mrs acilius – Page 13 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 219: One look at the man

This teleplay badly needed another trip through the typewriter.

In the opening scenes, seagoing con man Jason McGuire demands his friend and former henchman, the sorely bedraggled Willie Loomis, leave the estate of Collinwood and the town of Collinsport. He mentions that he saw Willie’s car the night before at the cemetery. He then orders Willie to get on a bus and leave town. Then he starts talking about Willie’s car again. Does Willie have a car or not? They’ve gone back and forth on this from one episode to another, but today they can’t keep it straight from one line of dialogue to the next.

A doctor shows up to examine Willie. He tells Jason that Willie is not sick at all. The reason he is so weak is that he has lost “an enormous amount of blood.” What does the doctor think the word “sick” means if it doesn’t apply to a person who is doing badly because of an “enormous” loss of blood?

Whatever meaning the doctor attaches to “sick” apparently also applies to “ailment.” High-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins asks what Willie’s ailment is, and the doctor says he has no ailment. He is simply immobilized due to an enormous loss of blood.

The doctor tells first Jason, then Roger, that Willie will be fine if he gets some rest and fluids and food. The idea of a blood transfusion doesn’t cross his mind, nor do Jason or Roger bring it up. It would be one thing if the doctor, Jason, and Roger were played by the Three Stooges, but there is no sign that we are supposed to think that they are a load of idiots.

An actor who has repeatedly triumphed over bad writing reappears after an absence of sixteen weeks. This is Dana Elcar as Sheriff George Patterson. The sheriff’s activities don’t always make a great deal of sense, but Elcar’s acting choices and his zest for performance make him a pleasure to watch no matter how dire the script he has to work with.

Today, the sheriff is telling Roger that a number of cows on the farms owned by the Collins family have been destroyed. A person or persons unknown somehow sucked every drop of blood out of these cows through small punctures in their hides. Roger is deeply unsettled by this strange news, and the sheriff sympathizes with him.

Roger repeatedly asks the sheriff why he is the one telling him about the cows. He says that he would have expected the veterinarian to call him. The sheriff says that the veterinarian called his office, because he determined that the cows were killed by someone’s deliberate act. That doesn’t explain why the veterinarian, whose bill the Collinses will presumably be paying, didn’t call him. We were so glad to see these fine actors working together that the senselessness of the scene didn’t bother us while we were watching it, but as soon as it was over we were left with a feeling of confusion.

Roger and the sheriff. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Regular viewers do wonder what farms the sheriff and Roger are talking about. The only previous reference to the word “farm” in connection with the Collinses was in #64, when Sheriff Patterson told their servant Matthew Morgan to “work their farm for them” and stay out of trouble. Today’s conversation repeatedly refers to “farms,” plural, more than one of which are big enough to have cows. That’s an operation much too complicated for Matthew, who had many other duties, to have handled by himself. Besides, Matthew left his job in #112 and was scared to death by ghosts in #126, and hasn’t been replaced. Whatever farm Matthew was working must have been so small that the Collinses can take care of it themselves in whatever time they can spare from their main occupation, keeping secrets and being sarcastic.

Writer Ron Sproat specialized in inventorying disused storylines and getting them out of the way. Back when Matthew was on the show, the Collinses were heavily in debt and running out of money. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin spent the first 40 weeks of the show trying to avenge himself on the Collinses by driving them into bankruptcy. All of that has gone by the boards, and we aren’t hearing any more about troubles concerning the business. So it’s time for Dark Shadows to reconceive the family as financially secure, indeed as imposingly rich. Talking about their many farms and the herds of livestock on them helps Sproat open up space in his narrative warehouse, but it doesn’t offer much to interest the audience.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, thought up a little fanfic that might have introduced the same points more intriguingly. The trouble with the cows first came up in #215. Hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell told the story of a calf belonging to his uncle that was found drained of blood. That suggested that an evil has been loosed that is spreading throughout the town and beyond. Why not stick with Joe as the point of view character in connection with the mystery of the desiccated cows? Not only would that give a badly under-utilized character something to do, but would also give us the sense that the fate of a whole community is at stake in the action.

If they needed to connect the Collinses to the cow story, they could have come up with a way to oblige them to join with Joe to figure out what’s going on. That in turn would raise the prospect of a story structured like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in which one character after another joins the team opposing the malign Count. The formation of the group that resisted blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins in the months leading up to #191 very much followed the pattern set in Stoker’s novel. Of course, the ending could be modified. The Laura story ended, not with the triumphant team-work that defeats Dracula, but with well-meaning governess Vicki cut off from her allies and left to confront Laura alone. But the team-work leading up to that point was full of interest, as characters shared information with each other, reconfigured their relationships, and found themselves doing things neither they nor we would have expected. Simply reintroducing the topic of the cows and leaving Joe and the Collinses siloed off from each other is easy for the writers, but it doesn’t take the story anywhere.

Episode 217: A terrible beating

Dennis Patrick was a fine actor, but so far he has had very little to do as seagoing con man Jason McGuire. Jason’s endlessly repeated blackmail threats against reclusive matriarch Liz are tedious in the extreme, and his attempts to charm others limit Dennis Patrick to the acting choices we might expect Jason to make. Things get livelier when he has to rein in his sidekick, Willie Loomis. Willie was introduced as a dangerously unstable ruffian, and Jason had to scramble to keep up with Willie’s moods. When Jason has to think fast, Patrick has room to maneuver.

Now, Willie is strangely changed. He is ill, and is for a second time a house guest in the great mansion of Collinwood. Flighty heiress Carolyn and well-meaning governess Vicki talk about Willie’s new demeanor, and Carolyn says that it is as if Willie has become another person. Considering that Willie tried to rape each of them the last time he stayed at Collinwood, you might think just about anyone else would represent an improvement, but Carolyn is for some reason distressed.

The episode really belongs to Dennis Patrick. It has never been clear why Jason wanted Willie around, and today there is only one possible answer- he cares about him. Even when Jason has a scene alone with Carolyn and confirms a threat he made a few days ago to make “serious trouble” for her mother Liz if Carolyn didn’t stop asking questions, he never stops being a man concerned for his friend.* It is interesting to see him combine that admirable quality with Jason’s overall rottenness.

Willie is very sick all day, barely able to stay awake, stumbling as soon as he tries to get out of bed. But at nightfall, he seems to gain strength. He hears the sound of a heartbeat. He gets up, goes downstairs, and gets past Jason. We hear a car squeal away while Jason calls after him to come back.

It is unclear whose car this is. The other day Carolyn mentioned “Willie’s car,” but before and after the idea of Willie leaving town had always been mentioned in connection with bus fare. Perhaps we are back to the idea that Willie has a car- he started it so quickly he must have had the keys. Since whatever car it is is parked by the house on what is supposed to be a large estate, its owner may have left the keys on the dashboard, but since Willie seems to have expected to have them it is at least as likely that it is his car and they were in his pocket.

Jason follows Willie to the old cemetery north of town, where he shines a flashlight directly into the camera. Willie disappears into the Tomb of the Collinses, and Jason loses his trail there.

*My wife, Mrs Acilius, phrased it this way. She also developed the idea of the episode as a glimpse of a different side of Jason, and called my attention to the phrase “a terrible beating” as the best title for a post about it.

Episode 211: He pretended to be someone he wasn’t

The opening voiceover complains about “a frightening and violent man.” We then see a fellow with a crazed look on his face trying to break into a coffin. Assuming that he is the frightening and violent man, a first time viewer might not be especially upset when a hand darts from the coffin and chokes him, even though something like that can’t be altogether a good sign.

At a mansion identified as the great house of Collinwood, an aristocratic lady is demanding that a man in a captain’s hat account for the whereabouts of someone called Willie. The man answers to the name of Jason and calls the lady Liz. Liz has had all she can take of Willie, whoever he might be, and is not at all happy that Willie’s things are still in her house. Jason does a lot of fast talking, but cannot satisfy Liz either that Willie is really leaving or that he himself does not know where Willie is.

