mirrors – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 976: Roger Collins

When Dark Shadows began, its most dangerous villain was high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. Since the plan was to kill Roger off after his crimes were exposed, writer Art Wallace and actor Louis Edmonds were free to present him as gruesomely as they pleased. That turned out to be so much fun for all concerned that it soon became impossible to imagine the show without Roger, and the plan changed.

Once Roger was established as a permanent part of the ensemble, they toned his wickedness down. He still did and said awful things, but they would pull him back whenever he might risk alienating the audience. So, he at first openly expressed his hatred for his young son, strange and troubled boy David, and in #68 and #83 coldly exploited David’s mental health problems to manipulate him into trying to murder well-meaning governess Vicki. But when David got Vicki into a situation that might actually have resulted in her death, Roger rescued her. When Roger’s estranged wife Laura showed up and wanted to take David away with her, Roger was so delighted at the prospect of getting rid of the boy that he willfully ignored one sign after another that something was seriously wrong with Laura. But when Vicki finally proved to him that Laura was an undead fire witch who intended to incinerate David, Roger joined in the effort to save him, and was so shaken by the experience that he would never again be overtly hostile to David.

Nor was his attitude towards David the only sign of Roger’s pathological lack of family feeling. He had squandered his inheritance, selling his half of the family business to finance his extravagant lifestyle. His sister, reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, went deep into debt buying back what Roger had sold. When Roger ran out of money, Liz took him and David in at the great house of Collinwood. When in #41 Liz reproved Roger for the difficult position she had put him in, he proudly declared that he had “enjoyed” his inheritance, and twitted her for her dreary ways. Liz gave Roger a job in the business, but the only time we saw him visiting his office he answered his phone and told the caller that what he was asking was someone else’s job. When in #273 Roger found that seagoing con man Jason McGuire had tricked Liz into believing that she had a terrible secret that she could keep only by surrendering her whole fortune to him in blackmail payments, he admitted to his sister that if she had confided her troubles in him, he would probably have done the same thing.

When vampire Barnabas Collins succeeded Laura as Dark Shadows‘ supernatural Big Bad, Roger was pushed to the margins of the story. From that time on, he had two things to contribute. The first were sarcastic remarks, many of them very funny, that established him as the show’s sardonic gay uncle. The second, which gave him what little function he retained in the plot, were ostentatious refusals to believe the evidence piling up on all sides that the family was beset by a procession of bloodthirsty monsters. Since several other characters, Liz among them, also refused to face these facts, the show could go long periods of time without featuring Roger at all.

In November 1967, Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795. From then until March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in that period. The segment was a hit in the ratings, and a triumph for Louis Edmonds, who was cast as haughty overlord Joshua Collins. Joshua was the opposite of Roger- as protective of the family’s position as Roger was careless of it, as committed to making money as Roger was thoughtless in spending it, as courageous in the face of physical danger as Roger was cowardly. The 1790s segment became The Tragedy of Joshua Collins, as we saw how Joshua’s best qualities led him to create the dark and twisted world in which his descendants would grow up to be weak, selfish men like Roger.

When the show came back from the 1790s, Roger was obsessed with a portrait painted in those days. The portrait’s subject was Angelique, the wicked witch who precipitated the disasters that annihilated Joshua’s family. Before long, Angelique herself returned, wearing a wig, using a false name, and married to Roger. The spell Angelique cast to win Roger occasionally caused him to think he was Joshua, and by the time that story ended Roger had become, if not the imperious tycoon Joshua was, certainly a hard-working, conscientious family man. He still had a languid manner and a way with a quip, but was otherwise unrecognizable as the show’s original Man You Love to Hate.

Evil spirits drove the Collinses out of the great house of Collinwood in #694. That episode marked the end of Roger’s function as one of the “There must be a logical explanation!” people. He was the last member of the family to insist that everyone else was being silly, but when he finally accepted the reality of the situation and was on his way out of the house, he turned to declare to the ghosts that the living would be back to reclaim what was rightfully theirs. From that moment on, Roger was no longer a narrative brake pad.

For most of 1969, Dark Shadows was set in 1897. In that year, we got to know Quentin Collins, who as a ghost would be chiefly responsible for the haunting that had driven the Collinses out of Collinwood. We saw that the living Quentin was a charming rogue, a spendthrift who cheerfully tells his sober-minded sister Judith that he can waste money faster than she can give it to him, inclined to violence when it serves his purposes and quick to run away when he is in danger of being called to account for his crimes. In short, he is what Roger originally was, only played by a younger, sexier actor, and with an unlimited future on a show that has discovered the characters won’t alienate the audience by being evil, only by being dull.

In the 1897 segment, Edmonds played Quentin’s brother Edward, who was not dull, but not evil either. Edward was stuffy and hypocritical. He was occasionally cruel, sometimes because of greed, sometimes because of prejudice, and sometimes because he flew into a panic in the face of an unexpected danger. But he was sincerely devoted to his children, and he had a sense of decency that would assert itself even after he had done awful things. For all his faults, Edward was ultimately one of the most lovable characters Dark Shadows ever created. If 1795 was The Tragedy of Joshua Collins, 1897 was largely the Comedy of Edward.

After 1897, Dark Shadows spent several months bogged down in an attempt to make a story out of some themes drawn from the tales of H. P. Lovecraft. Roger showed up in this part of the show just a few times. Quentin, brought into contemporary dress intact due to his great popularity in the 1897 segment, told Roger what was going on in #958. Rather than scoff as he would have in 1967 or 1968, Roger accepted Quentin’s account at once and helped him in the battle. Roger had by that point turned into Edward. His habit of denial was gone, and with it all of his languor and most of his wit.

Now the show is clearing out the last villains left over from the Lovecraft project and launching a story about a parallel universe that is occasionally visible through a doorway in the long-disused east wing of the great house. Roger is active in both of these plots today.

Even when he was a villain who cared nothing for his son, his sister, his family name, or Collinsport Enterprises, Roger very much enjoyed the company of his niece, Carolyn Collins Stoddard. On Friday, he was hugging Carolyn while she wept about the difficulties she was having in her new marriage; he called her “Kitten,” a term of endearment he has used with her since #4. In those early days, the show was heavy with hints that Roger and Carolyn’s relationship verged on incest. She often answered to “Kitten” in the moments when those hints were most insistent. But there was nothing unwholesome about Roger’s embrace of Carolyn on Friday, and he is irreproachably fatherly in his attitude towards her today.

At rise, Carolyn is in a trap. A man named Bruno, one of the leftover villains introduced while the show was dealing with the Lovecraft-derived material, has tricked her into entering a room where he has already imprisoned her old friend Chris Jennings. Bruno locked the door, and Carolyn saw that Chris was on the floor, writhing in pain. She asks him what is wrong, he won’t answer. Carolyn doesn’t know it, but Chris is a werewolf. The moon is rising, and his pains are the first stage of his transformation.

Bruno’s master wants Carolyn’s husband dead, and has decided that if the werewolf kills Carolyn he will lose the will to live. Since it would have been at least as easy to get the husband into the room as it was to get Carolyn there, and since one of the main things they have told us about the husband is that he is vulnerable to werewolf attacks, this scheme is unnecessarily complicated, marked for the audience as likely to fail. Indeed, since Bruno, his master, and Carolyn’s husband are all short-timers who don’t really need to be on the show anymore, while Carolyn has been a core member of the cast since #2, we can be quite sure it will fail, and if we have spent time over the weekend wondering about the cliffhanger, we’ve spent it wondering what will save Carolyn.

What saves Carolyn turns out to be well-timed intervention by her Uncle Roger. Roger was worried that she wouldn’t tell him why she was crying about her marriage, and followed her to Bruno’s place. He saw her enter, and after a few minutes let himself in. He confronted Bruno in his parlor, heard Carolyn and Chris in the back room, and found that the door to the back room was locked. When Bruno told him the door would stay locked, Roger hit him on the head with a candlestick, knocking him out. He took Bruno’s key, unlocked the door, and freed Carolyn. While Roger telephoned Collinwood to ask for permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, Chris jumped out of the back room’s window. Roger then decided that he and Carolyn should go home.

