that night twenty years before. Since the deal was already made, it is unclear why Paul had to come back to Collinsport, why he had to be told what he had done, and why Barnabas had to be a big jerk to him about it.

Paul has been trying to warn people that something terrible is happening, and Barnabas has become disaffected from the cult. The Leviathans are based on concepts H. P. Lovecraft developed in his tales of cosmic horror, and the specific Lovecraft story from which they have been drawing most heavily is The Dunwich Horror. In that one, what appeared to be a rapidly-growing, unaccountably precocious boy named Wilbur Whateley turned out to be one half of an unearthly creature of vast destructive power. Their Wilbur analogue has been a series of children who live in the antique shop that cultists Megan and Philip Todd own. There is a room above the shop where the creature takes its true, invisible form. Yesterday Barnabas helped Paul escape from captivity, and Paul went directly to the shop where he let himself into the upstairs room. Barnabas and the Todds got Paul out of the room and locked him in the prison cell in the antique shop’s basement.* The episode ended with the creature approaching the door of the cell and Paul holding a chair to use as a weapon against it.

Today we open with the creature entering the cell. The metal door jumps off its hinges and disappears; the chair flies from Paul’s hands; and Megan looks down from the top of the stairs, a gleeful look on her face as she anticipates Paul’s grisly end.

Megan is thrilled to see what her baby boy can do. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Danny Horn devotes his post about the episode at his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day to a series of complaints about the invisibility of the creature, claiming that it is unsuitable to have something important on a television show that does not come with striking visuals, but I can’t believe that any monster effect would be as impressive as this sequence. Director Lela Swift really delivers with it.

Barnabas shows up in the nick of time and orders the creature to leave Paul alone. He wrangles it back to its room, then scolds Megan for letting it out. While this is going on, Paul staggers out of the shop.

In the street, Paul meets mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Julia knows that Barnabas is involved in an evil scheme. It is very unlike him to leave her out of those, so she is alarmed. She takes Paul to the apartment of her non-evil friend, occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes.

Stokes and Julia comment on Paul’s appearance. His clothes are rotting away, as if they had been dipped in acid, and something is on him that emits a strong odor. This is a nod to The Dunwich Horror, in which the Elder Gods cannot be seen, but boy oh boy can they be smelled. “As a foulness you shall know them,” goes the refrain. Paul is in terrible shape and can’t talk. Julia vetoes Stokes’ suggestion that they call the police, and even after she notices Paul’s blood pressure dropping she does not suggest taking him to the hospital.

Stokes then shifts Julia’s attention to the B-story. He tells her that a friend of his is just about finished removing an overpainting from the portrait of Quentin Collins. Julia knows that this portrait, painted in 1897, freed Quentin of the effects both of the werewolf curse and of aging. Like the picture of Dorian Gray, it changes while Quentin himself remains the same. Quentin is back in town now, but he has amnesia. Julia believes that showing the portrait to him will jolt his memory back into place.

Julia lives as a permanent houseguest on the estate of Collinwood. We cut there, and see a woman named Amanda Harris pacing nervously in the foyer of the great house. Amanda was Quentin’s girlfriend in 1897, and was in that year granted more than 70 years of youth by a supernatural being named Mr Best. Mr Best said she could go on living even beyond that time if she could reunite with Quentin and get him to tell her her loved her. She has reconnected with Quentin, but since he doesn’t remember their past he doesn’t know he is in love with her. For some reason they don’t reveal to the audience she can’t tell him the truth. She has told Julia everything, and they have joined forces. We can assume Amanda is at Collinwood waiting for Julia to come back.

The telephone rings and Amanda answers it. It is Megan asking to speak with Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, owner of Collinwood and a member of the Leviathan cult. Amanda tells her no one is home. Megan asks who she is, and Amanda gives her current alias, Olivia Corey. As Olivia, she is a big star on Broadway, a fact which will be mentioned later today. There is quite a bit of overlap between antique dealers and Broadway fans, especially in the northeastern USA, and Amanda/ Olivia has been in Collinsport long enough that everyone must know she is in town. I try to imagine an antique shop owner in Bar Harbor or Kennebunkport asking a person on the telephone who they were, hearing “I’m Donna McKechnie,” and not getting excited. I suppose Megan’s continued focus on her own problem shows just how profoundly she is committed to the Leviathan cause.

Julia enters, and Amanda tells her that Mr Best will be coming for her in two hours. Julia replies that they must get Quentin to the portrait within that time.

They manage it. Quentin is noisily skeptical about the whole thing. He is frustrated that Julia keeps telling him he’s a hundred years old when he doesn’t look like he’s quite 29 yet, and even more frustrated that Amanda (who introduced herself to him as Olivia, and only today admits that isn’t her original name) won’t tell him when they met before and why she is so interested in him. Several times he threatens to leave the room before Julia can unveil the portrait. When she finally does, Amanda screams and runs out. Quentin reacts with fascinated horror.

