Tag: mrs johnson

Episode 691: Too late to be afraid

Throughout its first 73 weeks, Dark Shadows was usually very slow-paced, even by the standards of a 1960s daytime soap. Major characters like matriarch Liz and her brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, often seemed to exist solely for the purpose of refusing to accept the facts in front of their faces and thereby slowing down the progression of the plot. Even characters who did face facts would often as not have the memory of goldfish, so that weeks of character development would evaporate with a sudden display of inexplicable ignorance.

That changed when well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time in #365. For the next few months, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and events came thick and fast. When Vicki returned to the present and Dark Shadows returned to contemporary dress in March 1968, the show was a genuine hit. They tried to sustain the breakneck pace of the 1790s segment throughout 1968, with mixed success. That period was a Monster Mash, featuring multiple witches, vampires, mad scientists, Frankensteins, ghosts, and the Devil himself, or perhaps one of his middle managers. That attracted a new audience of preteen viewers, but all too often left the characters spinning their wheels as they tried to make room for each other within one small fishing village near Bangor, Maine.

A few months ago, they dumped all of those larger than life but ultimately unproductive figures and started concentrating on two storylines. The A story so far has been that of werewolf Chris and the efforts old world gentleman Barnabas and mad scientist Julia have made to keep him from killing quite so many people. That one has been moving along at a steady clip.

The B story has not progressed nearly as fast. At times, it has matched the leisurely pace of the show’s early days. Today is dedicated to that story, and in today’s pre-title teaser it appears that it has brought narrative progression to a total halt.

Maggie is the new governess in the great house of Collinwood, charged with the education of Chris’ nine year old sister Amy and of strange and troubled boy David. As usual, we open with a reprise of the previous episode. This time, the reprise is 5 minutes and 45 seconds of Maggie wandering around the house looking for the children and hearing voices, while doors open themselves. That was OK at the end of Friday’s installment, but on its own it is stupefying.

The story is that the evil spirit of the late Quentin is taking possession of David and Amy in order to destroy the Collins family and have the house to itself. It made sense that that story would start slow. Quentin was at first very weak. He existed only in a sealed chamber the children stumbled upon while exploring the long deserted west wing, and could influence events outside that chamber only by persuading them to do his bidding. He gradually gained the power to control one child at a time, and to manifest himself outside his little room. A while ago he was able to put strychnine into Chris’ drink; by the end of Friday’s episode he had Amy and David under his power simultaneously.

Once the action finally gets underway in today’s episode, Quentin is about to strangle Maggie and the children are screaming at him to stop. Housekeeper Mrs Johnson and Liz enter the room. Mrs Johnson sees Quentin, Liz does not. Maggie is unconscious and the children are in a state. By the end of the episode, Liz, Maggie, and Mrs Johnson know Quentin’s name, his plan, and his power. He has managed to create some kind of bubble around the house so that the people inside it cannot hear the rain. The children pass out. David comes to, and announces that it is too late to be afraid. He laughs maniacally, and in the background we also hear Quentin’s laughter.

Quentin no longer needs to hide from Liz and Mrs Johnson. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

With this slam-bang ending, the Haunting of Collinwood takes over as the A story and Liz forever sheds her role as a blocking figure. This phase of the show is approaching its climax, and there is a chance that what comes next will be exciting.

Episode 682: He killed me

Governess Maggie Evans saw the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins yesterday, and she tells housekeeper Mrs Johnson about it today. Mrs Johnson saw Quentin a few days ago; she and Maggie are the only adults in the great house of Collinwood who know that Quentin exists, and not even they know his name. Quentin is gradually taking control of Maggie’s charges, nine year old Amy Jennings and twelve year old David Collins. Yesterday, David led Maggie and his aunt, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, to the room in the long deserted west wing where Maggie saw Quentin. There is a mannequin there wearing a coat like Quentin’s; David says that he and Amy call it “Mr Juggins,” and Liz chooses to believe that Mr Juggins is what Maggie saw.

We see Maggie in bed. She gets up, goes back to the room, and sees Mr Juggins. We dissolve to a shot of Quentin in Mr Juggins’ place. Horrified, Maggie watches Quentin approach with a length of fabric. He chokes her with it. She falls to the floor. She is lying there when we cut to commercial. Maggie was introduced in #1 and has for long stretches been a central character, one of the most recognizable on Dark Shadows. Kathryn Leigh Scott tells a story of going to a wilderness area in Africa when the show was a hit and being greeted with cries of “Maggie Evans!” For the moment, it looks like they have decided to kill her off in the middle of a Tuesday episode.

Of course they haven’t. We come back from the break to hear Maggie telling old world gentleman Barnabas Collins about the dream in which she was strangled. She is surprised that Barnabas believes her story about seeing the man when she was awake, shares her suspicions that David and Amy are connected with the man, and is open to the idea that the dream is “a warning.” Barnabas tells Maggie that he and his inseparable friend, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, saw a woman dressed in clothes of the same period as Quentin’s clothes, that the woman’s presence could not be explained, and that she led them to Amy’s brother’s Chris at a moment when Chris needed medical help to save his life. Barnabas has concluded that the man and the woman are ghosts and that they represent something very dangerous.