It may strike first-time viewers as odd that Roger calls Julia and not the police. Established fans will be unsurprised, knowing that the Collinsport Sheriff’s office is one of the world’s most useless organizations and that Julia is a mad scientist whose powers know few limits. Still, once Roger gets Carolyn home he does tell her they should call the sheriff. She refuses, and also forbids him to tell her mother Liz anything about what has happened.

Roger finds Liz moping in the drawing room. He strikes up a conversation about Carolyn’s troubles. He says that he and Liz both made unhappy marriages, and that it is disappointing to see that the next generation seems determined to repeat their mistakes. He says that he wishes Carolyn would confide in one of them. Liz says that all she knows is that someone or something is threatening Carolyn’s husband, and that she refuses to discuss it. The camera pulls back, and we see that Carolyn is right there. Director Henry Kaplan was pretty bad at moving the actors around and even worse at figuring out where to point the camera, but he deserves credit for this shot. When we suddenly see Carolyn standing there, we realize that Roger and Liz are so deep in their worries that they are oblivious to their surroundings.

Carolyn insists on going to the carriage house on the grounds of the estate to see her husband. Since Bruno is at large, Roger objects. He can’t mention Bruno in front of Liz, since Carolyn has decreed that her mother must not be told what happened earlier in the evening, so he is powerless to stop her going.

Bruno does catch up with Carolyn, and he tells her he is going to kill her. Before he can do so, the werewolf springs out, pushes Carolyn aside, and slashes Bruno. She goes home and tells Roger and Liz what happened. From Carolyn’s description, Liz recognizes the werewolf as the same creature they encountered in late 1968 and early 1969, and Roger rushes out.

Roger finds Bruno on the ground. He tells Bruno he will call a doctor. Bruno says it’s too late. He says a few words (“animal… not an animal…”) and loses consciousness.

Back in the great house, Roger says that the police are searching the grounds for the werewolf. He says it’s terrible that Carolyn should have met with such an incident on top of what has already happened to her. Liz asks what he means, and Carolyn glares at him, appalled at his indiscretion. He stammers out something about how she’s having marital problems, then announces he has to go because he promised to do something for Barnabas.

Roger and Liz never have figured out that Barnabas is a vampire, and though Carolyn was briefly his blood thrall she’s forgotten all about it. So far as the Collinses are concerned, their distant cousin Barnabas is just a night person. Several times now, Barnabas has looked into a room in the east wing and has seen, not the dark space, bare floor, and sparsely decorated walls that are there in his universe, but an alternative version of the room, brightly lit, fully furnished, and heavily decorated. He has seen people with the same looks, voices, and names as people he knows, but with different personalities and relationships. He has reported this to Julia and her friend, Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, who have explained to him the many-worlds hypothesis.

On Friday, Barnabas told Roger about the room and about Julia and Stokes’ theory. The Roger of 1967 and 1968 would have jeered at Barnabas before he had spoken five words, but in 1970 he believed him readily enough. Barnabas expressed surprise at Roger’s openness to his outlandish account, and Roger acknowledges that “a year ago” he would have dismissed it. It was thirteen months ago that Roger turned and told the ghosts that the living would someday reconquer the great house; when he says “a year ago,” perhaps Roger is rounding down. Roger agreed then to come back and check the room.

When Barnabas showed Roger the room on Friday, it was bare. When Roger goes there himself today, he finds that the parallel universe is there. He cannot pass the invisible barrier in the doorway to enter it, nor can he communicate with the people there, but he can see them and hear them.

The first resident of the parallel universe Roger sees is Bruno’s counterpart. Astonished, he exclaims “I just saw him die!” Parallel Bruno is looking at the portrait of Parallel Angelique that dominates the room and telling it that the music he wrote for her will make her immortal. Roger does not appear to recognize the portrait’s resemblance to his second wife, much less to remember that he himself used to carry on similarly one-sided conversations with her eighteenth century portrait.

Parallel Liz enters and demands to know what Parallel Bruno is doing in the room. He says he belongs there. She tells him he is the only one who thinks so. She tells him that the master of the house, who is Quentin’s counterpart, will be coming home soon, and that he will never tolerate Bruno’s presence. Bruno says that he has heard that Quentin has remarried. When Liz says this is so, Bruno declares that Angelique will never allow another woman in the house. Liz is exasperated that people keep talking about Angelique as if she were still alive. Bruno exits.

Stunned by what he has seen, Roger looks away for a moment. He thinks of going to fetch Barnabas. His attention returns when he hears a conversation between Liz’ counterpart and his own.

Barnabas saw Parallel Roger on Friday; he was talking to the portrait in a way that suggested an obsession not so different from the one which the eighteenth century portrait had inspired in the Roger we knew. Today, Parallel Roger talks to Parallel Liz about Parallel Bruno in an airy, superior manner quite out of keeping with what we have had from our Roger today, but which sounds exactly like him as he was in 1967 and 1968.

PARALLEL ROGER: Was that Bruno, the terrible-tempered boy wonder I saw just now?

PARALLEL LIZ: Yes, he’s come back.

PARALLEL ROGER: Back to compose more of his morbid music and bore us with his tiresome memories of her? Well… It’ll be worth seeing the look on Quentin’s face when he finds out, won’t it?

Alliterative series such as “terrible-tempered” and “more morbid music” were characteristic of the old Roger’s verbal cleverness, as sarcastic expressions like “boy wonder” and complaints of boredom were typical of his habit of advertising his contempt for everyone and everything. Even Parallel Roger’s closing hope of “seeing the look on Quentin’s face,” as opposed to any thought of action he might himself take, is of a piece with the old Roger’s cowardice and laziness. Our Roger is horrified by the sight of his double.

Evidently the makers of the show have decided that Roger’s development has brought him to a dead end, and they are going to use the journey into “Parallel Time” to reintroduce the original villain. That Parallel Roger shares a scene with Parallel Liz suggests that we will again see the dynamic that their counterparts in the main “time-band” pioneered on the show, the conflict between Bratty Little Brother and Bossy Big Sister. This type of conflict is still one of Dark Shadows‘ signature elements, represented most prominently by Barnabas and Julia. The 1897 segment benefited from a similar conflict between Quentin and Judith; the 1795 segment lacked such a conflict, and in its absence they had to lean pretty hard on stories that put individual characters into isolation from the rest of the cast, burning them up one by one. Perhaps they plan to use the old standoff between Bratty Roger and Bossy Liz to keep the Parallel Time story spinning if the overall narrative hits some rough patches.

This episode marks the final appearance of the main “time-band” version of Bruno; the werewolf really did kill him. It is also the last time we will see the werewolf. Alex Stevens was billed as “Stunt Coordinator” when he played the werewolf. He will stay with the show as a stuntman, but won’t get his name in the credits again.

Episode 957: That’s a bad sign

Willie Loomis has come back to the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, where he once lived as the sorely bedraggled blood thrall of vampire Barnabas Collins. Willie intends to stay only for a short time, answering an invitation from Barnabas and mad scientist Julia Hoffman. Willie is engaged to marry a woman named Roxanne, and Roxanne expects to leave with him in the morning. But he finds out that Barnabas and Julia, along with the kindly Maggie Evans and some other people, are locked in battle with a vast and incomprehensible evil. So Willie announces that he cannot leave. He will stay and help Barnabas and Julia fight.

At the beginning and end, a shape-shifting monster sees something that terrifies him. Pondering this, Barnabas remembers that the two things which frighten the monster are ghosts and werewolves. Since Collinwood is the world capital of both ghosts and werewolves, that raises the question of why the monster wants to be there. The disturbance can’t be a werewolf- the first time it occurs, it prevents the monster from attacking Willie and Maggie, and if it were a werewolf it would just have gone on to attack them itself. The second time, Julia comes face to face with it. It casts a glowing light on her, and she asks what it is. One might assume she would recognize a werewolf, who in any case don’t glow. The show does a good job making us wonder just what the phenomenon is and making us hope we will find out tomorrow.

When Barnabas first enslaved Willie in 1967, he was extremely cruel and Willie was miserable beyond imagining. When Willie came back in 1968 after a stay in Windcliff, the mental hospital Julia controls, Barnabas’ vampirism was in remission and Willie took rather an insouciant attitude towards him. In those days, Barnabas put up with Willie’s insubordinate attitude with relatively mild displays of annoyance. Barnabas finally brought Willie to heel in #560, when he convinced Willie that his disobedience was putting Maggie in danger and Willie responded with agony. Torturing Willie in that way made Barnabas smile for the first time in ages. He was glad to return at last to his happy place.