Quentin can’t take his eyes off the painting. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Regular viewers, remembering the Dorian Gray bit, would have expected these reactions. If the moon is full enough, it will be the portrait of a wolf wearing an adorable little suit. Otherwise, it will show all the effects of 73 years of dissolute living. In neither case will it look much like the Quentin we know.

*That’s how people tell you they aren’t from Collinsport without saying they aren’t from Collinsport, they get all surprised when basements have prison cells.

Episode 919/ 920/ 921: The giver without a gift

Centenarian Charles Delaware Tate, once a famous painter, is trapped in his parlor with a man who is threatening to kill him. The man is Chris Jennings. Chris tells Tate that there will be a full moon tonight, and he identifies himself as a werewolf. In 1897, Tate painted a portrait of Chris’ great-grandfather, Quentin Collins. That portrait had magical powers that immunized Quentin against both lycanthropy and aging, and Chris is demanding Tate do the same for him. Tate keeps telling Chris that he no longer has the ability to create such things, but Chris won’t listen. Tate does a sketch. He says that his work is finished and tells Chris to take it and leave. Before Chris can comply, he turns into the wolf and attacks Tate.

Chris had been in a secure room at a mental hospital controlled by his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. He deliberately checked himself out and forced his way into Tate’s house because he wanted to use his condition as a weapon to coerce Tate. Julia is the audience’s chief point of view character these days, and she feels sorry for Chris. We also like two characters who care about Chris and don’t know that he is a werewolf. Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard is attracted to Chris and seems to have some lingering hopes that a romance might blossom between them, and Chris’ little sister Amy loves him and believes in him. Even one of Chris’ surviving victims, prematurely gray Sabrina Stuart, told Carolyn in #889 that while Chris is dangerous, “he is good.”

Despite everything these ladies are doing to help us like Chris, there can be no doubt that his attack on Tate is murder with premeditation and extraordinary cruelty. Roger Davis can usually be counted on to make us sympathize with anyone who is murdering one of his characters, but he plays Tate today with sensitivity and pathos, leaving us no way to avoid seeing a helpless old man locked up with a vicious killer. Chris’ future on Dark Shadows is limited for a number of reasons, chiefly his passivity in the face of his curse and his dependence on Julia and others to initiate action on his behalf. His abuse of Tate suggests that for whatever time he may have left on the show, Chris will be an unsympathetic villain.

Meanwhile, Carolyn is spending the day working as an assistant in an antique shop owned by her friends Megan and Philip Todd. Our first view of the shop today features Carolyn reflected in a mirror, but the main part of it is the taxidermied head of a baying wolf, emphasizing the danger Chris poses to everyone in and around the village of Collinsport.

The Wolf is loose, Carolyn is boxed in. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

A pair of hands cover Carolyn’s eyes. When they are pulled away, she expects to find that they belong to Philip’s eight year old nephew Alexander, but instead discovers that a thirteen year old boy she has never before seen has introduced himself to her by creeping up behind her and grabbing her face. The boy tells her that his name is Michael, that he is another of Megan and Philip’s relatives, and that Alexander has gone away. He tries to give Carolyn a pendant, but she recognizes it as one Megan wears and says that Michael can’t very well make a gift of something that doesn’t belong to him. He becomes very stiff and screams “How dare you not believe me!?” He doesn’t get any more pleasant as the scene goes on.

Philip comes in and tries to establish some kind of control; Carolyn takes the opportunity to excuse herself. As Michael and Philip talk, it becomes clear that they are part of a secret group with sinister plans. Returning viewers know that Michael and Alexander are not really human children, but are two manifestations of the same supernatural force. As Alexander, this force was a joyless, hateful little tyrant; Michael is no more appealing.

Dark Shadows originally ran on the ABC television network five days a week, from Monday through Friday. The episodes were numbered in a sequence reflecting the order of their original broadcast. When for whatever reason the show did not air on a given day, they would skip a number to keep the episodes airing on Fridays associated with production numbers divisible by 5. That made it easy to figure out how many weeks the show had been on, which in turn made it easy to keep track of where the show was in the thirteen week cycle that governed its long-term planning and the network’s decision to renew it.

In the last months of 1969, the show was being taped several weeks in advance of airdates, in a couple of instances more than five weeks ahead of time. This was atypical, and it led to a problem with the numbering. They knew that no episodes would air on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, or New Year’s Day, but did not foresee that the network would preempt #891 for live news coverage of the return of the Apollo 12 astronauts to Earth on 24 November 1969. Since they had already shot that episode and many following it with the original production numbers on the opening slate, it wasn’t until this one that they had the chance to get the numbers back in synch. That is why it is listed with the three numbers 919, 920, and 921. The only other time they had to skip two numbers was in November 1966, when coverage of football games on and after Thanksgiving Day blotted out #109 and #110. Since that disruption to the schedule was planned, the slate for the next episode was just marked #111. This is therefore the only episode regularly referred to with a triple number.

Episode 897: Restore our flesh and bones

The Trouble with David

Yesterday we saw strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy) go to a mysterious cairn in the woods, the ceremonial center of the cult of the Leviathan people, and announce that he was now one of the cult. The cairn then opened, revealing a little gap. David crawled into the gap. The gap was not quite big enough for him, so that the episode ended with an extended sequence of David Henesy wiggling his rear end at the camera while he tried to wedge himself into place.

