nelle gunston – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 1020: The last of the bachelors

Angelique Stokes Collins has risen from the dead, but her renewed existence may end within seconds. She is overwhelmingly cold, and can warm up only by draining the heat from the body of a living person. Someone is coming in the front door, just in time to be her victim and die in her stead. She wonders who it will be.

Almost all the characters currently on Dark Shadows are either so important to an ongoing story that their deaths would end a major arc or have so many connections to everyone else that their deaths would start a new one. So if she kills mad scientist Cyrus Longworth, his fiancée Sabrina Stuart, or barmaid Buffie Harrington, Angelique will be ending the Jekyll and Hyde story, or at least shifting it into a radically new phase. If she kills drunken sourpuss Quentin Collins, his wife Maggie Evans Collins, or housekeeper Julia Hoffman, she will be ending the adaptation of Rebecca. If she kills Carolyn Loomis or her husband Will, she will be ending the restaging of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

If Angelique kills woebegone homebody Elizabeth Collins Stoddard or her brother, sardonic dandy Roger Collins, she won’t be ending any ongoing stories. But Liz and Roger are the counterparts of characters who were central to the life of the great house of Collinwood in the first 196 weeks of Dark Shadows, when it was set in another universe, and are played by actors who have substantial followings. If either of them is murdered, the audience will expect major consequences. Angelique’s son Daniel Collins and Daniel’s cousin Amy Collins aren’t doing much just now, but if Angelique kills a child, especially her own son, the ABC network’s office of Standards and Practices would join the audience in insisting she face a serious reckoning that would take up a lot of screen time. This fit of heat vampirism came on Angelique too suddenly to make sense as the start of a new arc, so we can rule all of those candidates out.

There are also a couple of characters who were introduced to fill in for actors who were away the previous couple of months filming their parts in the theatrical feature House of Dark Shadows. Among those are Angelique’s Aunt Hannah and butler Mr Trask. They are possibilities, but are both played by actors who have enough going for them that it would be a bit surprising to bring them back just to kill them off. There are also a few miscellaneous day players whose characters would have no reason to let themselves into the great house of Collinwood- a bartender we saw in #991, a landlady we saw in #997, etc.

So it would seem that there are only two people who could be Angelique’s next meal. One is sleazy musician Bruno Hess, a former boyfriend of hers who lives in the cottage on the grounds of Collinwood and is friends with Cyrus, but who has been neither seen nor missed for some time. The other is Larry Chase, attorney at law.

Bruno is played by the dynamic Michael Stroka, who twice made a mark when cast in stories set in the other universe. Larry was written into the show as a last-minute substitute for a part played by an actor whose health problems made it impossible for him to continue. They didn’t have time for auditions, so they drafted associate director Ken McEwen for the part. McEwen was in the building, and he had a guild card because of some small parts he’d taken in TV shows he’d worked on in the 1950s. When he has enough time to rehearse, which is to say when he has had more time to rehearse than actors usually got on a show like Dark Shadows, McEwen gets his lines right, except for adding “Well…” at the beginning of every single one. You can tell he is making a sincere effort not to ruin the show. But that’s about all you can say for him. Even at his best he’s stiff and distracted, and when he hasn’t been able to get his part down, he disintegrates completely. So it isn’t much of a surprise that Larry is the one who opens the door. It wasn’t a surprise to me, I should say; writing these posts keeps all the details fresh in my mind. My wife, Mrs Acilius, looked at him for about thirty seconds and asked “Who’s that?”

Larry plays the same scene with Angelique that her second victim, Fred the transient handyman, had played with her in #1003, right down to telling her that he had wanted to hold her since he first saw her. Fred was played by Edmond Hashim, and anyone who sees the two versions of this scene side by side will come away with a new appreciation for Hashim’s talents as an actor. This is McEwen’s final on-screen appearance, though he will pinch hit as the opening narrator in three upcoming episodes. He will continue as an associate director through episode 1179/1180 in December.

Will enters to find Angelique screaming and Larry dead. Angelique, who is impersonating her late identical twin sister Alexis, claims that Larry was just standing there when he had an attack of some kind and dropped dead. Will touches the corpse and says that he is so cold he must have been dead for hours. “Alexis” insists he just died a moment before. Will calls Cyrus, who is the Collins family physician.