Jason talks with the housekeeper, a woman named Mrs Johnson. He asks her a series of questions about what she knows about Willie and she asks why he wants to know. Even though Mrs Johnson was in the room when Liz was insisting that Jason find Willie and get rid of him, for some unaccountable reason he will not tell her that he is looking for Willie.

Despite Jason’s inexplicable reticence, Mrs Johnson does tell him that Willie was preoccupied with the portrait of an eighteenth century figure named Barnabas Collins, that he was also interested in a legend that another eighteenth century personage, someone named Naomi Collins, was buried with a fortune in jewels, that Naomi Collins is buried in a tomb in a cemetery five miles north of town, and that the night before she saw Willie hanging around the toolshed. Returning viewers will recall that in yesterday’s episode, well-meaning governess Vicki had also told Jason that she had seen Willie in the vicinity of the toolshed, carrying a bag. There doesn’t seem to be a television set in the house, so everyone spends the evenings looking out the windows at the toolshed.

We see a cemetery. It soon becomes clear that it is the same cemetery we saw in the opening teaser. The gate of the tomb in which the frightening and violent man did his sinister work is swinging in the breeze. An old man in a three piece suit and celluloid collar comes upon it. He shows alarm and mutters that he can feel evil in the air.

Jason arrives at the cemetery and meets the old man. Jason says that he is looking for a friend of his, a young man. The old man identifies himself as the caretaker of the cemetery and laments the fact that a young man meeting the description Jason gives was there last night and broke the lock on the gate to the tomb. A first-time viewer’s suspicion that Willie and the frightening and violent man from the teaser are one and the same finds confirmation.

The caretaker can’t believe that Jason is unable to sense the palpable evil that emanates from the tomb. Jason overcomes the caretaker’s attempts to keep him out and makes his way into the tomb. The caretaker keeps warning Jason of the perceptible evil and Jason keeps failing to perceive it. Jason does find a cigarette on the edge of a casket in the tomb, and in closeup gives a look that can only be his recognition of a trace of Willie’s presence.

Jason returns to the great house. Liz is exasperated that he still can’t tell her where Willie is, and Mrs Johnson is irritated he doesn’t put his hat and coat where they belong. After Jason and Liz have left her alone in the foyer, Mrs Johnson takes Jason’s things to the coat closet.

We see Mrs Johnson fussing with the hat and coat from inside the coat closet, an unusual perspective that has in the past been used during shots when characters have stumbled onto important evidence about whatever mystery they were puzzling over at the moment. The shot goes on long enough to lead us to wonder if Mrs Johnson is about to find something important. My wife, Mrs Acilius, mentions that each time she has seen this shot she expected Mrs Johnson to find Willie’s cigarette in Jason’s pocket and to recognize it.

That expectation is thwarted when there comes a knock at the door. Mrs Johnson answers and greets the visitor.

The next shot is from the perspective of the visitor. We see a look of astonishment on Mrs Johnson’s face as a man in a fedora and an overcoat asks to be announced to “the mistress of this house, Mrs Elizabeth Collins Stoddard.” He identifies himself as Mrs Stoddard’s cousin from England. Mrs Johnson invites the man in. He hastens across the threshold.

We cut back to the interior, and see the man and Mrs Johnson facing each other. As she bustles up the stairs, the camera tracks around to show him standing next to the portrait of Barnabas Collins, a portrait he resembles strongly. He says, “Oh, madam! If you would, you may tell her that it is Barnabas Collins.”

For regular viewers, it is refreshing to see Jason on the defensive. Ten times in the first eight episodes where they appeared together, he and Liz had a conversation in which he made a demand of her, she resisted, he threatened to expose her terrible secret, and she capitulated. Today is the second episode in which they have interacted without reenacting this drab ritual. Liz is driving the action, Jason is thinking fast, and they are each in their element. For a first time viewer wondering about the hand that came out of the coffin, it’s a lot of filler, but for those of us who have been suffering through the tedium of the blackmail plot it is a fun change of pace.

Regular viewers will also be glad to see the return of the caretaker. He appeared four times* in the storyline of Laura Murdoch Collins, the humanoid Phoenix, and managed to be simultaneously eerie and funny. His catchphrases “Died by fire!” and “The dead must rest!” are all it takes to make Mrs Acilius laugh out loud. His return in #209 moved Patrick McCray to label him a refugee from the EC comics universe, and in my post about that episode I pointed to a shot that looks so much like a panel from an EC comic book that I wonder if the similarity might have been intentional.

While first time viewers may be confused or impatient with the caretaker’s oft-repeated attempts to alert Jason to the nimbus of evil that hangs in the air around him, regular viewers know that the caretaker is the one who understands the show he is on. Jason thinks that he’s on a noir crime drama, and indeed there had been a period when Dark Shadows just about met that description.

But for months now, all the action has been pointing towards the supernatural back-world behind the visible setting. Jason’s own storyline was introduced the very day Laura’s ended, and it is a means for wrapping up all the non-supernatural narrative elements still lying around. Jason’s insensibility to the evil in the tomb is not only a sign that he is himself too corrupt to tell the difference between a wholesome space and a cursed one, but also that he doesn’t fit into the genre where Dark Shadows will be from now on. The audience in 1967 wouldn’t have known that actor Dennis Patrick always insisted on fixing a date for his departure when he joined the cast of a daytime soap, but this scene should give them a strong indication that Jason McGuire is not to be with us indefinitely.

Patrick McCray’s commentary on this episode includes an analysis of director John Sedwick’s visual strategy in the last two shots, those in which Jonathan Frid first appears as Barnabas Collins. McCray confines himself to the first thing photography students are usually taught, the “Rule of Thirds.” But that’s all it takes to get us to look closely at the imagery and to see how Sedwick tells his story with pictures:

Two clear and subtly clever images with a bridge. His introduction comes from his own perspective, rather than Mrs. Johnson’s. It’s an exterior shot of the entrance, looking in.

The grid helps us divide the image. People in the west read from left to right, and tend to circle in our gaze back to the left. Sedwick uses this model of composition in all three shots. In image 1, we see someone — him? — through the eyes of Mrs. Johnson as the camera hangs over his shoulder, minimizing her (1.1). Why is she so transfixed? We follow her gaze up to the towering figure (1.2). Following the slope of his collar, we come back to Mrs. Johnson… specifically, her throat (1.3). After that, we circle back up to her gaze, even more worried. For what reason?

Then he enters with purpose, and we next see him again from the back, divesting himself of his cane and hat, getting a glimpse of his strangely antique cloak. His voice is rich with a uniquely tentative sense of authority. We still don’t see his face, just bits of his profile. These moments tease us, and yet they put us in the position of a confidant of the vampire’s. The composition mirrors what we saw outside. Within, Mrs. Johnson (2.1) is minimized, and the turn in the figure shows him looming, ready to pounce. Again, we begin with her, following her gaze from left to right. The mystery of what bedevils her, bedevils us, as well. The man towers (2.2) in the right, blocking the exit. Instead of following a sloping collar, we follow its larger, expanding offspring in the cape, which takes us circling to the left again where we stop on the poor, miniscule shield of his hat and then, like a wolf pulling her away, his feral looking cane (2.3).

Situated so close to the predator, with his gaze elsewhere, we have a strange safety. We don’t see him from the eyes of his prey. Instead, we are a quietly unacknowledged friend. Finally, as Mrs. Johnson goes to summon Elizabeth, the figure turns to face the portrait, rotating upstage to let us see him from profile to profile. As she exits, and we are alone with him, the chiseled face comes into focus from the side. It is alien. It is familiar. We think we know why, but then we see why. They are only face to face for a moment before the camera takes us away from him and uncomfortably close to the painting from 1795, cold and haughty and haggard and sad. He then steps even uncomfortably closer to it and spins to give his inevitable name. We see the two men in mutual relief.

