music box – Acilius on Dark Shadows

Episode 478: Carried on the wind

Soap operas usually have multiple more or less independent storylines going simultaneously. Dark Shadows had trouble keeping that up, usually having an A story with all the action and a B story that never got off the ground and eventually dried up altogether. Now, in the spring of 1968, they have several equally dynamic arcs going at once. As a result, today’s episode is a bit of a jumble, as we catch glimpses of several loosely related events.

For the nineteen weeks stretching from #365 to #461, well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself trapped in the 1790s. In that period, she met many people, among them gracious lady Josette and wicked witch Angelique. In the 1960s, one of Vicki’s closest friends is Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. Like Maggie, Josette is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott. When Vicki saw Josette, she realized that Maggie had some kind of metaphysical connection to her. This was a daring move on the part of the show, since it means that vampire Barnabas was onto something in the summer of 1967 when he abducted Maggie and tried to brainwash her so that her personality would vanish and Josette’s would appear in its place.

Angelique has followed Vicki to 1968. She calls herself Cassandra, wears a black wig, and has married sarcastic dandy Roger, thereby securing residence in the great house of Collinwood. Vicki and Barnabas recognize Angelique/ Cassandra, and each knows that she is a deadly threat to everyone in and around the estate. For her part, Vicki is trying to hide her knowledge from Angelique; Barnabas has taken a different tack, and the other day let Angelique into his house where he proceeded to give her all the information she could possibly need to realize her evil intentions towards him. This is not because Barnabas cannot keep a secret. Vicki has tried to enlist him in the battle against Angelique, but he, now in recovery from the vampire curse Angelique placed on him in the 1790s, does not want Vicki to know the truth about him, and so he will not cooperate with her in any way. It’s only his enemies with whom Barnabas compulsively shares damaging intelligence.

Maggie comes to the great house to have a tea party with Vicki today. Angelique/ Cassandra opens the door, and cannot hide her shock at Maggie’s resemblance to Josette. She so blatantly stares at her that she has to admit that she is unnerved because Maggie looks very much like someone she knew a long time ago.

Vicki comes in, and Angelique/ Cassandra asks her, not in her usual mid-Atlantic accent, but in Lara Parker’s sweetly musical Tennessee voice, if she and Maggie are planning to use the drawing room. Vicki at once offers to use a different space, not only as would be correct for a member of the household staff speaking to one of the family, but in a relaxed and friendly way that betrays nothing of her knowledge of Angelique/ Cassandra’s true identity. While returning viewers know that Angelique/ Cassandra remembers Vicki from the 1790s, the Southern accent is so much more natural than her usual way of speaking that it suggests Vicki has managed to get her to let her guard down to some degree.

While Vicki and Maggie settle into the drawing room, Angelique/ Cassandra goes to a portrait of Barnabas that hangs in the foyer of the great house and delivers a speech to it. She tells the portrait that Maggie is the very image of Josette, and will therefore be the first victim of her latest evil plan. She is going to spam people’s dreams with a series of nightmares, and when the last person has had the nightmare Barnabas will be a vampire again. Evidently the dreamers of Collinsport didn’t have anti-virus programs installed in their brains, because Angelique/ Cassandra expects them all to be helpless before this morphean malware.

In the drawing room, Maggie is too preoccupied with Angelique/ Cassandra’s strange reaction to her to hear when Vicki asks her how she takes her tea. When she tells Vicki that Angelique/ Cassandra was shocked by the sight of her, Vicki amazes her by saying that she is sure she did react that way, and giving her the details of the reaction before Maggie reports them. Maggie asks Vicki to explain how she knew and what it means. Vicki explains nothing.

This is something of a reversal. In #1, Vicki met Maggie. Vicki had just arrived in Collinsport, and went to the diner where Maggie was the waitress. While Maggie served Vicki, she told her that Collinwood was haunted and that it was unwise to go there. Vicki did not at that time believe in ghosts and told Maggie so. Now, Vicki is the one serving the tea, and she is the one who knows far more about the supernatural than does Maggie. At least, far more than is in Maggie’s conscious mind- she has amnesia about her experience as Barnabas’ victim.

Maggie is far more upset by Angelique/ Cassandra’s reaction to her than circumstances would appear to warrant. Vicki’s reticence is understandable, given the extreme complexity and improbability of her story, but she has always been so forthcoming with her friends that when Maggie asks why she is being so mysterious it seems quite likely that Vicki will tell her everything. Together, these two facts suggest to regular viewers that Maggie will eventually hear herself compared to Josette, that the comparison will jar loose the memory of what Barnabas did to her, and that she will go to the authorities. As an audience, we hope Barnabas will get away with his crimes, because the show is most fun to watch when he does. Now that Angelique has come to 1968, we have a morally defensible in-universe reason for this hope. Angelique is even more evil than Barnabas is, and without his active participation there is no hope she can be stopped.

Vicki’s reticence brings up another question. In the months before her journey to the past, she saw a great deal of evidence that Barnabas was a vampire. While in the eighteenth century, she saw so much more that upon her return Barnabas was certain she must have figured out his secret, and bit her to keep her quiet. When his vampirism responded to medical treatment, the symptoms of his bite went away. We wonder what Vicki knew at each stage of the story, and what she remembers now.

One possibility is that she has known everything all along. That would put Vicki in an intriguing position if Maggie’s memory does come back. Vicki originally represented the audience’s point of view; if she turns out to have been aware of Barnabas’ crimes from the beginning, she will put us in the uncomfortable position of wondering what it tells us about ourselves that we are consistently on the vampire’s side.

Vicki changes the subject to her boyfriend, a man named Peter. Vicki met Peter in the 1790s, and like Angelique he has followed her into her own time. Also like Angelique, he keeps insisting that he has a different name. He wants to be called Jeff. Unlike Angelique, Peter/ Jeff is amnesiac, is under the control of mad scientist Dr Lang, and brings the show to a screeching halt every time he is on screen. Vicki asks if Peter/ Jeff can rent the spare room in the cottage Maggie shares with her father. Maggie has never met or heard of Peter/ Jeff, and wants more information before she commits to living with him. Vicki doesn’t have anything to tell her, inflaming Maggie’s curiosity to the point where she exclaims “I can’t stand it!”