Barnabas enlists the aid of occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes agrees to conduct a séance in the drawing room in the hopes of contacting Madame Janet Findley, a psychic researcher whom he brought to the house in #647 to investigate the early signs of Quentin’s haunting. Amy and David tricked Madame Findley into going to Quentin’s stronghold in the west wing in #648, and she did battle with him there in #649. After that confrontation, Madame Findley appeared at the head of the stairs in the foyer and tumbled down them, dead.

This is the tenth séance we have seen on Dark Shadows. They usually come with four roles to be filled. In all séances, someone acted as organizer and leader. In eight of the first nine séances, someone else objected to the idea of a séance, but reluctantly took a place around the table. In seven of the nine, someone went into a trance, becoming a medium. Every time the trance began, someone grew alarmed at its first signs and tried to end the séance before the dead could speak; that drew a stern rebuke from the leader. The medium then spoke, more often than not passing out after struggling to utter a few mysterious words.

The roles of reluctant participant and objector are often combined. Today, Mrs Johnson is the first to combine the role of reluctant participant and medium. This is also the first time the trance does not draw an objection from someone wanting to stop the séance. Mrs Johnson does pull her hands back early on, breaking the circle of contact, and Stokes delivers the requisite stern rebuke. But no one speaks up when she starts to moan. As Madame Findley, she at first produces the usual jumble of words (“The children! Panel! Room!”) She manages to cry out “He killed me! He killed me!” before collapsing face first onto the table in the orthodox manner.

In their post about this episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri compare Mr Juggins with Otto the Automatic Pilot from the 1980 film Airplane! Perhaps inspired by the dissolve from Mr Juggins to Quentin today, they go on to Juggins-ize Otto:

The Scoleris also list all the séances on the show up to this point. They name the leaders and mediums, but not the reluctant participants or the objectors. I have added those:

Dark Shadows Before I Die Séance Tracker


Episode 170/171: Dr. Peter Guthrie conducts; Carolyn, Vicki, Roger and Laura Collins participate; Josette speaks through Vicki in French; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Roger and Laura join reluctantly; Carolyn objects]

Episode 186: Vicki conducts; Sam and David participate; David Radcliffe speaks through David; held in the drawing room at the Old House [Sam is both reluctant joiner and objector]

Episode 280/281: Roger conducts; Liz, Vicki, Burke, Barnabas, Carolyn participate; Josette speaks through Vicki; held in the drawing room at the Old House [Liz, Burke, and Barnabas are reluctant; Barnabas objects]

Episode 365: Roger conducts; Liz, Julia, Vicki, Carolyn and Barnabas participate; Sarah Collins speaks through Vicki after Carolyn pretends Sarah is speaking through her; Vicki is transferred to 1795; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Liz and Barnabas are reluctant; Liz objects]

Episode 449: Countess duPrés conducts; Joshua Collins participates; Bathia Mapes shows up, claiming she was called; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Joshua is reluctant; no trance]

Episode 510/511: Professor Stokes conducts; Julia and Tony Peterson participate; Reverend Trask speaks through Tony Peterson; the basement wall breaks open to reveal his skeleton; held in the basement at the Old House [Tony is reluctant, Julia objects]

Episode 600: Professor Stokes conducts; Barnabas and Julia participate; Phillipe Cordier speaks through Barnabas; held in the drawing room at the Old House [No conspicuously reluctant participant. Julia objects]

Episode 640: David conducts; Amy participates; unsuccessful attempt to contact Quentin Collins; held in Amy’s bedroom at Collinwood [Amy is reluctant; no trance]

Episode 642: Professor Stokes conducts; Liz, Vicki, Carolyn, Chris participate; Magda speaks through Carolyn; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Chris is reluctant and is objector]

Today’s episode: Professor Stokes conducts; Barnabas, Maggie and Mrs. Johnson participate; Janet Findley speaks through Mrs. Johnson; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Mrs Johnson is reluctant; no objector]

This is Maggie’s first séance, and they’ve been spending a lot of time lately showing us that she is unsure of herself. So it would have been expected for her to become frightened and try to stop the séance when Mrs Johnson goes into the trance. Maybe that’s why they left it out- it was too obvious a move. But the pattern is so familiar now that it feels like they’ve forgotten something when they leave the objection out.

Episode 680: Chicken Little was right

Strange and troubled boy David Collins and nine year old Amy Jennings are falling under the sway of the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins. Quentin has been gaining strength gradually; at first he was confined to a small chamber hidden behind a wall in a storage room in the long deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood, and was dependent on Amy and David to do his bidding elsewhere. Now he can move around the estate and do things for himself. He is still able to control only one of the children at a time, though, and when Amy found out that Quentin had poisoned her brother Chris she made up her mind to fight him.

Today, David goes to the west wing to tell Quentin that Amy will cooperate with him if he promises to leave Chris alone. When David puts this to Quentin, he nods in agreement. If Quentin is still weak enough that he must give in to Amy on this point, he is still weak enough to be stopped before he does any great harm. That builds suspense- the show has invested so much time in building up the threat Quentin poses that it would feel like a cheat if he were defeated now, but we can look forward to seeing him survive a series of close calls between now and the time when his storyline approaches its climax.

