on-screen murder – Acilius on Dark Shadows

Episode 486: Endless corridors of trial and error

Today’s cast includes a vampire, a wicked witch, two mad scientists, a Frankenstein’s monster, and an irritable housekeeper. The deadly menace turns out to be the housekeeper.

In a laboratory in a house by the sea, mad scientists Eric Lang and Julia Hoffman are trying to transfer recovering vampire Barnabas Collins’ “life force” into the body of the creature Lang has built for the purpose, a creature Barnabas has named Adam. In the drawing room of the great house atop Widow’s Hill, wicked witch Angelique disrupts that attempt by sticking a pin into a clay figure that she addresses as “Dr Lang.” It is unclear how Angelique attached the clay figure to Lang, though since it has roughly the same acting ability as Addison Powell the pairing seems natural enough.

Lang gasps for air. Julia helps both him and Barnabas. Barnabas gets up from the operating table and declares he will go to the great house and stop Angelique. Lang tries to tell Julia how to carry on his work, but keeps breaking down. While Julia is out of the room getting some heart medicine, Angelique removes the pin from the clay figure. During that moment of relief, Lang is alone in the lab. He turns on his tape recorder and says that if both Barnabas and Adam live, Barnabas will be free of the vampire curse. Adam will drain it from him, but will not suffer from its symptoms. If Adam dies, Barnabas will revert to active vampirism.

Angelique resumes tormenting Lang as Julia returns to the laboratory. Lang cannot keep his breath long enough to tell Julia his message or make it clear that she should listen to the tape. Angelique says that Lang has suffered enough for tonight, and that she will put the pin away. As she is about to do so, the door to the drawing room opens and housekeeper Mrs Johnson comes in. Mrs Johnson startles Angelique, who inadvertently drives the pin through the clay figure, killing Lang.

This is the second death to which Mrs Johnson has contributed. The two cases are very similar. She unknowingly gave undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins the information she needed to cast the spell that killed parapsychologist Dr Peter Guthrie. Guthrie resembled Lang not only in holding a terminal degree, studying the uncanny, and doing battle with an undead witch, but also in his use of a tape recorder. In #170 and #171, Guthrie recorded the audio of a séance; in #172, Laura erased the recording and replaced it with the sound of fire; and in #185, he was on his way to get his tape recorder to use at another séance when Laura cast the spell that killed him. Mrs Johnson is a menace to a very specific kind of person.

Barnabas comes to the great house and threatens Angelique, calling her by the name “Cassandra,” the alias under which she has married sarcastic dandy Roger Collins and found a place in the house. At first he says he will burn her if Lang dies. She pretends not to know what he’s talking about, and says that she will expose him as a madman. He looks at her neck and leans in, a sign that his vampire urges are coming back. The telephone rings, and Mrs Johnson enters. Angelique/ Cassandra explains their compromising position by claiming that she was fainting; with that, she shows that her threat to air her complaints is a bluff, since she could easily have demanded Mrs Johnson call the police.

Barnabas is getting thirsty. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Mrs Johnson says the call is for Barnabas. It is Julia reporting Lang’s death. Barnabas makes some grim remarks to Angelique/ Cassandra, then goes back to the laboratory and talks with Julia. She is distraught, but agrees to pick up where Lang left off.

We end with a dream sequence. Angelique has loosed a “Dream Curse” on the people of Collinsport. One after another, they have the same basic dream, in each case beginning with an appearance by the next person to have the dream beckoning them into a haunted house attraction and ending with a door opening to expose something the previous dreamers didn’t see. Julia’s dream begins with Mrs Johnson, telling us she will be the next up. It proceeds with her walking through a foggy room, including a clear shot of the fog machine. It ends with the sight of a skeleton wearing a wedding dress and the sound of Angelique’s distinctive laugh, telling us that the position Angelique has gained by marrying Roger is particularly dangerous to Julia. Since Julia lives in the same house as Angelique and they know all about each other, this is not exactly a major revelation.