Peter/ Jeff telephones from Lang’s laboratory, and Vicki gets Maggie to agree to meet him at her house in an hour. Unknown to Vicki, Lang is building a Frankenstein’s monster, and plans to download Barnabas’ personality into the body once it is completed. Peter/ Jeff has dug up graves and fetched body parts for Lang to use, but is tired of that sort of work and is eager to make a fresh start. Unfortunately for him, Barnabas requested that the body look like Peter/ Jeff. So Lang persuades Peter/ Jeff to call Vicki back to say he won’t be available to meet her and Maggie today after all. He then gives Peter/ Jeff a shot to knock him out, straps him to a table, and sets about cutting his head off. Peter/ Jeff comes to and complains about this; Lang, irritated, tells him he can’t very well have expected him to let him live, knowing what he knows.

Maggie has the dream Angelique has sent. It begins with Peter/ Jeff calling on her. Since they went out of their way to tell us Maggie has never seen Peter/ Jeff, this tells first time viewers that this sequence, as is typical of dream sequences on Dark Shadows, comes not from the character’s mind, but is the product of a supernatural agency. In the course of the dream, Maggie hears the sound of Josette’s music box; Barnabas made her listen to this when he was holding her prisoner. This again raises the prospect that Maggie’s memory will return. The rest of the dream is a concerto for fog machine. Technical director Lou Marchand is credited today; presumably he was the soloist. The fog immerses everything so completely that it is anyone’s guess what exactly Miss Scott is doing for most of the sequence.

Episode 464: Justice to history

High-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins was Dark Shadows‘ first villain. Through the first 40 weeks of the show, dashing action hero Burke Devlin was determined to prove that Roger, not he, had been driving when his car hit and killed a pedestrian ten years before, and Roger would stop at nothing to keep Burke from succeeding. The Revenge of Burke Devlin storyline was never particularly exciting. By the time Burke formally gave up on his quest for vindication in #201, it had been running on fumes for some time. Roger hasn’t been central to a plot since then. The show has capitalized on actor Louis Edmonds’ unrivaled gift for sarcasm by having him deliver the occasional zinger, and otherwise has used him as a symbol of the inability of the Collins family to use its wealth and connections to solve any of its problems.

For nineteen weeks ending this past Monday, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late eighteenth century and Edmonds played haughty overlord Joshua Collins. That performance was a triumph, and the entire segment turned out to be The Tragedy of Joshua Collins. So returning viewers will have an appetite to see more of what Edmonds can do, and will be excited when we come back from the opening title sequence to a scene focusing on Roger.

Roger spends this scene staring at a portrait and reciting poetry to it while various people enter the room and try to get his attention. That may not sound like a promise of thrills, but it is on this show. For example, Roger’s son, strange and troubled boy David, had a lively if somewhat one-sided conversation with the portrait of Josette Collins that hangs in the Old House on the estate in #102, and that conversation presaged danger for David and an important role for Josette’s ghost. The show’s first supernatural menace was Roger’s estranged wife, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, and several characters had important relationships with portraits of Laura during the four months she was in the cast. And dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis once spent a week staring at the portrait of the late Barnabas Collins that hangs in the foyer of Collinwood. As a result, Willie wound up opening Barnabas’ coffin, finding that he was a vampire, and turning Dark Shadows into an entirely different kind of show.

Roger talks to the portrait of Angelique.

The portrait that has captured Roger’s attention is of Angelique, the wicked witch who turned Barnabas into a vampire in the first place. Well-meaning governess Vicki found this portrait in an antique store and brought it home yesterday. It was Vicki who took us to the 1790s when she became unstuck in time. While there, she met Angelique and the living Barnabas. Shortly after her return to the 1960s, Vicki found that her memory of her time in the past had become spotty. She can’t explain why she wanted the painting, but it does make sense to her that Barnabas reacts to it with violent dislike.

We first saw the portrait in #449, when it was clear that Vicki would be returning to the 1960s soon but unclear whether Angelique would follow her. Showing us that they had commissioned a portrait of Lara Parker was their way of telling us she would be back. Having Roger become obsessed with the portrait is their way of telling us that he will be the instrument of her arrival, as Willie was the instrument of Barnabas’.

We learn that Roger’s obsession will blur the distinction between him and Joshua when long-term houseguest Julia Hoffman approaches him and he speaks to her in Joshua’s voice, addressing her as the Countess DuPrés, who was a houseguest at Collinwood in Joshua’s time. Julia and the countess are both played by Grayson Hall. Vicki mistook the countess for Julia when she first met her in 1795, and since her return to 1968 has kept mistaking Julia for the countess. Now that Roger has made the same mistake, Julia must be trying to figure out what’s going on.

A man comes to the front door. Vicki answers it and sees a familiar face. It belongs to Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes. She hasn’t met him before, but she met his ancestor, much put-upon servant Ben Stokes, in the 1790s.

Like Ben and crazed handyman Matthew Morgan from 1966, Professor Stokes is played by Thayer David. Matthew and Ben were both major characters, so we can assume that Stokes will be as well. Matthew was a bad guy, Ben a good guy. When Ben was on the show, the contrast between him and Matthew was drawn very heavily to make the point that Matthew’s crimes are what Ben’s virtues would have led him to do had his personality been warped by the environment in which Matthew grew up. That environment was the consequence of the curse that Angelique placed on the Collinses in the 1790s. Burke expressed this idea in #64 when he said of Matthew that “Collinwood breeds murderers,” but he was understating the effect. Matthew grew up, not on the estate, but in the nearby village of Collinsport, and the curse leaves its mark on everyone who comes from there. Since Stokes is an out-of-towner, he is likely to be unaffected by the consequences of the curse, and so we do not know what we will find under his worldly and self-possessed exterior.

Stokes is researching his ancestor Ben, and wanted to buy the portrait because he thought it might depict a woman Ben knew. Stokes says that Ben wrote a memoir. Barnabas is in the room; in the 1790s, Ben was his closest friend, and knew all about his vampirism. So he is alarmed by the idea of a volume of memoirs by Ben. He can take some comfort when Stokes tells him that most of the manuscript was lost in a fire a few years ago.

The idea of a servant writing memoirs that might expose Barnabas’ secret first came up in #326. At that point, Willie was out of his control, and Barnabas told Julia, who is a mad scientist and his confederate, that he was afraid Willie might start “writing his memoirs!” That phrasing was meant to raise a laugh, since Willie is conspicuously not burdened with literary ambitions. But it planted a seed that flowers for the first time here, and that will flower again later.

Stokes offers Vicki $200 for the painting. Barnabas is eager to get the thing out of the house and urges her to take Stokes’ money, but before she can Roger bids $500. Stokes can’t afford that, and so it stays at Collinwood.