David was not the only one who went from the main part of the house to the west wing. Governess Maggie saw him go there, in direct defiance of her orders that he stay in his room. Maggie followed David down the corridor and saw him go into the storage room. By the time she entered that room, David had gone into Quentin’s secret chamber and closed the panel behind him, leaving Maggie baffled as to where he could be. She went back to the main part of the house to wait for David.

In David’s room, Maggie sits in the armchair by the wall. She is still there when David comes back. This recreates a pair of scenes in #667, when David sat in the chair and was still there when Amy entered. That was supposed to be a power move, and it worked, more or less. David asserted his role as Quentin’s spokesman, and Amy acquiesced.

But Maggie can’t pull it off. She doesn’t give in to David when he denies everything, tells her her eyesight must be failing, claims that she doesn’t have the right to punish him, and yells at her that he will “get even.” But her visible nervousness encourages him to try each of these tactics. It’s only when she reminds him that he had his flashlight with him when he went into the west wing and says she will look for it in the storage room that she shuts him down, and then only for a moment.

David protests his innocence to Maggie, but he tells us that the sky is falling.

Maggie goes back to the west wing, where she sees Quentin. David looks directly into the camera and recites the epigram “I do not love thee, Dr Fell.” In the first months of the show, David was the only character who made eye contact with the audience. He stopped doing that late in 1966, when he stopped being a menace, and several other characters have been called on to do it since. It’s good to see him revisit the technique, and he is quite effective at it today.

Closing Miscellany

As my screen name may have led you to suspect, I make my living as a Latin teacher. So I would be remiss if I did not mention that “I do not love thee, Dr Fell” is a translation of a piece often used on the first day of introductory Latin classes, Martial’s Epigram 32:

Non amo te, Sabidi, nec dicere possum quare.

Hoc tantum possum dicere: non amo te.

When poet Tom Brown translated the epigram in 1680, he changed the name “Sabidius” to “Dr Fell” in memory of the dean of the Oxford college which he had briefly attended. A literal translation should enable you to figure out the meaning of each of the Latin words: “I do not love you, Sabidius, and I cannot say why. I can say only this: I do not love you.”

In a conversation with housekeeper Mrs Johnson, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard says that “David is twelve years old.” This is the first time in a while David’s age has been specified explicitly.

Liz orders Mrs Johnson to take David’s dinner to him on a tray and sit in his room while he eats. Longtime viewers may remember that when Mrs Johnson started working in the house in #77 and #79, David was afraid she would be his “jailer”; in #189, she actually did sit in his room and function as his jailer for a little while. She is reluctant to do that again today, because she has caught on that David and Amy are involved with something uncanny and she is afraid of them.

Danny Horn devotes his post about this episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day to a tour of the props and decor of David’s room. It’s a lot of fun. One of his commenters, “Jayson O’Neill,” links to a 2014 post on the Dark Shadows News blogspot page focusing on David’s posters; another, “John E. Comelately,” points out that famed rock and roll band The Turtles released a track in 1967 called “Chicken Little Was Right.” I made a comment myself finding fault with the acting and blaming director Dan Curtis for it; I don’t agree with that anymore, but you’re welcome to read it if you want.

Episode 676: Scared of the funniest things

Chris Jennings turns into a werewolf when the moon is full, which it is about half the time in the universe of Dark Shadows. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins has learned of Chris’ plight and decided to help him. As they make their way through an old cemetery to the hidden chamber where Barnabas will lock Chris up so that he doesn’t hurt anyone tonight, Barnabas asks Chris to confirm that he doesn’t remember anything he does in his lupine form. Chris does, saying that waking up and not knowing what he did the night before “is the most agonizing part of the whole thing.” You might think that he would find it even more agonizing to know that he has been killing one or two random human beings a month for the last seven years, but different things bother different people.

Chris asks how Barnabas knew that he didn’t remember what he did as the werewolf. Barnabas replies “Well, it’s obvious you’ve forgotten that you attacked me in this graveyard the night before last.” Chris says that “It’s a wonder you’re still alive.” To which Barnabas replies “No, it’s a wonder YOU’RE still alive!” For a moment we wonder how long this will go on, but Barnabas explains that werewolves can be killed by silver weapons. The head of the cane he carries is silver, and he struck him with it.

Barnabas shows Chris to the hidden room in the back of the old Collins family mausoleum. Barnabas himself was kept in a chained coffin in this room for over 170 years, when he was a vampire. He tells Chris that the room was originally constructed to hide ammunition from the British during the Revolution, which we have heard before. The coffin is still there; he tells him it is empty, and denies knowing anything about it. He says that the walls of the tomb are solid granite a foot thick; this is the first we’ve heard this detail. When Chris asks if anyone else knows about the room, Barnabas concedes that “A few” do. He assures him that none of them will be around tonight. Regular viewers will start making up a list of all the characters currently on the show who know about the room; Barnabas’s friend Julia Hoffman and his servant Willie Loomis know about it, as does strange and troubled boy David Collins. Barnabas can tell Julia and Willie to stay clear, and David has no reason to come to the cemetery tonight.