Cyrus is in his lab, looking at the potion which turns him into the Mr Hyde-like John Yaeger. He is about to capitulate to his craving when the telephone rings. Will tells him that Larry is dead and asks him to come to Collinwood. Cyrus puts the potion back in his safe and rejoices that he is “Saved!” Larry was Cyrus’ lawyer and apparently a social friend as well. We’ve already seen Cyrus do enough horrible things that this sociopathic reaction is no shock.

Back at Collinwood, Will and “Alexis” are talking with Barnabas Collins. Unknown to “Alexis,” Barnabas is a visitor from the other universe. Her counterpart in his world was the wicked witch who turned him into a vampire, so Barnabas cannot keep a hostile edge out of his voice and manner when he is talking to her. Will is one of Barnabas’ victims, and knows all of his secrets.

When they are alone in the drawing room, “Alexis” questions Will about Barnabas. Will denies knowing him particularly well. Barnabas is staying at Will’s house, and several years ago Will wrote a biography of Barnabas’ counterpart in this universe, a man who lived a quiet life and died a natural death in 1830. Barnabas claims to be a descendant of that Barnabas Collins, and to have come to Collinwood to meet the author of the biography. Will becomes more and more disturbed as “Alexis” presses him harder and harder for information. She is perplexed that he won’t tell her anything. Lara Parker and John Karlen have both been on the show for a long time, but this is the first substantial two scene between them, and it is terrific. Their acting styles were very different, but they couldn’t have meshed better.

Barnabas is sitting at a table in the Eagle tavern. There is a glass of reddish liquid in front of him. In view of his condition, one wonders what that liquid might be.

Enjoying your AB Negative, Mr Collins? Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas invites Buffie to sit with him. Since there are no other customers, she agrees. He tells her he is from South America. The son of this universe’s Barnabas Collins whom he claims as his great-grandfather went to Peru; when he introduced himself to the family, he said that his forebear did not die in that country. But evidently his imaginary descendants stayed on the continent, somewhere.

The Eagle is the counterpart of the Blue Whale in the other continuity. In #3, Burke Devlin was sitting at a table in the Blue Whale with hard-working young fisherman Joe Haskell when he said that his success in life began when a strange man picked him up in a bar in Montevideo. That was the show’s only reference to Uruguay, but Burke, the Blue Whale, and Brazil came to be strongly associated with each other. The song “Aquarela do Brasil,” a big hit in the English speaking world in the 1960s under the title “Brazil,” played on the jukebox at the Blue Whale, and it became Burke’s theme song. Ultimately Burke would die on a business trip to Brazil. Barnabas and Burke were enemies; when he sits at this table and claims to have a South American background, longtime viewers may wonder if he is thinking that the new universe is a place where he can try out a new personality and maybe he will start by imitating Burke’s.

Burke was a dashing action hero, attractive to women. Barnabas’ attempt to imitate him breaks down almost immediately. He winds up mimicking another prominent bachelor from his native universe, Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, when he asks Buffie if she’s ever heard of the theory of “Parallel Time.”

Buffie shakes her head no. Barnabas says that some people believe that there are many universes, and that a copy of each of us can be found in each of them. They may look the same, but they lead different lives because they have made different choices. Buffie laughs and says that she hopes her other selves are having more fun than she is. She hastens to say that she doesn’t mean she isn’t having fun at the moment, sharing a table with Barnabas; she means that her life in Collinsport, as viewed from the most all-encompassing perspective and analyzed in the most thorough philosophic manner, well and truly sucks shit. Barnabas says that the other Buffies in the multiverse might have left Collinsport* and had wonderful adventures.

Longtime viewers saw one of those other Buffies in #951, when we were still in the original continuity. She had a different name; she went by Nelle Gunston. And as befits a mirror universe, she moved in the opposite direction. Rather than leaving Collinsport to look for something new as Buffie wishes she had done, Nelle left her parents’ home in Virginia and went to Collinsport because she had joined a cult dedicated to the destruction of the human race and its replacement by a loathsome breed of Elder Gods known as the Leviathan People. Barnabas had been the leader of the Leviathan cult, and when Nelle came to town she sat with him by the same table where Buffie and Barnabas sit today. They even take the same seats.

Buffie is charmed by Barnabas’ talk; between the suavity that Jonathan Frid brings to his part today and the energy with which Elizabeth Eis presents Buffie’s enthusiasm for him, it is far easier than it usually is to believe that Barnabas is a sexy dude. Maybe we are supposed to think that role-playing as Burke has enabled him to loosen up.

The conversation is really warming up when the bell attached to the front door rings. “Customer,” Buffie ruefully says to Barnabas as she rises. It is Cyrus.