Featuring a very special appearance by the fog machine. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The dream involves the beckoner’s voice reciting a little bit of doggerel. As it goes on, some beckoners say “through endless corridors by trial and error,” others say “through endless corridors of trial and error.” I prefer “of trial and error.” That implies that the corridors are themselves made up of decisions people have made and of the consequences of those decisions. Saying that the characters are moving through the corridors “by trial and error” means that the corridors exist whether anyone engages with them or not. We saw Angelique start the curse, so we know it isn’t something that has been out there in reality all along, and it expresses itself in dreams, not in anything that persists when people stop paying attention to it. Besides, the whole idea of drama is to show decisions and their consequences, so “of trial and error” is better on every front.

Episode 451: The pit of my soul

Haughty overlord Joshua Collins and good witch Bathia Mapes decide to take Joshua’s son Barnabas to the deserted Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Bathia has agreed to do battle with the ghost of wicked witch Angelique in hopes of lifting the curse whereby Angelique turned Barnabas into a vampire. Bathia warns Joshua that if she is interrupted, Angelique will defeat her. In that case, Barnabas will remain as he is, and Bathia will die. Joshua assures her that no one will come to the Old House.

Bathia, Joshua, and Barnabas before they go to the Old House. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In the great house on the estate, Barnabas’ mother Naomi talks with fluttery heiress Millicent Collins and Millicent’s new husband, naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes. Millicent’s mental health has always been fragile, and Nathan has been making a concerted effort to shatter it altogether so that he can get his hands on her share of the Collins fortune. Making matters worse, Barnabas bit Milllicent the other day. She has a beautiful mad scene today, one of several that Nancy Barrett knocks out of the park during this storyline. She insists on telling Naomi that she has seen Barnabas. This distresses Naomi, who knows that Barnabas is dead but does not know about the vampire curse.

Millicent gives Naomi enough details to stir her curiosity about what is going on at the Old House. She goes there, interrupting Bathia’s efforts. Joshua manages to hustle Naomi out of the house, but the damage is done. Bathia bursts into flames and dies. In keeping with his habit of covering up compromising information, Joshua has kept everything from Naomi. Once more, we see the cost of this habit. Had he leveled with her about Barnabas’ condition, Barnabas might have been freed.

There is a detailed comparison of the script for this episode with the finished product on a tumblelog called sights9. It is in five parts, the first of them here.

A very famous blooper occurs before Joshua and Bathia take Barnabas from the great house to the Old House. Bathia is supposed to be giving instructions, but falls silent, stares at the teleprompter, and squints helplessly for a long moment. Then we hear the line producer, Bob Costello, prompt her with “Then go to the house” and she picks back up.

Episode 440: You’re bein’ more stupid now

Vampire Barnabas Collins arises from the dead, goes to the front parlor of his house, and finds a friend of his passed out drunk in an armchair. The friend, much put-upon servant Ben Stokes, had left the house the night before after saying that he would no longer help Barnabas in his murderous schemes. Barnabas brings this up, but apparently Ben has decided he has nowhere else to go, so he’s back.

Barnabas tells Ben that he has two projects going at the moment. He dropped his cane with its instantly recognizable silver handle in the shape of a wolf’s head at the scene of an attempted murder last night; the victim, a streetwalker named Maude Browning, screamed and someone came running. Barnabas orders Ben to find the cane and bring it back before it leads to his exposure.

The other project is Barnabas’ attempt to take revenge on the Rev’d Mr Trask, a visiting witchfinder who has wrought considerable havoc in town. Barnabas recently discovered he had some magical powers, and he has been using those powers to drive Trask insane. He says that he will stay in the house and cast more spells on Trask while Ben goes to Maude’s room over the feed store to look for the cane.

In his room at a local inn, Trask can’t keep a candle lit. He hears Barnabas’ laughter, and declares that it is the voice of the Devil. Or as Trask calls him, THE DE-VILLL!!!! A knock comes at the door. Trask is fearful, but answers when the knocker identifies himself as naval officer Nathan Forbes.