Stokes’ interest in family history establishes a contrast between him and Roger. Stokes, like Roger, appears to be a confirmed bachelor. But while Roger’s lack of interest in the responsibilities of marriage is of a piece with his indifference to all family ties, so that he was eager to divorce Laura and palm David off on her even after it had become clear to other characters that she was a danger to the boy, Stokes is an avid genealogist. He has renounced the prospect of marriage because he has other ways to be of service, not simply because he wants to wallow in his own crapulence as Roger does.

Suddenly Vicki remembers that the woman in the portrait is named Angelique, that Angelique was a witch, and that her spells caused all the misfortune that began at Collinwood in 1795. We hear all of this while Barnabas is in closeup, squirming gloriously. Stokes leaves with Barnabas and tells him he knew that the woman’s name was Angelique, but that it’s news to him that she was a witch. He is impressed by Vicki’s knowledge, and says that he can sense that she is attuned to paranormal phenomena. He wants to get to know her better.

Vicki suddenly remembers who Angelique was. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Most characters we have met spend a long time slowing the story down by scoffing at the idea of the supernatural. That Stokes is a self-identified student of the occult and immediately receptive to Vicki’s identification of Angelique as a wicked witch tells us that he will serve to speed up the pace of events.

This again makes a stark contrast with Roger. When Vicki managed to get Roger away from the painting for a moment in Act One, he told her that he refused to believe that she traveled to the past and returned to the present. When she lists some of the abundant evidence he and everyone else saw that can be explained no other way, he says he attributes all of that to mass hallucination.

In his Dark Shadows Every Day post about this episode, Danny Horn at one point refers to Stokes as a character whose function is “to backfill Dr. Woodard’s spot in the cast,” referring to a stolid medico whom Barnabas and Julia murdered several months back. But in this contrast, we see that the character whose place Stokes is actually taking is Roger. When the show started, the Collinses of Collinwood were the central frame of reference for the action. But Roger and his sister, matriarch Liz, are for various reasons locked out of the supernatural storylines. Since those are the only storylines they have, the show needs to build another family to anchor the action, and that family is going to be defined, not by marriage and genealogy, but by a shared commitment to getting as deep as possible into the weirdest shit going.

Stokes tells Barnabas that there was a series of unsolved murders in Collinsport in the 1790s, and wonders if it might be possible to prove that Angelique was responsible for them. Barnabas suggests that it is too late to do justice in such an old case, to which Stokes replies that it is never too late to do justice to history. Not only does this reply deepen the contrast between Stokes and the amoral Roger, it has, by happenstance, a deep resonance for many who might see the episode today. It originally aired on 4 April 1968, just a few hours before the Rev’d Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, was assassinated. Millions are still unsatisfied with the official answers about who killed Dr King and why; they might cheer the idea that there is a species of justice that is still possible even after 56 years or more have gone by.

Barnabas bit Vicki the other day in an attempt to control her and keep her from revealing any information about him she may have acquired during her sojourn in the past. Disquieted by his conversation with Stokes, Barnabas stares out his window and summons Vicki to his house. In her bedroom, an enchanted music box Barnabas gave her as part of an earlier brainwashing attempt opens itself and begins to play. She rises from bed and goes to him listening to the music box all the way.

At Barnabas’ house, Vicki gives him the music box. He tells her that the next time he calls her, they will go away together forever. He bites her neck.

Barnabas has Vicki over for a bite. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We cut to Vicki’s bedroom. The music box is back in its place and she is back in bed, asleep. Julia comes in to check on her. Vicki says she’d had a bad dream, and Julia finds the bite marks on her neck.

In the weeks leading up to Vicki’s visit to the past, Julia had alienated Barnabas by opposing his efforts to seduce Vicki. Now she marches over to Barnabas’ house and renews her opposition. She accuses him of having been in Vicki’s bedroom. He answers that he brought her to his house. This might seem to be a trivial distinction, but perhaps not to viewers who have been with the show from the beginning. Today’s focus on Roger might remind us of #4, when Roger tried to let himself into Vicki’s room while she was sleeping, obviously in search of some kind of sexual thrill that would not be preceded by her consent. Barnabas can’t deny that he is the moral equivalent of a rapist, but he isn’t going to miss an opportunity to differentiate himself from Roger.

Barnabas doesn’t seem very interested in anything Julia is saying. Even when she gives him an ultimatum, threatening to expose him if he doesn’t back off by tomorrow night, he reacts with a mild irritation. Regular viewers, remembering the displays of jeering contempt and seething rage which are typically the options from which Barnabas chooses his response to this sort of thing, will be startled by his relative blandness. Julia should be unnerved by it.

Episode 405: To love anyone

Gallant gentleman Barnabas Collins discovered that his wife, Angelique, was a wicked witch and a deadly threat to his true love, the gracious Josette. He did not tell anyone what he knew about Angelique, but did persuade Josette to flee. Today, Angelique discovers that Josette is beyond the range of her powers.

In her rage, Angelique takes a doll belonging to Barnabas’ little sister Sarah. She sticks pins in it; Barnabas has learned that this causes Sarah to become ill. Angelique is about to stick a pin into the doll’s heart when Barnabas takes a dueling pistol and shoots Angelique.

Angelique drops the doll; Barnabas takes the pins from it. Angelique presses her hand to her shoulder while delivering a long, bombastic speech. Barnabas has plenty of time to reload the pistol and shoot her again, but chooses just to stand there and listen to her. This turns out to be a bad decision when she ends the speech by placing a curse on him. He will spend all eternity unable to rest, and everyone who loves him will die. Having completed her death scene, she ostentatiously collapses.

We hear a window smashing. A bat appears. It approaches Barnabas. He yells at it, flails his arms, and walks backward. This is an echo of #330, which ended with strange and troubled boy David Collins reacting the same way when the same puppet appeared in his bedroom. David was a neurotic and isolated pre-teen who had been through a lot of trauma, so that was an effective scene. Barnabas is a grown man who has been trying to function as an action hero. Seeing him as the equivalent of a cartoon lady standing on a chair screaming because she saw a mouse rather undercuts this. Anyway, the bat bites Barnabas on the neck, so now he’s going to be a vampire.

The bite. Not Barnabas’ cloak in the background, playing the role of The Grim Reaper. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In #330, it was Barnabas who sent the bat against David. This is one of many indications that the vampire Barnabas we knew from April to November of 1967 was not only under Angelique’s curse, but that he was in some sense a manifestation of Angelique. Maybe when she casts a spell, she breaks off a chunk of herself and that chunk goes about the world pursuing its own objectives. The image of a supernatural being as a complex of vaguely related but independent phenomena has been standard in Dark Shadows since undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins first appeared on the show in December of 1966, so regular viewers are prepared to learn that the vampiric Barnabas is a subcategory of the syndrome known as “Angelique.”