Barnabas explains that he will not show Chris the mechanism that unlocks the door from the inside, but promises to come back to release him after dawn. Chris urges Barnabas to leave at once; Barnabas insists on sticking around and asking more questions, saying that the moon isn’t up yet. Chris tells him that he first transformed shortly after he graduated from architecture school. “Oh, I was going to be an architect to be reckoned with, bold, imaginative, revolutionary. I thought nothing could stand in my way. Then something did.”

After Chris delivers a monologue about what a soulful and remorseful serial killer he is, Barnabas finally does close the secret panel. He sticks around until he hears the sounds of the werewolf snarling in the hidden room.

Chris’ nine year old sister Amy is staying at the great house of Collinwood. David finds her standing outside the front door, staring at the moon. She tells him that the moon scares her sometimes. His response is “Well, then don’t look at it,” which does seem logical. But she tells him that she can’t help it. David complains about how odd she is. We will hear more of this grumbling; it makes them seem like an old married couple, and is hilarious.

Amy and David are coming under the influence of the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins. Quentin keeps trying to get them to set various members of the Collins family up for lethal traps; they haven’t succeeded yet in killing anyone, but housekeeper Mrs Johnson has caught on that there is something peculiar going on with the two of them, and she is frightened.

Mrs Johnson enters the drawing room to do some straightening up and finds the children playing a game with a deck of stage magician’s oversized cards. She and they stare silently at each other for a minute or two, and she protests. They say they were just watching her work, and she orders them to go to bed. They object that it isn’t bedtime yet. Of course it isn’t, Mrs Johnson doesn’t work around the clock. They get even more intensely on her nerves by bringing up a recent incident when she saw Quentin’s ghost, and in her exasperation she chases them out of the room.

Amy and David irritate Mrs Johnson. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There isn’t anything about Quentin in the episode prior to that scene, so I cannot imagine what viewers would make of it. It’s late in the day, a domestic is tired, and a couple of kids are trying to annoy her. That is a relatable situation, but it doesn’t match with the heavy, melodramatic Dark Shadows music and the terrified affect with which Clarice Blackburn plays Mrs Johnson. I suppose that by January 1969, Dark Shadows was so widely known as a supernatural thriller that most people tuning in for the first time would assume that something paranormal was going on, but if they turned the television on after the opening titles and didn’t realize what show they were watching, they could only have concluded that they were witnessing an utterly ludicrous case of exaggerated seriousness. After David and Amy are out of Mrs Johnson’s sight, we see them go upstairs laughing, but that proves only that they are trying to upset her, not that they are connected to a malign power greater than themselves.

Barnabas enters and sees that Mrs Johnson is upset. She begins to tell him why, but interrupts herself to declare that he won’t believe her. He assures her that he will, and keeps asking her to go on. After she has told him everything she and the audience both know, he asks her to start over. The scene cuts out, suggesting that Barnabas is taking pains to get as much information from Mrs Johnson as he possibly can.

The children go to the little room in the long-deserted west wing of the house where they first met Quentin. Quentin is there when they arrive. This is the first time we have seen Quentin waiting for them; previously, they have had to summon him. Quentin does not speak; David can sense that he wants Amy to go back to the main part of the house so that they can talk privately.

Alone with Quentin, David asks where “the bottle” is. Quentin opens a rolltop desk, and David sees a bottle. He is shocked to find that the bottle is labeled “strychnine.” He declares that he won’t hurt Chris, and he runs out of the room.

Downstairs, Amy is in the drawing room, where she presses a few keys of the piano. We heard her play “London Bridge” in #656, but this doesn’t seem to be a part of any song. She is just idly pecking at the keyboard. When David comes, Amy complains about how long he was gone. He is distant, refusing to maintain eye contact or to answer any of her questions. He says they won’t be playing tonight.

We cut back upstairs, where Quentin is picking up the bottle of strychnine. Mrs Johnson saw Quentin in Chris’ cottage, so we know that he can go there. If David won’t poison Chris, perhaps Quentin will do it himself.

Episode 669: Hide and seek

Governess Maggie Evans forbids her charges, David Collins and Amy Jennings, from going outside. They ask her to play hide and seek. She agrees, and accepts the role of It. She searches for them for a long time, ultimately finding them outdoors. She points out that she had told them to stay indoors, and they pretend not to have understood that this applied to their hiding places.

Maggie does not punish Amy and David for this obvious insubordination. This establishes that Maggie is a squish who will not maintain discipline. That point had already been made in yesterday’s episode, when Maggie caught Amy hiding in David’s room, in defiance of orders from heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard. At that time, Maggie lied to housekeeper Mrs Johnson to cover up what the children had done. Maggie’s irresolution bears repeated exposure, though, since the children are coming under the influence of the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins and would not be very effective as his helpers if they were subject to even moderately competent adult supervision.

Today Mrs Johnson and her son Harry are under orders from Carolyn to fix up the caretaker’s cottage on the estate. Carolyn has invited mysterious drifter Chris Jennings, Amy’s big brother, to live in the cottage. In the opening, Mrs Johnson tells Maggie she objects to this idea on the grounds that the cottage is cursed. Maggie dismisses Mrs Johnson’s belief in such a curse, but she really shouldn’t. Mrs Johnson keeps calling it “Matthew Morgan’s cottage” after the crazed handyman who lived there for eighteen years. Matthew killed Mrs Johnson’s beloved employer Bill Malloy, then tried to kill Maggie’s dear friend and predecessor as governess at Collinwood, Vicki Winters. Maggie knows all about those incidents. Mrs Johnson also says that no good happened at the cottage after Matthew; the only resident of the cottage since Matthew’s death was David’s mother, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Maggie knows plenty about Laura as well, since her father Sam was deeply involved in the strange goings-on concerning Laura and Vicki led the fight against her.

