mad scene – Acilius on Dark Shadows

Episode 456: The little boy I brought with me

In 1966, the well-meaning Victoria Winters (Alexandra Moltke Isles) came to the great house of Collinwood to be governess to strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy.) Throughout the first 25 weeks of Dark Shadows, Vicki gradually learned that David’s stories of ghosts and other paranormal phenomena were not signs of a disordered imagination, but were simple statements of fact. Once she came to terms with that reality, Vicki and David became the closest of friends.

Now it is 1796. Vicki has come unstuck in time. For a brief period she served at Collinwood as governess to the children there, including Daniel Collins (David Henesy,) with whom she became the closest of friends. Vicki’s signal failure to adapt to her new surroundings soon led her to be convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death. She escaped from gaol and found a hiding place in the secret room of the Collins family mausoleum. Daniel joined her there.

Daniel, too, had been fleeing for his life. An unsightly man had abducted him. Daniel got away from him and made his way to the cemetery, where he had earlier seen Vicki duck into the mausoleum. When Daniel went out again, the man appeared and tried to strangle him. Vicki found out what was going on and shot the man to death.

Daniel and Vicki then left the cemetery and went to the great house. The lady of the house, Naomi Collins, believes that Vicki is innocent. Daniel is sure Naomi will help her.

In the study. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Today, Daniel and Vicki arrive at the house, and Naomi does indeed hide them. The three of them are in the study when Daniel’s brother-in-law, naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes, knocks on the door. Naomi hustles Vicki into a closet and lets Nathan in. Nathan dismisses Daniel’s claim that he was attacked, but when Daniel gives a description of his assailant Naomi realizes that it matches a man she saw Nathan with earlier. She is convinced that Nathan tried to do away with the boy.

She is correct. Nathan wooed Daniel’s sister Millicent for her money, only to discover after they were married that she had signed all of it over to Daniel. If Daniel dies, it reverts to her, which is to say to her husband. So Nathan set about scheming to have Daniel killed. As it was always dangerous to disbelieve David, so it would be dangerous to disbelieve Daniel.

When Naomi tells Nathan that the authorities will investigate Daniel’s story, he warns her against attracting the attention of the constable. He can see that she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. So he tells her that it is to do with her son Barnabas. Naomi declares that Barnabas is in England, repeating a lie that her husband Joshua commanded her to propagate. Nathan says that isn’t true. “So you know Barnabas is dead,” replies Naomi. Nathan denies that as well, and says that Barnabas has recently been murdering people in the town of Collinsport.

Naomi was in the house when Barnabas died and saw him in his coffin afterward, so she is not inclined to accept Nathan’s assertion. But Millicent keeps saying that she has seen Barnabas, Naomi thought she heard Barnabas’ voice the other day, and Joshua is obviously keeping some secret from her. So when Nathan tells her that Barnabas is in the room on top of the tower attached to the house, she can’t resist going up there to see for herself. At the end of the episode, Naomi is in the tower room, opening Barnabas’ coffin.

Episode 276: Into the room

For the first 54 weeks of Dark Shadows, reclusive matriarch Liz was paralyzed by the fear that someone would enter the locked room in the basement of the great house of Collinwood and find the murdered body of her husband Paul Stoddard buried there. For the last 16 of those weeks, seagoing con man Jason McGuire exploited that fear to blackmail Liz.

It turned out that Liz didn’t actually kill Stoddard and there never was a corpse hidden in the basement of the great house. There is, however, a corpse hidden in the basement of another house on the same estate. During the daytime, Liz’ distant cousin Barnabas Collins is a dead body resting in a coffin in the basement of the Old House. He gets up at night to feed on the blood of the living, lure the unwary to their damnation, and deliver rambling monologues about how sorry he feels for himself. Unlike Stoddard’s supposed grave in the great house, Barnabas’ coffin is not kept in a locked room, so the parallel has been incomplete.

Today, Barnabas decides to complete it. Trying to find and steal Barnabas’ jewels, Jason had broken into the Old House. He made his way to the basement, where he stumbled upon the coffin. He opened it, and Barnabas strangled him. Now, Barnabas orders his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie to help him carry Jason’s body to the secret room in the mausoleum where Barnabas himself was imprisoned and undiscovered for “nearly 200 years.”

Before they leave the basement, Barnabas tells Willie about his sister Sarah, who died when she was very young and innocent. After they leave, Sarah’s ghost appears and puts Jason’s sea cap on Barnabas’ coffin.

Sarah places Jason’s cap. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Episodes #1-#274 had all opened with voiceover narrations delivered by Alexandra Moltke Isles in character as well-meaning governess Vicki. Starting Friday, they gave the opening monologues to one of the actresses who happened to be in the episode to deliver as an unnamed external narrator. Today, this spoils a surprise. We haven’t seen Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, for a while, and aren’t sure when we will see her again. When Kathryn Leigh Scott delivers today’s opening voiceover, we know we will see Maggie today.