Today we learn that the carpenters were not the only ones who haven’t caught on that Mr Henesy isn’t nine years old anymore. David has followed the gap to an underground chamber with a steaming cauldron. He takes some vegetation out of the cauldron and recites a cryptic poem, all the while staring portentiously off into space. His manner, words, and actions would be effective as part of a creepy little kid sequence, but the thirteen year old Mr Henesy looks mature enough that we just chalk him up as one more member of the Leviathan cult.

The Trouble with Chris

Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard calls on drifter Chris Jennings in his cottage. They talk about someone named Sabrina who has told Carolyn that while Chris is a nice enough guy, he will, in spite of himself, kill her if she keeps hanging around him. Chris tells Carolyn that this is true and that he is “a monster.” He does not explain. She leaves, and he takes out a pistol. First-time viewers will wonder if Chris has a compulsion to fire his pistol at people. Regular viewers know that he is a werewolf, and that his particular case of lycanthropy is so advanced that he sometimes transforms even when the moon is not full. We can assume that he plans to use the pistol to put himself out of his misery.

Regular viewers also know that Chris was safely confined to a mental hospital until he checked himself out recently. When he returned to the great house of Collinwood, he told his psychiatrist, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, that he just couldn’t stand the conditions at the hospital. Since leaving the hospital means that Chris will resume killing at least one random person a month, this decision just about completely erased any sympathy we might have for him as a character. It also undercuts his motivation in this scene. If Chris really wants to stop killing, he is free to go back to the hospital at any time.

The ghost of Chris’ great-grandmother, Jenny Collins (Marie Wallace,) appears. She tells him not to commit suicide. Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in 1897 from March to November 1969; in those days, we got to know Jenny as “Crazy Jenny,” who played nothing but one mad scene after another. She was sane and well-put-together just once, when she appeared as a ghost in #810 and #811. In this second postmortem appearance, Jenny is extra mad, wearing a disheveled wig that reaches heights few hairpieces have dared. She does not tell Chris to return to the hospital, but to find his great-grandfather, Quentin Collins. She says that she cannot help him, but Quentin can.

This confirms what the show has been hinting, that Quentin is alive. Chris doesn’t know that, nor does he know of his relationship to Quentin. He is left bewildered and helpless by Jenny’s pronouncement. His response would no doubt be more complex if he were up to date, but he has been so ineffective at managing his curse and so irresponsible generally that we can’t imagine he would do anything constructive even if he knew everything we do. The character seems to have reached a dead end.

The Trouble with Barnabas

Upset by her conversation with Chris, Carolyn goes to her distant cousin, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. She enters his home, the Old House on the estate of Collinwood, and finds the front parlor empty. She hears Barnabas’ voice coming from behind a bookcase, repeating over and over that “There is no margin for error. Punishment is necessary.”

Longtime viewers know, not only that a room is hidden behind this bookcase, but that Carolyn knows about that room. Her friend, David’s well-meaning governess Vicki, was held prisoner there by a crazy man in December 1966, several months before Barnabas joined the show. Carolyn is moving her hands, as if she is looking for the release that makes the bookcase swing open, when Barnabas comes downstairs.

When Carolyn says that she heard his voice, Barnabas explains that he was simply keeping busy by “conducting an experiment in electronics.” The candles around the room will suffice to show that the house doesn’t have electricity, and even if Barnabas weren’t so resolutely technophobic it would still require explanation that the text he set his speakers to reproduce over and over was “There is no margin for error. Punishment is necessary.” Moreover, Carolyn knows Barnabas well, and she can’t have overlooked that he is not his usual self these days. He is distant, calm, and utterly self-possessed, a far cry from the fussy, excitable chap who so often stumbles over his words. He remains formidably well-composed as he reiterates his position that Chris is a dangerously unstable person whom Carolyn should avoid, and that she has a bright future ahead of her. He gently but firmly guides her to the front door, and she is out of the house in record time.

Carolyn does not know that Chris is the werewolf, but at least she knows that there is a werewolf. She does not know that the Leviathan cult exists, and so it is understandable that she does not suspect that Barnabas is acting as its leader. But as the story unfolds, others will no doubt catch on that something is up, and so many people have spent so much time with Barnabas that it is difficult to see how they can all fail to notice the drastic change in his personality and to connect it with the strange goings-on. Putting him in this position makes it likely that the writers will have a harder time managing the story’s pace than they would if his involvement were more subtle.

Once Carolyn has exited, Barnabas opens the bookcase and reveals Philip Todd, antique shop owner. He rewinds a reel-to-reel tape and replays “There is no margin for error. Punishment is necessary.” Philip and his wife Megan are members of the cult, entrusted with the care of many of its most sacred items. Yesterday Barnabas found out that one of these, a book, had gone missing. He summoned Philip to the cairn, and it seemed he might be about to kill Philip. But now, he sends Philip off to administer the punishment to someone else, presumably Megan.