This episode explains how a couple of the more important props got to be in the places we are used to seeing them. Early in the episode, Barnabas gives Josette a music box. This music box figured heavily in the story from May to August 1967 as a symbol of Josette and as a vehicle for some kind of magic spell that was supposed to turn other people into her. A bit later, we see that Barnabas has hung the portrait of Josette over the mantle in the front parlor of the Old House. It was there when we first saw the Old House in #70, and was the focus of all supernatural phenomena on the show from then until Barnabas reclaimed the Old House in #212.

Episode 397: I’m not sure I should be here, either

Yesterday, the ghost of Jeremiah Collins started to bury wicked witch Angelique alive. Today, we see that he barely got her dress dirty. She’s lying on a mound next to the empty grave when we find her.

This is the one where Angelique marries Barnabas. It ought to be packed with incident. There is a lot of activity, but like the live burial, it doesn’t amount to much. It’s a real disappointment.

One particular weak spot in the episode is the officiant at the wedding, the aptly named Reverend Bland. Actor Paul Kirk Giles does what he can, but as soon as the Rev’d Mr B realizes that something unwholesome is going on he declares that he is getting out of the place. Apparently his conception of the duties of a pastor consists of avoiding people who might need help confronting the spiritual forces of darkness. It doesn’t matter- Bland’s squeamishness disappears after Barnabas orders him to stay and perform the wedding.

After the wedding, Angelique returns to her bedroom. There is a gift that hadn’t been there before. Opening it, she finds a music box. The music box was a big deal in 1967, when Barnabas was a vampire and he thought that a woman who listened to it would turn into his lost love, the gracious Josette. This is the first time we have seen the music box during the segment of Dark Shadows set in 1795. In 1967, Barnabas told various stories about the origin of the music box, but the one thing that remained consistent was that it was meant for Josette.

Angelique finds the music box. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas and Josette were engaged when the 1795 segment began, but that ended when Josette and Jeremiah conceived a mad passion for each other and eloped. Unknown to Barnabas, that was the result of a spell Angelique cast in hopes of getting Barnabas for herself. Barnabas responded to the elopement by killing Jeremiah in a duel. He has told Angelique that he still loves Josette and always will, but that he knows there can never again be anything between them. Moments after he had told her that, Angelique agreed to marry him. Evidently it was to be a sham marriage.

Jeremiah’s ghost has been railing at Angelique for raising him from his grave, and apparently he wants to be avenged by making the sham marriage even shammier. When Barnabas comes into the room, he sees the music box, explodes in rage, and storms out.

In life, Jeremiah never knew that Angelique was behind his and Josette’s passion. He has evidently learned that and other of her secrets, and is using them against her. Perhaps Angelique put more of herself into him than she intended.

On The Collinsport Historical Society, Patrick McCray says that this is an important episode because Barnabas and Angelique’s wedding is the basis for some developments much later in the series. That’s true, but by the time he’s talking about the show isn’t very good any more. So I consign it to the ranks of the “Stinkers.”

Episode 303: Separate worlds

Fake Shemp Burke Devlin is starting to suspect that there is something odd about old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. He suspects that Barnabas is not from England as he claims to be. More darkly, he is considering the possibility that Barnabas might be the one who abducted Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, and held her prisoner. As it happens, the audience knows that he is correct in both of these suspicions. We also know more- that Barnabas is a vampire.

Burke has hired investigators to probe into Barnabas’ past. Barnabas told him he lived near London with a cousin named Niall Bradford. Burke’s investigators have found that the last time a man of that name lived in London was 130 years previously. Dark Shadows has been going back and forth for months on whether Barnabas lived in the 1830s or in the eighteenth century. Yesterday they seemed to commit themselves to the earlier date, but now we’re back with the 1830s.

Burke asks Maggie’s doctor, addled quack Dave Woodard, to show him all of her medical records. Woodard protests that medical records are confidential. He then tells Burke everything he knows about Maggie’s case.

Burke calls on Maggie. She is back home, apparently well, but suffering from amnesia covering the entire period of her captivity. Unknown to any of the characters we see today, Maggie’s psychiatrist Julia Hoffman is a mad scientist in league with Barnabas, and she has wiped Maggie’s memory clean of any information that might threaten to expose him. Burke talks with Maggie and her boyfriend, hardworking young fisherman Joe, repeating everything Woodard told him a few minutes before.

Maggie and Joe tell Burke that she has had a few visitors since she came home. Maggie blithely mentions that Barnabas was one of those visitors. Burke is startled to hear this, and Maggie repeats that Barnabas dropped in to pay his respects.

During the fourteen weeks when Dark Shadows was driven by undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, Burke saw extensive evidence of supernatural doings. But he lately he has decided that he lives in the kind of world where the show took place in its first few months, where there might be hints of ghosts in the background, but all the action came from flesh and blood humans subject to the usual laws of nature. Since it doesn’t occur to him that a person might have powers like Julia’s, Maggie’s calmness when talking about a visit from Barnabas seems to prove that Barnabas is innocent.

Burke learns that Barnabas has been to see Maggie.

Maggie does say that there is just one memory she has that seems to be connected with her time in captivity. It is a bit of music- “a light, playful tune. A soft, tinkling sound.” She freely admits that it seems unlikely that this would have any connection with such an experience, and speculates that it may have been something she remembered from childhood.

In the great house of Collinwood, well-meaning governess Vicki is listening to the enchanted music box Barnabas gave her. Burke and Vicki are now engaged to be married. He comes to see her, and remarks on the music box. She accuses him of being jealous of Barnabas, and he keeps coming back to the music box. When she opens it for him, he remarks that it makes “a light, playful tune… a soft, tinkling sound.”

The episode ends with Burke listening to the music box and staring off into space. Barnabas gave the music box first to Maggie, then to Vicki, in each case hoping that she would listen to it until its magical quality caused her to believe that she was his lost love Josette. Seeing the look on Burke’s face as he listened, my wife, Mrs Acilius, said “Maybe Burke will start to think that he’s Josette.” Who knows, maybe he and Barnabas could be very happy together.

Episode 282: Sense memories

We cut back and forth between an opulent estate called Collinwood and a mental hospital called Windcliff.