Trask believes hapless time traveler Vicki Winters to be the witch. A court has agreed with him, convicting Vicki of witchcraft and sentencing her to hang. Trask tells Nathan that the witch has started tormenting him. Since Nathan testified against Vicki, Trask warns that she might do the same to him next. When Nathan takes Trask’s warning lightly, he responds with some overheated rhetoric. To this, Nathan remarks that it’s never man-to-man with Trask. When he listens to him, he gets the feeling that sitting in a pew and that the rest of the congregation is absent.

Trask then tries to tell Nathan about the terrible visions he has been suffering. While he does so, he hears Barnabas’ voice and sees his hand. Nathan, of course, can neither see nor hear these manifestations.

Lately Nathan has established himself as a rather cold villain, but he used to be a good-hearted sort, though with some glaring personality defects. We catch another glimpse of the friendly Nathan when he tells Trask the trial must have taken a toll on him. He offers to take Trask out of his room and give him a place to rest. Trask responds indignantly to this offer, and demands Nathan leave him alone.

We cut to Ben searching Maude’s room. When Ben leaves, Nathan catches sight of him. Nathan follows Ben back to Barnabas’ house. Nathan stands at the window and eavesdrops as they talk about Ben’s search of the docks and of Maude’s room, of his failure to find the cane, and of the drunken ramblings with which Maude has been confusing the barroom patrons who want her to tell them about the attack she suffered.

Nathan eavesdrops on Barnabas and Ben. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When the show was set in 1967, we saw several characters stand at this window and listen as Barnabas held incriminating conversations with his henchmen. Most notably in #274, seagoing con man Jason McGuire eavesdropped as Barnabas handled a box of jewelry and told his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie Loomis of his evil plans for Vicki. As Nathan has become more and more a villain, he has become more and more reminiscent of Jason. The night after Jason listened to Barnabas and Willie, Barnabas killed him. Seeing Nathan in this position, regular viewers will wonder if it implies that his death is as near today as Jason’s was then.

Barnabas and Ben leave the house. Ben suggests they leave Collinsport and go someplace where Barnabas will not be recognized. Barnabas will not hear of it. He moans that the house is the place where he and his lost love Josette were supposed to live and be happy. Ben pleads with him to let go of the memory of Josette. Having seen Barnabas in 1967, we know that this plea will fall on deaf ears. Barnabas calls himself “stupid” for leaving the cane at the scene of the crime; the ever-forthright Ben tells him he’s being more stupid now. None of Barnabas’ twentieth century confederates would have dared say a thing like that to him, making Ben’s boldness a refreshing change for regular viewers.

We cut back to Maude’s room. Nathan is bringing Maude home. She is much the worse for drink. He urges her to stay in her room with the door and window locked, then goes.

A bat squeaks at the window, Maude panics, and Barnabas materializes in the room. He asks her about the cane. She tells him she doesn’t have it, and he strangles her. It’s one of the most brutal on-screen murders we have seen so far.

From Maude’s room, we cut to the door to Trask’s. He stands in front of it and we hear him deliver a monologue in a recorded voiceover. This is the first time we have heard an interior monologue from Trask. He shouts so much that it often seems that if you could read his mind you’d see nothing but all-caps disquisitions about THE ALMIGHTY! and THE DE-VILLL! But in fact, he’s telling himself that Nathan must have been right and that all the visions he saw and voices he heard must have been the result of nervous strain brought on by his hard work during Vicki’s trial. He goes into his room, telling himself to calm down. He looks at his bed, and finds Maude’s strangled corpse sprawled there.