The Trouble with Megan

Megan (Marie Wallace) has been in an extremely overwrought state ever since she found that the book was gone. Today’s episode ends with a long scene in which she is alone in the shop, feeling that someone is coming to kill her, reacting sharply to every noise.

Danny Horn devotes most of his post about the episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day to reasons why this scene does not work, among them the fact that a depiction of a person descending into madness requires that the person start off as something other than over-the-top loony. Megan has been so frenzied for the last few days that Miss Wallace has nowhere to go when she hears the ominous noises. Moreover, her first two characters on Dark Shadows, fiancée of Frankenstein Eve and Crazy Jenny, were both intense, overbearing characters who were so inflexible that they had little opportunity to respond to anything their scene partners might do. Longtime viewers therefore expect to see Miss Wallace screaming and carrying on by herself, so nothing she does here will unsettle us. They lampshade this iconography problem by showing us Crazy Jenny’s ghost today, but that doesn’t help at all.

Many fans compare this scene to episode #361. Most of #361 is devoted to a one-woman drama in which Julia is tormented by sights and sounds in her bedroom, suggesting that her mind is collapsing. I don’t think that episode is a success, but because Julia had always been in control of herself up to that point we can see what is supposed to be at stake in it. That’s more than we can say for Megan’s fearful turn.

In John and Christine Scoleri’s post about the episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, Christine points out the prominence of the taxidermied animals in the background, and speculates that the scene is an homage to The Night of the Living Dead. I wouldn’t have guessed that director Lela Swift or writer Violet Welles would have studied that film, but Christine provides screenshots from it and from the episode, and the parallels are so striking that I can’t see how she could be wrong.

Closing Miscellany

I think the tape recorder is the same one we saw in the summer of 1968, when it was part of the Frankenstein story. It also appears to be the one that parapsychologist Peter Guthrie brought to Collinwood early in 1967.

Her haunting of Chris marks Jenny’s final appearance. Miss Wallace reprised the role decades later in a couple of the Big Finish audio dramas.

During Megan’s big scene, the camera swings a bit to the left and we can see beyond the edge of the antique shop set. We get a good look at a tree that stands near the cairn in the woods. Making matters worse, when they turn the camera away from the tree they go too far right, showing a stage light on the other side.

The antique shop and the cairn. Screenshot by Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day.

As the opening credits begin to roll, the camera is pointed a bit too far to the right and a stagehand is visible, adding dry ice to the steaming cauldron in the underground chamber.

Closing credits blooper. Screenshot by Danny Horn, Dark Shadows Every Day.

Episode 894/ 895: The time of the Leviathan people

Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins has become the leader of a mysterious cult. Antique shop owners Megan and Philip Todd are members of the cult, and they have a magical baby who materialized after Barnabas gave them a sacred box. Inside the box was a book that is also of tremendous importance to the cult. Philip and Megan left the book on a table in their shop, so that it appeared to be for sale. Yesterday strange and troubled boy David Collins stole the book. In its absence, the baby has developed a high fever. When Megan and Philip found that the book was gone, they flew into a panic and declared that they would have to kill the person who took it.

Many stories on Dark Shadows start with David, so it could be that the uncanny and sinister forces behind the cult want him to have the book. If so, Barnabas doesn’t know any more about it than do Philip and Megan. He finds out today that the book is missing, and takes Philip to a cairn in the woods. He tells him he will have to be punished for losing it.

When Philip first saw the cairn, he remarked that he had been that way before, but never noticed it. Barnabas explains that only people connected with the Leviathan cult can see it. This casts the minds of returning viewers to heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, Barnabas’ distant cousin. In #888, Carolyn saw the cairn and ran into a prowler there. The prowler refused to identify himself to her; the closing credits told us he was Paul Stoddard, Carolyn’s long missing father. We had seen him from behind the day before, when he saw the cairn materialize, then simply walked off. His blasé response told us that he expected to see what he saw, which can only mean he was connected with the cult. Carolyn doesn’t know anything about the Leviathans, but what Barnabas says to Philip today confirms that she is nonetheless associated with them in some sense. Indeed, Barnabas has been very solicitous of Carolyn’s well-being ever since he joined up with the Leviathans and keeps telling her that she has an extraordinary future.

Philip and Barnabas at the cairn. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There is also some business going on between Paul and Carolyn. On the surface it would seem to be a typical soap opera story, in which the daughter is trying to reintroduce her errant father into the family circle and has to keep secrets from her mother and young cousin to pull it off. Given what we know about Paul’s awareness of the Leviathans and their interest in Carolyn, we can see that it is in fact part of the supernatural A story.

There are no closing credits today, only the logo of Dan Curtis Productions. The Dark Shadows wiki says that this one was directed by Henry Kaplan. I am certain this is false. Kaplan was very clumsy with the camera, resorting to closeup after closeup and then to ever-more extreme closeups until you have scenes played by one actor’s left ear opposite another’s right nostril. Today, there is a scene between Carolyn, David, and Barnabas in the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood, a scene in which Carolyn presses David with questions about the book, that is so expertly choreographed that only Lela Swift could have blocked it. My wife, Mrs Acilius, marveled at the dance that Nancy Barrett, David Henesy, and Jonathan Frid execute so flawlessly.