Now, Barnabas is a vampire again, but Willie is full of friendship and goodwill towards him. He talks warmly to Julia about how Barnabas helped him in the past. In turn, Barnabas is genuinely concerned for Willie’s well-being, telling him that the current situation is too dangerous for him and that he should go live his own life. This new coziness leads to some intentionally funny moments. At one point, Willie walks in on Barnabas saying out loud that he doesn’t understand what’s going on. He tells the vampire “You’re talking to yourself, Barnabas. That’s a bad sign!” As if that’s the part he needs to worry about!

Willie has a conversation with Maggie that verges on the poetic. When he tells her “I never knew how awful it was to be alone until I wasn’t,” we find ourselves wanting him to go directly to Roxanne and run as far as he can as fast as he can.

There is a big mirror on the wall at the foot of the stairs in Barnabas’ house. At one point he walks in front of it and casts a reflection. Sometimes they have been very emphatic that vampires don’t cast reflections. Most famously, Julia confirmed that Barnabas was a vampire in #288, when she contrived to open her compact and point the mirror at him. The same prop was used in #704, when it exposed Barnabas’ secret to the luckless Sophie Baker, prompting him to murder her. On the other hand, when wicked witch Angelique became a vampire for a while in 1968, there were some shots that were obviously deliberate in their composition that prominently featured her reflection in mirrors, making the point that she was an exception to this rule. The mirror doesn’t have to be on the wall, but if it is we will inevitably see Jonathan Frid reflected in it, suggesting that they put it there on purpose to show that he is now another exception to the rule.

Willie was off the show for a year, from #696 (broadcast 24 February 1969) to #956 (broadcast 23 February 1970.) His absence during that period was not explained. Today he mentions to Julia that he has been working at another hospital, as he once worked for her at Windcliff. Indeed, she had offered him a job there in #537. Since Julia did not know about this other hospital job, he must have taken it sometime after leaving his position at Windcliff and without a reference from her. Before Barnabas enslaved him, Willie was a dangerously unstable ruffian, wanted by the police, so they are likely the first employers he has had who would have provided a usable reference. So he probably left Collinwood for the job at Windcliff not much later than March 1969 and held a job in some third place before getting back into hospital work more recently.

In the first year of the show, only David Henesy, as strange and troubled boy David Collins, looked directly into the camera; in the last year, that move has been the signature of Denise Nickerson as David’s young friend Amy Jennings. Today, just about every member of the cast does it. I believe it is the first time Jonathan Frid has done so, though there have been times when his examination of the teleprompter has moved him perilously close to an unintentional soliloquy.

Barnabas tells Julia that their enemies will never find his coffin “where it is now.” The first time we heard that was in 1967, and back then it made us wonder why, if he has an impregnable hiding place for his coffin, he usually just leaves it in the middle of his basement where no one coming downstairs could avoid seeing it. Barnabas spent most of 1969 as a time traveler visiting 1897. His vampirism was exposed in that year, and he was hunted. He assured his allies that no one could find his coffin where it was hidden then; they found it immediately. So longtime viewers aren’t so sure that Barnabas will escape detection during the day.

As Julia, Grayson Hall has a new hairdo today. It is a bit longer than it has been, and is swept up in front.

Episode 842: Some kind of an unnatural creature

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman has traveled back in time to the year 1897 to help her friend, vampire Barnabas Collins. Julia has fallen into the clutches of sorcerer Count Petofi and is bound and gagged in Petofi’s lair. A loaded revolver is tied to the doorknob, rigged to fire a round through her heart when the door opens.

Barnabas has learned where Julia is, but not about the death-trap in which she is ensconced. He storms into the building, turns the doorknob, and thereby discharges the gun. He sees Julia slumped over in her chair, and shouts at Petofi’s henchman that he will kill him. He then goes to Julia and finds that she is alive. There is a bullet-hole through the back of her chair, but she herself is unharmed.

Julia declares that there is only one explanation for this phenomenon that makes sense. Considering the kinds of stories that play out on Dark Shadows, we would think that an explanation that makes sense would be the one we could discard immediately, but Julia plows ahead. When she traveled back in time, only her “astral body” made the trip. Her physical body is still in 1969. For his part, Barnabas had a body in 1897, trapped in a sealed coffin. That body is hosting his personality, which is why he is subject to physical injury. But Julia is in no danger. When she later says that she can disregard Petofi’s threats, Barnabas says that if he finds out the truth, Petofi will just find another way to immobilize her, so she has to lie low.

Petofi is so powerful that Barnabas does not believe that he and Julia can fight him by themselves. So he tells Julia to summon wicked witch Angelique. Barnabas and Angelique have been enemies for centuries, but he thinks they have a common cause now. Angelique is determined to marry his cousin Quentin, whom he has befriended and Petofi has enslaved. So Barnabas expects she will agree to help fight Petofi.

Angelique does come in response to Julia’s message. She remembers Julia from time she herself spent in the 1960s, and is shocked to find her in 1897. Julia refuses to explain how she made her way back in time. She says that if Angelique can come to 1897 from 1968, she oughtn’t to be surprised she has come there from 1969. Angelique responds that Julia is not like herself and Barnabas. “I’m human,” says Julia. Since she is separated from her proper body, she isn’t fully human, not at the moment, but she still takes evident satisfaction in applying the label to herself. This marks a contrast with Angelique, who was offended earlier in the episode when Petofi laughed and taunted her for being “so human.” Julia and Angelique then snipe at each other about their respective relationships to Barnabas.

Julia says that it is essential Barnabas should “complete his mission” and solve the problems they were facing in 1969. Angelique responds that he will never be able to do that, because he has changed history too much in the time he has spent in 1897. This remark is intriguing for regular viewers. Barnabas’ six months of bungling around, picking fights, and committing murders must have had major consequences for what came after. That gives the show two ways forward. When Barnabas and Julia go back to a contemporary setting, they might meet an entirely different cast of characters and have to find a place for themselves in an alternate universe. Or they might do what they did when the show’s first time-travel story ended in March 1968, and dramatize the force of the Collins family’s propensity for denial. The head of the family in the 1790s decided to compel everyone in and around the village of Collinsport to pretend that none of the events we had seen had ever taken place, and when the costume drama segment ended we found that he had made that pretense stick ever since.

After Julia points out that it is to her advantage to emancipate Quentin from his bondage to Petofi, Angelique agrees to help. She still will not answer Julia’s questions. After she leaves the room, Julia looks in the mirror, sees an image of Angelique, and says that now she understands what she is going to do and believes it will work. That puts her one up on the audience.

Julia looks for an image of herself, and finds Angelique. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The scene pairs Julia and Angelique as two women whose lives have been shaped by their pursuit of Barnabas. Their bickering makes this similarity explicit. When Julia looks in the mirror and sees Angelique, they put very heavy emphasis on the similarity. In a brilliant, but now inaccessible, post on the great Collinsport Historical Society,* Wallace McBride wrote that “On Dark Shadows, your reflection always tells the truth.” He demonstrated that on the show, reflections are very strongly coded as true, so much so that they must be making a serious statement when they give us an image like this one. They are committing to the idea that Julia is, in some important way, the same as Angelique.

There are also a couple of scenes featuring the repulsive Roger Davis as artist Charles Delaware Tate. Mr Davis is especially hard to take in a scene with Donna McKechnie as the mysterious Amanda Harris. Miss McKechnie had already done outstanding work on Broadway as a singer and dancer by this time, but she felt herself to be a beginner as an actress, and she could not conceal her discomfort when Mr Davis shouted his lines. The 4:3 aspect ratio of old-time American television meant that the performers spent much of their time only a few inches from each other, and when Mr Davis yells in Miss McKechnie’s ear, she winces. He clutches at her arm, and she recoils; before she can relax from that invasion of her space, he slams down on a table, making a loud noise and causing her to jump.