At Collinwood, we spend our time with well-meaning governess Vicki. From the beginning of Dark Shadows, Vicki has been the audience’s main point of view character. The audience is now made up chiefly of people who want to see how they are going to fit vampire Barnabas Collins into an ongoing series, and Barnabas’ principal concern is getting hold of a woman, erasing her personality, and replacing it with that of his lost love Josette. So of course Vicki is fascinated with Barnabas and fantasizes about being Josette.

Matriarch Liz has functioned as a blocking figure. Her goal has been to keep her secrets. Her actions in pursuit of that goal have slowed story development in a largely futile attempt to create suspense. She’s fresh out of secrets, but is still trying to put the brakes on. She keeps complaining that Vicki’s interest in Josette is unwholesome.

Liz has a point. Barnabas has settled on Vicki as the next subject of his experiment. To that end, he has given Vicki Josette’s music box. When he was trying his lunatic plan on Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, he had given Maggie the music box. Evidently the music box has some kind of magical power over the women to whom Barnabas gives it. When she opens it, Vicki sits for hours staring vacantly into space listening to its simple tune.

The previous night, Vicki had worn Josette’s dress at a costume party Barnabas hosted in his house on the estate. The party ended in a séance in which Josette spoke through Vicki. Liz mentions this possession as a sign that Vicki is becoming too involved with Josette. Vicki doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She blandly exclaims “It’s happened before!” Indeed, the show’s first séance, in #170 and #171, climaxed with Vicki channeling a message from Josette. Liz points out that this doesn’t make it better.

Vicki goes to Barnabas’ house to return the dress. She and Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie take it to Josette’s restored bedroom upstairs. There, she blissfully tells Willie she wishes she could wear Josette’s clothes all the time. Remembering what Barnabas did to Maggie and knowing his plans for Vicki, Willie winces. He hates the things Barnabas does, but is too far under his power to actively oppose him. Vicki goes on about how close she is coming to feel to Josette, and Willie winces harder. She tells him that she has been listening to the music box for hours at a time, and he shouts “You shouldn’t do that!” When she asks why not, he takes a second to come up with something that he can say. He tells her she might damage the mechanism. Still blissful, she says, “Oh, I’ll be careful.”

Willie tells Vicki that tomorrow is Josette’s birthday. Vicki is delighted with this information. She resolves to go to the cemetery and lay flowers on Josette’s grave. When she tells Liz of this plan, Liz objects to it. Because of Liz’ function as a blocking figure, her opposition implies that it will advance the plot. To appease Liz, Vicki agrees not to go alone, but to take Liz’ fellow narrative speed-bump Burke Devlin.

At Windcliff, Maggie is in session with her therapist, Dr Julia Hoffman. As a result of her time as Barnabas’ prisoner, Maggie has amnesia and can speak only with difficulty. In his effort to Josettify Maggie, Barnabas combined his own supernatural powers with sensory stimuli like the music box that were supposed to elicit the responses he had in mind. Now Julia is trying to recreate those stimuli in her effort to recover Maggie’s memories and restore her personality.

At one point, Maggie tells Julia about a sweet scent that regular viewers know to be that of Josette’s jasmine perfume. As she does so, music starts playing on the soundtrack that we have heard when Josette’s ghost has appeared. When this happened, my wife, Mrs Acilius, said “Josette is there.” Later in the episode, when Vicki is in Josette’s room with Willie, Vicki takes a whiff of the perfume. The music strikes up then too. Josette’s ghost hasn’t manifested since March- maybe the ghost’s musical cue is now the perfume’s.

Their use of sensory stimuli is not the only way in which Julia is a reverse-image reflection of Barnabas. Barnabas is a vampire, so we expect to hate him and oppose his plans. But he is also the character who makes the show fun to watch, so we find ourselves wanting to see more of him. Further, he evolves into a comic villain, with whom we identify as we see him scramble to keep his madcap schemes from backfiring. And the longer we see him, the more of actor Jonathan Frid’s personality comes through, and Frid seems to have been adorable.

Julia is a doctor trying to help a patient we know and care about, so we expect to like her and cheer her on. Yet she always seems more than a little sinister. She takes a stern, occasionally impatient tone with Maggie today, which we might think is part of her therapeutic technique. But in her previous appearance, in #265, she took the same tone with Maggie’s father, boyfriend, and family doctor, none of whom is her patient. More than once in that episode, she made remarks suggesting that she suspected that Maggie’s condition was the result of an encounter with an undead monster, then refused to explain what she meant. We wonder why she would withhold such information. At the end of today’s installment, she insists that Maggie return to a place where something terrible happened to her. When Maggie begs her not to make her go back there, we see a closeup of Julia’s face with a look of satisfaction that led Mrs Acilius to say “Julia can do ‘evil face’ as well as Barnabas can.”*

Julia’s grim satisfaction mirrors ours. Ever since Liz gave her great show of reluctance at Vicki’s plan to lay flowers at Josette’s grave, we’ve been wondering what kind of progress a stop at the cemetery could possibly represent for the story. Julia has unwittingly answered that question for us. The place she is going to take Maggie is, of course, that very cemetery.

*Mrs Acilius had a lot to say about Julia as Barnabas in reverse, this whole section is derived from her insights.

Episode 281: All the unhappiness of all my ancestors

Vampire Barnabas Collins is giving a costume party in his home at the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. His distant relatives, the living members of the Collins family, are dressed as their ancestors from Barnabas’ own time as a living being. The whole thing was impossibly dull until the mischievous and witty Roger Collins suggested they have a séance. Now well-meaning governess Vicki is in a trance, channeling the spirit of Josette Collins.

The last time Josette took possession of Vicki at a séance was in #170 and #171. At that time, Josette delivered her message in French. Since Vicki could not speak French (but Alexandra Moltke speaks it fluently,) that was evidence enough to convince even the most skeptical that something was going on. Today Josette speaks English. The characters are all sure that she is the one speaking, but it doesn’t have the same effect on the audience as did that earlier irruption of a language we had not expected to hear.

I do wonder if the decision not to use French came at the last moment. Even though Vicki/ Josette’s voice is loud and clear, the others make a show of struggling to understand what she is saying and seize on a word here and there (“Something about ‘run!'”,) as people do when they are listening to someone speak a language they don’t quite understand. Perhaps writer Joe Caldwell wasn’t quite up to writing in French, and the Writer’s Guild wouldn’t let Alexandra Moltke Isles or any other Francophones on set make a translation. Or maybe they thought that the switch to French wouldn’t be as effective the second time as it was the first.