Episode 423: A position to threaten me

The gracious Josette, recently ill, has disappeared from her bedroom in the great house of Collinwood. She did not exit through the door to the hallway, nor did she climb out the window. Josette’s aunt, the Countess DuPrés, asks the master of the house, haughty tyrant Joshua Collins, how her niece could have got out. Joshua says there is a secret passage, but he cannot imagine how Josette would know about it. He did not tell her, and the only other people who knew of its existence were his brother Jeremiah and his son Barnabas, both of whom are dead. Since Josette was engaged to Barnabas for a time and was later married to Jeremiah, perhaps one of them might have mentioned the passage to her, but this possibility does not occur to Joshua.

Everyone in the house becomes involved in a search for Josette. That includes untrustworthy naval officer Nathan Forbes, Nathan’s fiancée Millicent Collins, and Nathan’s wife Suki. Millicent does not know that Suki is Nathan’s wife. Suki introduced herself to the Collinses as his sister, and is content to go on masquerading as such so long as there is a prospect Nathan will pass along a great chunk of Millicent’s vast inheritance to her. Nathan did not expect Suki to turn up, and she has been making him extremely uncomfortable for the last couple of days. It has been magnificent to watch.

Nathan and Suki need to have a conference about some topics they cannot possibly discuss in a house where they might be overheard. It occurs to him that no one is living in the Old House on the estate. He tells Suki to wait for him there.

Nathan is not entirely wrong when he says that “there is no one living” in the Old House. However, there is one among those who are not living who is not simply dead. That is Barnabas, who has become a vampire. Suki enters the house and meets him.

Barnabas demands to know who Suki is. When she introduces herself as Suki Forbes, sister of Nathan, he soon declares “You are not his sister, you are his wife! Don’t bother to deny it.” He tells her that Nathan has no sister, therefore she could only be his wife.

This conclusion is more impressive the more you think about it. Before Barnabas died, he and Nathan were friends, so it is reasonable that he would know Nathan has no sister. Suki is not carrying a bag or riding a horse or wearing strong boots, so she must be staying at the great house. She gives her name as Forbes, so she must be staying there as a connection of Nathan’s. Granted that she is lying about being his sister, the true nature of that connection must be something she and Nathan want to conceal from the Collinses. Barnabas knows that Nathan has persuaded Millicent to marry him, prospectively raising him from the genteel poverty of life on a junior naval officer’s salary to the great wealth of the New York branch of the Collins family. So the secret relationship must be one that would deny him that glittering prize. Suki, indeed, must be Nathan’s wife. It is a brilliantly logical inference, which makes it inexplicable that Barnabas draws it. He is a character who does smart things sometimes, foolish things frequently, but he has never before shown any great aptitude for sequential reasoning. Nonetheless, it is a wonderful moment. Wonderful moments multiply when Suki is around.

Suki is one of the most quick-witted and daring characters on the show. She recovers from the initial shock after a second or two and asks Barnabas what it is to him if she is Nathan’s wife. He speaks in his usual menacing way, and she tells him he is in no position to make threats. She recognizes Barnabas from the portrait of him that hangs in the great house. She realizes that the official story, the tale Joshua put about that Barnabas has gone to England, must be the cover for some shameful secret, and she sets about crafting a blackmail demand as her price for keeping that secret.

Suki thinks she has Barnabas over a barrel.

Suki finds Josette’s cloak on a chair. She realizes that Josette is in the house with Barnabas, and we see her thinking up new and higher blackmail demands.

While Suki is involved with the cloak, Barnabas dematerializes. Bewildered, she looks for him in the parlor, then goes outside. A bat frightens her.

Suki retreats into the house. She melts down and starts sobbing with fear.

The bat reappears in the room. It hovers near the lens of the camera, then gives way to Barnabas, one of the best efforts they have made at showing Barnabas change form. Suki tells him she can’t believe what she is seeing.

Suki brings out the best in the writing staff, driving them to show each character doing whatever it is they do that makes the biggest contribution to the show. Unfortunately, Barnabas makes his biggest contribution when he murders people. So he winds up strangling Suki at the end of this episode. It is a terrible shame that a character as dynamic as Suki is only on Dark Shadows for a few days.

