Tag: mrs danvers

Episode 970: Another road

Yesterday, Barnabas Collins went to the long-disused east wing of the great house of Collinwood to search for the coffin that vampire Megan Todd occupies during the day. Barnabas is himself the vampire who ended Megan’s human life, passing his curse along to her. When his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, makes a characteristic remark and tells him “you must not feel personally about Megan Todd,” Barnabas asks “How can I feel any other way?” Most of Barnabas’ feelings, in this or any other matter, consist of pity for himself, but there is a trace of sympathy for Megan in there someplace, probably.

Now, Barnabas has taken Julia to a spot that he happened upon while looking for Megan. While Julia was in the carriage house on the estate with matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Barnabas saw two women who looked and sounded exactly like them in a brightly lit, fully furnished, heavily decorated room behind a pair of doors in the otherwise dark and empty east wing. Julia’s double was wearing a French maid outfit and giving orders to Liz’, which is probably someone’s fetish but which is totally out of character for the women Barnabas knows.

In #351, Barnabas was without a blood-thrall. Julia offered to guard his coffin during the day. They were not really friends at that point, and he reacted to her offer warily. Among his objections was that it was not suitable for her, as a medical doctor, to fill such a position. She assured him that she was not volunteering “to be your maid.” Longtime viewers might remember that line when they see Parallel Julia in her livery.

There was an invisible barrier in the doorway that Barnabas could not cross, and he was unable to attract the attention of the women who were so near to him, even when he shouted what he supposed to be their names. The doors closed, and when they opened again the barrier was gone, but so were the doubles of Julia and Liz, along with all the furnishings and lights that had surrounded them.

Thinking of what Barnabas has told her about the room, Julia hesitates to enter it with him. She dismisses her concern as “silly.” Regular viewers will perk up at this- labeling a fear as “silly” is the surest way of marking it as the basis of an upcoming major story point. Once inside the bare room, Julia starts thinking out loud:

JULIA: I was at Eliot Stokes’ house one night, oh, last spring. We were having a brandy after dinner and he started talking about time… He was complaining that we all simply accept it. We don’t have much choice, I thought.

But Eliot had been reading a theory. It sounded insane to me. A theory of parallel time… we live on this universe in 1970, right? We accept the fact that our time is the only time that we can truly know. Suppose time is like a road and parallel to it there’s another road. On one we live the lives we know, but on the other road our lives are different because we’re in a different time-band* and we’ve made different choices. For example, in that other band of time I could’ve made a different choice when I was at college. Instead of being a doctor I could’ve married and had children.

Barnabas, you don’t actually think through some warp in the time band that you have actually seen us living other lives?

BARNABAS: I don’t know, there’s got to be a more rational explanation.

JULIA: Must there?

So, now we know that we are about to launch a new kind of time travel story. The show has taken us back in time for long costume drama inserts, most notably from November 1967 to March 1968 when it was set in the 1790s and from March to November 1969 when it was set in 1897. Now they are going to travel sideways in time, and take us to a parallel universe where Julia is a maid and Liz is not the lady of the house.

Time bandits. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

At the end of the episode, Barnabas sees the room change again. Parallel Time Liz and Parallel Time Julia uncover a portrait that hangs there, the portrait of a woman whom PT Liz insists is dead and PT Julia insists is still the rightful mistress of the room. Barnabas recognizes the subject as the Parallel Time counterpart of his ex-wife, wicked witch Angelique.

With this, the behavior of PT Liz and PT Julia falls into place. We’re about to see a story derived from Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. PT Julia is Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper maniacally devoted to Rebecca, the late wife of Maxim de Winter. PT Angelique is the one whose death and continued ownership of the room have been a point of contention between PT Julia and PT Liz. We’ve seen a photograph of Parallel Time counterparts of Barnabas’ distant cousin Quentin Collins and strange and troubled boy David Collins, signed “Your loving husband, Quentin.” PT Quentin is the one whom we have heard Liz say is returning with a new wife. In the main “time-band,” Quentin is a penniless rogue with a long supernatural backstory, but his counterpart is the master of Collinwood, and Liz ranks somewhere below the uniformed domestics in the household hierarchy. The David we know is the son of Liz’ brother Roger and a blonde fire witch named Laura Murdoch, but evidently his Parallel Time counterpart is the son of the counterparts of Quentin and Angelique. We have had no indication of who Quentin’s new wife is to be.

This is not the first reference to Rebecca on the show. When Clarice Blackburn joined the cast as housekeeper Mrs Johnson in September 1966, she was supposed to model the character on Mrs Danvers. Mrs Johnson came to Collinwood as a spy for Collins family nemesis Burke Devlin, driven by her certainty that Roger was responsible for the death of her beloved former employer Bill Malloy. Bill, like Rebecca, had drowned under suspicious circumstances, though he didn’t have much else in common with her. By the time the “Death of Bill Malloy” story played out, Mrs Johnson had taken on a new function as an inveterate gossip who made narrative progression possible by blabbing everything she knew to everyone she met. Blackburn’s outstanding talents made her a significant part of the show for quite some time; it’s a shame she isn’t going to be part of the upcoming segment.