This episode is double numbered to make up for a planned pre-emption, when the ABC television network showed football at 4 PM on the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day. Every Friday’s episode was supposed to have a number that ended with a five or zero, so that all you had to do was divide by five and you would get the number of weeks the show had been on. That didn’t work this time, because there was also an unplanned pre-emption when the network’s nes division took the 4 PM slot to cover the return of the Apollo 12 mission. They are producing episodes well ahead of their airdates at this point, in a couple of cases over five weeks ahead, so it will be a long while before they can get back in sync.

Episode 836: The grownup world

It is 8 September 1969, and the ghost of Quentin Collins has rendered the great house of Collinwood uninhabitable. The family, including permanent house guest Julia Hoffman, have been staying at the Old House on the estate while recovering vampire Barnabas Collins is on a trip back in time to 1897, when Quentin was killed and the trouble started. But Julia has received a letter Barnabas wrote to her in September 1897 indicating that, as of that date, his mission was about to end in total failure, and so she decides to take matters into her own hands. First, she must learn exactly how and when Quentin died.

Julia goes to the great house and follows the sound of Quentin’s theme song to the tower room. There, she finds the ghost of maidservant Beth, who was one of Quentin’s many lovers. When Beth is in a shadowy corner, she puts on a ghostly voice and tells Julia that her name would mean nothing to her. As soon as she comes into the light, Julia says that they’ve met several times, and soon she is calling her by name. Along with the fact that, as Beth, Terrayne Crawford is just standing there in the same light as Grayson Hall, with no practical effect whatsoever to suggest ghostliness, this deflates whatever feeling we are supposed to have that we are witnessing an encounter with the supernatural.

Julia insists Beth tell her how Quentin died. When the ghost of Barnabas’ nine year old sister Sarah Collins was on the show from June to November 1967, she would often insist on the Ghost Rules and vanish if people put direct questions to her. But Beth just wanders around a little, moans to Quentin that she has no choice but to tell Julia what she wants to know, and starts dishing. Again, they aren’t making ghosts like they used to.

Beth tells Julia that on 10 September 1897, she found out Quentin was going to marry a woman named Angelique. Quentin did not tell her this news himself; he left it to Angelique to do so, making the blow fall all the more heavily. This will remind longtime viewers of #392, when Barnabas could not bring himself to tell his ex-fiancée Josette that he was engaged to Angelique, leaving Angelique to tell Josette herself in #393. Josette waited until #425 to leap to her death from the cliff at Widows’ Hill, but things move faster now. Beth went straight from her conversation with Angelique to her room, where she had a bottle labeled “Poison.”

Sensible shopper that she is, Beth buys her poison in the Generic section of the murder weapon store. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Before she could do away with herself, Beth was interrupted by a knock on the door from twelve year old Jamison Collins. Jamison came in to show her a puzzle he had solved, then saw the bottle. He demanded to know what was going on, and she admitted that she was planning to kill herself because Quentin was going to marry Angelique. He stopped her doing that, but after he left to confront Quentin she took a loaded revolver out of her dresser.

Jamison found Quentin in the drawing room, in Angelique’s arms. Angelique at first dismissed Jamison, saying that his uncle was too busy to speak with him, but Jamison held his ground and insisted on seeing Quentin alone. Quentin obliged, but would answer Jamison’s questions only with airy assertions that he is too young to understand the situation. Jamison is so composed and forceful, and Quentin’s behavior is so flagrantly irresponsible, that we might expect Jamison to ask to be spared lectures on maturity from a man so much more childish than he. Instead, Jamison simply becomes angry and tells Quentin that after what he has done to Beth, he wants nothing more to do with him.

In #767, Jamison had a dream in which Quentin’s ghost said that his death was preceded by three events. The first two events happened shortly after. The third event was that Jamison rejected him. This has now happened, and in the dream Quentin said that once that took place “There was almost no time left for Quentin Collins.” Indeed, shortly after Jamison stalks off Beth shows up with her revolver and shoots Quentin. He staggers from the drawing room and goes upstairs. Since the staircase is made of eleven steps and is eight feet tall, that’s some pretty fancy staggering for a man who has just taken a round to the midsection. Quentin keeps staggering all the way to the tower room, where Beth shoots him a few more times.

We cut back to 1969, where Beth tells Julia she killed herself the day after she killed Quentin. She doesn’t seem to be done talking when Julia excuses herself. Say what you will about Sarah, she always left them wanting more.

Julia finds twelve year old David Collins, Jamison’s grandson, in the drawing room with Quentin’s ghost. Since Barnabas took us back in time with him in #701, we’ve got to know the living Quentin quite well, and he is a charming rascal who has very little in common with the silent, family-annihilating ghost we saw late in 1968. Beth’s story does very little to explain how the one turned into the other. The ghost has been draining the life from David; Julia orders David to come away from him, and he does. David lies down on the couch, and Julia examines him. She finds that he is weak, but resting comfortably.

Occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes enters. Quentin’s ghost has vanished. Stokes calls Julia by her first name, something he had not done prior to this episode, and asks after David. She at first says he will be all right, then checks on him again. She cannot find a pulse, and declares him dead. Julia has performed wonders in her work as a medical doctor, but her death pronouncements are so often wrong that this does not give much grounds for alarm. However, we then hear Quentin’s voice laughing maniacally, darkening David’s prospects.

Terrayne Crawford seems to be such a nice person that it distresses me to point out that she was not a very good actress. But in this one, Beth’s lack of supernatural quality and Julia’s bland reaction to her make it seem like writer Gordon Russell and director Lela Swift were conspiring to vent their exasperation with Miss Crawford’s limits. She can play one emotion at a time, so that when Beth is shocked to learn that Quentin is going to marry someone else she is only and entirely Shocked. When Beth is suicidal, she is only and entirely Sad; when she decides to take Quentin’s life instead of her own, she is only and entirely Gleeful; when she tells Julia that her vengeance did not relieve her sorrow over Quentin, we can see that’s true, because she is only and entirely Sorrowful. The result is like looking at a series of wood block cuts illustrating various emotions. It’s all very clear and quite vivid, but there’s no sense of development from one scene to the next. Had Miss Crawford been able to lay one emotion over another and play two or more of them at a time, the grin on Beth’s face when she kills Quentin would have shown us that all the layers of complexity of feeling had finally been stripped away and only hatred was left. That would have been a tremendous climax for the character. But since there was never any such complexity to start with, it’s just another block cut.

Often when I see disappointing performances on Dark Shadows, I think of other actors in the cast and try to imagine what they would have done with the part. Gail Strickland, like Miss Crawford, is a tall, thin woman whose chin juts out on a horizontal line, and she was on the show as doomed schoolteacher Dorcas Trilling for a couple of episodes in May. Dorcas’ role would have been well within Miss Crawford’s competence, and in her long and distinguished career Miss Strickland proved she could do just about anything. So on a day like this, I envision a different, much more nuanced Beth. The episode in my imagination is really stellar, I wish you could see it.

Today, David Henesy plays both his 1897 character Jamison Collins and his 1960s character David Collins. He is not credited for either of those roles, but for Daniel Collins, whom he played when the show was set in the 1790s back in late 1967 and early 1968.

Episode 818: I have but one, and his name is Petofi

The disastrously repressed Charity Trask knows that rakish libertine Quentin Collins is a werewolf, and she wants to warn everyone about him without actually saying the facts out loud. She corners maidservant Beth Chavez in the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood and urges Beth to end her romance with Quentin.

Charity keeps saying that there is something about Quentin that Beth does not know. In fact, Beth not only knows everything Charity does about Quentin’s curse, but a great deal more. She was the very first person to know that Quentin was a werewolf, before Quentin himself knew. She was with him the first time he transformed, and when he became human again in the morning she refused to tell him what she had seen. She had previously seen Quentin murder his wife Jenny, she knows that Jenny’s sister Magda placed the curse as vengeance for that murder, and she was the one who told Magda that Jenny had borne children to Quentin who would inherit their father’s curse. Beth is the foremost authority on Quentin’s condition. But she is protecting him anyway.

Charity then goes to a set known to longtime viewers as the Evans cottage. In the parts of Dark Shadows set between 1966 and 1968, this set is home to artist Sam Evans and his daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. Today the dramatic date is 1897, but the cottage is already an artist’s studio. It is occupied by Charles Delaware Tate, a nationally renowned painter who was commanded by the evil sorcerer Count Petofi to execute Quentin’s portrait. When we first saw Tate in the cottage, he said that he rented it because he’d heard about it from a friend who had stayed there some time before.

The cottage is full of paintings and sculptures. This is odd for a rental. Several possible explanations come to mind. Did Tate bring a dozen or more of his own works to keep him company? Did his friend or other artists who had rented it leave their completed pieces behind? Did the landlords display their own collection there for the edification of their tenants? Easy as these explanations are to think of, none of them seems very likely, and the question is never addressed in the show. The out-of-universe explanation is of course that when the audience looks at an artist’s studio, it expects to see a lot of artwork, and the artwork here gives director Lela Swift a chance to make good use of color.

At any rate, the set is gorgeous today, full of bright greens and mixed reds. Swift was a highly ambitious visual artist, and she outdoes herself here. The first shot in the cottage begins with a closeup of the portrait of Quentin. It then pulls back further than any previous shot of this very familiar set, showing us a lattice that used to be part of the set representing the kitchen/ breakfast nook area at Collinwood. Behind it is a plant with some large, intensely green foliage. We then track around the set to see several sculpted pieces in black, paintings in a variety of tones, and a whole array of vivid colors in the furniture and other decorations. Dark Shadows has come a long way from the clumsiness that marked its use of color when it first switched from black and white in #295.