The painting of Barnabas is a prisoner in a four-sided frame on the wall, disapproving and distant as the first thing our eyes rest on (3.1). Is the painting gazing at the man? No. The more we look, the more the painting is gazing at us, as if we’ve been caught looking. It’s natural to avert our eyes from this, and by comparison, section 3.2 is practically benevolent. His impossible doppelganger is standing before it in three dimensions on our 2D screen. Liberated, he smiles, and there is something optimistic about it. He’s gazing upward to the landing, yes, but it’s also to the future. Gazing left, he’s anticipating the next image rather than look for one that has passed. Subtly, our eyes wander down to 3.3, his medal, a subtle reminder that, despite his strange warmth, he’s a soldier as well, and a force to be reckoned with.
Patrick McCray, “The Dark Shadows Daybook: April 14,” from The Collinsport Historical Society, 14 April 2017

*In episodes 154, 157, 179, and 180

Episode 202: You and I wouldn’t be friends

There is only one ongoing story on Dark Shadows right now, and it doesn’t seem to have much of a future. Seagoing con man Jason McGuire is blackmailing reclusive matriarch Liz, threatening to reveal that she killed her husband Paul Stoddard eighteen years ago and that he buried Stoddard’s body in the basement of the great house of Collinwood. Not only was all of that clear when Liz and Jason had their first conversation several days ago, but yesterday we heard Jason on the telephone making it clear that he is bluffing. If Liz calls the police, he will get out of town as fast as he can. So whatever Liz does in response to Jason’s so-frequently repeated threat, the story can go only so far before it reaches a dead end.

Looking at Jason, audiences at the time would have recognized actor Dennis Patrick as a frequent guest star on prime time television shows and might have suspected that he was too big a name to stay on a daytime soap opera for very long. They would not have known that Patrick always made it a point to have an end date in place anytime he agreed to guest on a soap or that when he played Jason he did not have a contract, and was free to walk away any time he wanted. Seeing him share so many scenes with Joan Bennett, who had been a major movie star for a number of years, they might have thought it was possible he could stick around, but the show so quickly burned through what little story the two of them had that it wouldn’t have seemed likely.

So, what comes next? Alexandra Moltke Isles’ opening voiceover, delivered as always in character as well-meaning governess Vicki, gives us a hint:

My name is Victoria Winters. The foundations of Collinwood house a frightful secret, a secret that has lain dormant for eighteen years, a secret awakened by a stranger. But there is another stranger, one who is to awaken and unleash a force that will affect the lives of everyone.

This other stranger is Jason’s henchman, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis. At the beginning of this episode, Willie is drinking at the bar in Collinsport’s only night spot, The Blue Whale. There are three other customers in the tavern, an old man at the bar and a young couple in the background* bowing to each other at irregular intervals. If we assume, as I suppose we must, that these movements represent an attempt at dancing, we might wonder if the force Willie is destined to awaken and unleash is choreography.

Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, enters. She looks around for a long moment, then slowly makes her way to a table. Willie tells Bob the bartender he wants to buy Maggie a drink. Bob goes to her table, and we see them have a conversation in the course of which Bob gestures to Willie and Maggie shakes her head no. When Bob returns to the bar, Willie tells him that “A good bartender wouldn’t have asked any questions!” Not even what kind of drink the lady would like, apparently. So maybe he’s going to awaken and unleash the force of unconsumed beverages.

Willie goes to Maggie’s table and sits down. When she protests that she’s waiting for someone, he sneers that no one tells him where to sit.** As Willie, James Hall is doing a great job of establishing himself as a clear and present danger to everyone he meets. Maybe Willie was right about one thing- a good bartender would notice Maggie’s discomfort and order Willie out of the bar. It’s obvious that Willie wants to awaken and unleash the force of sexual assault.

Maggie’s boyfriend, hardworking young fisherman Joe, enters. Willie refuses to leave the table and tells Joe to go wait at the bar. Joe squares up for a fight. He and Willie are about to start throwing punches when Jason comes into the bar and commands Willie to back off. At that, Willie awakens and unleashes the force of doing as he is told.

Jason apologizes to Maggie and Joe for Willie’s behavior and tells Bob he wants to treat everyone to a round of drinks. Joe mentions that Maggie’s father, drunken artist Sam, will be sad he missed a free drink. Maggie says that Sam won’t be drinking tonight, because New York art dealer Portia Fitzsimmons is pressing him for more paintings. Evidently Sam will be working more and drinking less now that he is no longer connected to any ongoing storyline.

At the bar, Willie complains to Jason that he’s come to help him, but hasn’t got any money out of the operation yet. Jason gives him some cash and tells him to be patient. The time has not yet come for Willie’s brawn to complement Jason’s brains.

Hall’s Willie does not spend any time processing his emotions or any energy concealing them. When he is getting ready to fight, he displays unfiltered rage; the instant he has to forgo the idea of beating up Joe and raping Maggie, he lowers his eyes and a look of deepest despair comes over him. Much as we hate Willie when he is menacing our friends, the transparency and intensity of his feelings makes it easy to watch him when he is feeling sorry for himself. Why is this strange, horrible man the way he is, and what will he do next? So when he awakens and unleashes the force of whining, it proves to be a strong enough force to keep us watching for a few minutes.

Those are good minutes for Dennis Patrick as well. Monotonous as Patrick’s scenes with Joan Bennett were, his scenes with other members of the cast usually had some element of unpredictability. We don’t know what is going on between Jason and Willie, and Jason himself doesn’t really know what Willie is going to do from one moment to the next. So it’s fun to watch Jason scramble to keep his associate in line. Also, we have a chance to root for Jason, at least for the duration of his two shots with Willie, since his control over Willie is what prevents violence against characters we care about.

Jason’s remark about Willie’s brawn raises the question of what exactly he wants Willie for. Liz is giving Jason everything she has, bit by bit, in response to his blackmail. If that is the whole plan, there doesn’t seem to be any need for brawn at all. Of course, Hall is a short, slender man, so much so that only his well-realized portrait of a violent felon keeps Willie’s confrontation with the substantially taller and more muscular Joe from looking ridiculous. Only Jason’s intervention prevented Willie from awakening and unleashing the force of badly losing a bar fight. Still, we keep wondering what the next phase of Jason’s evil plan will be.

Back at Collinwood, Jason is in the study, smoking a fine cigar. Flighty heiress Carolyn enters, and remarks that the cigar is one of her Uncle Roger’s favorites. Jason says that he knows of even finer cigars, and says that his whole philosophy of life is finding the good things and squeezing whatever he can out of them. Carolyn agrees that he has described himself well, neither hiding her disgust nor disturbing his complacent attitude.

Jason has identified himself as a friend of Carolyn’s father, the long-missing Paul Stoddard. Carolyn explains that she knows very little about her father, and asks Jason to tell her about him. He doesn’t really tell her anything she doesn’t already know, but does remark that “Paul Stoddard and I were very much alike.” He delivers that line in a way that suggests it might become significant. Once Carolyn gets up to go, Jason assures her that he does have stories about Stoddard to tell her some other time. Once she is gone and we are wondering if he really knew Stoddard at all, he steals three more of Roger’s cigars.

When we were watching this episode, my wife, Mrs Acilius, surmised that Carolyn asked Jason about her father less because she wanted to learn about him than because she wanted to figure Jason out. It is strange that she follows her obvious disapproval of Jason’s “philosophy of life” with “I never knew my father…,” unless it is a ploy to get Jason to talk about himself. And indeed, he does tell her far more about himself than about Stoddard. So that may well have been on Nancy Barrett’s mind when she was playing the scene.

A knock comes at the front door. Carolyn opens it to find Willie, identifying himself as a friend of Jason’s and announcing that he has decided to accept Jason’s invitation to stay at Collinwood. Jason is crestfallen to see that he has lost his control over Willie, and we are appalled to see Maggie’s would-be assailant moving into Carolyn’s house.

*This is the man in that couple. He would be a very familiar face on TV for a long time after this. He isn’t listed on either the Dark Shadows wiki or the imdb entry for this episode, and I can’t quite place him.

Hey look, it’s that guy! The one who was on those cop shows, you remember.

UPDATED 7 February 2024: I just spotted him in an episode of Columbo! His name is Paul Jenkins.