Barnabas invites Cyrus to sit with them. He declines, saying that he came only to ask Buffie if she had seen John Yaeger lately. She tenses up. Yaeger used to beat her up and force her to help him with his crimes. She says that Cyrus himself had told Buffie that Yaeger wouldn’t be back in Collinsport. Cyrus says that he did, but that he is worried he might not be able to predict Yaeger’s movements as well as he thought he could. He offers Barnabas a lift back to Collinwood. That’s a bit surprising, since Cyrus got uptight when he saw Barnabas. As Yaeger, Cyrus discovered that there is a coffin in the basement of Will and Carolyn’s house, and he suspects that Barnabas spends his days there. But longtime viewers can remember the days Barnabas and Burke had conversations at the Blue Whale that were just as tense as the one he and Cyrus have in the Eagle, and Burke never failed to observe the small graces. It’s just the done thing, I suppose.

Cyrus leaves, and Buffie remains standing. She and Barnabas keep talking. He gets close, and goes in for a bite. He stops himself at the last second, to her surprise and disappointment. She was apparently ready for a kiss on the neck. He says he has to go. She is even more disappointed by that, but he promises to come back at closing. He asks to walk her home, and she happily agrees.

Will and Cyrus are in the drawing room at Collinwood. Will urges Cyrus to join him in a drink. When Cyrus declines, Will reminisces about the old days at Collinwood, when the party would just be getting started at this hour. In those days, people would leave the great house in the small hours of the morning and continue their revels at the Eagle. Cyrus says he won’t find much company there tonight. When he says that the only people in the place earlier were “the girl who works there” and Barnabas, Will looks alarmed. All of his mannerisms that suggest drunkenness drop away, and he rushes out.

Will gets to the tavern, and finds Buffie alone. The alcoholic author is obviously one of her favorite and most lucrative customers, so even though she has already blown out the candles she tells him he is in time for last call. To her amazement, he is not interested in a drink. He asks her where Barnabas is. She says he’ll be back and that he is taking her home. He says no, and she asks what’s wrong. Before he can answer, Will hears Barnabas’ voice behind him, echoing Buffie’s question. Laboring under the vampire’s power, Will has no choice but to leave Buffie alone with Barnabas.

Nelle, too, had agreed left the tavern with Barnabas. She expected to meet the leader of the Leviathans at his place, and was unhappy to find that the two of them were alone. Buffie is again an inverted mirror image of her counterpart. She takes Barnabas to her place, and is quite happy to be alone with him. The two close in for an embrace. He bites her neck, and she collapses. He had bitten Nelle, too. At that moment, Cyrus enters the room.

Cyrus does not exactly have a counterpart in the other continuity, but Christopher Pennock did play the Leviathan leader whom Nelle expected to meet. Like Cyrus, that character was a murderous shape-shifter. So Cyrus’ unexpected arrival mirrors the Leviathan leader’s unexpected absence.

When we first cut to Buffie’s room, the camera lingers for several seconds on an extremely unusual prop. It is a television set. The only other time we have seen a television set on Dark Shadows was in #27, in the other universe, when Burke visited investigator Stuart Bronson in a hotel room in Bangor, Maine where there was a small portable unit. It looks like it might be the same set.

The shot goes on so long, and the set is such an odd thing to see in the context of the show, that they must be making some kind of point with it. We have wondered why Buffie submitted to Yaeger’s abuse, when she is such a strong and intelligent person. Her reflection in Nelle suggests a partial answer. Nelle was drawn to the Leviathans, who offered to destroy her and all other humans. We can assume that Buffie, too, was following a self-destructive urge when she went along with Yaeger. Associated with her, the television is a symbol of the annihilation of the self. Turn the idiot box on, turn your mind off. If you aren’t careful, you may even wind up spending your weekdays staring glassy-eyed at ABC’s daytime lineup.

*He actually says “Collinwood.” Which is a blooper, but since Buffie mentioned in her first episode that she used to work at Collinwood it is kind of an interesting one. Maybe when another Buffie left her position as an upstairs maid or whatever she was, she got further than the nearest tavern.

Episode 997: How pretty your tears

We are in the fourth week of an arc set in a different universe than the one we saw in the first 196 weeks of Dark Shadows. This universe, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time,” was originally introduced as a realm populated by Doppelgänger of the characters we have known. They are the same people, but have made different choices and are therefore living different lives.