Rebecca was not the only Du Maurier novel to inspire a story on Dark Shadows. Dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis first freed Barnabas to prey upon the living after David and Mrs Johnson told him the plot of Du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek and claimed that it happened to one of the Collins ancestors. Searching for the treasure the pirate gave to the lady, Willie stumbled upon Barnabas’ coffin. He opened it, earning a bite that made him the vampire’s slave.

Willie’s mistake was that he did not know what kind of show he was on. When Dark Shadows began, executive producer Dan Curtis and ABC vice president for daytime programming Leonard Goldberg** meant for it to be the television equivalent of the “Gothic romance” novels that were so popular in those days. Du Maurier’s novels were among the cornerstones of the Gothic romance genre, and if it were still that kind of show in April 1967 Willie would have been on solid ground in his expectation that there might be a lot of jewels hidden in an unmarked coffin in the old mausoleum. But when Laura was on the show from December 1966 to March 1967, her story subsumed all the major plot threads into a tale of the supernatural. Willie and his sometime friend, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, were on the show as in-betweeners to sweep up the last non-paranormal odds and ends and help introduce the next uncanny menace.

Now, the show is heading in the opposite direction, and Willie is back to help take us there. In Parallel Time, Dark Shadows will finally do the Daphne Du Maurier adaptation that didn’t work out in the Bill Malloy story and that was never meant to work out for Willie. But Megan has to be destroyed before Barnabas can decamp for Parallel Time, and he and Julia order Willie to destroy her.

It was not a foregone conclusion that Julia and Barnabas would want to stake Megan. At the moment, Julia is giving Barnabas injections meant to relieve him of the effects of the vampire curse. Similar injections had worked in 1968 and again during the 1897 segment. Julia shows Barnabas the cross she wears to ward Megan off, and he does not recoil from it. That suggests the injections are having some effect on him, even though he keeps complaining that they aren’t doing anything to curb his bloodlust. When Julia and Barnabas find Megan in the east wing, she refuses the injections. When they find that she is feeding on Roger, they conclude that she cannot be allowed to see another night.

Willie is horrified by the command to drive a stake through Megan’s heart. He protests that he doesn’t even know her. As Barnabas and Julia tell him of the nightmare that awaits everyone if he doesn’t do as they say, he starts to talk about his fiancée Roxanne and the secrets he has been keeping from her. He worries about the image she will have of him if she finds out that he is the former blood-thrall of one vampire and the destroyer of another. “I mean, she’s gonna be thinkin’ I’m weird or somethin’!” I suppose that would be an occupational hazard for blood-thralls.

Willie is worried Roxanne might get the wrong idea about him. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There is an odd moment when Julia is asking Liz about the east wing. Liz tells her that Roger knows more about the legends of the house than she does. When Julia was first on the show, she was posing as an historian looking into the old families of New England. In those days, Liz mentioned that Roger knew far less about the Collins past than she did, which fit with the original keynote of Roger’s character, an extreme lack of family feeling. But by this point, Roger has merged with the roles Louis Edmonds played in the 1790s and 1897 segments, both of whom were dedicated to the honor of the Collins name.

*The first appearance of this bit of Collinsport English.

**Not to be confused with his then-boss, network president Leonard Goldenson.

Episode 432: Cousin Abigail’s religion

In the deserted Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, repressed spinster Abigail Collins has stumbled upon the coffin in which her nephew Barnabas spends his days. She arrives just as he is rising for the evening. Abigail knows that Barnabas is dead, but she has never heard of vampires, so she has no idea what to make of what she sees.

Barnabas taunts Abigail. When she cries that the Devil is trying to touch her, he cynically asks why she thinks that the Devil always wants to touch her. The broadcast date is 1968, when Freudianism was riding high in the circles frequented by the sort of people who wrote and produced Dark Shadows. The dramatic date is 1796, when that school of thought was undreamed of. Still, there were various strands of folk wisdom about the adverse psychological effects of celibacy, so Barnabas’ smirking comment undoubtedly means exactly what the original audience would have taken it to mean.

From the moment Barnabas saw Abigail at the end of yesterday’s episode, we’ve wondered how he would go about killing her. She is his aunt, after all; the vampire’s bite is so widely recognized a metaphor for the sexual act that we could hardly expect the ABC censors to have allowed him to make a meal of her. In the end, he simply bares his fangs and she dies of fright.

Barnabas scares Abigail to death. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Abigail has been a villain; even the opening voiceover refers to her as “a woman who has been responsible for much grief.” During their confrontation, Barnabas tells Abigail many truths that, had she known them earlier, would have kept her from causing that grief. If she accepts them now, she will be remorseful. To the extent that we want Abigail to know what she has done, we identify with Barnabas during this scene. That might lead us to think that her death by fright is a way of letting us see Barnabas as the good guy, since he does not kill her by physical contact. But throughout the confrontation he has been telling her that she is about to die. Before he bares his teeth, he makes a dramatic announcement that clearly tells us that he is bringing matters to their climax, and when he sees her die he does not look the least bit unhappy. He seems to have known that the sight of his teeth had the power to kill his aunt, and to have deliberately used that power.