Paul R. Jenkins as Sergeant Douglas and Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo in *The Most Dangerous Match* (1973)

Jenkins appeared in a number of feature films, among them Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, and Network, and did guest spots on dozens of TV shows, among them the Dark Shadows-adjacent Falcon Crest. Evidently he was friends with Sidney Poitier, the two of them worked together on multiple projects, including Poitier’s 1992 film Sneakers. Most of the images of Jenkins I can find online come from a 1972 episode of M*A*S*H where he played an American NCO who keeps a Korean woman as a slave. This still from The Secrets of Isis illustrates his Wikipedia entry, and the civilian clothing from the 1970s is more typical of his on-screen appearance than was the 1950s Army uniform he wore on M*A*S*H:

**For some reason, Willie addresses Maggie as “Speedball.” “Listen, Speedball!” he commands. I wonder if Vladimir Nabokov considered Listen, Speedball as the title for a sequel to his Speak, Memory.

Episode 199: About as welcome as poison ivy

Yesterday’s episode ended with a powerful scene in which Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, learned the terrible secret her father, drunken artist Sam Evans, has been keeping for the last ten years. Today begins with a reprise of that scene.

Sam has admitted that one night he saw a car barreling down the highway, swerving wildly from lane to lane. It hit and killed a man, then sped off. Sam could see the driver, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. Dashing action hero Burke Devlin was passed out in the back seat, and Roger’s future wife, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch, was also in the car. The night after the collision, Roger showed up at the Evans cottage and offered Sam $15,000 for some paintings.*

Sam tells Maggie that he knew this was a bribe to secure his silence. He explains that at that time, Maggie’s mother was very sick with the illness that would ultimately take her life, and that he had no way of earning enough money to meet even the family’s basic expenses. With the money from Roger, he was able to give Maggie’s mother everything he had always wanted her to have. The more Sam explains that he traded his conscience for money, the more Maggie looks down at herself and sees her waitress’ uniform. Apparently she can’t help thinking about where the household income has been coming from in the years since Sam’s big sale, and assessing Sam’s current contribution to their balance of expenses.

Maggie talks slowly, choosing her words with care and her themes with tact. She acknowledges that it would have been hard to refuse Roger’s money under the circumstances, and Sam exclaims that it would have been impossible. Maggie turns away with a look of distress, as if she suspects that another sort of person might have found it entirely possible to say no to Roger. She leaves that topic alone, and focuses on how shocked she is that Sam kept quiet when Burke was tried, convicted, and sentenced to five years in prison on the premise that he had been the driver.

Sam asks Maggie what he can do or say to regain her respect. She suggests he go to Burke and confess to him. Sam asks if she wants him to go to jail; she says no, of course she doesn’t want that. He swears he will quit drinking; wearily, she tells him she hopes he sticks with it this time. Eventually she stops responding to what he says, and just answers his pleas by announcing that she has a date to get ready for.

This exchange is divided into two scenes. The second begins with some repetition of points from the first, but that actually works to strengthen the drama- it shows us that Sam is desperate to find some way of making things right with Maggie that doesn’t involve volunteering for a prison sentence.** When Maggie has left for her date, we see Sam stew around for a moment. Finally, he picks up the telephone and calls Burke. By that time, we can see that he really has exhausted every possible alternative.

In between the two Sam/ Maggie scenes, we see Burke having dinner with well-meaning governess Vicki at Collinsport’s only night spot, The Blue Whale. Vicki is telling Burke everything she knows about the current doings at the great house of Collinwood. She is worried about reclusive matriarch Liz, who hasn’t been herself lately, and uncomfortable around Liz’ houseguest, seagoing con man Jason McGuire. Burke has never heard of Jason. As the Collins family’s sworn enemy, Burke of course listens attentively to all the intelligence Vicki has gathered. One does wonder what the Collinses think of their governess blabbing so much to Burke, who casually mentions in response to one of Vicki’s expressions of concern for Liz that he is trying to drive her out of business.

Jason shows up in the tavern and approaches Vicki. She introduces him to Burke. While they are exchanging pleasantries, a young man enters and smiles. He calls to Jason, who hastens away from Burke and Vicki to talk alone with him.

The young man leers at Vicki. Burke gets up and says he wants to confront the young man, but Vicki insists he sit back down. The young man continues leering at Vicki, and Jason pleads with him to stop. The man’s tone and bearing are threatening, and his habit of referring to himself in the third person while talking about the things to which “Willie” is entitled emphasizes the note of menace. When another customer brushes against him, Willie jumps up. Three men, Jason, Bob the bartender, and a background player*** restrain him from punching the guy. Burke and Vicki comment on Jason’s choice of friends.

Willie forlornly watches a man leave, taking with him his chance to beat him up

Actor James Hall does a fine job of showing Willie as a dangerously unstable man. His staring at Vicki unsettles everyone, a fact which seems to please him. As soon as he stops talking, the airy manner he adopts when he declares that his current lodgings are “not Willie’s style” or that “Willie is not a patient man,” disappears and his face settles into a look of depression. The brush that sets him off into his spasm of violence is so light and so brief as to be noticeable only in a prison laundry. When Jason, Bob, and the man from the background hold him and he realizes he has missed his chance to beat someone up, his rage at once gives way to a hollow look of yearning and sorrow, as if he is in mourning for the violence that might have been. He would be right at home on a cross-country killing spree, but it’s hard to see what use Jason would have for him. Jason is a con man and blackmailer, two forms of criminality that require the ability to gain some measure of trust from a victim, and no one would trust Hall’s Willie for even a fraction of a second.

If it turns out that Jason has more than one piece of compromising information on Liz, Willie might make sense. Let’s say that, when she and her long-absent husband lived together, they found themselves implicated in a number of Jason’s crimes, and some of those involved hyper-violent hoodlums. Then when Liz sees Willie, she might find herself falling back into an old trap and try to figure out a new way to free herself from it. But if all Jason knows about Liz is what he has threatened to reveal in his three conversations with her so far, Willie would seem to be an unsolvable puzzle.

Burke shows up at the Evans cottage and tells Sam that he received his message. Since Sam had told the clerk at Burke’s hotel that he was calling in connection with an emergency, Burke keeps pressing him to explain what he wanted to say. Sam keeps stalling. Despite his promise to Maggie a few minutes ago to quit drinking, his stalling involves a couple of shots of booze. Finally Sam screws up his courage and tells Burke everything. Burke declares “I knew it!”

*According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics online CPI calculator, $15,000 in the summer of 1956 would have the same purchasing power as $165,905.41 in March of 2023.

**I am curious as to what Sam’s legal position would actually have been. He tells Maggie that neither he nor Roger said anything about the accident when he gave him the money; Sam simply assumed he was taking a bribe. Since Roger did receive the paintings, and famed art dealer Portia Fitzsimmons has told Sam that the paintings would now be worth a great deal of money, only Sam’s confession of his corrupt motive would suggest that he did anything ten years ago that it might be possible to prosecute him for. Besides, he never committed perjury or lied to law enforcement- he never said anything at all. It would seem the most they could have got him on at the time would have been failure to report an accident, and surely the statute of limitations on that misdemeanor would have expired after ten years.

His more recent behavior would seem to present a more serious problem. Ever since Burke came back to town in episode 1, Sam and Roger have been talking to each other about the accident and its aftermath, meeting in public places and confirming over and over that the money was a bribe. Moreover, Sam has spent the last few days blackmailing Roger, threatening to go to Burke unless Roger produces the paintings in time for him to have Portia Fitzsimmons show them in her gallery. Roger has not been able to find the paintings. So going to Burke, or even to the police, could be interpreted as an act in furtherance of Sam’s blackmail scheme, and therefore as itself felonious. It is no wonder that when Sam went to the telephone, my wife, Mrs Acilius, was shouting at the screen “Call a lawyer!”

***Who according to the Dark Shadows wiki worked under the name “Frank Reich.” Since “Frankreich” is the German name for France, I assumed that “Frank Reich” was an obvious pseudonym. But it turns out there are a number of people in the world whose actual given name is “Frank Reich,” some of them well-known, so who can say.