Mr Davis’ incessant shouting will bring back memories for viewers who have been with the show from the beginning. The scene takes place on a set which is known in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s as the Evans Cottage. The Evans Cottage was home to drunken sad-sack Sam Evans and his daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. Sam, like Tate, was an artist, and the artworks scattered around the set in the 1897 segment remind us of the cottage’s iconography.

The first seven times we saw Sam, between #5 and #22, he was played by an actor called Mark Allen. Like Mr Davis, Allen had considerable training as an actor and a long resume of stage and screen appearances. Also like him, he is just terrible. Mr Davis did have extensive skills and could on occasion give nuanced performances, though he rarely chose to do so. He much preferred spending his time roughing up the women and children in the cast.

But Allen never once did a good job of acting. In each of his episodes, he either shouted every line with the same ear-splitting bellow, or whined every line in the same putrid snivel. Allen didn’t assault his scene partners on camera, as Mr Davis routinely did, though Kathryn Leigh Scott, who played Maggie, has made it clear that she did not feel safe in scenes where they embraced. Moreover, in some corners of fandom there are persistent rumors about abusive behavior off-camera that led to Allen’s dismissal. People claim to have heard remarks cast members and others associated with the show let drop at Dark Shadows conventions over the years, and from those remarks they come to some alarming conclusions about what Allen did behind the scenes. Who knows if those conclusions are correct, or if the people who report the remarks even heard them clearly, but Allen was so unpleasant as a screen presence that it is tempting to believe the worst about him.

The point of Tate’s scene with Amanda is that she does not want to believe that she is an artificial being who came to life when he painted a portrait that looked like her. Tate’s success as an artist is the result of magic powers Petofi gave him; he just recently learned that he can make things pop into existence by drawing or painting them. To convince Amanda that he has this power, Tate sketches an imaginary man. She screams, and we see her looking at the man who has come into being.

This seems like a bad choice on Tate’s part. Why not draw an inanimate object instead? If he’d drawn a hat or a gold bar or a gemstone, he could just have given it to Amanda with his compliments. But now he has a 25 year old man whom he is obligated to help make his way in the world. If an inanimate object wasn’t a striking enough image to send the episode out with a dash of spectacle, then Tate could have created a farm animal, such as a donkey or a goat. If Amanda didn’t want such an animal, Tate could just shoo it outside and be confident someone would claim it- Collinsport is supposed to be a tiny town in the middle of a rural area, after all. But for all the irresponsible behavior we’ve come to accept from characters on Dark Shadows, we are not going to be able simply to forget about this human being. They are going to have to do something to account for him.

*A site which has now been taken over by a “crypto-based casino” outfit! You’d be safer at Collinwood.

Episode 823/824: Brandy will warm you

Count Petofi, 150 year old sorcerer, is holding time-traveling vampire Barnabas Collins prisoner. Barnabas’ distant cousin, rakish libertine Quentin Collins, is convinced that only Barnabas can free him of the curse that has made him a werewolf and condemned any male descendants he may have to the same fate. Petofi is afraid of the Rroma people, a group of whom are in the area, and Quentin hits on a plan to use this fear to his advantage. He will tell Petofi that he has a confederate who will tell the Rroma where he is unless he releases Barnabas by 12:45 AM.

In fact, Quentin has enlisted his girlfriend, maidservant Beth, to carry this message to the Rroma camp. When Petofi reminds Quentin that his magical powers make it very easy for him both to compel Quentin to tell him who the messenger is and to stop any messenger once he knows her name, Quentin says there is no need to compel him to say the name. He claims that it is wicked witch Angelique.

As soon as Quentin tells this lie, we wonder why he hadn’t thought of Angelique sooner. Angelique has intervened to rescue Barnabas before, and she and Quentin are in touch. Petofi’s powers may be greater than hers, but it would take him more time to outfight her than it would for her to show the Rroma the way to his hiding place.

Petofi insists Quentin drink with him, and Quentin is too civilized to refuse. This is mirrored back at Collinwood. The repressed Charity Trask has lost her personality and became a vessel for the spirit of Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye. Charity/ Pansy insists that Beth drink with her.

Pansy approves of her new looks. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

While Petofi does not tamper with Quentin’s drink, Charity/ Pansy puts something in Beth’s that knocks her out. Charity/ Pansy wants Quentin for herself. She has thought of killing Beth, and knows Quentin will be upset with Beth if she disappoints him. That leaves us in suspense as to whether she murdered Beth or merely kept her from running her errand.

This diptych emphasizes Petofi’s power and Charity/ Pansy’s unpredictability. Quentin need not fear Petofi will poison him, because there are any number of more elegant ways he could kill him if he wished to do so. As another sorcerer said of himself in #528, he is much too talented to spend his time drugging drinks. But Beth should fear Charity/ Pansy, because she is still connected to the world of the living only uncertainly, and there is no telling what she might do to find her footing.

Episode 766: The weeping Dorcas

Vampire Barnabas Collins happens upon his unwilling sidekick, ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, after she has fired a silver bullet at his distant cousin, werewolf Quentin Collins. He sternly forbids her to finish Quentin off, and for some reason she decides he is right.

Back in human form, Quentin is haunted by the ghost of Dorcas Trilling, a woman he killed in his first night as a werewolf. He has been telling himself that the evil deeds of the werewolf are not his own responsibilities, but that “he” is the culprit. That comforts him, but Dorcas isn’t having it. So he instantly collapses into, “All right, I did, but I couldn’t help it!” That doesn’t go over any better.

Unfortunately, this is Gail Strickland’s final appearance on Dark Shadows. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas and Quentin have a confrontation. Barnabas tells Quentin that he knows his secret and says that he wants only to help him; Quentin angrily responds that he cannot trust Barnabas, who refuses to tell him anything about himself. He does ask Barnabas to kill him if it is the only way to keep him from turning into the werewolf again, so I suppose that is a step towards friendship.

Episode 758: Strangled on her stories

Undead blonde fire witches Laura and Angelique are trying to destroy each other, using Laura’s son Jamison and Jamison’s uncle Quentin as their cat’s paws. At the beginning of the episode, it looks like the spell Angelique and Quentin are casting is about to incinerate Laura; at the end, it looks like the spell Laura is casting is incinerating Angelique. In between, Quentin’s sister Judith notices that something is wrong with Jamison, and suspects that whatever Quentin and Angelique are up to is the cause.

Quentin and Laura get all religioused-up asking the gods of ancient Egypt to help them against Laura. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Laura is just about out of story, so we can see that she will be leaving the show soon. She has important relationships to all the characters on the show right now, so her departure will kick this segment of Dark Shadows, a costume drama set in the year 1897, into a new phase. Today’s episode is too deeply involved with the back and forth in the battle of the witches to give much indication as to what that next phase will be, but Judith’s perceptiveness suggests that whatever it is will keep up the rapid pace set in the first twelve weeks of the flashback, unencumbered by characters who slow things down by refusing to face facts.

Longtime viewers will be intrigued by variations on some familiar themes. Angelique orders Quentin to bring her a mirror and then leave the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. Obviously she is going to use it to cast a spell that will protect her from Laura, but she refuses to tell Quentin the particulars. We know well how powerful reflections are in the universe of Dark Shadows; Wallace McBride of the Collinsport Historical Society made some very penetrating observations about how that motif was already in place in episode #1 in his 18 April 2020 post on that treasured, but now only intermittently available, site.

Later, Laura is in the drawing room at the great house on the estate about to tell Judith the secret of the mysterious Barnabas Collins, but Angelique enters, makes googly eyes at Laura, and thereby robs her of the power to speak. When the show had its first séance in #170 and #171, it was held in this room and another iteration of Laura was in attendance. It was that Laura who looked at the medium with bulging eyes when she began to speak, and that medium struggled to speak just as Laura does now. So today we see the tables turned on Laura.

Quentin and Angelique are alone for a moment in the foyer of the great house. He backs her against the portrait of Barnabas that hangs there and asks why she prefers Barnabas to him. That is a question that will have occurred to the audience. The two of them look great together and have a lot of fun together, while Barnabas hates Angelique. All she does is kill his family and friends to punish him for refusing to love her. She brushes Quentin off and orders him to go back to the Old House.