It is also a shame that Jane Draper doesn’t come back to play another part in one of the segments of Dark Shadows set in a period other than the late 18th century. Perhaps the makers of the show thought that in Nancy Barrett, who plays Millicent in the 18th century segment, Carolyn Collins Stoddard in the 1960s segments, and many other characters in segments we will see later, the show already had a tiny blonde actress with a wide range and a forceful style. Her similarities to Miss Barrett may have prompted the producers to cast Ms Draper as Millicent’s rival/ would-be exploiter/ mocking Doppelgänger. Miss Barrett’s other characters tend to be very different from Millicent. They are given to abrupt psychological reverses, alternating between acute self-consciousness and fierce self-loathing and between irritable distrust and complete emotional dependence. Her characters are usually their own mocking Doppelgänger, so that there was no need to cast another actress to play such a part. But Ms Draper is so very good as Suki that there can be little doubt she would have been able to handle any role they threw her way.

Episode 341: A fatal curiosity

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman and vampire Barnabas Collins are visiting Dr Dave Woodard in his office. Woodard has stolen the notebook in which Julia has recorded the truth about Barnabas and is planning to hand it over to the sheriff. At Barnabas’ insistence, Julia has prepared a hypodermic with a potion that will induce a heart attack. He orders her to give Woodard the lethal injection.

In her reluctance to kill her onetime friend, Julia suggests that Barnabas turn Woodard into a vampire. Julia believes she will soon find a cure for vampirism. So, Woodard will just be one more patient who will benefit from her imminent success. Neither he nor Barnabas receives her brainstorm with any great enthusiasm.

Woodard claims that, even if he became a vampire, he would have free will and would be able to fight Barnabas and destroy himself. He then asserts that Barnabas, too, has the ability to do the right thing. As viewers of drama, we are predisposed to believe that characters whom we hear talking and who have motivations we can understand are at liberty to choose what they will do, so we may believe that Woodard is right. But we haven’t seen any evidence to support his contention.

Julia keeps trying to postpone the killing. Exasperated with her procrastination, Barnabas tells her to hand him the hypodermic. She does so. As he is about to give the shot, Woodard claims to see the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah. Barnabas is so desperate to see Sarah that he falls for this and lets Woodard go. Julia calls out “Stop him!”

Barnabas is furious that Woodard has hit him at his most sensitive spot. As he regains his grip on Woodard, he jabs him in the shoulder with the needle. While Woodard crumples at his feet, Barnabas picks up on the words Woodard had earlier used to describe him, exclaiming “Loathsome I am, and evil! You can mock me for that, but leave my pain alone!” Even after that exclamation, Barnabas asks Julia if Sarah really was there. We don’t see her, but we do hear the strains of “London Bridge,” a song that has always before told us that Sarah is present.

Barnabas places Woodard’s corpse in the desk chair. He appears to be enjoying himself hugely while he taunts Julia for her squeamishness. He asks her, as a medical doctor, to verify that Woodard is dead; she can’t bring herself even to look at the body. She wants to leave immediately; he asks if she plans to leave the needle on Woodard’s desk. Once she puts the murder weapon in her purse, she again wants to rush out; he asks if she is planning to leave the notebook in Woodard’s pocket.

Even after they return to his house, Barnabas continues tormenting Julia. He tells her she will soon grow accustomed to her new identity as a murderer. She resists the label, and he magnanimously agrees to share half the responsibility for the killing. She says she will stop trying to cure him and go away; he tells her that will no longer be possible. They need each other more than ever now. When he tells her that he is her only friend, she hears Woodard’s voice saying “You no longer have friends.” As those words sound, so do the notes of “London Bridge.”

Barnabas is at his most compelling in these scenes, thanks to the actor who plays him. Jonathan Frid’s style of acting was rather old-fashioned even in 1967, but his achievement today is extraordinary. He takes us on a dizzying ride from horror at the brutal killing of Dr Woodard, to pity for the vastly lonely man longing for his little sister, and back to horror at Barnabas’ glee in bestowing the title of murderer on Julia. I can’t imagine any performer doing a better job.

