Tag: lunar eclipse

Episode 1075: A siege of unrelieved tranquility

We come to the end of the first week of The Re-Haunting of Collinwood, a rehash of a story that they got all the good out of when they did it the first time in December 1968 to March 1969.

The story isn’t going anywhere we haven’t been before, but there is some good stuff in this one. Kathleen Cody does an excellent job of acting as teen Hallie Stokes, brooding and subtle as she protests to her friend David Collins about the strangeness of their situation. Miss Cody had a very bad day at the office yesterday, and it is good to see what she can do.

As David, David Henesy commits one of the more memorable bloopers when he is supposed to tell Hallie that “We need a lot more clues” to figure out what is going on, but actually says “We need a lot more cues.”

Director Lela Swift, a gifted visual artist, outdoes herself at several points. I would particularly mention exceptionally fluid shot when Barnabas Collins and Julia Hoffman are in the foreground, in the doorway of the drawing room, and Quentin Collins approaches the through the foyer. Quentin’s loose-limbed, swinging motion combines with Barnabas and Julia’s intensely static pose to create a sense of rapid movement within strict boundaries.

There is some new stock footage of the Moon illustrating a solar eclipse; even though the final shot shows the Moon sprouting a corona at totality, it is so refreshing to see color pictures in this context that we can write that off.

The eclipse itself fulfills one of the cryptic clues a future version of Barnabas’ distant cousin Carolyn gave him, that something important would happen on “The night of the Sun and the Moon.” A lunar eclipse is a night of the Sun and the Moon, all right, but it is not at all all clear that anything that happens today would have struck Carolyn as especially noteworthy, even if she were in today’s episode.

While he is watching the eclipse, Quentin says that he is sad about his great-grandson and great-grand-daughter, Chris and Amy Jennings, and Chris’ fiancée Sabrina Stuart. Chris inherited an old curse of Quentin’s and was a werewolf. Quentin has managed to escape the effects of that curse, and also of aging, but no one could find a way to help Chris. Some time ago, when the show was set in an alternate universe where Barnabas and Julia were staying, Chris, Amy, and Sabrina left. All Quentin says is that he was sorry to see them go “that way.” We never hear a reference to any of them again.

Chris’ storyline ran out of road several months ago, and he was Sabrina’s only connection. So it would be no surprise that they are gone, even if actor Don Briscoe’s health problems had not overwhelmed him. We’re free to believe that Sabrina took Chris to a big farm in the country where he could play with the other werewolves. Amy was so central to the original Haunting of Collinwood segment in 1968 and 1969 that it would be impossible to pretend there was anything new about the Re-Haunting if she were around, so her departure was also inevitable.

Episode 414: Walks the night

There was a lunar eclipse on the night of 24 January 1796; it reached its maximum at 10:09:20 Eastern time. In our time-band, that eclipse was not easily visible in central Maine, but in this episode we see that in the universe of Dark Shadows, it was spectacular there. Caddish naval officer Nathan Forbes and fluttery heiress Millicent Collins come inside from the terrace of the great house of Collinwood after watching the eclipse.

In the drawing room, Nathan proposes marriage to Millicent. She gladly accepts. Matriarch Naomi Collins enters. Millicent is worried Naomi will disapprove of them being alone together so late, while Nathan wants to tell her of the engagement. Before they can say anything, Naomi tells them that her daughter Sarah, whose eleventh birthday is day after tomorrow on the 26th, has gone missing. Nathan volunteers to take charge of the search parties.

Sarah had been looking for her big brother Barnabas. Unknown to her, Barnabas has become a vampire and has been snacking on the women who frequent the waterfront of the village of Collinsport. In yesterday’s episode, Sarah caught a glimpse of Barnabas, followed him to the cemetery, and wound up in the outer room of the family mausoleum, near the secret panel behind which Barnabas’ coffin is hidden. At the top of today’s episode, the door out of the mausoleum slams itself shut and Sarah is unable to open it.

That moment suggests a solution to a riddle that has been part of Dark Shadows ever since Barnabas joined the cast of characters in April 1967, when the show was set in contemporary times. Doors in structures associated with Barnabas would close themselves and trap people. Sometimes this advanced Barnabas’ objectives, but just as often it was an inconvenience to him. Today, he most definitely does not want Sarah to be in the mausoleum. Part of the curse that made Barnabas a vampire is that everyone who loves him will die. Barnabas has killed the malign Angelique, the witch who placed the curse on him, but he is still a vampire- the curse lives on. So perhaps the curse itself has a power that makes the doors slam shut, keeping Sarah in this cold room until she falls ill.

At the waterfront, Barnabas meets a woman named Ruby Tate. Ruby is fashion-forward, to say the least; her outfit would become stylish nearly a century later. It’s the sort of thing that might have been admired by the women Jack the Ripper killed in the Whitechapel section of London in 1888-1891. Indeed, this foggy scene is a fairly obvious reference to the Whitechapel murders.

Ruby smiles for the last time. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas is alarmed when Ruby recognizes him and calls him by name. He is befuddled when she tells him she had heard that he went to England- he doesn’t know that his father Joshua is spreading that story to conceal his death, which Joshua believes to have been the result of the plague. Ruby keeps saying that the other girls will be jealous when she tells them she spent the night with Mr Barnabas Collins, alarming him further.

In the early months of the show, the story of Burke Devlin’s quest for revenge on the Collinses had occasionally brought up the contrast between the working class village of Collinsport and the lordly family on the estate of Collinwood and suggested class conflict as a theme. Those suggestions were never very richly developed, and lately we have spent so much time holed up with the Collinses in their mansions that it is startling to see them through the eyes of the villagers. Ruby’s excitement at pairing off with one of the area’s grand aristocrats reminds us that the curse threatens the future of more than one family.

Ruby promises Barnabas not to tell anyone about him, but does notice him looking at her strangely. Something clicks, and she cries out “It’s you!” Barnabas draws closer. Fleeing him, she falls into the water. Barnabas calls Ruby’s name, but cannot stop her drowning.

Apparently Barnabas found someone else to attack after Ruby drowned, because his face is smeared with blood when next we see him. He returns to the mausoleum. Sarah sees him. He keeps his face turned away from her while she pleads with him to take her home. He keeps telling her to go without him. He finally turns to look at her. She sees the blood and shouts “You’re not Barnabas! You’re not, you’re not!” She runs out of the mausoleum, and dawn breaks.

Ruby Tate is played by Elaine Hyman. Hyman was busy as an actress in New York for decades before her death in 2020. She was in three plays that made it to Broadway, and her TV credits included episodes of The Sopranos, Broad City, and several iterations of the Law and Order franchise. She’s a sensation as Ruby, it’s a shame this is her only appearance on Dark Shadows.