Abigail is the sister of Barnabas’ father, haughty overlord Joshua Collins. Before he even became a vampire, Barnabas killed Joshua’s brother Jeremiah in a duel. By his clumsiness, Barnabas inadvertently caused the death of his own sister, little Sarah Collins. Things are getting rather lonesome for Joshua.

In the great house on the same estate, young Daniel Collins is trying to slip out into the night. Yesterday, he arranged to meet secretly with much put-upon servant Ben so Ben could give him pointers on how to run away from this depressing house. The lady of the house, Joshua’s wife Naomi, intercepts Daniel. She asks if he plays whist, and he complains that he isn’t allowed to play cards because that is “against cousin Abigail’s religion.” Naomi says that so long as it isn’t against his religion, it’s no problem for her.

This isn’t the first indication that Abigail’s religion is different from that of the rest of the family. As rich New England landowners in the eighteenth century, we can assume they are all Congregationalists, but the loose polity of Congregationalism left room for a lot of variation from one congregation to another. She may well have attended a stricter meeting than did the other members of the family, though she seems to have taken her greatest satisfaction in imposing her austere ways on the other members of the household.

Naomi suggests that Daniel and his older sister Millicent might stay at Collinwood with her and Joshua indefinitely. Daniel is clearly not a fan of this idea, and struggles to find a polite way to say that he is desperate to go back home to New York City. He is still struggling when a knock comes at the door. It is the Rev’d Mr Trask, whom Abigail called in from out of town to find witches. Trask is currently prosecuting Victoria Winters, former governess to Daniel and the late Sarah. Abigail asked Trask to meet her because she thought she would find evidence against Vicki in the Old House. Since she found Barnabas instead, she will not be keeping the appointment.

While Naomi goes to look for Abigail, Trask takes the opportunity to work on Daniel. At first Trask seems to be far more agreeable than we have ever seen him before. So when Daniel apologizes for telling him that he looks like the Devil and that he sees no reason they should exchange any words, Trask smiles and calmly says that he appreciates his honesty. Trask holds Abigail up as an exemplar of Christian virtue; Daniel says that he cannot bring himself to want to emulate Abigail, since she “is always so, so unhappy, as if whatever she has eaten doesn’t agree with her.” Trask takes this remark in good turn.

Daniel keeps insisting that Vicki is not a witch, but is very nice. Trask takes everything he says as evidence against Vicki. For example, when he tells Trask that Vicki extolled the virtues of curiosity, Trask exclaims that “Curiosity is the Devil’s money! What you buy with it is disbelief in everything it is right to believe in!” Even in this portion of their encounter, Trask seems far smoother than the screaming fanatic we’ve seen up to now. Daniel complains that Trask keeps talking about the Devil when “I want nothing to do with him.” At that, Trask leans in and says that if Daniel feels that way, he can still be saved. When Daniel asks how he can be saved, we can see how Trask might have managed to win a new follower, if he hadn’t gone straight to a demand that Daniel testify against his friend Vicki.

Trask and Daniel have a man-to-man talk. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Trask finally loses his temper. Naomi returns and is appalled when she hears Trask telling Daniel that he bears the mark of the Devil. Daniel runs out into the night, and Naomi tells Trask he is to blame for that.

Daniel wanders about in the woods, looking for Ben. He quickly concludes that he must have missed Ben, and he thinks of going back to the house. Remembering that Trask is there, he chooses to stay outside.

Naomi is in the woods looking for Daniel; Trask joins her, much to her displeasure. Daniel sees Abigail’s corpse propped against a tree. He shouts for Naomi. She and Trask come, and he points the corpse out to them.

Daniel shares his gruesome discovery. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Abigail is the second character Clarice Blackburn has played on Dark Shadows. She joined the cast in #67 as housekeeper Mrs Johnson. In her first months on the show, Mrs Johnson was out to get revenge on the Collins family for their treatment of her former employer and the object of her unrequited love, the late Bill Malloy. Blackburn was told to think of the character as if she were Mrs Danvers, the terrifying housekeeper in Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca. After the Death of Bill Malloy storyline ended, Mrs Johnson transformed into a warm-hearted old biddy whose wildly indiscreet chatter gave the other characters just the information they could use to advance the plot.

Mrs Johnson was always fun to watch, and one of the reasons to look forward to the show’s return to a contemporary setting is that she is waiting for us in 1968. But after her first few weeks, her appearances were rare and usually brief. Abigail gave Blackburn her first chance to show viewers of Dark Shadows what she could do when she had the chance to work on a big canvas. In later storylines, she will have more such opportunities, but we will always miss Abigail.