The killing of Dr Woodard is quite a shock. It is only the second premeditated murder we see on Dark Shadows. Undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins used black magic to cause parapsychologist Peter Guthrie to have a fatal car crash in #186. There’s no magic this time- this is a plain old death by poisoning. We also saw Barnabas kill seagoing con man Jason McGuire, but that was not a premeditated act. Jason opened Barnabas’ coffin at sunset, and Barnabas, apparently by reflex, strangled him. That’s a reflex many of us might understand, I’m certainly not at my best when I first wake up. So when Barnabas wrestles with Woodard and jabs him with the needle, we are entering new territory.

When Julia and Barnabas are back in his house, she throws the needle into the fireplace. The Dark Shadows wiki disapproves of this action:

The destruction of the murder weapon was taken more lightly in this scene than it would have been in real life. The heat from a normal fireplace would not be hot enough to melt glass. The metal needle would have been blackened, and if someone looked through the ashes thoroughly, it would have been discovered. Had the syringe been discovered, Woodard’s death would have been ruled a homicide.
Dark Shadows wiki, episode 341.

I don’t see why the presence of a warmed-over medical sharp in Barnabas’ fireplace would mean that “Woodard’s death would have been ruled a homicide.” The police haven’t made any connection between Woodard’s death and Barnabas’ house. Even if they had, they would have no reason to suppose a hypodermic needle in his fireplace would have anything to do with Woodard. Julia is keeping it quiet that she is a medical doctor, but it isn’t a secret from the authorities. She spends most of her time at Barnabas’ house and is treating him for what she believes to be a rare blood disease, so she’s likely to have all sorts of medical supplies there. It is never specified what the chemical was that caused Woodard’s death, but if it was potassium chloride, it would have had the effects Julia describes and the heat of the fireplace would be sufficient to cause it to disappear without a trace in a little flash of dark purple flame. And of course potassium chloride dissolves in the bloodstream so completely that even a large dose of it cannot be detected in a normal postmortem examination. Unless they had dripped some of it into Woodard’s ashtray, Julia and Barnabas would have no reason to believe that the police would be looking for potassium chloride.

Julia moves to throw her notebook into the fire after the needle. Barnabas intercepts it in a move that looks so much like what you’d see on a basketball court that I count it as a blooper.

“Hoffman goes up, and is DENIED by Collins!” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In between the scenes with Barnabas and Julia, there is some stuff with the sheriff and artist Sam Evans. The sheriff ambles into The Blue Whale tavern and finds Sam starting his fourth shot of whisky. They talk about Woodard, and Sam insists they go to his office to look for him. For the first 40 weeks of Dark Shadows, Sam’s alcoholism was a substantial story element, part of the “Revenge of Burke Devlin” arc. When that arc finally dried up in #201, Sam’s alcoholism went away. He’s a social drinker now. Still, he used to be the town drunk, and apparently that’s a higher post than sheriff. The sheriff follows Sam’s orders and accompanies him to Woodard’s office.

They knock on the office door. There is no answer. Sam suggests they break the door down. They haven’t tried to turn the knob, so they have no reason to suppose it is locked. Returning viewers will recall that yesterday Julia just walked into the office, without even knocking, and she and Barnabas did not lock the door behind them. So we can be fairly sure it is not locked. Still, orders are orders, so when the Town Drunk (Retired) says it’s time to break the door down, the sheriff watches him respectfully. Of course the whole set is made of a sheet of plywood, so when Sam “flings himself” against the door, he has to maintain a ludicrous gentleness to keep any part of it standing.

Inside, they find Woodard dead in his chair. Their response is bewildering. At first they are going to call for help, but then decide that because Woodard is dead there is no point. Eventually the sheriff remembers that he ought to call the coroner. They also take turns declaring that they believe Woodard’s death was the result of foul play.