Episode 193: Portia Fitzsimmons

Drunken artist Sam Evans receives an unexpected visitor to his cottage. She is famed art dealer Portia Fitzsimmons, and she is magnificent.

Mrs Fitzsimmons, as she insists on being addressed, was in a junk shop earlier this week, where she found two of Sam’s paintings available to buyers of the frames they were in. The paintings were done ten or twelve years ago, and she declares that they are in a style that will soon become fashionable. If Sam can come up with a dozen more canvases from that period, he will have a one-man show at her gallery, and he will become famous. With that fame, he may even be able to sell some of his newer paintings, countless of which have been collecting dust around the cottage for years on end.

This was the very first scene of Dark Shadows I ever saw. I’d heard of the show when I was a boy in the late 70s and my mother was watching whatever daytime soap she was into. I heard her say something like, “Ooh, they’re going to turn into Dark Shadows.” I asked her what Dark Shadows was, and she explained that it was a soap opera that had been on about ten years before which introduced a vampire as one of the regular characters. At that age, I thought of soaps as the dullest thing in the world. I wasn’t particularly into vampires, but they were obviously too interesting for the televised sleeping pills that beamed into our living room for an hour every afternoon, so I followed up with some more questions. She had never watched the show, so all she could tell me was that it started as a more or less conventional daytime serial, added a vampire, and became a hit.

When the 90s came along and I got cable TV in my apartment, that was still all I knew about it. So when I saw that the Sci-Fi Channel* was showing Dark Shadows, I decided to take a look. There is no suggestion of vampires in this one, but Portia Fitzsimmons is such a dynamic character that I could see that the show was capable of being pretty lively without them.

Actress Lovelady Powell has two physical abilities that enable her to give us something fresh to look at every second the camera is on her. First is her remarkably mobile face. Her left eyelid alone is capable of a wider variety of expressions than most performers can produce with their entire physiognomy. Since it is her left eye that is focused on Sam throughout the scene, that eyelid is going to be the crucial body part in her delineation of their relationship, but she uses it with remarkable facility. Focus on her left eyelid in these three images, and see how it does most of the work in taking her in a few seconds from delighted to dismayed to dismissive:

Those three images show a major shift in mood. The same eyelid can also modulate finer shades of feeling. In this sequence a few moments later, the left eye is partially obscured, but still shows precisely what is going on when Mrs Fitzsimmons gives Sam his marching orders:

Powell not only made excellent use of the fine muscles of her face, but of her limbs as well. So her second strength is her style of movement. She walks around the set continually, making many wide, sweeping gestures. If those seemed to be a number of distinct motions, she would be a hectic, distracting presence. But in fact, it all comes together as an uninterrupted flow, and defines the entire performance space in terms of her action and her presence. This is difficult to illustrate with still images, but if you look at how she uses her elbows in this sequence I think you’ll get the idea:

I think an actor could watch this scene a dozen times and learn new things from every viewing.

All these techniques for establishing visual dominance pay off in the scene. Sam is an artist who has so utterly despaired of finding an audience for his art that it simply does not register with him that a famous art dealer has come calling. Returning viewers will remember that Sam has been moping around feeling sorry for himself since his first appearance in episode 5. Two weeks ago, in #184, he told his daughter Maggie that it was too late for him ever to have a one-man show and that all he could ever hope for was to sell a few paintings to tourists every summer. Within minutes, Mrs Fitzsimmons has changed all of that. She watches Sam’s reactions as she turns his life upside down, and visibly calculates the particular sort of flourish with which she will deliver each of her lines. When he tells her that he thinks he will be able to assemble enough paintings within a week, she stands in the doorway and replies that she is sure he will be able to do it then, “if you can do it at all.” She then pirouettes away and wafts off whence she came.

When I first saw the scene, I wondered how big a part Mrs Fitzsimmons would play in the storylines to come. I still remember seeing the name “Lovelady Powell” in the closing credits. With my work schedule at the time, I didn’t have a chance to see another episode for months, and when I did join it again there was no sign of Portia Fitzsimmons. I assumed she’d been written out, perhaps to return in some later narrative arc, perhaps because Lovelady Powell had gone on to bigger things. It came as quite a surprise to learn that this was her only appearance on Dark Shadows, and that her acting career never really took off.

Now that I’m on my second complete viewing of the series, it’s an even bigger surprise. The portraits of the ancestors of the ancient and esteemed Collins family are among the most prominent visual features of the chief sets, those representing the great house of Collinwood. Portraits there and elsewhere, including in the long-abandoned Old House at Collinwood and in the Evans cottage, have repeatedly been shown to have supernatural power, representing a bridge between the world of the living and that of the dead.

Further, every storyline that has been resolved so far has centered on strange and troubled boy David Collins. The show has gone out of its way to show that David has promise as an artist. David Collins is nine, and actor David Henesy turned ten in October of 1966, but the character is unusual enough and the actor is sophisticated enough that it would be interesting to see David interact with the grand dame of the New York art world.

An art connoisseur is therefore as well-positioned as anyone to act as a guide to the uncanny realms into which the show will be venturing from now on. Combining Portia Fitzsimmons’ claim to expertise with her imperious personality and Lovelady Powell’s sophisticated acting style, you’d have a character who could carry us right through the whole series. The producers will be hard-pressed to find another actress who can play as worldly and forceful a Vergil to the various Dantes who will be exploring Collinwood’s weird infernos.

Sam’s reaction to Portia Fitzsimmons’ command that he bring her a dozen canvases that he painted ten or twelve years ago puzzled me on my first viewing, and puzzles me in a different way now. The only group of works that fill that bill are in the possession of high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. Sam sold them to Roger ten years ago for $15,000. Roger likes money, a point made clear in his scene with Sam today. If Sam simply telephoned Roger and told him that the famous Portia Fitzsimmons wants to show the paintings in her gallery and sell them at a great profit to Roger, no doubt he would be eager to find them and make the deal.

Sam does not do anything so straightforward. Instead, he visits Roger at Collinwood. Roger responds to his presence by railing at him, declaring that he never wants to see him in the house and wants him to leave immediately. Sam then insists that Roger give him the paintings. When Roger asks why, Sam denies that any part of the $15,000 was a payment for the paintings. He starts to explain that it was hush money Roger gave Sam to ensure he kept a secret Roger wants withheld from dashing action hero Burke Devlin.** Roger looks around in terror when Sam starts talking about the secret, then orders him never to speak of the matter again. Sam says he will tell Burke all about it unless Roger produces the paintings. Roger dismisses Sam’s threat, but does offer to sell him the paintings for $50,000, unless it turns out that he destroyed them or lost them somewhere along the way.

Now that I’ve seen episodes 1-192 a couple of times, I know that Sam hates Roger, hates himself for taking Roger’s money and betraying Burke, and wants to start a new life in which Roger will have no part. But his undisguised attempt to blackmail Roger into handing over the paintings isn’t really in character for Sam. His tortured conscience has hobbled Sam time and again in his attempts to stand up to Roger. Besides, Sam just had a harrowing encounter with the supernatural in the form of Roger’s estranged wife, blonde fire witch Laura Collins, and that experience seemed like it would make him a kinder and more thoughtful man. That his first act after emerging from it is to commit an out-and-out felony is a disappointment to me.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, wasn’t disappointed. She likes the scenes when Sam is sober enough to stand up to Roger, and she sees this as one of the strongest of those. While she acknowledges that Sam is not being rational, she cheers for his desire to press to the hilt his advantage over the rich so-and-so who has been a blight on his existence for so long.

In the local tavern, The Blue Whale, Maggie Evans is having a drink with her boyfriend, hardworking young fisherman Joe. The camera focuses on a man in a seaman’s coat and captain’s hat sitting at the bar, eavesdropping on their conversation. When they mention Collinwood and reclusive matriarch Liz, the sailor perks up and approaches them.

He apologizes for listening to their conversation, but goes on to ask a series of questions about its content. When Joe makes it clear he does not welcome the intrusion, he apologizes again, while in the act of sitting down with them. When they are finally getting rid of him, he says that it is terribly sad that Liz never leaves her home, and while speaking of that terrible sadness flashes a huge grin. He gives his name as Jason McGuire.