Charity is unaware that she and Tate are not alone. Tate’s master, Petofi, is in the next room eavesdropping. Charity is horrified to see the portrait of Quentin, and reminds Tate that she saw Quentin’s features in the portrait change into those of a wolf when she visited the cottage on the night of a full Moon. Tate tries to convince her she did not really see such a thing, but she will not have it. Charity gives Tate a warning somewhat less incoherent than the one she had given Beth. After she exits, Petofi and Tate talk. Tate had suspected Quentin was a werewolf, and now is sure. Petofi says that his plans for Quentin are none of Tate’s concern.

Petofi goes to the great house. Quentin confronts him there, demanding to know by what gods he swears. He replies “I have but one, and his name is Petofi!” Charity sees Petofi and vehemently demands he leave. I don’t know why she does this. As far as I can recall, Charity knows Petofi only as Victor Fenn-Gibbon, an honored guest of the Collins family. He did cast rather a nasty spell on her when he was using that alias, but I don’t see why she would realize that he was to blame for it, or for any of his other misdeeds.

Whatever the motive for Charity’s angry reaction to him, Petofi responds by magically robbing her of the power of speech. When he tells her that he has a healing touch, his manner and the background music indicate that after he touches her, what Charity will say will never again be up to her.

Episode 783: Talk to the hand

Nine year old Nora Collins walks in on her teacher, Charity Trask, being bitten by vampire Barnabas Collins. Barnabas tells Nora to “Look into my eyes!” He hypnotizes Nora and mind-wipes away her memory of him. Barnabas has been on Dark Shadows for more than two years now, and this is only the second time he has pulled the “Look into my eyes!” move with someone whose blood he has not been drinking. The previous occasion was also with Nora, in #756. In the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s, Barnabas is usually paired with mad scientist Julia Hoffman, who is the master of a magical form of hypnosis that allows her to rewrite people’s memories at will. So if Barnabas exercised this traditional vampire power in those segments of the show, he’d be stepping on Julia’s territory. But this episode is part of a time-travel story set in 1897, and Julia is not here.

Barnabas has been exposed and is being hunted by a number of people. His current hiding place is inside a cave. He confers there with his reluctant sidekick, broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi. Today the show is being taped on new cameras, and the image is crisper and more nuanced than we have seen since it went to color in August of 1967. The cave would barely have shown up through yesterday’s cameras, but it looks nifty today.

Magda is Barnabas’ sidekick, she is quick with lies, and she is played by Grayson Hall, but she does not do hypnosis. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Magda has stolen a severed hand that a crime boss was keeping in a box, and believes that she can use it to undo a curse she placed on the rakish Quentin Collins. Barnabas is worried that they will not use the hand correctly when the time comes to release Quentin. Since there is no way to test the procedure they plan to use on Quentin, he asks if it will be able to help someone else. Magda says that it should. He has the bright idea to summon Charity. He evidently overate, and she is in danger of dying from loss of blood.

Vampires are metaphors for extreme selfishness, and with this suggestion Barnabas is a case in point. If the hand can lift curses from the people it touches, why does Barnabas not have Magda place it on him? If it freed him of vampirism, that would heal Charity and his other victims, and would allow him to stroll up to the vampire hunters on some sunny day and watch their suspicions of him collapse. But that is out of the question, because he does not know how to control the hand. He is simply using Charity as a laboratory animal.

Barnabas telepathically summons Charity. As it happens, lawyer/ Satanist Evan Hanley is at her bedside. Evan is among the vampire hunters, and knows Charity is under Barnabas’ power. He physically restrains her from leaving her room. Barnabas and Magda despair of bringing Charity and the hand together. The hand then disappears from its box. Magda thinks the hand is simply lost and is terrified that she will not be able to return it to its owner, but Barnabas is serenely convinced that it has gone to Charity under its own power.

This turns out to be true. The hand materializes in Charity’s room. Evan sees it, and, expert that he is in occult lore, exclaims “The hand of Ojden!” It settles on Charity’s face, and when it vanishes the bite marks are gone from her neck and she is once again her brisk, authoritative, and intensely priggish self, no longer a thrall of Barnabas. The hand reappears in the cave next to the box, and Barnabas smugly announces to Magda that it completed its mission.

For some reason, Barnabas’ self-satisfied certitude crumbles and he feels compelled to check on Charity to see that she has indeed been healed. He materializes in her room, but she is not there and the cock is already crowing. When he returns to the cave, Evan meets him, holding up a cross and keeping him from getting back into his coffin.

Episode 774: Sometimes people change their roles in life

Tim Shaw, uptight teacher turned victim of brainwashing turned fugitive murder suspect, makes his way into an abandoned root cellar. He finds a coffin there. Naturally, he opens the coffin. That’s what everyone does on Dark Shadows when they find a coffin where one shouldn’t be. You meet the most interesting people that way.

Tim finds that the coffin is empty, and goes into a dark corner to hide. Someone comes to the door, and Tim gets up to greet whoever it might be. He hasn’t been a fugitive very long, and hasn’t quite perfected all the skills that the status calls for.