Josette is telling the story of her death. A man was chasing her, and fleeing him she threw herself off the peak of Widow’s Hill to the rocks below. Barnabas interrupts and breaks Vicki’s trance.

When the others scold him for stopping Josette before she could reveal the name of the man who ran her off the cliff, Barnabas says that the name could not have been of any importance, since whoever it was who drove Josette to kill herself must have been dead for “almost 200 years.” The others do not suspect that he was that man. They do not know that he is a reanimated corpse; they think he’s just English.

When Dark Shadows started, the stories of the tragic death of Josette and of the building of the great house of Collinwood were set in the 1830s. In the weeks before Barnabas’ introduction in April of 1967, they implied that Josette’s dates were much earlier, sometime in the 18th century. Last week, they plumped for the 1830s again. But Barnabas’ line about “almost 200 years ago” puts us back to the 1700s.

After the séance ends, we have evidence that this bit of background continuity might start to matter. Vicki looks at the landing on top of the staircase and sees the ghost of Barnabas’ 9 year old sister Sarah watching the party.

Sarah watches the party. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

It seems that when Barnabas was freed to prey upon the living, he unknowingly brought Sarah with him. Sarah has been popping in and out quite a bit the last few weeks, and she has already made some important plot points happen. We’re starting to wonder just how many more beings will emerge from the supernatural back-world into the main action of the show. The opening voiceover today tells us that “the mists that have protected the present from the past are lifting,” so perhaps they will have to nail these dates down sooner rather than later.

The whole party had accepted instantly that Vicki was channeling the spirit of Josette and none of them ever comes to doubt it. But when she says that she saw a little girl at the head of the stairs, they get all incredulous. By the end of the episode, Vicki will have encountered so much disbelief on this point that she herself will decide that she must have been hallucinating.

Back in the great house, Roger is still overjoyed that the séance turned out to be so exciting. His sister Liz and Liz’ daughter Carolyn consider this to be in terrible taste. But Roger won’t give an inch. He has some great lines, exiting with “I think that all of the unhappiness of all of my ancestors is my rightful heritage, and you shouldn’t try to keep it from me. Good night, ladies.” Both Patrick McCray, in his Dark Shadows Daybook post about this episode, and Danny Horn, in his Dark Shadows Every Day post, make insightful remarks as they analyze the fun Louis Edmonds has playing Roger.

Carolyn approaches Vicki to speak privately. She tells her that she isn’t bothered that fake Shemp Burke Devlin is dating Vicki. Vicki’s response to this is “What?” Carolyn reminds Vicki that she used to be interested in Burke and was initially jealous of Burke’s interest in her. But she assures her she doesn’t feel that way any longer. Vicki smiles, nods, and looks away. Carolyn then says “He’s really very nice!” Vicki answers “Who?” “Burke!” says Carolyn. Again, Vicki smiles, nods, and looks away.

This is probably supposed to tell us that Vicki is coming under some kind of spell associated with Barnabas, but in fact it is likely to suggest something quite different to the audience. Burke was originally a dashing action hero played by Mitch Ryan. Dark Shadows never really came up with very much for a dashing action hero to do, but Ryan’s skills as an actor and his charismatic personality always made it seem that he was about to do something interesting. Several weeks ago, Ryan was fired off the show after he came to the set too drunk to work.

Since then, the part of Burke has been played by Anthony George. George was a well-trained actor with an impressive resume, and by all accounts was a nice guy. But he cannot dig anything interesting out of the character of Burke as he stands at this point in the series. The only scene in which George has shown any energy so far was in #267, when Burke had lost a dime in a pay phone. The rest of the time, he has blended so completely into the scenery that it is no wonder Vicki can’t remember him from one line to the next.

Back in the Old House, Barnabas talks to Josette’s portrait. In the months from #70 to #192, it was established that Josette can hear you if you do this. Several times she manifested herself either as a light glowing from the surface of the portrait or as a figure emerging from it. In #102, we saw strange and troubled boy David Collins having a conversation with the portrait- we could hear only his side of it, but it was clear that Josette was answering him.

The first time we saw Barnabas in the Old House, in #212, he spoke to the portrait. At that point, Josette was not yet his lost love. It seemed that she was his grandmother, and that she had sided against him in some terrible fight with his father Joshua. He ordered Josette and Joshua to leave the house to him. The next time David tried to talk to the portrait, in #240, it seemed that they had complied- David could no longer sense Josette’s presence in it.

Barnabas had spoken briefly to the portrait the other day, but today he makes his first substantial address to it since banishing Josette and Joshua in #212. Again he entreats her to go, but for a very different reason. Now he says that she is lost to him forever, and must allow him to live in the present. Since he has been scheming to capture a woman, erase her personality, replace it with Josette’s, and then kill her so that she will rise from the grave as a vampiric Josette, this sounds like he has decided to make a big change in his relations to the other characters.

It turns out that he hasn’t, but the writers have decided to change their relationship to their source material. Barnabas’ original plan was identical to that which Imhotep, the title character in the 1932 film The Mummy, had pursued in his attempt to replicate his relationship with his long-dead love Princess Ankh-esen-amun. Imhotep met Helen Grosvenor, whom he regarded as the reincarnation of Ankh-esen-amun because they were both played by Zita Johanns, and subjected her to the same treatment Barnabas first inflicted on Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, and now plans to try on Vicki.

Maggie is played by Kathryn Leigh Scott. The audience in 1967 would not have known that Miss Scott also played the ghost of Josette in some of her most important appearances. However, they would have noticed when David saw Maggie dressed as Josette in #240 he assumed it was the ghost, because her face was “exactly the same” as it had been when she manifested herself to him previously. So we have the same reason to believe that Maggie is the reincarnation of Josette that Imhotep had to believe that Helen was the reincarnation of the princess, and we therefore assume that Barnabas, like Imhotep, was trying to take possession of both the ghost and the living woman.

But after Barnabas tells Josette to go away, he declares that if he is to have her, she must be someone from the present. This sequence of words is nonsensical in itself, but harks back to a theory he had laid out to his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie in #274: “Take the right individual, place her under the proper conditions and circumstances, apply the required pressure, and a new personality is created.” Jonathan Frid would always sound and move like Boris Karloff, but now his project of Josettery is inspired less by Imhotep than by the various “mad doctors” Karloff played in the 1940s. Of course, in the 1960s real-life mad scientists such as Stanley Milgram and John Money were performing experiments on human subjects for which Barnabas’ statement might have served as a motto. So Barnabas is coming to be less a merger of Dracula and Imhotep than of Dracula and Dr Frankenstein.