Episode 275: To the end of the Earth

Part One. Her name is not Victoria Winters.

Each of the episodes of Dark Shadows from #1 to #274 began with a voiceover narration delivered by Alexandra Moltke Isles in character as well-meaning governess Victoria Winters. The implicit promise of these little bits of prose was that Vicki would eventually find out about whatever was happening in the episode we were about to see.

Now, vampire Barnabas Collins is a permanent addition to the cast of characters. If Vicki finds out what Barnabas is up to, she will work to destroy him as she worked to destroy the show’s previous undead menace, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. If she succeeds, the show will lose the only ratings-maker it has ever had. If she fails, Barnabas will have to kill her and who knows how many other characters, requiring them to start all over with a new cast. So Vicki has to move off the center of the stage.

Today’s opening voiceover is delivered by Nancy Barrett, not in character as heiress Carolyn, but as an unnamed external narrator. The pattern will be that a female member of the day’s cast will play that role. Mrs Isles still does it when she is in the episode, but if she isn’t they give it to another woman. Eventually they will start letting the men do it, and down the line there will be episodes in which Mrs Isles appears but which she does not narrate. Sometimes they are careless and give the voiceover to an actress whose character’s presence in the episode was supposed to come as a big shock, spoiling it for us.

Part Two. “All those years… there was nothing there.”

Matriarch Liz spent the last eighteen years on the great estate of Collinwood. Ostensibly this was because she was afraid that if she left, someone might wander into the locked room in the basement where the remains of her ex-husband Paul Stoddard were buried, and once there would discover that she had killed him.

This never made much sense-the estate is supposed to stretch for miles in every direction, and she roams all over it. If she is spending a day in the gardens by the groundskeeper’s cottage, she is no more guarding the locked room than she would be if she were skiing in the Alps. It made even less sense when we learn, in #249, that nothing untoward can be seen in the room, which Liz has frequently visited over the years, because the tile flooring over Stoddard’s grave had been replaced and cleaned up. It made the least sense of all when we learned in #271 and #272 that Liz herself must have been the one who replaced and cleaned it.

In #259, Liz confided her terrible secret in Vicki. She told Vicki that she had to keep the secret at all costs, not because she feared prison, but because she feared that her daughter Carolyn would hate her if she found out she had killed her father. Now the secret has been revealed and Liz has discovered that she never actually killed anyone. Seagoing con man Jason McGuire helped Stoddard fake his death, buried an empty trunk in the basement, and told Liz she had killed him. Liz never had anything to hide from either the police or her daughter.

Today, Liz is in bed. She appears to be ill, but it turns out the doctor just overdid it a bit with a sedative, she’s fine.

Carolyn left the house before the truth came out, and thinks her mother killed her father. Liz is distraught. We hear her thoughts in a taped voiceover. She is horrified that Carolyn is under this impression and urgently wonders where she is. We fade to a location insert of Carolyn walking along the beach, she’s fine also.

Carolyn comes to Liz’ room and tells her that she was silly to run- she’s sure that whatever Liz did, she did because she had no choice. She vows to stand by her throughout the trial and what may come after, and mentions that after all, she never really knew her father. Liz then tells her there won’t be a trial, because she didn’t actually kill Stoddard.

On his Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn expresses his exasperation with this extreme anticlimax:

So, you know that blackmail storyline where Liz had to do everything that Jason said, because otherwise she’d go to prison and her daughter would hate her forever?

Well, guess what? Liz finally told everybody that she killed Paul, and now she’s going to prison, and her daughter hates her forever.

But not really. It turns out that Liz never killed Paul in the first place, and Carolyn would have forgiven her even if she had.

Carolyn spent the night wandering around outside, in clear violation of Collinsport’s recent curfew. She’s given it a lot of thought, and now she’s ready to stand by Liz through the trial. Except there won’t be a trial, because there was no murder, and the entire four-month storyline was a complete waste of time.
Danny Horn, “Episode 275: The Last Normal Day,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 29 November 2013

Liz then explains that Jason won’t stand trial either. She isn’t going to press charges for the blackmail because she just wants to forget the whole thing. An understandable desire, to be sure. Carolyn says she hopes Jason has gone a million miles away, two million miles away, even further. “I hope he’s gone to the end of the Earth.”