So we are introduced to a second new character in this episode. This one is apparently going to get some kind of storyline started. The actor is talented and the scene has some good things in it, but Jason McGuire is no Portia Fitzsimmons.

*As it then was known.

**A sketch of Burke is on display in Sam’s cottage today. The Dark Shadows wiki speaks with the voice of fans everywhere when it says that Sam tore up a sketch of Burke in #41 and therefore should not have this item now. But Sam made that sketch as part of his preparation for painting a full portrait of Burke. Artists make more than one sketch when they are getting ready for a major painting, so the fact that Sam tore up one sketch doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have any number of others lying around.

Episode 182: That spook bit

Like many children of divorce, strange and troubled boy David Collins finds himself having to decide which parent he will live with. He and his father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, have been living in the great house of Collinwood as guests of Roger’s sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, ever since Roger ran out of money some months ago. Now David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, has reappeared after an absence of many years, and she wants to take David. This idea delighted Roger from the first, but David had initially reacted to Laura with fear. He still has mixed feelings about her.

Today, well-meaning governess Vicki is trying to get David to focus on his studies. He tells her that he is thinking about his living situation. He likes Collinwood, especially since Vicki came. But he has just about decided to go away with his mother.

Vicki asks why David wants to do this. He reminds her of a vision he had yesterday that terrified him. He saw himself in the fireplace, immersed in flames and showing no sign of wanting to escape them. He interprets this as a warning from the supernatural realm that he is in great danger, and that the danger is to be found at Collinwood. He believes he will find safety if he goes far from the estate with his mother.

Vicki knows that David is partly correct. She has considerable evidence that the ghost of Josette Collins has been trying to warn David and her and several other people that David is in danger of being burned alive. She is also sure that the source of this danger is at Collinwood- it is Laura herself. She is an inhuman creature who will burn David alive. Vicki can’t tell David about this, but she does remind him of some of Josette’s previous warnings. David realizes that his mother featured prominently in those warnings, but does not see that she is the one Josette is warning him about. To Vicki’s dismay, David concludes that Laura is also in danger, and that it is urgent that the two of them go off together at once.

When her warnings to David backfire, Josette is running true to form. The first time she tried to rescue someone from imminent peril was in episode 122, when crazed handyman Matthew Morgan had kidnapped Vicki. Matthew’s response upon hearing a ghostly voice was to put a knife to Vicki’s throat. Eventually Josette enlisted some of her buddies from that land of ghosts which forms the back-world behind what we see, and together they would stop Matthew and save Vicki. Here again, Josette needs help getting her point across.

Of all the characters, David is the one who has had the easiest rapport with Josette. In #102, we saw him standing in front of her portrait in the long-abandoned Old House on the grounds of Collinwood, chattering happily away to her. We couldn’t hear her, but he could. She had no need to manifest herself visibly or do anything else spectacular; she and David could just talk to each other.

Now, Laura is blocking Josette’s attempts to communicate. In #165, Josette manifested in a room with Laura and David; Laura ordered her to go away, and she did. In #170, Josette began speaking through Vicki at a séance; Laura silenced her, and in later episodes visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie said that Josette was battling against some power at least equal to her own. Strong as Josette’s connection to David has been, she cannot break through his mother’s interference.

Vicki confers with Guthrie. They decide to present their case to Roger, who alone has the legal right to oppose Laura’s wish to take David, and to dashing action hero Burke Devlin, who has a great influence over the boy. Guthrie meets with Roger in the drawing room, and Vicki goes to Burke’s suite at the Collinsport Inn.

Roger despised Guthrie as a quack starting almost as soon as he met him, but in his most recent appearance, in #178, he started to suspect that there might be something to Guthrie’s ideas. He is quite rude to Guthrie throughout their conversation today, but does hear him out.

Burke respects Vicki, but finds it impossible to sit still when she starts talking about Josette. So she sticks to the demonstrable facts. The camera sticks to Alexandra Moltke Isles’ eyes, on which the light plays arrestingly.

At length, Burke admits that something strange might be going on. Vicki asks Burke if he will stop encouraging David to go away with his mother. He says he believes that he ought to stop doing that, but that he doesn’t know what he will actually do after he next sees Laura. Vicki says she knows how he feels about Laura. Burke tells her that he himself doesn’t know how he feels about Laura, or about anyone else.

Mitch Ryan projects Burke’s bewilderment about his own behavior when he is with Laura. We haven’t seen any sign that Laura has cast a spell on Burke. So far, it is entirely possible that Burke is just smitten with Laura. She was the ex-girlfriend who left him for Roger and is now suggesting she wants to get back together with him. As such, she is the symbol of both his lost youth and his upcoming triumph over his bitter enemy. Also, she is beautiful, and can be hilariously funny. That combination would be enough to cloud anyone’s mind. But when Burke is telling Vicki how confused he is about his emotions, we wonder if there might be some witchcraft involved as well.

Back at Collinwood, Roger and David are in the drawing room. David tells Roger that he wants to go away with Laura, and when Roger asks why he has made that decision David tells him what he saw in the fire. David asks him if he still wants him to go away. In previous episodes, David had asked Roger about his hostility towards him. Sometimes Roger parried these questions with witty remarks, other times he simply dismissed David and walked away. Now Roger just chokes up. “We’ll see,” he keeps saying. “We’ll see.” What we the audience see in Louis Edmonds’ performance is a man who is starting to realize what he has thrown away by refusing to love his son. It makes a powerful moment.

After David leaves him alone in the drawing room, Roger assumes his usual position in front of the brandy bottle and pours himself a glass. He lifts it to his lips, then looks around, as if he detects an unusual scent in the air. He sets the drink down. He turns, and sees an old book open itself.

A book first did this in the drawing room in #52. That time the Collins family history opened to a picture of Josette. More recently, Josette’s signature jasmine perfume was in the air in the crypt at the old cemetery when a book opened itself there in #157. Regular viewers will therefore assume that when a book opens without visible aid of a cast member, it is Josette, the spectral research librarian, leading the characters to the information they need.

Roger hasn’t seen these previous occurrences, and he has chosen to disregard the evidence he has seen for the existence of supernatural influences around him. So the sight of the book opening itself comes as a great shock to him. When he looks at the page to which it has opened, he finds out something about the death of a woman named Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, whom Guthrie and Vicki believe to be an earlier incarnation of his wife. That Laura had died by fire in 1867, along with her young son David. Guthrie had told Roger that. A fact he had not mentioned, and which strikes Roger with particular terror, is that David Radcliffe had not wanted to be rescued from the fire. He had wanted to burn.

The idea of Laura the Phoenix is an interesting one, and the storyline gives Josette and the other vague, indefinable spirits of the supernatural back-world Dark Shadows has been hinting at since it began a suitable adversary to bring them into the action of the main continuity. But most of the individual episodes are so slow, so heavy with recapping, and so confused in their development that few of them can be recommended on their own merits. Indeed, this is only the second episode from the Laura arc, after #146, to which I apply the “Genuinely Good Episode” tag.

After we watched the episode, my wife, Mrs Acilius, shared her theory that the show is getting better because they’ve learned that it will be renewed for another 13 weeks. That makes sense- if it was going to be canceled after #195, the writers might not want to come up with any fresh stories and the producers certainly wouldn’t want to pay to build any new sets or hire actors to play new characters. Better just to run out the clock so that the Laura arc ends in #195 and everyone else lives spookily ever after. But if they know they can keep going until #260, they will have time to work out new ideas.

Whatever was going on among the writers, the actors seem to have been in a good mood today. David Henesy and Mrs Isles horse around a bit with the opening slate. He strikes a goofy pose to hold it, and she creeps up on him and puts her hand over his mouth.

Episode 180: She’s out there somewhere

Yesterday, we saw four men visiting a crypt. They are parapsychologist Dr Guthrie, hardworking young fisherman Joe, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank, and the unnamed Caretaker of the old cemetery. They witnessed an uncanny event when the ghost of Josette Collins opened the coffin of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge, who died (by fire!) in 1767.