Under orders from Quentin, the children contrive to trap Mrs Johnson in the cottage by herself. Quentin appears to her there. She is terrified. This is quite a surprise to regular viewers. Quentin has appeared on screen only once before, in #646. Moreover, the children have made it very clear that Quentin is confined to the little room hidden in the long-deserted west wing of Collinwood where they found him. We are left to wonder how he gained the ability to manifest himself in the cottage and even to walk outside it when no one is looking.

Quentin terrifies Mrs Johnson. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Perhaps we are to think that Quentin is in some way connected with the curse on the cottage, and with Chris. When the children first contacted Quentin, Amy could communicate with him before David could. This left David miffed, since “Quentin Collins is my ancestor.” That line of David’s led us to expect that we would learn that Quentin is also Amy and Chris’ ancestor. Tomorrow, David will tell Amy that Quentin is “quite pleased” that Chris is living in the cottage. Maybe it was Amy’s presence in the room in the west wing that activated the ghost of Quentin there, and Chris’ impending arrival in the cottage that activates it in that space.

This episode marks the last appearance of Harry. Until today, he was played by Craig Slocum. Edward Marshall takes Harry over the horizon. Mr Marshall must have been watching the show; he does a flawless imitation of Slocum’s very peculiar line delivery. His Harry is just as petulant and resentful as Slocum’s was, but he is so much more physically relaxed and so much more responsive to his scene partners that he is enjoyable to watch in a way Slocum never was. I can’t help but wonder if Harry would have caught on and become a bigger part of the show had Mr Marshall taken the part earlier. Harry’s personality made it impossible for him to figure in a romance of any kind, limiting his usefulness on a soap, but there’s plenty of room on Dark Shadows for comic relief in the form of an inept, grumbly, dishonest servant.

Episode 614: Any morbid fantasy

Housekeeper Mrs Johnson saw old world gentleman Barnabas Collins last night, and he was in a frightful state. Her son, unsightly ex-convict Harry, had come upon Barnabas unconscious in the woods in the small hours of the morning, and brought him back to the great house of Collinwood. Barnabas was pale and weak, barely able to stand. Mrs Johnson wanted to call a doctor, but Barnabas refused any help and insisted on returning to his own home elsewhere on the grounds of the estate. This morning, Mrs Johnson drops in on Barnabas to see how he is doing, and to her horror finds that he is in an armchair in his front parlor, a rope being pulled tight around his neck by local man Joe Haskell. She fights Joe, and he runs off, leaving Barnabas alive.

Mrs Johnson does battle with Joe. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Had Joe succeeded in killing Barnabas, it would have been oddly appropriate for Mrs Johnson to be present. She was the first character we saw Barnabas speak to. He knocked on the door of the great house in #211 and she opened it, inviting him in when he identified himself as the Collins family’s cousin from England. They might have brought things full circle by having her also be the last person to speak to him.

As it is, Barnabas is not seriously hurt. He has no telephone in his house, so Mrs Johnson says she will go back to the great house to call the sheriff. Barnabas becomes agitated and forbids her to do this, saying that what has happened must remain between him and Joe. She doesn’t work for Barnabas, and even if she did he would have neither the legal authority to stop her reporting a crime to the police nor the power to silence a character whose function has long been to distribute information to anyone who might use it to advance the story.

Back in the great house, Mrs Johnson finds Harry in the foyer. She asks him what he is doing in the front part of the house, and he claims to be on an errand for one of the ladies. She mentions that Barnabas is in a bad way, and Harry expresses surprise she was at his house. He blurts out a reference to Joe, and his mother questions him sharply. She realizes that he knows far more than he is telling, and she wants to know what he is doing and who else is mixed up in it. He doesn’t give her any answers. She picks up the telephone to call the sheriff, and Harry puts his finger on the hook to hang it up.

The front door opens. The lady of the house, matriarch Liz, is there with her brother Roger. Joe is leaning on Roger’s shoulder. Liz and Roger found Joe in the Collins family mausoleum in the old cemetery north of town, which they were visiting because Roger wants to remodel it. Mrs Johnson is horrified to see Joe, and tells Liz and Roger what she saw at Barnabas’ house. They can’t believe that Joe, who has always been a decent and honest person and is now very ill, could have done such a thing. Roger and Harry help Joe to the sofa, where Roger asks him if Mrs Johnson is telling the truth. Joe responds by saying that he has to kill Barnabas before Barnabas kills him, and Roger calls the police.

Episode 612: I want you to be the guilty one

Joe Haskell has become a victim of vampire Angelique. That cost him his job, his fiancée, and everything else that gave him an identity. In #607, he went to visit Angelique and found that she had moved on to a new victim and didn’t want him anymore. Having lost even the source of his troubles, Joe stabbed himself.