Some of the Parallel Time characters fit this description. So, we have known matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her brother Roger Collins from episode #1. In the early days of the show, much was made of the Collinses’ straitened financial circumstances, the result of Roger squandering the half of the family’s assets he had inherited and Liz scrambling to keep control of the business. Roger lived in Liz’ house as her guest and worked in the business as her employee, and she kept a wary eye on any move he made to get his hands on her money. In #981, Parallel Liz mentions that she used to be quite wealthy, but that she entrusted her share of the Collins fortune to Roger, and as a result they are both penniless. Original Liz saw that fate as a distinct possibility, every time Roger was in the same wing of the house as her bank account information.

Parallel Liz and Parallel Roger live in the great house of Collinwood as the guests of their brother Quentin. Parallel Quentin is not at all the same person as Original Quentin. He is an entirely different person. Original Quentin was born in 1870, died in 1897, became a ghost haunting Collinwood in 1968 and 1969, and as the result of a time travel storyline in 1969 was both spared death and immunized against aging. Original Quentin was a riff on the early conception of Roger as a villain, and he was a huge hit with the viewing public during the part of the show set in 1897. Ever since Dark Shadows returned to contemporary dress in late 1969, they’ve been at a loss what to do with him. Parallel Quentin is an attempt to reinvent the character to let him keep enough of his vices that he retains the roguish charm that the fans liked, but at the same time use those vices as motivation for him to act the part of the hero from time to time.

There is need for an action hero today. Quentin’s friend, dippy mad scientist Cyrus Longworth, has invented a Jekyll-and-Hyde potion and taken a swig of it. As the darkly mustachio’d John Yaeger, he has been persecuting barmaid Buffie Harrington and Buffie’s unlucky boyfriend, big galoot Steve. We open with Yaeger choking Buffie and telling her she needs to be beaten into submission. Later, Yaeger gets the jump on Steve in a dark alley behind the Greenfield Inn, an establishment that also fronts a sinister alley in the main continuity. He threatens him with his sword cane. Steve manages to get that weapon away from him, but Yaeger beats him down. Yaeger is choking Steve, apparently with the intention of murdering him, when he hears a police whistle and runs away.

Cyrus Longworth and John Yaeger are played by Christopher Pennock.* In the main continuity, Pennock played a character who asked to be called Jabe but wound up answering to “Jeb.” Jabe appeared to be a man in his twenties, but was in fact a shape-shifting monster who was only a few months old when he was destroyed. We’ve heard a good deal about what Cyrus was doing six months ago and more, and there are diplomas on the walls of his laboratory that show his history is nothing like Jabe’s.

Among the very few choices in Jabe’s short life was an attempt to renounce his shape-shifting abilities so that he could remain in human form at all times. In that way, he is the opposite of Cyrus, who chooses to take his potion knowing it will change him into Yaeger.

Also, Jabe was so obnoxious that even people brainwashed to regard him as a divine being come to fulfill a plan that more than justified the extermination of the human race found his personality too much to take and turned against him after a few encounters. But by the end of Jabe’s time on the show, it had become undeniable that there was a kernel of sweetness in his personality. In this regard, too, Cyrus is the opposite of Jabe. We hear his soft voice and see his diffident manner, and we assume that the single-minded scientist in his lab coat, toiling all hours on a project that he keeps saying will benefit humankind, is a well-meaning sort, though perhaps dangerously naïve. Cyrus’ dutiful assistant and devoted fiancée, the lovely Sabrina Stuart, encourages us in that assumption, insisting that Cyrus is thoroughly good, if hopelessly unworldly. But as the initially insufferable Jabe turned out to be endearing at the end, so the apparently innocent Cyrus is deliberately choosing to turn himself into Yaeger even after he knows what Yaeger is capable of. What’s more, he refuses to let anyone at all help him with his experiment, meaning there is no one to restrain Yaeger’s sprees.

Sabrina’s counterpart in the main continuity was the fiancée, not of Jabe, but of another dangerous shape-shifter. She was engaged to werewolf Chris Jennings. As this Sabrina is convinced Cyrus is good, so that one kept insisting Chris was good, even after she had learned that he repeatedly refused to be restrained on nights of the full Moon, so that the killings he committed in his lupine form were premeditated murders on his part. This Sabrina does not know the nature of Cyrus’ work, and she believes that Yaeger is an enemy of his who is holding him prisoner. Sabrina would appear to stand with Roger and Liz as a character who is in a meaningful sense the same person in both timelines, so we are in suspense as to how she might react if she finds out the truth about her man.