One of the devices by which Barnabas tries to place women “under the proper conditions and circumstances” for Josettification is a music box which he bought for the original Josette and may or may not have given her.* He gives this to Vicki. To his satisfaction, she is reduced to a complete stupor when she hears it play. She is in that state when the episode ends.

* In #236, he says he never had the chance to give it to her. In subsequent episodes, he implies the opposite.

Episode 251: Madness preferable to sanity

We reprise the final scene of Friday’s episode, in which vampire Barnabas Collins catches his prisoner Maggie Evans trying to stab him. He flashes his fangs at her.

The first time around, this had been the climax of a number of powerfully realized scenes, so it still carried a punch despite the silliness of the fangs. From a standing start, though, the result is a bad laugh.

In the 45 seconds following the first commercial, ABC staff announcer Bill Rice* summarizes the action of the previous week’s episodes.** This recap comes so close to exhausting every event we saw in those 110 minutes of scripted drama that regular viewers will have another unintended laugh.

The recap was inserted because many ABC stations preempted Dark Shadows to cover a United Nations debate about the Vietnam War. The show was about as resolutely disengaged from contemporary politics as it was possible to be, but conjoining US policy in Vietnam with a character like Barnabas, who combines a vast capacity for killing with a desperate need to be loved, does bring certain thoughts to mind.

Barnabas and Maggie have a conversation about his inclination to kill her. Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood-thrall Willie Loomis joins in, saying that Barnabas will have to kill him first. This would not seem to present Barnabas with any difficulty at all. Willie wouldn’t be missed- everyone else on the show remembers Willie from the days before he met Barnabas, when he was dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis, and has been urging Barnabas to get rid of him. Nor would it be especially difficult for Barnabas to replace Willie- he just has to bite someone else, and that other person will become his new slave. But Barnabas stands around arguing with Willie and Maggie. When someone knocks on the front door, he scolds Willie for failing to keep it locked, such a humdrum complaint under the circumstances as to bring another bad laugh. Barnabas leaves Willie and Maggie in the basement while he answers the door. Before he goes, he sticks out his lower lip, a facial expression known as “pouting.”

The visitor is well-meaning governess Vicki, who tells Barnabas that the sheriff has ordered that no woman go out alone at night. Some think it strange to send a woman out alone at night to carry this message to a man who is indoors, but considering what we’ve seen of the sheriff, doing the exact opposite of what he commands would seem always to be the wisest course.

Vicki notices an antique music box on a table in Barnabas’ front parlor. Vicki admires its tune and makes a few not-very-coherent remarks about “the past” while it is playing. Barnabas has been using this music box as a tool to hypnotize Maggie into believing that she is his long-lost love Josette. After Vicki leaves, he opens it again, then looks at the door through which she left. He turns his head and smiles, looking very much like someone who has just had an exciting new idea.

Meanwhile, Maggie and Willie talk to each other in the basement. The two of them had one of the most electrifying scenes of the entire series down there Friday. The last traces of that energy have been piddled away by the time Barnabas comes back downstairs and resumes his conversation with them.

Willie urges Barnabas to look at Maggie and see how beautiful she is. Barnabas says “No” and looks away. Coming at a moment of high dramatic tension, this might have been powerful. When we sit down as an audience, we enter into a sort of agreement that if the show includes something worth seeing, we will look at it. So when we see a character refusing to look at a sight as well worth contemplating as was the young Kathryn Leigh Scott,*** we might be shocked. But there has been too much idle chatter, and the memory of Barnabas’ pout is so fresh, that all we can think of is a petulant child saying “I don’t wanna look at her!”

Barnabas announces that he will not kill Maggie right away. He tells her that he will make her suffer torments worse than anyone has ever known so that death will finally come as a blessed relief, then locks her up in the prison cell in the basement of the house. What, your house doesn’t have a prison cell in its basement? It’s a standard feature of homes in Collinsport, as we will come to see in future episodes.

Barnabas goes to the great house of Collinwood and talks to Vicki. He brings a handkerchief that, legend has it, was a gift from the queen of France to Josette. They babble about “the past” and Barnabas invites her to drop in at his house “some day.” He says “day,” even though he’s busy being dead every day until sunset. And doesn’t specify when- any old time, if she hears screams coming from the basement she’ll probably just ignore them.

Evidently Barnabas is thinking of Vicki as a backup Josette in case Maggie doesn’t come around. This marks a retreat from #240 and #241, when strange and troubled boy David Collins, who has seen Josette’s ghost many times, saw Maggie in the gown Barnabas gave her and said that she must have been Josette because she looked “exactly the same” as he had seen her before. That suggested, not only that Barnabas chose Maggie because of her looks, but also that he might be right in thinking that she is Josette’s reincarnation. This storyline is modeled on the 1932 Universal film The Mummy, in which Imhotep’s idea that Helen Grosvenor is the reincarnation of his lost love Princess Ankh-esen-amun is substantiated when Zita Johann plays both roles. If Vicki and Maggie are interchangeable, then all of that goes by the boards.

*Presumably no relation to the main character of Gene Roddenberry’s 1963-4 CBS TV series The Lieutenant, one episode of which was written by Art Wallace.

**As transcribed by the Dark Shadows wiki:

For those who have missed the last few episodes of Dark Shadows: Elizabeth Collins [Stoddard,] at Jason McGuire’s insistence, has taken Vicki, Carolyn, and Roger into the basement room and convinces them that it holds no mystery. They don’t realize that beneath the flagstones on the floor is concealed the room’s secret—the body of Elizabeth’s husband, Paul. Elizabeth, now realizing that the secret can never be told, announces to the family that she and Jason will be married. Maggie Evans escaped from Barnabas and attempted to get to her father, but was recaptured and told by Barnabas that unless she assumes the identity of Josette Collins, she will die. Realizing that she can never escape, Maggie attempts to destroy Barnabas.

***Or for that matter as is the not-so-young Miss Scott of today, she’s one of the best looking octogenarians around.

Episode 250: A servant’s name

Maggie Evans, the Nicest Girl in Town, has been the prisoner of vampire Barnabas Collins for some time. At rise, she is in front of her mirror, struggling to remember who she is. Her name and her father’s come back to her, but then the music box Barnabas gave her starts playing, and she begins to believe that she is Barnabas’ long-lost love Josette. This scene takes about a minute more than is necessary.

She renews the struggle later, and this time overcomes the hypnotic power of the music box. She decides to pretend that she believes that she is Josette in order to trick Barnabas and Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie into giving her enough freedom to escape. She fools them, only to hear Barnabas tell Willie that her compliance means that the time has come for the final part of his plan.