In the final scene, Quentin returns to the Old House and is baffled to find that Angelique not only got there before him, but that she has had time to play a long game of solitaire since returning from the great house. She dismisses his questions and tells him that she wants him to be with her when “it happens.” Before he can find the words to ask what she is expecting, she bursts into flames.

It seems that Angelique is in two places at once. More precisely, it seems that there are two of her, one that Quentin left in the great house, and another who was in the Old House all along waiting to be incinerated by Laura’s spells. Presumably the one in the Old House is a Doppelgänger that Angelique used the mirror to create. Nowadays, the idea of a home-made Doppelgänger fabricated to serve a specific purpose will remind many people of the 2017 season of Twin Peaks, with its concept of a “tulpa.” The Buddhist concept of the tulpa was indeed in circulation in the USA in the 1960s; Annie Besant had introduced it to the Theosophist movement, which had many followers in the Midwest, where writer Sam Hall was born. But Besant and her fans seem to have used the word in a sense closer to its original, in which people attaining Buddha-hood have the power to send copies of themselves back into the world to teach others pursuing enlightenment. Later heirs of Theosophy have tried to develop a non-Buddhist meaning for the word tulpa, but using it to refer to a lookalike that some practitioner of black magic can whip up to do a job appears to be the intellectual property of Lynch/ Frost Productions.

Be that as it may, we have seen ever since Laura was first on the show from December 1966 to March 1967 that each of the supernatural beings on Dark Shadows is a complex of related but independent phenomena, some of which may work at cross-purposes with each other. Angelique in particular seems to create another version of herself and send it out into the world each time she casts a spell. Since others of Angelique’s creatures have gone on to defy her, even trying to kill her, it must have come as a relief to know that this time the Doppelgänger would be going up in flames by nightfall.

Episode 742: Barnabas, Quentin, and the advantage of being seen together

We open in the cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, where the rakish Quentin Collins has triumphantly confronted his sister-in-law and sometime lover, Laura Murdoch Collins, with a telegram from the authorities in Alexandria, Egypt, declaring that she died in that city the year before. Laura points out that the fact that she is standing in front of him and breathing would tend to limit the credence such a document might be expected to command. Quentin hadn’t thought of that. He looks puzzled for a moment, then says that even if no one else is convinced, he is now sure that she is dead.

Laura, unable to believe that Quentin really is this stupid. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Viewers who have been with Dark Shadows from the beginning will particularly enjoy this exchange. Another iteration of Laura, also played by Diana Millay, was on the show from December 1966 to March 1967, when the dramatic date was contemporary with the broadcast date. In those days, the authorities in Phoenix, Arizona, kept sending messages to the residents of the great estate of Collinwood concerning their reasons for believing that Laura was dead. Most of those messages were received with a laugh, then with irritation that a bunch of brain-dead bureaucrats wouldn’t stop pestering them with reports that were obviously false. But there were a few times when characters took them with an inexplicable seriousness. It’s a relief to see that this part of the show, set in the year 1897, will not include any of those jarringly foolish reactions.

Quentin and Laura argue about her children. She wants to take them and leave Collinwood; he asks what she will accept instead. Quentin’s pretense that he would have anything to offer her that might be tempting so amuses Laura that she doesn’t bother to be insulted. When he says that he will give her money, she laughs. The penniless Quentin says that he will steal any amount she names. He claims to “have powers.” Before Laura returned to Collinwood in #729, we twice saw Quentin take part in unholy summoning rituals on this set (#711 and #718,) each of which did result in communication with the spiritual forces of darkness. It does seem to be a bit of an exaggeration for him to claim to “have powers,” though. Especially so when he is talking to someone whom he believes to have transcended death.

A male servant comes to the door. Quentin believes this man to be Laura’s lover, and nearly says so today. In fact, Quentin has severely underestimated Laura in every way. She did die in Alexandria. But she has also died in other places, at other times, and will do so again. She is an undead fire witch who periodically incinerates herself and rises from the ashes as a humanoid Phoenix. The man is not her lover in any human sense. Rather, one of the ways she keeps herself more or less alive is by draining heat from his body in a kind of dry vampirism.

Quentin leaves Laura alone with the servant. Opposite David Selby, Diana Millay had shown her gift for dry comedy to great advantage. Once he exits and she is alone with the servant, her manner shifts abruptly. She suddenly starts overacting and sounding false. I think that is down to the actor who plays the servant, Roger Davis. Mr Davis was notoriously abusive of his female scene partners, and she has to play her scene in his arms. It would have been difficult for anyone to relax sufficiently to give a good performance when she was stuck in that unenviable position.

Laura is not the only vampiric presence at Collinwood these days. Time-traveler Barnabas Collins is the old-fashioned blood-sucking kind, and we see him rise from his coffin. He summons his blood thrall Charity Trask to come to him at the Old House on the estate. Charity comes. Several of Barnabas’ female victims have gone through a particular series of stages. First, they are elated at their new connection with Barnabas, and want to devote themselves to him as slavishly as possible. Then, they become reluctant to go on serving as his breakfast, and make anguished protests about wanting to return to their previous lives. Finally, they rebel. Charity has entered the second stage. She says that her father expects her. Barnabas has seen all this before, and has learned to have fun with it. He tells Charity that he needs her more than her father does. He bares his fangs and bites her, after which she is back to elated servility.

Barnabas tells Charity that she will be assisting him in a ceremony. She waits in the Old House while Barnabas goes to the great house on the estate to fetch something he needs for that ceremony.

We cut to Quentin’s room in the great house, where we see a mirror. It shows the reflection of Quentin kissing maidservant Beth. When we first saw them talk to each other in #701, Beth was fighting her attraction to Quentin and trying to resist his attempts to seduce her. That’s what was supposed to be going on, anyway, but we didn’t actually see it. Terrayne Crawford played Beth’s lines according to the literal meaning of the words, with the result that for the first six weeks of the part of Dark Shadows set in 1897 Beth seemed sincerely uninterested in Quentin, and his overtures were just sexual harassment. Now Ms Crawford no longer has to play conflicting emotions. Beth is simply in love with Quentin. She gets that point across adequately.

Beth pulls away from Quentin, explaining that she has to get back to work. He talks about ending his marriage so that they can be together permanently; he says that it may serve their cause to stop being so discreet, since a little scandal may prompt the rest of his family to drop their opposition to any change in the status quo. While they get ready to part, we see the window, outside of which a bat is squeaking incessantly. They exit, and Barnabas appears.

Barnabas rummages through Quentin’s desk and finds a book. Beth reenters and catches him. He tells her he came for the book and was planning to leave a note. A smirk on her face, Beth says that it will not be necessary to do so, as she will tell Quentin all about what she has seen.

Beth goes downstairs and meets Quentin in the foyer. Quentin asks what book it was Barnabas took. She says that all she saw of the title was the word “dead.” Evidently Quentin has quite a few books with the word “dead” in the title, because he has to ask where exactly Barnabas found it. She says it was in the desk, and he rushes off to the Old House.

It was the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and Barnabas used it to perform a rite calling on Amun-Ra to cause the spirit of one of Laura’s previous incarnations to appear before him. At that, we cut to the cottage, where the currently alive-ish Laura grows weak and vanishes. Back in the Old House, we see the ghost take shape. Charity sees it too, and runs screaming out the front door. Quentin enters just in time to see the end of Barnabas’ conversation with the phantasmal Laura. The phantom looks at Quentin, screams, and disappears.

On Friday, Laura said that no one knew just how deeply Quentin was obsessed with the occult. His own absurd claim today to “have powers” so great that he could make it worth Laura’s while to leave without her children confirms that he is very far gone in this obsession. So when he sees that Barnabas is not only doing battle with the same adversary whom he is trying to confront, but is also able to conjure up spirits from the vasty deep, we can be confident that Quentin’s hostility to his recently arrived “cousin from England” will soon be evaporating. As Tony Peterson might say, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Episode 738: The rest of the truth

This episode ends with one of the most thrilling moments in all of Dark Shadows.