Barnabas had held Maggie prisoner for several weeks. He had borrowed a plan from the 1932 Universal film The Mummy. He would erase Maggie’s personality and replace it with that of his long lost love Josette. Once he had done that, he would kill her and she would rise from the dead as a vampiric version of Josette. Maggie did not go along with the plan, and Sarah’s ghost helped her to escape. Barnabas managed to scramble Maggie’s memory before her father found her, and she is now in treatment at a sanitarium called Windcliff.

Maggie’s hometown doctor, addled quack Dave Woodard, is visiting the director of Windcliff, Dr Julia Hoffman. Woodard wants to show Maggie a sketch Maggie’s father, artist Sam Evans, made when the ghost of Sarah visited him to tell him where to look for Maggie. Julia resists, Woodard insists. While Julia delays, she feeds the fish in the aquarium in her office. We see enough of the aquarium to suggest that Julia is the keeper of a world within a world, a little enclosure with its own rules.

Woodard shows Maggie the sketch. After a moment, she says “Sarah.” She tells them that Sarah visited her in the room where she was confined, that she told her a riddle that showed her how to escape. She becomes too upset to talk. She starts miming her search for a loose brick in the wall of the cell, then sings a verse of Sarah’s signature tune, “London Bridge.” She is shouting words from “London Bridge” when the nurse drags her down the hall, back to her room. Julia declares that the whole thing was a waste of time, a judgment in which Woodard does not concur.

Sam’s sketch of Sarah. Apparently the drawing was done before Sharon Smyth was cast as Sarah, when they planned to give the part to Harvey Keitel in drag. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Meanwhile, Barnabas and Willie take the body of Jason to the tomb of the Collinses and bury it in the secret room. They talk about the people buried in the part of the structure known to the public- Barnabas’ parents and his sister Sarah. Barnabas confirms that Sarah is the one he was telling Willie about in the basement, the friend he knew long before he met Josette. He reminisces about repairing a doll of hers the night before she died. We see the plaque giving her dates as 1786-1796, implying that Barnabas met Josette after 1796. They leave, and Sarah appears.

Liz had last seen Jason the night she thought she killed Stoddard; his reappearance would lead to the opening of the locked room and the exposure of its secret. Barnabas last saw Sarah in 1796; her reappearance, today’s events suggest, might lead to the opening of all the rooms Barnabas wants to keep closed and to the exposure of all his secrets.

Episode 265: Unusual as doctors go

Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, has escaped from vampire Barnabas Collins, but not before Barnabas put the zap on her brains. She is being treated at Windcliff Sanitarium, under the care of Dr Julia Hoffman.

Windcliff Sanitarium. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Dr Hoffman’s old acquaintance Dr Dave Woodard shows up with Maggie’s father Sam and boyfriend Joe. Woodard and Hoffman are Dark Shadows ‘ current versions of Bram Stoker’s Dr John Seward and Professor Abraham Van Helsing. As Seward called Van Helsing in when he needed help solving the mystery he encountered treating the victims of Count Dracula, so Woodard has called the expert Dr Hoffman in to help him solve the mystery he has encountered treating Barnabas’ victims. As Van Helsing refuses to answer any of Seward’s questions when they first start working together, so today Dr Hoffman refuses to answer any of Woodard’s questions about the case. There is one departure, in that Dr Hoffman combines Seward’s occupation as chief physician at a sanitarium with Van Helsing’s role as mysterious expert from out of town.

Dr Hoffman tells Dr Woodard that she believes it will be bad for Maggie to see Sam and Joe, but she consents to the visit as a way of discouraging them from trying to come back. When Sam and Joe join them in her office, she attends to her aquarium. In the post about this episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, Christine Scoleri points out that this is a rather direct way of telling us that there is something fishy about Dr Hoffman.

Fishy doctor. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

When Sam and Joe go to Maggie’s room, she has a mad scene. She starts singing “London Bridge,” gets to an obscure verse running “Take the key and lock her up,” and starts screaming “Lock her up!” over and over. It’s magnificently terrifying.

In his post on Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn raves about Grayson Hall’s performance as Julia Hoffman. Rightly so, she will quickly make herself indispensable to the series. He includes a lot of screenshots of her face, showing the wide variety of expressions she uses. I have a more complicated response to this aspect of her style.

As many screenshots as Danny gives of Grayson Hall’s face in his post, I presented even more screenshots of Lovelady Powell’s face in my post about #193, where Powell plays art dealer Portia Fitzsimmons. What impressed me about Powell’s performance is that she takes one of the most basic rules of screen acting- choose one of your eyes and look at your scene partner only with it- and builds a whole character around it. Her left eyelid is all she needs to command the stage and leave an indelible impression.