Angelique shared Joe’s desire that he should die, but did not want her master, suave warlock Nicholas, to come home and find him bleeding to death on the carpet. So in #608 she called her new victim, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins, to take Joe away and leave him to die in the woods. Unable to be a party to Joe’s death, Barnabas took him back to his own house. He asked his friend, Julia Hoffman MD, to treat Joe there. Julia discovered the bite marks on Joe’s neck and figured out that he was a blood thrall and Angelique was the vampire, but she did not realize Barnabas was also in Angelique’s power.

Nicholas has for his own reasons joined Joe and Angelique in wanting Joe to die. Yesterday, he summoned a man he brought under his power in #601, unsightly ex-convict Harry Johnson, and ordered him to sneak into Barnabas’ house and pour a vial of poison into Joe’s medicine. In #528, Nicholas had scolded Angelique when she asked him to slip a potion into someone’s beverage, saying “I am much too talented to spend my time drugging drinks.” However talented Nicholas may be, the writing staff is taxed to the limit, so by #555 he was himself devising a plan to do just that. This time it doesn’t even seem to be a magical potion, just something colorless and toxic.

Nicholas isn’t the only evil genius who is failing to meet his own standards. Barnabas and Julia go on and on about the importance of not leaving Joe alone in the upstairs bedroom for a minute. Barnabas takes the first watch, but Angelique calls him away. Julia is asleep while Harry enters the house and poisons Joe’s medicine. She wakes up, goes to Joe’s room, finds that Barnabas is gone, then goes back downstairs, leaving Joe alone. When Barnabas returns, Julia is still downstairs, and she tells him he has been away for “hours.” Apparently she has left Joe unattended that whole time.

In the interval, Angelique bit Barnabas and left him unconscious in the woods. Harry found him there and took him to the great house of Collinwood, where his mother, housekeeper Mrs Johnson, was appalled by Barnabas’ pale color and evident weakness. She kept insisting on helping Barnabas, at first wanting to call a doctor, then saying Harry would walk him home, but Barnabas refused all assistance and left alone.

This is the first time we have seen Mrs Johnson in over eight weeks. It is also the first time we have ever seen her out of her working clothes. She is in a robe and has her hair down. Clarice Blackburn walks with exaggerated care, suggesting arthritis, and talks as if she were mindful of dentures that might come loose. With these tricks and in her usual costume, she does manage to seem somewhat older than her 47 years. But en déshabillé, she cannot conceal that she is younger than the character, and only 13 years older than the actor playing her son.

Mrs Johnson tries to reason with Barnabas while Harry looks on. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Early in the episode, Harry watched the clock in the foyer of the great house while we heard his voice in a recorded monologue thinking about Nicholas’ command and his reluctance to obey it. That was the first time Craig Slocum was entrusted with a simultaneous dual performance as voice actor and silent actor. The monologue is an efficiently written bit of exposition, and as a voice actor he delivers it competently enough. As a silent actor, he stares lifelessly forward throughout it, adding nothing to the words. Slocum wasn’t reliably interesting as a performer, but he could do well on occasion, and there would have been some grounds for hoping that Nicholas’ command to kill Joe would have provided him with an occasion to which he could rise. Slocum first appeared on Dark Shadows as Noah Gifford, another hopeless schlub who found himself ordered to commit a murder. The person giving that order was the unscrupulous Nathan Forbes, who like Joe was played by Joel Crothers. You’d think that the second time around, Slocum would find a way to invest the role of reluctant murderer with something subtle and compelling.

At the end of the episode, Jonathan Frid has a voiceover monologue while Barnabas wrestles with Angelique’s command to give the poisoned medicine to Joe. This monologue is entirely superfluous; we know exactly what Barnabas is thinking. Frid goes to the opposite extreme from Slocum, and makes faces and gestures emphasizing every point he hears his voice make. Without the voiceover, Frid’s dumbshow might at least have been nostalgic for people who remembered the silent movies. With the voiceover, it’s just embarrassing, a bad ending to a mediocre installment.

Episode 569: Call me a superstitious woman

When housekeeper Mrs Johnson was first on Dark Shadows in September 1967, she was hyper-intense, determined to exact vengeance on the ancient and esteemed Collins family for the death of her longtime employer, Bill Malloy. In #69, she told the Collinses’ nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, that “I believe in signs and omens!” and that the signs and omens she could see showed that reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her family had Bill’s blood on their hands.

“I believe in signs and omens!” Mrs Johnson with Burke Devlin in #69.

As the storyline centered on Bill’s death petered out, Mrs Johnson forgot about her hostility to Liz and her family, and became their devoted retainer. Her new personality was that of a friendly old busybody who kept advancing the plot by blabbing all the information she has to whoever can use it to make the most trouble. Since Mrs Johnson opened the front door to the great house of Collinwood in #211 and admitted Barnabas Collins, she has become an intermittent presence on the show, but Clarice Blackburn plays her with so much style that her occasional appearances are always a highlight.

Today, Mrs Johnson lets suave warlock Nicholas Blair into the house. She informs Nicholas that Liz has escaped from Windcliff, the mental hospital where she has been staying for the last nine and a half weeks. She gets very worked up as she declares that Liz’ aberrations are no ordinary psychiatric problem, but are the product of a hostile supernatural force that plagues the Collinses. Her voice is fearful and she shies away from eye contact with Nicholas, a contrast with the anger and boldness she had shown with Burke Devlin 100 weeks ago, but she again underlines her point with exaggerated hand gestures and facial expressions.