The show’s first supernatural menace was undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, who was on it from December 1966 to March 1967. Its second was vampire Barnabas Collins, who first appeared in April 1967. Laura herself was presented with many tropes that conventionally mark vampires; for example, they laid great emphasis on the fact that Laura was never seen eating or drinking. And Laura’s story was structured very much like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with well-meaning governess Vicki taking Mina’s role as the driving force behind the opposition to her. Presumably, if Barnabas had been staked and destroyed as the original plan envisioned, Vicki would have led the fight against him as well, and in #275 driven the stake into his heart. But Barnabas brought the show a new audience, and so Vicki was never called on to go to battle with him. Her character withered and was written out, and he replaced her as its chief protagonist.

In early 1967, Vicki learned that Laura had appeared at least twice before, and had died in strikingly similar ways each time. In 1767, Laura Murdoch Stockbridge was burned to death with her young son David; in 1867, Laura Murdoch Radcliffe was burned to death with her young son David; and in 1967, Vicki found Laura Murdoch Collins beckoning her young son David to join her in the flames consuming a wooden building. At the last second, Vicki broke through David’s trance and he ran to her, escaping the flames.

In November 1967, the show established that Barnabas lived on the great estate of Collinwood as a human in 1795, and that he became a vampire as a result of the tragic events of that year. If Barnabas were the same age in 1795 that Jonathan Frid was in 1967, he would have been born late in 1752, meaning that he would have been a teenager when Laura Murdoch Stockbridge and little David Stockbridge went up in smoke. The Stockbridges were a very wealthy family, so they would likely have been on familiar terms with Barnabas and the other rich Collinses of Collinsport, and the deaths of Laura and David would have been one of the major events in the area in those days. So longtime viewers have been wondering ever since whether Barnabas knew Laura, and if so what he knew about her.

Now Barnabas has traveled back in time to the year 1897, and there he meets another incarnation of Laura. He is thunderstruck at the sight of her. In her bland, enigmatic way, she expresses curiosity about his reaction, and he collects himself sufficiently to make some flattering remarks about her beauty. As soon as he is alone with his blood thrall, Miss Charity Trask, he declares that Laura has been dead for over a hundred years. So has he, but apparently when a woman rises from the dead to prey on the living that’s different, somehow. We saw this same old double standard a couple of weeks ago, when libertine Quentin Collins expressed shock at Laura’s return from the dead, when he himself had died and been a zombie just the week before.

If Laura did know Barnabas when she was as she is now and he was an adolescent, it is no wonder she does not seem to recognize him. She knows that there is a Barnabas Collins on the estate, and has heard that he is a descendant of the eighteenth century bearer of the same name. She would expect him to resemble the boy she knew, but would not necessarily know what that boy looked like when he was in his forties.

This is the first time we’ve seen Charity since Barnabas bit her in #727. She lives in the town of Rockport, which in the 1960s was far enough away from Collinwood that in #521 it was worthy of note that you could dial telephone numbers there directly. In 1897, when automobiles were rare and roads weren’t made for the few that did exist, a long-distance relationship between vampire and blood thrall would seem quite impractical. Still, in #732 we saw a character make two round trips between Rockport and Collinwood in a single evening, so I suppose it could be managed.

Barnabas’ recognition of Laura is a fitting conclusion to a fine episode. Much of it is devoted to a three-cornered confrontation between Laura, her twelve year old son Jamison Collins, and her brother-in-law/ ex-lover/ mortal enemy, Quentin. Danny Horn analyzes this in his post about the episode at Dark Shadows Every Day. I recommend that post highly. All I would add is that as it plays out today, the confrontation makes me suspect that the writers of the show may have done more planning than Danny usually credits them with. Jamison is the only person Quentin loves, and so far we have seen that Jamison loves Quentin back. When he learns that Quentin is his mother’s foe, Jamison turns against Quentin. Barnabas traveled back in time after Quentin’s ghost had made life impossible for everyone in 1969. The evil of Quentin’s spirit fell heaviest on David Collins, whom Quentin had possessed, turned into another version of Jamison, and was in the process of killing. Nothing yet has explained why Quentin’s ghost would focus its malignity on the image of Jamison. Actress Diana Millay used to claim that Laura was added to the 1897 segment at the last minute because she told Dan Curtis she wanted to work, but Millay famously enjoyed testing the credulity of Dark Shadows fans with outlandish remarks. I wonder if a falling-out between Quentin and Jamison over Laura was in the flimsies all along.

Charity makes her first entrance in the great house of Collinwood. Quentin is apologizing to her for some boorish behavior when he realizes she hasn’t been listening to him at all. She is completely absorbed in the eighteenth century portrait of Barnabas that hangs in the foyer. She excuses herself and wafts out the front door.

In Barnabas’ house, Charity says that he makes her feel beautiful, and that she wants to see herself in a mirror. Barnabas is a bit sheepish about the particulars of vampirism, and so he changes the subject. We cut from this exchange to Laura’s room in the great house, where she is with a servant named Dirk whom she has enthralled to serve as a source of body heat. That scene opens with a shot in a mirror, making the point that Laura’s relationship with Dirk is a reflection of Barnabas’ relationship with Charity. Earlier, there had been a clumsy attempt at an artsy shot of Laura reflected in Quentin’s sherry glass. That does show us that Laura casts a reflection and that her relationship with Quentin has been affected by his drinking, but it calls too much attention to itself to do much more than that.

The portrait in the foyer is hugely important to Barnabas. It made its debut on the show in #204, the day before his name was first mentioned and more than a week before he himself premiered. His thralls stare at it and receive his commands through it. He himself uses it as a passport, appealing to his resemblance to it as proof that he is a descendant of its subject and therefore a member of the Collins family. Today, Barnabas is surprised when Charity comes to his house; he wasn’t transmitting a message through the portrait summoning her. Instead, it was functioning as another mirror, in which Charity, who has become a part of Barnabas, could see the motivating force within her own personality.

Dirk is played by Roger Davis, a most unappealing actor. At one point he makes this face while Dirk is involved in some kind of mumbo-jumbo:

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

At one point today, Quentin tells Jamison that he shouldn’t be afraid of telling the servants what to do, since after all he will someday be the master of Collinwood. Jamison takes this altogether too much to heart, and spends the rest of the episode ordering everyone around. David Henesy is a good enough actor to extract the comic value from this. For example, when he turns to Quentin, says “I’ll talk to you later!,” and keeps walking, we laughed out loud.

Episode 718: Spy school

The principal writer of the first seventeen weeks of Dark Shadows was Art Wallace, who was interested in characters as one another’s reflections. Many of his episodes were structured as diptychs, in which we would alternate between two small groups dealing with similar situations. In the comparison, we would see that people who were in some ways very different from each other or hostile to each other would make the same decisions when faced with the same circumstances.

Wallace left the show in October 1966, never to return, but his interest in mirroring comes up again and again. The current storyline centers on Barnabas Collins, who has traveled back to the year 1897. In the first months of 1969, the ghost of Quentin Collins was persecuting strange and troubled boy David, and it was to rescue David that Barnabas participated in a summoning ritual which, to his surprise, got him unstuck in time and brought him face to face with the living Quentin. It also turned Barnabas back into what he was for 172 years, a vampire.

This story is the inverted image of Dark Shadows‘ first costume drama insert, which ran from November 1967 to March 1968. In that period, well-meaning governess Vicki participated in a summoning ritual because she knew that some supernatural menace posed a mortal threat to David. She did not know who that menace was or in what way he was supernatural, but the audience knew that it was Barnabas the vampire. During the four months of that uncertain and frightening journey into the past, we learned how Barnabas became a vampire and that he could be interesting even if he were not one. Vicki didn’t learn anything, and would eventually be written out of the show.

Early in today’s episode, Barnabas is in the room on top of the tower in the great house on the estate of Collinwood. This room was introduced in the 1790s story as one of the places where Barnabas was hidden. In this period, a mentally ill woman named Jenny Collins is hidden there. Governess Rachel Drummond sneaked into the room because Barnabas’ unwilling associate, ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, read Rachel’s palm and told her she had a deadly enemy who was hiding there, and that if she let that enemy choose the time of their first meeting she would have no chance of survival. Jenny sprang from the room, locked Rachel in it, went to the main part of the house, and set fire to the sheets of the bed in which the stuffy Edward Collins lay sleeping.