Maggie hears carpentry work, and sneaks down to the basement. She finds Barnabas watching Willie build a coffin. It sits next to the coffin in which Barnabas spends his days. It becomes clear that once Maggie is fully Josettified, she will be a vampire as well. Unfortunately, Jonathan Frid has a great deal of trouble with his lines in this scene. I don’t usually mind Frid’s bobbles, but his line troubles here take us out of what needs to be a terrifying moment.

In the morning, Maggie goes back to the basement. Willie finds her there. He is not convinced that she believes she is Josette. He presses her, and she finally breaks down and gives up the act.

Maggie shows Willie the diamond necklace Barnabas gave her as a present for their wedding, and tells him it will be his if they destroy Barnabas and escape. Willie’s fascination with jewels was what led him to undertake the grave-robbing expedition that freed Barnabas in the first place, and the necklace does distract him for a little while. But then he hears Barnabas’ heartbeat. He heard that sound before, in #208, #209, #210, and #217, but in those episodes no one else could hear it. Maggie can, since Barnabas has been drinking her blood too, but she can still resist the vampire’s spell. She is holding a large awl, ready to drive it into Barnabas’ heart, but Willie cannot overcome his urge to protect his master. He disarms Maggie.

We see Maggie in her room and hear Barnabas’ voice on the soundtrack going over what she heard him say in the basement. This is the first time an interior monologue has played quotes from another character. They aren’t the lines Jonathan Frid actually delivered, but cleaned-up, intelligible lines, presumably the ones that were in the script.

As sunset nears, Willie takes Maggie back to the basement. He leaves, telling her that she and Barnabas must be alone when he completes “the ceremony.” She finds the awl, picks it up, and opens the coffin. Before she can drive it into Barnabas’ heart, he awakens and shows his fangs. She screams and presses herself against the brick wall behind her.

This is the second episode credited to writer Joe Caldwell, and is certainly the best teleplay Dark Shadows has seen since Francis Swann left the show in November of 1966. Like Swann and Art Wallace, Caldwell understood what actors could do and knew how to give them a platform to show their stuff.

Aside from Frid’s one bad scene, the actors excel. In 1967, Kathryn Leigh Scott was already a highly trained actress. Maggie Evans, on the other hand, has never acted before. When Maggie is pretending to believe she is Josette, Miss Scott shows her giving a crude imitation of Barnabas’ high-flown style, mixed with some prancing movements you might see from a little girl playing the princess in a school play. Barnabas is so desperate to believe that his lunatic scheme is working that he falls for it completely. When he and Maggie are in the front parlor together, he responds to her amateur performance as a sign that she is matching his pomposity, which of course thrills him.

When Willie and Maggie are in the basement, John Karlen plays his earthy skepticism with a simplicity that makes Maggie’s pretending look ridiculous. When Maggie gives up her act and whispers a plea for Willie to help her, Miss Scott matches the force of Karlen’s performance and the resulting encounter is as powerful as anything the show ever achieves.

The episode is good enough that we barely noticed some major lapses in story logic. If Maggie can sneak down to the basement to eavesdrop on Barnabas and Willie, why can’t she slip out the front door? She knows how to get from Barnabas’ house to the great house of Collinwood, where she has friends and there is a telephone to call the sheriff.

And when did she learn that you can destroy vampires by driving stakes through their hearts? She’s lived in Collinsport all her life, and no one in that town has ever heard of vampires. Granted, the show would move a lot faster and could have more layers of irony if the characters had read Dracula and seen movies from Universal and Hammer, but this is the first hint that any of them has.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, was very interested in the fact that Maggie calls herself “Maggie, or Margaret” in this one. First time we hear the name Margaret! I’m not sure why that impressed her so much, but she’s very bright, so I’m sure it’s important. All I can think of is that “Maggie” waits tables in the diner, cleans up after her Pop has had one drink too many, and is everybody’s pal, while “Margaret” is a saint’s name, and a queen’s name. So Margaret might have a bigger destiny than we’ve seen.

Episode 248: The bride of Barnabas Collins

At the end of yesterday’s installment, artist Sam Evans looked out the window of his house and saw his daughter, missing local girl Maggie. Today, the sheriff shows up and reports that he and his men couldn’t find anything to substantiate Sam’s report. The sheriff then tries to convince Sam that he didn’t really see Maggie at all. When last we see Sam, he is telling himself that it was only his imagination.

Maggie had escaped from the custody of vampire Barnabas Collins and Barnabas’ sorely bedraggled blood thrall, Willie Loomis. Today, Barnabas meets Maggie in the graveyard, chokes her, and takes her into the tomb where he spent a century or two. He declares that he will punish her for trying to leave him.

As Barnabas talks, Maggie seems inclined to go along with his plan to annihilate her personality and replace it with that of his long-dead love, Josette. He wonders aloud if the punishment he was planning is necessary after all. But then she remembers that she is holding her father’s pipe, and she calls out “Pop!” Barnabas then takes her to the hidden room in the back of the tomb and shuts her up in his old coffin.

Director Lela Swift was uncharacteristically sloppy with the framing yesterday, but today she makes up for it with one of the most remembered shots of the entire series. When Barnabas shuts Maggie up in the coffin, we see him from her point of view. Claustrophobic viewers beware!

The next morning, Willie releases Maggie from the coffin, takes her back to Barnabas’ house, and urges her to convince herself that she is Josette. For a while, she tries it. We start to wonder if Willie will have as much success with Maggie as the sheriff had with her father. But then she looks in the mirror and shouts “I’m Maggie Evans!”

That may not sound like much story for 22 minutes, but it never feels slow. Swift and the actors are all in fine form today.

On the other hand, there are a couple of script problems. The sheriff is written as such a fool that we can’t help but be distracted, and the scene between Maggie and Barnabas in the outer section of the tomb goes on too long. But even at its lowest points the actors just about save it. Dana Elcar always makes it seem that Sheriff Patterson knows more than he’s letting on, so it isn’t until he starts trying to talk Sam into believing he didn’t really see Maggie that we get the sinking feeling that he is absolutely useless. And Jonathan Frid and Kathryn Leigh Scott are electric as Barnabas and Maggie, so much so that we could forgive the scene between them even if it had been twice as repetitious as it fact is. With two consecutive episodes including as much good stuff as was in yesterday’s and today’s, it’s starting to seem like they are due to land one in the ranks of the Genuinely Good Episodes any day now.