Tim sees Dirk Wilkins, a dimwitted servant of the ancient and esteemed Collins family who has been missing for several days. Tim calls out “Dirk!” This is the first time we learn the two men know each other. They are unlikely to have been friends. Tim rarely left the school where he worked. The school has been housed in a building on the Collins family’s estate for several weeks, so it makes sense that he and Dirk would have met, but Dirk has been unpleasant to everyone we have seen him with, including his employers and pretty girls he wants to attract. It is hard to imagine the painfully shy Tim befriending him.

Dirk turns out to be a vampire, and he bites Tim. We then cut back to the school. The headmaster, the overwhelmingly evil Gregory Trask, is browbeating Tim’s fellow teacher and onetime girlfriend, neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond. Returning viewers will recall that Trask has made flagrant passes at Rachel, and also know that Trask conspired with a local Satanist to cast a spell on Tim which caused him to kill Trask’s wife Minerva. Trask is pretending to be upset about Minerva’s murder and to believe that Rachel plotted with Tim to commit it. He tells Rachel that if she does not leave the school, he will accept that she is innocent. She goes to her room, distraught. Later in the episode, Trask will telephone his co-conspirator, gloating that the authorities are on their side.

Spinster Judith Collins, sole proprietor of all her family’s great wealth, shows up to offer her condolences to Trask. They find that Rachel is gone, and he tells her that she must have gone with Tim. Trask realizes that Tim and Rachel have no money, and wonders if there is anyone who might give them enough to allow them to flee the state. Judith says that her distant cousin Barnabas Collins, who is currently staying at the Old House on the estate, is very fond of Rachel and that he might give them some money. She says that she will get in her carriage and go to the Old House before Rachel can get there. She will tell Barnabas about the murder and about Tim and Rachel’s involvement in it, thereby ensuring that he will not give them any money.

Judith consoles he new widower. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Judith knocks on the front door of the Old House and gets no answer. She enters, and finds the house empty. She is still in the front parlor when Dirk enters. She chastises him for staying on her property after she dismissed him, and tells him she will call the police if he is not gone within 24 hours. He walks towards her, backing her against the wall and ignoring her demands that he let her leave. He says that he is no longer her servant, but that she will soon be his. He bites her.

Judith was right when she told Trask that Rachel would go to the Old House. Rachel does go there. She peeks in the window, sees Judith sitting in a chair, and scurries off. This is rather an odd moment- Judith told Trask just a few minutes before that she would go to the Old House in her carriage. It seems unlikely that she drove her own carriage and there is no driver waiting outside, but even if if she did the carriage must still be sitting there in full view. How did Rachel fail to notice it?

Trask comes to the Old House and tells Judith he wanted to offer her his support in her conversation with Barnabas. Trask knows how fond Barnabas is of Rachel, and may well suppose that he would want more details about Minerva’s death than Judith could offer before he agreed to regard Rachel as a criminal. Judith says Dirk’s name when Trask enters, and when Trask notices the bleeding wounds on her neck he quickly realizes that Dirk inflicted them.

We cut back to the root cellar, which we see Rachel entering. She sees the coffin, and of course opens it. That’s just good manners. She turns, and sees Dirk in the entryway.

In his post about this episode at Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn transcribes a conversation among Roger Davis, Jerry Lacy, and director Lela Swift captured on video when the three were on a panel at a convention:

Roger Davis: I do remember being very excited when I got to be a vampire on the show, so excited, and the first person that I got to bite was Joan Bennett, and I was so enthusiastic and excited I knocked her over — flat on her back!

Jerry Lacy: I remember when you did it, it was rehearsal in the morning.

Roger: Was it?

Jerry: Yeah. You grabbed her, and you bit her, and then you just threw her. And she was already sixty years old then.

Lela Swift: Then we had to pick Joan up and put her together again.

Danny Horn, “Episode 774: What’s Up, Dirk,” posted at Dark Shadows Every Day, 21 November 2015.

To which my comment is, fuck that guy. I don’t make a habit of swearing, but there are not enough curse words in the language to express my reaction to Mr Davis chortling through his reminiscences of physically abusing his female scene partners. He can fuck off straight to hell.

This story gives an extra dimension to the scene between Judith and Trask in the Old House. Mr Lacy plays Trask’s relentless evil so effectively that he is difficult to watch; my wife, Mrs Acilius, refuses to watch his episodes this time through the series. It usually makes a viewer’s skin crawl to see Trask posing as a representative of something good. But knowing that behind Trask in the position of standing by Judith after she had been attacked by Dirk was Jerry Lacy standing by Joan Bennett after she had been attacked by Roger Davis, our response is much more complex. After all the times we might have wondered how anyone could fail to see through Trask’s blatant hypocrisy, this time enough of the thoroughly decent humanity of Jerry Lacy peeks through that we can understand why Judith has been so supportive of Trask.

The cast went into makeup after the morning rehearsal. From the looks of Dirk’s fake mustache and artificial pallor, makeup artist Vincent LoScalzo must not have brought his usual enthusiasm to his work when Mr Davis sat in his chair. The mustache in particular is so crudely affixed that it looks like Mr Davis might have done his own makeup today.