Mrs Johnson tells Nicholas about the curse on the house. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

For regular viewers, it is surprising that Nicholas doesn’t seem to have known about the details of Liz’ trouble. His subordinate, the wicked witch known variously as Angelique and Cassandra, had sent Liz mad by placing a spell on her shortly before he arrived on the scene. He’s still keeping Angelique/ Cassandra around his house- he stripped her of her powers, turned her into a vampire, and has been using her to attack various men he wants to silence. You’d think he would at some point have asked her what happened to the lady who owns the town he has settled in. But, evidently his curiosity did not extend that far.

Liz’ brother Roger comes home and invites Nicholas to join him for a brandy. As they are headed for the drawing room, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman enters. She is pale, unsteady on her feet, and talking with great distress about her inability to find Tom Jennings. Roger points out that Tom is dead, and Julia faints.

Nicholas carries Julia to the couch in the drawing room. While she lies on it unconscious, he sneaks a peek under her scarf and finds bite marks on her neck. Thus he learns that Tom, whom Angelique turned into a vampire at his direction, has been feeding on Julia.

Liz has not been an active part of any major storyline since #272, when it turned out that her belief that she had killed her husband was mistaken and she did not in fact have any terrible secrets to conceal. So Nicholas’ lack of interest in her might just be a sign that he doesn’t want to waste time on irrelevant details. But Julia is indispensable to Nicholas’ plan to found a new race of artificially constructed human beings. She is a medical doctor, and is the only person Nicholas can coerce into building a mate for the Frankenstein’s monster she recently helped bring to life. She hasn’t been able to work on the project since Tom bit her, and apparently won’t be able to resume work until she is freed of his influence. If Nicholas lets his projects get in each other’s way to this extent, one can draw no conclusion other than that he is a bad manager.

Julia recovers and refuses to see a doctor. She goes to bed, and Roger tells Nicholas he thinks Liz might be on the grounds of the estate. The two of them go out to look for her. Of course Liz is there; of course she sees Tom; of course it is only when Roger and Nicholas approach that Tom vanishes and she is spared his bite.

It has been established that Windcliff is about 100 miles north of Collinsport; in #294, the ghost of Sarah Collins performed one of the most stupendous of her many feats when she transported Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, from Windcliff to Collinsport on foot in about an hour. Liz has had 24 hours since she went missing from her room, and people used to hitch-hike in those days, so it wouldn’t necessarily have required a supernatural agency to get her home in that time. It still would have been quite a trip for an escaped mental patient to make by herself, without bus fare, as the subject of a state police all points bulletin, on the roads running through the woods of central Maine.

Back in the house, Liz makes it clear that she is not herself when she only gradually recognizes Mrs Johnson. She is also obsessed with a fear of being buried alive. Roger concludes that she has to return to the hospital, and goes off to get the car. Julia comes downstairs, and Mrs Johnson asks her to keep an eye on Liz while she goes off to telephone the hospital.

Liz asks Julia, who is the nominal director of Windcliff and a qualified psychiatrist, to examine her and see that she is sane. As she is about to respond, Julia hears dogs howling outside and goes into a trance. She opens the window and stares out into the night, saying that the dogs are calling to her and that she must go to “him.” While she does this, Liz asks her what she’s talking about, but clearly still wants her to serve as the standard of sanity. The first time we saw Liz, in #1, she was standing where Julia stands in this shot, looking out the window with Roger behind her. Liz reprised that pose many times in the first year of the show, and it became her signature. It is incongruous to see Julia in Liz’ customary place as Liz looks on. The whole encounter is so funny that I suspect the humor must have been intentional.

Liz begins to doubt that Julia will be able to help her.

Julia rushes from the house; Liz follows her out. Julia goes to the crypt where Tom’s coffin is kept; evidently Tom’s hunger is getting the better of him, and he has decided to DoorDash it tonight. Liz follows her in. Julia sees Liz and demands that she leave. Liz sees the coffin and asks if it the one in which she will be buried alive. Julia tells her it has nothing to do with her, and repeatedly yells at her to “Get out!” She complies. Tom appears, and opens his mouth to bite Julia.

Julia’s expulsion of Liz from the crypt is an effective turn, but it is also a sad one for longtime viewers. When Dark Shadows started, the presence of Joan Bennett in the cast was probably its single biggest ratings draw, and all the way through her name appears at the beginning of the credits under the word “Starring.” But for a year now, the show’s whole attitude towards Liz has been one of active hostility. They simply will not let her be involved in the action. When Julia shouts “Get out, get out, get out!,” she is speaking with the voice of the story conference.

Danny Horn’s post about this episode on Dark Shadows Every Day details how Liz has been pushed to the margins and kept there as the show has evolved. Danny makes a point of not discussing the first 42 weeks, when Liz was enough of a part of the action that Joan Bennett had some chance to show what she could do, but in this post at least he seems to realize that the makers of Dark Shadows were squandering a considerable resource.

Episode 566: Too much sunlight

Permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman asked housekeeper Mrs Johnson to add more draperies to those already on the window of her room. In #361, she had asked Mrs Johnson to remove all the draperies. Evidently Julia fixates on window treatments when she isn’t feeling well.