The ghostly intervention was disturbing enough in itself, but when the four men saw that the coffin was absolutely empty they had to change their ideas. Before Josette took action, the Caretaker had vowed that he would die rather than let a grave be disturbed. After they have seen the empty interior of the coffin, Guthrie asks him about another grave he wants to dig up and the Caretaker gives him directions. Frank had shouted at Joe and Guthrie that they would go to jail if they didn’t immediately stop disturbing the crypt, but now he agrees to go to the other grave and help dig. Joe had joined Guthrie only with utmost reluctance and had wanted to stop when the Caretaker first showed up, but now he is the one who points out a toolshed from which he volunteers to grab some shovels.

The second grave is that of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe. In 1867, just one hundred years after the fire that killed Laura Murdoch Stockbridge, Laura Murdoch Radcliffe died the same way. What’s more, a woman initially identified as Laura Murdoch Collins died (by fire!) in Phoenix, Arizona earlier in 1967 and her body inexplicably disappeared from the morgue some weeks after her death. Evidently Guthrie’s hypothesis is that graves will both be empty, because the body of each Laura Murdoch disappeared after death. He also surmises an otherworldly connection between these three dead and vanished Laura Murdochs and the apparently alive Laura Murdoch Collins who has been hanging around the great estate of Collinwood for a couple of months.

Back in the crypt, the Caretaker is delivering a soliloquy. He thinks Guthrie, Joe, and Frank are wasting their time trying to learn secrets from the dead. He has information he could share if they would stay and listen to him. He remembers that there was something strange about the death of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, and that a book about the Radcliffes is on the shelves in the crypt. He looks through the book and finds the information. “The child!” he exclaims.

Laura Murdoch Collins materializes in a dark corner and strikes up a conversation with the Caretaker. As her talk grows more and more mystifying, the Caretaker looks confused, as if he has never before been the least weird person in any room.

Laura’s appearance gave us (Mrs Acilius and I) two grounds for fear. Our first fear was that Laura might kill the Caretaker. We could easily imagine Guthrie, Joe, and Frank coming back to the crypt to find it in flames, the records kept there in ashes, and the Caretaker dead (by fire!) We like the Caretaker, and want to see him in future episodes.

Our second fear was that Laura would go to the grave of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe and interrupt the exhumation. What we dreaded about that prospect was that it would slow the story down. Yesterday’s show moved at a nice clip, and while today does not match it, at least some things are happening to advance the plot. In the last several weeks, the pace has alternated between glacial and dead stop. So the idea of yet another delay is well worth a shudder.

Laura Murdoch Collins examines the coffin of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge

There is a moment when it seems that Laura will go to stop the men. The Caretaker tells her that they have gone to the grave of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, and starts to give her directions. She tells him not to bother explaining where it is. Laura doesn’t speak the line “I’ve been there before,” but Diana Millay’s eyes communicate the thought to the audience. Having already seen her inspecting the inside of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge’s empty coffin, we know that she is on a tour of her old neighborhood.

Laura Murdoch Collins doesn’t need directions to the grave of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe

For whatever reason, Laura does not interfere with Guthrie, Joe, and Frank. They dig up the coffin of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe. They open it and look inside. Guthrie asks “What do you see?” Frank replies “What you thought we’d see.” There it is, a bullfrog in a top hat singing “Hello, My Baby.” Oh no wait, I changed the channel there for a second. On Dark Shadows, the answer is “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. An empty box. It’s almost like it’s always been empty.” No wonder we’re still watching the show after all these years, where else can you find thrills like that.

The Caretaker is talking to Laura and looks down for a second. When he looks up, he is baffled. We cut back to the spot where she had been standing, and it is vacant.

Guthrie, Joe, and Frank return to the crypt. They apologize for having been away for so long. The Caretaker tells them they have only been gone for a minute or two. They are puzzled. They find the book about the Radcliffes, and discover that a portion of a newspaper clipping containing an account of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe’s death has been erased, as by an intense light generated by a fire. This leaves us wondering why Laura erased only that section of the clipping, calling attention to it, when she could just as easily have set fire to the book and destroyed the whole thing.

It’s a relief that the Caretaker survives to dodder another day, and a relief that Guthrie, Joe, and Frank complete their business in the cemetery and free us to move on to the next story point. As Guthrie, John Lasell was visibly bored yesterday; today his part is smaller, but he is back on his game, and the others are good too.

Daniel F. Keyes has some particularly good moments as the Caretaker. Yesterday he struck the heroic note when he told Guthrie and Joe that they would have to kill him before they could open the graves, and he made that a powerful moment. Today, he shows us both how lonely the Caretaker is, and why he cannot escape that loneliness. The feeling is painfully raw in his soliloquy about the information he could give if only the others would listen, and his exaggeratedly careful movements and other mimicries of a fragile old age give that rendition of helpless, desperate loneliness an extra punch. His interaction with Laura is even more interesting- while he lives too much in the world of ghosts and taboos to be at home with the living, he is too much a part of the this-world institution of the cemetery and of its rational, bureaucratic routines to know what to do when he encounters an otherworldly being face to face. He is entirely alone, caught in the interstices between the natural and the supernatural, unable to communicate with the denizens of either realm.

Today is the last time we will see actor Conard Fowkes and his character, Frank. I call him “instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank” because, while Fowkes consistently does an excellent job of embodying whatever Frank supposed to be at any given moment, he never gives the feeling that there is anything else under the surface. I keep wishing Frederic Forrest, who danced at the Blue Whale in #137, had been cast as Frank. Forrest could have created a convincing character while also giving a sense of a goofy, engaging personality inside whatever Frank is in any given scene, so that you not only appreciate each turn but also wonder what is coming next. Each time you see Fowkes, you can recognize that he presented exactly what he was supposed to present, but he never drops a hint that anything different might be coming. Still less does he leave you wanting more.

Today, Frank is supposed to be chastened by the sight of what Josette did and willing to join Guthrie and Joe in their exhumation. He is the very image of “Chastened.” Yesterday, he was indignant about Guthrie and Joe’s lawless behavior. A still of him from that episode would have been a fine illustration for a dictionary definition of “Indignant.” In #169, he was haggard and concerned about the mysterious illness gripping reclusive matriarch Liz. Again, he was a faultless model for “Haggard and Concerned.” When we first saw him in the offices of his firm in #92, he was so much the fellow you would expect to meet in a law office in Bangor, Maine in 1966 that you felt like you were reading a writ of replevin.

In a way, Fowkes was an excellent actor. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the way in which a regular member of the cast of a scripted television series ought to excel. The proper medium for him would be something more static, such as filmstrips or View Master reels, in which we could stop and look at him as he demonstrated various moods and personality types. I suppose he might also have been an outstanding mime. Fowkes was always pleasant, and in her scenes with him Alexandra Moltke Isles has a chance to show aspects of the personality of well-meaning governess Vicki that we never see in any other setting. So I’ll miss him, but I’d have missed Forrest a whole lot more.

Episode 178: Bake me a cake

We open in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. Visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie is trying to talk hardworking young fisherman Joe into helping him open a grave. Joe’s ex-girlfriend, flighty heiress Carolyn, is alarmed by the idea, but is on Guthrie’s side. Guthrie recaps the current storyline until he bores Joe into submission. Joe goes off to get his tools.

Guthrie, Carolyn, and Joe make their plans

As Joe, Joel Crothers does manage to hold the audience’s attention. While the other actors are starting to seem bored with the endless repetitions, his shocked interjections make him seem like someone learning these bizarre facts for the first time. With so much time spent selling old rope, it is genuinely surprising to find oneself taking an interest in anything about the dialogue.

We cut to stock footage of the Moon behind clouds, then see blonde fire witch Laura staring out the window of the cottage on the estate. This is the first time we see that footage coupled with the sight of a supernatural villain staring out a window, but it won’t be the last.

Laura’s estranged husband, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger drops in on her. They recap the same material Guthrie has been going over.