Hall was at the opposite extreme. She ignores the one-eye rule, and virtually every other piece of guidance professionals give about how to create a character on camera. She uses every muscle at every moment. Her broad, stagy approach works well for Dark Shadows, and the three actors with whom she shares her shots today stay out of her way. Still, she does make me miss Powell’s dominating simplicity.

With Julia’s introduction, all of the actors in the photo I use as the header for this blog have joined the cast of Dark Shadows. There is also a version of the picture where the actors are frowning.

Here’s the smiley version. I’ve marked each player with the number of the first episode in which s/he appeared:

Episode 258: Secret friend

Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is giving up hope. Vampire Barnabas Collins locked her up in the jail cell in the basement of his house some time ago, and everyone she knows is coming to believe that she is dead.

The other day, a little girl in eighteenth century clothing appeared outside Maggie’s cell. The girl did not respond when Maggie tried to get her attention, nor did Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood thrall, Willie, see her when she walked past him. Only on her second or third visit to Maggie did the girl interact with her, and then only to warn her not to tell her big brother that she had seen her. Maggie suspects that the girl was a hallucination of hers.

We know that the girl is real, because we saw her interacting with someone else. Outside Barnabas’ house, the girl talked with strange and troubled boy David Collins and played catch with him. If we’ve been watching the show from the beginning, we also know that there are many ghosts in and around Barnabas’ house, and that they have a special rapport with David. Further, this girl gives her name as Sarah and says that everyone she knows went away a long time ago. We’ve been told that Barnabas had a sister named Sarah who died in childhood, so we know that Sarah is the ghost of that sister.

Today, the girl appears to Maggie again. This time she shows up in the cell itself. At first, she tosses her ball in the air, sings “London Bridge,” and ignores Maggie’s repeated questions. Eighteenth century kids didn’t have mobile phones, apparently they had to resort to a ball and “London Bridge” when they wanted to tune out the grownups. Sarah finally comes around when Maggie puts her hand on her shoulder.

Sarah explains that she came because Maggie was crying. She asks what Maggie is sad about, which Maggie doesn’t try to explain.

Sarah won’t answer many of Maggie’s questions. Sarah says that she has been looking for her parents, and she is puzzled as to where they and everyone else have gone. She says she does have one friend. If that is a reference to David, it would show that Sarah can learn information during one apparition and retain it during subsequent apparitions. It is unclear whether she knows that she is a ghost, and her understanding of Maggie’s situation is remarkably slight.

Maggie and Sarah play catch and sing “London Bridge” together. Sarah vanishes a moment before Barnabas arrives. Maggie reacts to him with terror, but when it becomes clear that he isn’t planning to kill her right away her excitement at Sarah’s visit comes bursting out. She tells him that she has a secret friend who visits her in her cell and plays with her. When he asks what she’s talking about, she tells him it’s a secret. She babbles in a gleeful, childlike way.

Barnabas reacts to this with discomfort. He keeps his eyes on Maggie and edges away from her, speaking to her in a pitying tone. Bleak as Maggie’s situation is, this is a laugh-out-loud moment- she’s become too weird for Barnabas.

Upstairs, Barnabas tells Willie that Maggie isn’t working out. In a moment of wild hope, Willie asks if that means he’ll let her go. Barnabas sourly replies that of course it does not mean that- they will have to kill her. His plan is to kill her in such a way that no trace of her will ever be found, “because there will be no trace.”

Willie takes a meal to Maggie and demands she stop pretending to be crazy. It isn’t helping her, he says. She denies that she is doing any such thing, and babbles cheerfully that “I do whatever anyone tells me to do.” Willie leans in, putting his face close to hers, and screams and shouts that she has to be her usual self if she is to have any chance of survival.

After Willie leaves, Maggie starts crying again and telling herself that there is no little girl. But then she looks at the floor and finds a doll Sarah left behind. Maggie smiles, knowing that her secret friend does exist.

Maggie’s mad scenes are fascinating. Even though she believes that Sarah is real and we know she is right, seeing Sarah has the same effect on Maggie a psychotic break might have. It takes her out of the reality that she shares with Barnabas and Willie, and gives her an affect that is neither continuous with her usual personality nor intelligible to them.

The three adult actors are all on the top of their form today, just superb. Nowadays, when Sharon Smyth Lentz describes her performance as Sarah, she says that “The first word that comes to mind is ‘clueless.’” But that works out surprisingly well. We know so little about what, if anything, is going on in Sarah’s mind that the keynotes of the performance would have to be “lost,” “confused,” and “vague,” and she had those three things down pat. Things sometimes get rocky when Sarah has a long stretch of dialogue or when multiple actors are moving at the same time, but neither of those is a problem today.

Joe Caldwell started making uncredited contributions to the writing of Dark Shadows early in 1967, and I am tempted to attribute every good thing in a script by Malcolm Marmorstein to him. But Caldwell’s name is showing up in the credits now, and this episode is excellent. So maybe Marmorstein could rise to an occasion every now and then.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, points out that this is the first episode set entirely in the Old House.