Barnabas heard about this from Rachel, who reminds him of his lost love Josette. He knows that Angelique, the wicked witch who turned him into a vampire in the first place, is operating in this period and that she has already targeted Rachel. He knows nothing about Jenny, and so he assumes that Angelique is lurking in the tower room. When he enters it, he opens an armoire and finds a doll’s head. The rest of the doll is not attached and the back of the head is caved in, but the face is undamaged. This is the first suggestion of a mirror, a device in which a face can be seen intact and functional even though it is separated from the rest of the person.

Barnabas calls for Angelique and she appears. Barnabas denounces Angelique’s crimes; Angelique brings up his. She asks what he sees when he looks in the mirror, then remembers that he casts no reflection. Angelique does not mention what we have seen ever since we first met her during the 1790s segment, that the vampire curse made Barnabas into her reflection. Today, for example, she gleefully taunts him with the murders he has committed, including those her curse compelled him to commit. This reminds longtime viewers of #341, when Barnabas pressured his friend Julia Hoffman into helping him kill a man named Dave Woodard and then gleefully taunted her with her new status as a murderer.

Angelique tells Barnabas that he has only to love her and she will cease to be his enemy. She makes it clear that she knows all about the mission that has led him to travel back in time from 1969, and offers to help him accomplish it. She suggests that it is his hatred for her that has led her to treat him and everyone around him so cruelly for so long. She says that she will return his love as abundantly as she has returned his hate. She claims to be his mirror, as we know he has long been hers, and offers to show him a pleasing reflection if he submits to her desires.

Barnabas angrily refuses, and Angelique conjures up an image of his impending destruction in the window. Barnabas will not look into this magic mirror, and when he seizes Angelique she vanishes from his arms.

Quentin is on his guard against Barnabas. In the course of an adorable scene in which Quentin and his twelve year old nephew Jamison pretend to be spies, he sends Jamison to steal something that belongs to Barnabas.

Jamison is leery of the whole thing; he says that Quentin doesn’t know any more about real spycraft than he does, forcing Quentin to admit that he was in fact a spy for the police in Egypt not so long ago. This too will get the attention of longtime viewers. Jamison is played by David Henesy, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s plays David Collins. Jamison and Quentin are in the groundskeeper’s cottage on the estate, which from December 1966 to March 1967 was home to David’s mother Laura Murdoch Collins. Laura often told the story of the Phoenix, usually setting the scene in an unnamed land which, she said in #140, “Some call… Paradise.” But she leans heavily enough on the existing mythology of the Phoenix that she reminds even readers who have never heard of Herodotus of ancient Greece and Egypt. Laura herself turned out to be a supernatural phenomenon consisting of several distinct beings reflecting themselves back to each other.

Quentin decides that Jamison must sneak into Barnabas’ house and bring his cane back to the cottage. After he does so, Quentin casts a spell that causes Jamison to speak with the voice of Ba’al, a title for various gods whose cults are remembered very unfavorably in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Among other grim associations the name of Ba’al brings to the minds of those who adhere to the great monotheistic religions is the practice of child sacrifice among the Phoenicians, a practice that often involved the burning of the body of the sacrificed child. Since “Phoenician” and “Phoenix” sound so much alike,* longtime viewers may well associate Ba’al with Laura.

Quentin has made a voodoo doll of Barnabas. Through Jamison, Ba’al says that only silver will work against Barnabas. Silver is of course used in making mirrors, and the piece of silver Quentin uses to inflict disabling pain on Barnabas is the head of Barnabas’ own cane. So once more Barnabas finds himself oppressed by a reflection, or perhaps by the absence of a reflection.

Barnabas is with Magda when he collapses under the pain Quentin is causing him. They discover that the cane is missing. Magda figures out what is happening, and rushes to the cottage. She confronts Quentin, jeering at his cowardice. Quentin is no man at all. He is using a child as a pawn in a black magic rite, and fighting an enemy using a doll. Magda looks at Quentin’s face and reacts with horror as the image of a skull is superimposed on it. She recognizes this as a sign that he will die soon.

Jamison has scenes with both Quentin and Magda today. David Henesy had such great chemistry with David Selby that it’s no wonder Mr Selby named his son “Jamison,” and Hall’s equally great chemistry with him leads me to suspect that if her son Matthew hadn’t already been born when she joined the show he might have been named for Mr Henesy as well. Hall and Jonathan Frid are always wonderful together, and today’s Barnabas/ Angelique confrontation is the best scene Frid and Lara Parker have shared so far. Angelique’s maniacal intensity has always set an upper bound to how responsive Parker could be to Frid’s performance. She is calm enough today that we see them for the first time really in the same space.

*As well they might- they both come from the ancient Greek Φοίνιξ, an adjective meaning “red.” Herodotus calls the legendary fire creature “red-bird,” and the Greeks named the northern Canaanites after the red dye they bought from them.

Episode 704: The sort of person relatives would want to meet

When vampire Barnabas Collins first came to the great house of Collinwood in April 1967, the living members of the Collins family were embattled, isolated, and desperate for friendship. In 1966, one of the major themes of Dark Shadows had been that the Collinses were running out of money and their nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, was using his own fortune to buy up their outstanding debts and alienate the people of the village of Collinsport from the Collinses. Everywhere they turned, they met hostility in one form or another. Their two most devoted employees had been plant manager Bill Malloy and handyman Matthew Morgan; in a fit of rage, Matthew killed Bill, and went on to abduct and try to kill well-meaning governess Victoria Winters. Roger Collins’ estranged wife, Laura Murdoch Collins, showed up; she turned out to be an undead blonde fire witch out to kill their son, strange and troubled boy David. No sooner had Victoria rescued David from Laura than seagoing con man Jason McGuire presented himself and set about blackmailing matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Jason even forced Liz to give the bedroom next to her daughter Carolyn to his rapey sidekick, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis.

So when a man knocked on the door who looked exactly like the portrait of an ancestor who lived in a previous century and introduced himself as a distant cousin from England, a wealthy eccentric with courtly manners who wanted only to spend time on the estate where his forebears lived long ago, Liz and Roger were delighted to host him. Barnabas spent most of 1967 as a comic villain scrambling to maintain the pretense that he was native to the twentieth century, but as far as the adult residents of the great house were concerned his authenticity was established beyond doubt the first moment they saw him.

Now Barnabas has traveled back in time to the year 1897. In this period the Collinses of Collinwood are rich, powerful, and paranoid. Unknown to Barnabas, a woman named Magda Rákóczi, whom he had given a ruby ring as a bribe to secure her help after she learned that he was a vampire and that her husband Sandor was his blood thrall, had preceded him to the great house. Magda did not know why Barnabas had come to Collinwood, but she knew that he had some objective and that he would likely leave as soon as he had accomplished it. When Barnabas told Magda that he would keep giving her jewels as long as she helped him, he therefore gave her an incentive to slow him down as much as possible. She therefore told repressed spinster Judith Collins and Judith’s brother, libertine Quentin Collins, that they should beware of a “creature of darkness” who would be calling on them after sundown and who would claim to be “a friend, or perhaps a relative.”

Neither Judith nor Quentin has any respect for Magda, as much because of her Romani ethnicity as because of her mercenary ways. But when Barnabas introduces himself, Judith is deeply shaken. Quentin mocks her, suggesting that the resemblance between Magda’s prediction and Barnabas’ identification is as likely to be a coincidence as anything else, but as soon as he is alone with Barnabas Quentin pulls a sword, holds it at Barnabas’ throat, tells him he knows he is an impostor, and demands the truth within “five minutes” or he will run him through.

With this act, Quentin shows as little strategic nous as Barnabas had shown when he led Magda to believe that it was in her interest to make sure he stayed around for a while. Quentin does not know that Barnabas is a vampire, so that running him through with a sword would do nothing but give whoever saw it a story that he could not tell without branding himself a lunatic. But he does know that he is the black sheep of the family, and that his brothers and sister are eager to get him out of the way before their grandmother dies and her will goes into probate. If he kills a man in cold blood, they would have an excellent reason to have him committed to an asylum and whatever legacy he receives placed in a conservatorship they would control.

So Quentin’s threat is an empty one. Had Barnabas caved in and made a confession that he was a fraud, only Judith would have known of Quentin’s triumph, and she has made it clear that she is not about to yield a penny of her inheritance to him no matter what he does. At most, Quentin would have given Judith a new esteem for Magda, who herself has no use at all for him. And when Barnabas holds his ground, all Quentin can do is back down, losing face and making himself permanently ridiculous in his eyes.