Julia’s trouble today is that she has been bitten by vampire Tom Jennings. She is trying to keep this fact from everyone, including her friend Barnabas Collins and Barnabas’ servant Willie Loomis. Since Barnabas was himself a vampire for 172 years and Willie was for many months his victim, they are particularly well-positioned to recognize the signs of vampirism, and both do know that Tom is now an undead bloodsucker. At Barnabas’ direction, Willie sneaks into Julia’s room; the gleeful look on his face as he lets himself into a lady’s bedroom suggests that the personality he had before Barnabas bit him, when he was a dangerously unstable ruffian who threatened to rape all the young women and beat up their boyfriends, is not entirely gone.

Blast from the past. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Willie was himself staying at the great house of Collinwood, perhaps in this very room, when Barnabas first bit him. After he sees Julia, he goes back to Barnabas’ house and tells him about the contrast between her condition when he found her unconscious early this morning and her current state. She was dazed and weakened then, and now seems much stronger, but is strangely hostile. This so closely matches the description of Willie’s own condition in his early days as a blood thrall that there is no need for him to mention Tom to explain why there is such an urgent note of concern in his voice.

Barnabas goes to the great house and intercepts Julia returning from a session with Tom. After some verbal preliminaries, he pulls the scarf off her neck and exposes the vampire’s bite marks. Julia’s secret is out.

Tom has a substantial amount of dialogue today, the first we have heard him speak since he joined the ranks of the undead. Don Briscoe doesn’t seem to have found the character yet. There is a familiar note in the voice, but one I couldn’t place until much later in the series. Eventually, Briscoe will appear in a different role and not only imitate the voice of a famous actor of the past but wear a costume modeled on one that actor wore in his most celebrated parts. I won’t give away who it is, but once you’ve seen those episodes you will recognize that person’s voice every time Briscoe speaks.

Episode 542: Henceforward in thy shadow

When Dark Shadows began, Carolyn Collins Stoddard was capricious, vain, and perverse. When her mother, reclusive matriarch Liz, was hospitalized in February and March of 1967, Carolyn had to take on responsibility for the family’s businesses and for the great house of Collinwood. With that, she matured dramatically, and she’s never been the flighty heiress since.

Now, Liz is back in the hospital. The show has long since stopped paying attention to the Collinses’ business interests, so we don’t know who’s running those, and the house just sort of takes care of itself while various hell-spawned abominations drop by and take up residence. So Carolyn is keeping herself busy by hiding the latest arrival, Frankenstein’s monster Adam, in the long-deserted west wing.

Carolyn and Adam in the west wing. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This is the first we’ve seen the west wing in color. Strange and troubled boy David trapped well-meaning governess Vicki in a room there from #84 to #87, and Adam appears to be staying in the same room.

Adam, who didn’t know a single word of any language when he was brought to life in #490, has in nine and a half weeks acquired the ability to speak fluent, if grammatically unorthodox, English. He is also able to read. When he is alone, he whiles away the hours with the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. He asks Carolyn for an explication of Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet VI”:

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore—
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

Carolyn does not give the poem anything like the dramatic interpretation we would have expected had Nancy Barrett read it in her own person. Carolyn hastens through it, stumbling a bit over the enjambments, and gives only the most cursory explanations. Since Carolyn has to leave Adam alone so much of the time in order to keep the other residents of the house from suspecting that she is harboring him, it makes sense that she finds a piece about loneliness and separation upsetting. When she mentions that the poem is about a woman’s love for a man, Adam caresses her face, which she finds even more upsetting. He asks if she hates him, she tells him she does not, and she leaves as quickly as she can.

Housekeeper Mrs Johnson notices that someone has been stealing food from the kitchen. She suspects her son, ex-convict Harry. In fact, the culprit is Carolyn, who is gathering provisions for Adam. This harks back to #120, when David stole food from the kitchen to give to the fugitive Matthew Morgan. David was about nine years old, so it made sense that he could not get supplies for his friend any other way. But Carolyn is a grown woman, with money and a car. Even if she would be too conspicuous to go to the grocery store in the village of Collinsport without having to answer questions, she could easily drive to some town where she would not be so well-known and buy food for Adam there. In the last two episodes David seemed far less intelligent and capable than he was when the show began; when we hear that she has been sneaking food from the kitchen, it seems that Carolyn has lost a lot of ground as well.

This is the first we have seen Harry since he was introduced in #471. He stumbles upon Carolyn returning to the main part of the house from the west wing; she reacts by scolding him for being upstairs. When he tells his mother about it, she is frightened. She is still frightened when she talks with Carolyn about the incident. That will remind longtime viewers that in Liz’ absence, Carolyn is in charge of the house. Clarice Blackburn does such a fine job of acting that even first time viewers will understand that Carolyn has the power to fire Mrs Johnson if she wishes.

Craig Slocum is one of the least-loved actors in all of Dark Shadows; in truth, his performances usually are pretty painful to watch. He’s reasonably competent today, but since he shares his scenes with two actresses who would hold an audience’s attention even if they were playing opposite a hat-rack it takes a lot more than reasonable competence make Harry linger in our minds.