Sabrina’s part makes us wonder if the original plan were to cast Don Briscoe, who plays Chris in the main continuity, as Cyrus and Yaeger. At this time Briscoe was struggling with bipolar disorder. He was trying to self-medicate with street drugs, which not only made matters worse in itself, but also led him to get a severe beating one night while trying to score a fix in Central Park. Briscoe appears in Parallel Time as lawyer Chris Collins and has a small part in the concurrently filmed feature House of Dark Shadows, but his health problems ruled out a part as crucial as the lead in the Jekyll and Hyde story.

Buffie is played by Elizabeth Eis, who appeared in one episode set in the main continuity as Nelle Gunston. Nelle was a young woman from Virginia, bored by life with her parents, who had joined the cult that was meant to serve Jabe and the world-wrecking plan to which he was central. When she was asked if she would commit murder if that was what the cult required, she smiled pleasantly and said “Even that.” Nelle was killed before she could meet Jabe.

Buffie is not at all the same person as Nelle. She is not from Virginia, for one thing. When she thinks about leaving Collinsport to get away from Yaeger, she realizes she has only $13.40 to her name, and laughs at herself for a plan that wouldn’t get her any further than Worcester, Massachusetts. Naming Worcester as a synonym for “nowhere” would suggest that she is a New England girl, which would fit with her employment in a bar in a fishing village in central Maine. Buffie is the opposite of what they originally told us the characters in Parallel Time would be- she is not Nelle after she has made a different choice, she is a person who began differently than Nelle and is making a similar choice.

Buffie is in her room when her landlady, Mrs Duvall, comes for the rent. Buffie has a check ready. Mrs Duvall thanks Buffie for recommending her boarding house to a gentleman who has rented her four best rooms at a very handsome price. She tells Buffie that the man is a big step up from Steve. Buffie has no idea what she is talking about. Yaeger shows up, and Buffie realizes he is Mrs Duvall’s new prize boarder. Buffie is horrified, and demands her rent check back. Mrs Duvall refuses to return it. Yaeger points to a print hanging on the wall and instructs Mrs Duvall to take it away and burn it. She is doing so when Buffie protests that it is hers. At that, Mrs Duvall stops short of the door, but she does not put the print back on the wall. Eventually, Mrs Duvall does take Buffie’s print, and leaves her with Yaeger.

The telephone rings. It is Quentin, asking Buffie about Yaeger. Yaeger stands next to her and forces her to answer Quentin’s questions with lies. Later, Steve will come to Buffie’s room. She will tell him to give up on her and not to take any more beatings from Yaeger on her behalf. Steve asks if Yaeger is a superman; Buffie widens her eyes and says that he might be. This brings us back to Nelle, who renounced her life in Virginia and her connection to the human race because she was looking for a superman and thought she would find one in Jabe. Steve may not have had much to offer, but it’s a cinch he wasn’t as bad as Yaeger, and he’s gone from Buffie’s life after this scene.

The emptiness of Buffie’s life is represented today by a prop we have seen only once before on Dark Shadows, a television set. There was a set in a motel room in Bangor in #27; we never do see one in the Collinsport or the Collinwood of the main continuity. Perhaps the makers of the show are suggesting that people who have nothing better to do than to watch the idiot box are likely to fall prey to any fella who offers physical abuse and verbal intimidation.

Mrs Duvall is played by Camila Ashland. Ashland was a very distinguished stage actress who appeared in #928 as someone called Mrs Hutchins. A man from the cult around Jabe hired Mrs Hutchins to tell some lies to throw mad scientist Julia Hoffman off their trail. That didn’t work, but Julia admired Mrs Hutchins’ performance, as we suspect Grayson Hall admired Ashland’s. When the man from the cult paid Mrs Hutchins for her work, he was unpleasantly surprised at her questions and the uneasy conscience it reflected, responding roughly that she is being paid for a job and should leave it at that. He didn’t realize he was dealing with an artist. Mrs Duvall’s eagerness to please the obviously horrible Yaeger shows that she really is the crude mercenary the man from the cult assumed Mrs Hutchins was.

We cut to Cyrus’ laboratory. Yaeger has fled there from the police. He is about to take the re-Jekylling formula when Quentin shows up and demands to know where Cyrus is. We end with them in that standoff.

*Billed twice in the closing credits- as Christopher Pennock for Cyrus, and as Chris Pennock for Yaeger. Adorable!