The particulars of the scene are interesting, as well. Quentin tells Barnabas that he has “five minutes” to explain himself. When we heard that, my wife and I laughed out loud. Are we about to be treated to five minutes of silence while they hold their poses? Surely, we thought, it was a blooper- the scripted line must have been “five seconds.” But no! A moment later, Quentin says that “five minutes can go by rather quickly, when a man is about to die.” Had Barnabas been struck with terror at the sight of the weapon so close to him, he might have started confessing as soon as he saw it, but by the time Quentin doubles down on this “five minutes” it is obvious he has already lost the game.

Quentin tells Barnabas that he has just returned from a visit of about six months in England, during which time he discovered that he had no relatives there named Collins. This gives Barnabas an opportunity to insult Quentin, saying that his reputation may have preceded him and driven his relatives to make sure he did not find out about them. This stuns Quentin satisfactorily, but is not strictly necessary. There had been a great deal of migration from Ireland to England by the 1890s, more than enough that an Irish name as widespread as Collins would have been very familiar there. It is hardly likely that even if he had spent six months doing nothing but tracking down every Collins family in the country Quentin would have been able to have confidence that he had not overlooked some descendant of a Collins who had left Collinsport generations before. After all, they didn’t have ancestry dot com back then! It is clear that he must be lying.

Worst of all from Quentin’s perspective, he is still holding the sword at Barnabas’ throat when Judith comes in. At that sight, she has no choice but to set aside her own doubts about Barnabas. She demands Quentin apologize to Barnabas. Barnabas tells them that he can assure Quentin that he does not want any of the family’s money; in fact, he says, the English Collinses are quite comfortable financially and he plans to make some investments in local businesses while he is in Collinsport. Quentin perks up at this, no doubt seeing Barnabas as a possible mark for his next con game. Longtime viewers will remember that when Barnabas introduced himself to the 1960s iteration of the family, Roger was extremely interested in his apparent wealth and had several ideas about how he might help himself to a share of it.

Judith offers Barnabas a room at the great house. He says he would rather stay at the Old House on the estate. Judith breaks it to him that the current head of the family, dying nonagenarian Edith Collins, has let “Gypsies” live there. She makes it sound like a whole Romani clan has settled in, but in fact it is just Magda and Sandor. Barnabas feigns surprise, but still asks permission to inspect the house. Judith consents, and he sets out, alone

Danny Horn’s post about the episode on his Dark Shadows Every Day focuses on the ways it makes Quentin look like a child. I’d say it makes Judith look equally childish, even though she is clearly senior to Quentin. The two of them model one of Dark Shadows‘ signature pairings, that of Bossy Big Sister and Bratty Little Brother. Even when the big sister is in a position to exercise authority, as in the 1960s Liz was in a position to exercise authority over Roger, she winds up being merely bossy because however flagrantly he disobeys her, in the end she covers up his misdeeds and protects him from the punishment they merit. Longtime viewers suspect Judith will find herself doing the same.

In yesterday’s episode, Quentin entered maidservant Beth’s room and found her getting ready to go out. He asked if it was her day off; she said Judith gave her permission to run personal errands in town. He grabbed at her things and found an envelope with $300 cash. She claimed she saved this out of her salary, an obvious lie. He made leering insinuations about her relationship with his oldest brother Edward; she slapped his face.

Now, Beth is on her way back to Collinwood from her mysterious errand. Barnabas sees her in the woods and addresses her by name. She asks who he is and how he knows her. He introduces himself, and explains that he saw her photograph in an album at Collinwood. In fact, his friend Julia Hoffman saw such a photograph in 1969 and described it to him; Barnabas himself never saw it, but he did see Beth’s ghost. Evidently the photo had already been taken and put into the album, because Beth smiles when Barnabas talks about it. He asks Beth about the children at Collinwood. She mentions two; he asks about a third, and she says there is no third. He asks why he thought there was, and she seems uncomfortable. After she leaves, we hear his thoughts in a voiceover monologue. In 1969, Beth’s ghost led Barnabas’ friend Chris Jennings to an infant’s coffin; he wonders if that child has already died, and looks around, as if he might be standing on its grave.

Barnabas’ next stop is at the waterfront. When he was first a vampire in the late eighteenth century, Barnabas once found himself on the docks by chance and was overcome with thirst for the blood of the streetwalkers who worked there. This time he must have made a conscious decision to find a sex worker to drain of blood. Some wonder why he does not feed on Sandor and Magda, but longtime viewers know the answer to that one. When Barnabas was first on the show, Willie was his blood thrall, and each bite left Willie critically ill throughout the daylight hours. Barnabas needs Sandor and Magda to guard him during the day, so others will have to suffer to provide him with blood.

Barnabas picks up a small object from the pavement. He hears a soprano voice nearby, calling for an unseen “Charlie!” to help her find her lost makeup compact. The owner of the voice comes into view and introduces herself to Barnabas as Sophie Baker.* Barnabas gives her the compact. She thanks him and says it was a gift from a dear man, a Captain Strathmore. She asks Barnabas his name. He says he thinks it is best if he doesn’t give his name. “What an odd thing to say,” she responds. If she made her living the way Barnabas hoped the woman he found would make hers, it wouldn’t be odd at all; Sophie’s reaction is that of someone who has no idea that she is in a place where that trade is practiced. Evidently Sophie comes from a sufficiently comfortable background that prostitution does not impinge on her thoughts even as something other women do.

Barnabas tries to get away, and Sophie asks “Well, what’s the matter with me?” Charlie is hopelessly drunk, leaving Sophie without an escort. Barnabas is plainly alone, and the night is young. The pub is nearby- why don’t they stop in for a drink. Barnabas shows great reluctance, but finally agrees to walk Sophie to the door. She takes out her compact to freshen her face, looks in its mirror, and notices that Barnabas does not cast a reflection. She is stunned by this. Barnabas bares his fangs, and sates his bloodlust.

Sophie seals her fate. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The compact with a mirror was apparently a new invention when one was advertised in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue in 1908, so it is an anachronism in 1897. But it is a perfect touch. Sophie’s discovery that Barnabas does not cast a reflection turns the scene from a little bit of farce into a tale of horror in a fraction of a second. That the compact allows such an efficient use of time makes it no wonder that they used the same prop in 1967, when Julia glanced in her compact to confirm her hypothesis about Barnabas’ nature in #288.

This time, the compact also goes a long way towards explaining Barnabas’ attitude towards Sophie. It shows that she can afford to buy the latest and most sophisticated trinkets, and that she expects to be seen using them. Barnabas picks the compact up and returns it to Sophie as a gentleman might a lady’s handkerchief. Sophie’s personality may have led her to match the outgoing and uninhibited manner that is a professional requirement for sex workers and that made them easy targets for Barnabas, but when he sees that she is not of their class he becomes reluctant to attack her. Thus we learn that snobbery Barnabas has shown in some of his darker moments is not just an occasional failing, but that his whole career as a vampire is primarily a war on poor people.

Back at Collinwood, Quentin spots Beth taking a tray of food upstairs. He waylays her, uncovers the tray, and demands to know who it is for. She says it is for Edith, and he declares that his grandmother is far too ill to eat so much. When he finally lets her go, Beth goes to Edith’s room and tells Judith about Quentin’s interrogation. They confer about the matter in urgent whispers. Judith tells Beth they will have to be far more discreet now that Quentin is back. She urges her to take care Quentin does not see her when she takes the rest of the food “upstairs.” Evidently there is someone in the house Quentin does not know about, and Judith and Beth are conspiring to keep it that way.

Judith leaves the room, and Quentin slips in. He pretends to be Edward. Edith is not fooled, and expresses her annoyance with him. She says she is not as far gone as he thinks she is, and he assures her that she is. She will die tonight, and will tell him the family secret before she does. He seems to be threatening to kill her himself by the time the episode ends.

Every episode of Dark Shadows begins with a voiceover delivered by a member of the cast. This one reuses yesterday’s opening voiceover. I believe this is the first time they have done this.

*The closing credits give her name as “Sophie Barnes,” but she very clearly says “Baker.”