When we were watching the episode, Mrs Acilius became frustrated. Laura tells Roger that Guthrie is not simply a psychologist- he is a parapsychologist. Roger is appalled by this news. Mrs Acilius was appalled that Roger, who has always been presented as a reasonably intelligent person, is suddenly so dumb that he hadn’t figured it out yet. After all, Roger and Laura had both participated in a séance Guthrie had organized- wasn’t that enough of a clue for him?

My interpretation is that Roger isn’t being dumb. He has said time and again that he regards Guthrie as a quack. I think that up to this point, he has assumed that Guthrie was just making stuff up as he went along. When Laura tells him that Guthrie is a researcher specializing in psychic phenomena, he is stunned to realize Guthrie isn’t improvising- he is a committed to a systematic plan of quackery. The missus seemed to find that interpretation intriguing.

Roger is stunned deeply enough, in fact, that his resistance to the idea that there might be something seriously weird about Laura starts to break down. Roger runs through all the unexplainable occurrences that have taken place since Laura has come back to town, and insists she tell him anything she might be holding back. Roger usually responds to information that inconveniences him by declaring that he will erase it from his memory as soon as possible, but it seems that he can no longer seal off the warning signs about Laura.

As Roger talks to Laura, she realizes that he might be about to become a lot less manageable. Her look changes from irritation to worry to a brief, beautiful moment when she is clearly thinking of casting a spell on him. I missed that bit when we were watching the episode, and Mrs Acilius had to point it out to me. I must have been looking away- as Diana Millay plays the scene, the flickering thought is easily legible on her face.

Roger goes to the great house and acts like he owns the place. Carolyn and Guthrie play along with him. He orders Guthrie out. Guthrie goes quietly; it’s time for him to meet up with Joe anyway. Carolyn pleads with him to give Guthrie a chance. After yet more recapping, he breaks down and admits that it is possible that something supernatural might be going on.

We see Guthrie and Joe at the door of the building in which the crypt they want to open is located. They try vainly to open the door. They knock and get no answer. They are about to give up when the doorknob starts to turn. The door opens, and they peer inside with startled looks. This is a reprise of the ending of #153, when well-meaning governess Vicki and her boyfriend, instantly forgettable young lawyer Frank, came to the same door with the same result. Vicki and Frank had been led to the building by the ghost of Josette Collins, and did not know what they were to do there. Guthrie and Joe have decided to go there because Guthrie’s analysis has led him to the conclusion that they have to open the tomb of L. Murdoch Stockbridge. That difference in context doesn’t make today’s conclusion any more exciting than that one was, but at least it marks a certain measure of progress in the development of the plot.

Episode 61: A sandwich for a lonely man

My wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out that my post about episode 60 was unfair. She objected to the sentence “The Friday cliffhanger is Burke asking if he may join the Evanses and Vicki for dinner.” As she explained, that moment actually is an effective cliffhanger. I hadn’t mentioned that the sheriff had called drunken artist Sam Evans to warn him that dashing action hero Burke Devlin might be coming to his house, that he urged Sam to call back if Burke did come, and that actor David Ford played Sam’s reaction to this call with a convincing display of terror.

Sam on the phone — Sam trying to conceal his fear from the women behind him and the man on the other end of the call

I also failed to mention the shot when Burke enters the room. Before Sam can get the words out to tell his daughter Maggie not to open the door, Burke has burst in. The scenes in the Evans cottage have been dimly lit, with all three figures moving before dark backgrounds. When the light colored door swings open, its relative brightness feels for a second like a flash, and when he stands in front of it Burke cuts a stark figure. We see him in contrast with Maggie, who stands against a dark background, wearing a dark top and a stunned expression:

Throughout the episode, Sam had failed repeatedly to exercise any measure of control even in a social situation in his own home where the only other people are his daughter Maggie and well-meaning governess Vicki, the two kindliest characters on the show. The irruption of Burke into that setting is indeed a formidable moment for Sam.

So yes, that was a more plausible Friday cliffhanger than I allowed. Perhaps I was prejudiced against it because I remembered this episode. The purpose of a cliffhanger is to bring the audience back for the next installment. Typically, the next installment will begin by resolving the cliffhanger as quickly and unceremoniously as possible. But today, Burke’s intrusion into the Evans cottage drags on and on. In the process, it does serious harm to Burke’s character.

After rushing into the Evans cottage, Burke defies Sam and Maggie to say that he isn’t welcome. Maggie, unaware of the sheriff’s call urging Sam to let him know if Burke shows up, breaks down and says that of course Burke is welcome. Burke then tries to order Vicki and Maggie into the kitchen so that he can be alone with Sam. Neither woman is at all meek, however, and they stand up to Burke’s browbeating admirably.

Not so Sam. He takes the first opportunity to run away. We know that Sam has his guilty secrets, but he is a likable character, and it is hurts to imagine the pain that will await him the rest of his life whenever he remembers the night he left his daughter and her sweet young friend to face an angry man alone in his house. Sam doesn’t even call the sheriff. Instead, in his panic he goes to the hotel to try to retrieve a sealed envelope he had Maggie leave in the safe there. That gives us a scene with Conrad Bain as hotel manager Mr Wells. Bain is always a delight, and his little business about the envelope is certainly the most pleasant part of the episode. At the end of the episode, Sam will meet Burke at the hotel and ask to talk with him alone in his room, leaving us with the image of him trying to redeem himself in his own eyes.

Before that end comes, however, we have much, much more of Burke trying to bully the young women in the cottage. He won’t let them eat dinner. He harangues them about his manslaughter conviction. In the course of that harangue, it becomes clear that he isn’t thinking at all clearly. “I was drunk and don’t remember too much about that night, but I do remember Roger Collins taking over the wheel.” That’s just delicious- he was hopelessly drunk, blacked out in fact, but he’s pretty sure he remembers giving the keys to someone else before the fatal collision. The fact that his substitute driver was just as drunk as he was doesn’t seem to occur to him as a flaw in his “defense,” nor does the fact that this one convenient piece of information is the only thing to surface from his alcoholic stupor. That sort of thinking runs at such an oblique angle to reality that there would be nothing to say to Burke even if he were willing to listen to you. He goes on to suggest to Maggie that her father may have killed their old friend Bill Malloy, and refuses to leave the house when Maggie tells him to do so.

Burke’s abuse of Sam, Maggie, and Vicki makes it hard for us to like Burke as much as the show needs us to like him. We’re supposed to perk up when he’s on screen, not only because we don’t know what he might do next, but also because we don’t know whether we will approve of whatever surprising thing he makes happen. Even when he is trying to destroy the family to which our point of view character, Vicki, owes her loyalty, we’re supposed to want to see more of him. But when we see him treat Vicki and Maggie the way he does here, the image of him as a grinning thug sticks in the mind, and it is hard to want more of that.

All the more so, perhaps, because of his ineffectiveness as a thug. Our first concern with the show is that it should tell an interesting story, and Burke earns our attention by providing exciting story points. We can like even a very evil character who makes exciting things happen, but someone who simply shows up at your house when you’re about to eat, keeps you from your dinner, rambles on with a lot of nonsense, insults your father, and refuses to leave is just testing your patience for bad conduct.

We can compare Burke as the villain of this episode to another, more interesting villain. Throughout 1966, Mitch Ryan was not only playing Burke on Dark Shadows, but was also on Broadway in Wait Until Dark. In that play, he was one of the con men who, under the control of a mysterious figure calling himself Harry Roat, junior (and senior, but that’s another matter,) talk their way into a blind woman’s apartment and try, at first by trickery and then by threats of murder, to get her to hand over something valuable that she hadn’t realized she had in her possession. Like Maggie and Vicki, the heroine of the play stands up to Ryan’s character and the other villains. She ultimately triumphs over them. Unlike Burke, who is simply indulging on rage for its own sake and boring everyone as he does so, Roat has devised a brilliantly clever scheme to trick his victim, a scheme which fails only because she is his equal in brilliance and his superior in other ways. Wait Until Dark was a major hit in that original Broadway run, as was the movie version the next year and as many revivals of it have been in the years since. If Roat’s activities were as pointless in the play as Burke’s are in this episode, I very much doubt it would have been produced at all.