Episode 951: Do something with the body

Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins has fallen afoul of a shape-shifting monster from beyond time and space who once hoped people would call him “Jabe.” The monster, who has settled for the name “Jeb,” turns Barnabas back into what he was from the 1790s until 1968, a vampire.

Re-vamped, Barnabas suddenly gets a lot of gray in his hair and a much darker complexion. Makeup artist Vince Loscalzo deserves a lot of credit for these bits of color, they are placed perfectly to emphasize the look of anguish as Barnabas realizes what has happened to him and struggles to resist his urges. The actors’ faces were the medium of Loscalzo’s art, and he outdid himself with these complements to Jonathan Frid’s face.

People talk endlessly about the heroic makeup work Dick Smith did with Jonathan Frid one week in October 1967 and again on a feature film, but Vince Loscalzo did great stuff like this day in and day out for years. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We see Barnabas sitting at a table in The Blue Whale, the tavern in the village of Collinsport. He is the only patron in the room. He has a glass of reddish liquid in front of him, and the bartender is moving around the room. The bartender looks at Barnabas, as if to ask, “How do you like your glass of AB negative, Mr Collins?” But he turns away and moves on.

A young woman enters. Barnabas invites her to join him at his table. He sees that she is wearing a pendant that identifies her as a member of the secret cult that serves Jabe and other creatures who intend to seize control of the Earth, supplanting humankind. Barnabas introduces himself, and says that he was the one who made it possible for Jabe to come to life. This is true, but it is also true that he has become disaffected from the cult. Even after Jabe turned him back into a vampire, Barnabas is still determined to thwart it.

The young woman introduces herself as Nelle Gunston, who was recruited into the cult while living a dreary life with her parents in Virginia. Nelle tells Barnabas that everything has changed for her since she joined the cult. She says that she will gladly do anything she can to advance its objectives, including murder. They have this conversation in nice loud voices while the bartender is nearby.

Barnabas’ friends, mad scientist Julia Hoffman and recovering werewolf Quentin Collins, enter. He introduces them to Nelle, then explains to them that he and Nelle have a private matter to discuss. Quentin and Julia go to the bar, where Quentin orders brandies. They talk about Nelle’s pendant and their fear that Barnabas is falling back under the power of the cult while the bartender is in their space serving them drinks. Evidently they’ve learned to rely on his discretion. They are still deep in conversation when Barnabas leaves with Nelle.

Barnabas takes Nelle back to his place on the pretext that Jabe will meet them there. She asks him why it is so dark in there; he asks her how she got into the cult. She catches on that Jabe is not coming and that Barnabas is not loyal to him. She draws a knife and is about to stab Barnabas when he bares his fangs to her.

Quentin and Julia let themselves into Barnabas’ house. They find Nelle dead on the floor and Barnabas wallowing in self-pity next to her. Julia takes a second look at Nelle and sees the puncture wounds on her neck. She tells Barnabas she will renew the treatments that first put his vampirism into remission two years before; he says there is something else he has to do first. After he rushes out, Quentin and Julia talk about how they will hide Nelle’s body.

Nelle was the perfect victim for Barnabas- no one in town knew her, no one expected her to come, no one will notice she is missing. And he is determined to weaken the cult, so reducing its numbers by one fits his goals.

Barnabas goes to the antique shop in the village. Jabe is in an upstairs room; Barnabas is convinced that Jabe can assume his true form and lay it down only in that room. We saw him do that in a house on an island many miles away in #946, and he told Barnabas that he had done so in #947, but apparently that doesn’t count, somehow. Jabe is far more powerful in his true form than he is when he is man-shaped, but he cannot mingle with humans in that form. So Barnabas believes that he will limit Jabe’s options if he destroys the room. He pours gasoline all around the first floor of the shop and sets a match to it.

Nelle is played by Elizabeth Eis, in her first appearance on Dark Shadows. They say that the first thing actors have to do to work effectively is to pay attention to each other. Eis shows how far this can take you. She listens ravenously to everything Frid says and never takes her eyes off him. The script doesn’t give her a huge amount to work with, but simply by giving her scene partner her total attention she creates a sensational performance. The producers noticed; she will be back later this year in two quite different roles.

This episode is the last time we see either the Blue Whale or Bob O’Connell as the Bartender. The Blue Whale was an important part of the show from its debut in June 1966 until the first costume drama insert began in November 1967. O’Connell appeared as the Bartender in 60 episodes (three of them as other bartenders in other periods of history) and had speaking parts in 6. It’s too bad he doesn’t get to say anything today, but at least he is in the closing credits.