Part Three. He gets what he came for.

Carolyn gets her wish. As it happens, the end of the Earth is conveniently located right there on the grounds of Collinwood. It is the Old House, where Liz’ distant cousin Barnabas and his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie are in residence. Jason broke into the Old House at the end of yesterday’s episode, and is searching the front parlor for a box of jewels he had earlier seen through the window.

Willie catches him there. Willie was once Jason’s henchman, and still has friendly feelings towards him. Willie tries to warn Jason that he is in danger, and even after Jason hits him and twists his arm he resorts to the extreme expedient of telling him the truth- “Barnabas, he isn’t alive. He can walk at night, but he’s dead.” Jason doesn’t believe him.

Jason keeps telling Willie that he is determined to get enough money to start over. The way he expresses it is “I need a stake.” Little does he know how right he is!

Jason forces Willie to accompany him to the basement. He sees Barnabas’ coffin there, and is convinced it is full of treasure. Willie makes one more effort to save his former friend, taking a handful of jewels from a table near the coffin and offering them to Jason if he will leave at once. Jason scoffs at him, and Willie backs sadly away. Jason opens the coffin. A ringed hand shoots out and chokes him. So long, Jason! We can’t say it hasn’t been weird.

This is only the second on-screen killing we’ve seen on Dark Shadows, after Laura murdered Van Helsing-equivalent Dr Guthrie in #185. Moreover, it’s the first time Barnabas has killed anyone on the show. It’s kind of odd to have a vampire around for thirteen weeks before the first fatality is recorded. We might wonder if he will pick up the pace as he goes on.

Episode 185: Soon we may know all there is to know

Strange and troubled boy David Collins finds visiting parapsychologist Dr Guthrie writhing in agony on the floor of the drawing room. David calls for well-meaning governess Vicki.

As Guthrie struggles, the image of David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, is superimposed on the screen. This visual effect lies somewhat beyond Dark Shadows’ ability to achieve clearly. One of the hallmarks of the show is its ambition; time and again, their reach exceeds their grasp. But that adds to the excitement of it- there is always the chance that the next time they try something extraordinary, it will actually work.

Look at this pile of shapes long enough, and you’ll make out an extreme closeup of Laura over an image of the struggling Guthrie

Guthrie clutches at David. David is a true New Englander in his reaction to Guthrie’s touch. When a man hugs him, he recoils and gives a horrified look.

As Guthrie holds onto David, we see Laura looking confused. Apparently her spells don’t work against someone in contact with David. As he regains his strength, Guthrie thanks David for saving him and tells him that he is “the key.”

Guthrie is getting some people together to have a séance in the Old House on the grounds of the great estate of Collinwood. The ghost of Josette Collins has been trying to warn people about the danger Laura poses to David. Josette spends most of her time haunting the Old House, so he thinks she should be able to speak most clearly there.

After David rescues him, Guthrie knows that Laura is trying to use her powers to silence him and that he will be helpless if he is alone. He gets into his car to drive by himself into town and back. Vicki knows that Laura is nearby and has been thwarted because David was out of her control. She leaves David alone just inside the front door while she wanders off for several minutes. Malcolm Marmorstein wrote today’s script, so those are only the most glaring of several inexplicable acts of stupidity in it.

While David is standing in the entryway waiting for Vicki, Laura sweeps in and asks him to come away with her at once. He tells her that he can’t go tonight- Vicki is going to take him someplace special. When Vicki finally drifts back in, she stands her ground. She tells Laura that “Soon, we may know everything there is to know.” She is wearing a very sweet smile when she says this, but Laura’s reaction and the background music both make it obvious that it is a threat.

After Vicki and David leave, wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson comes out and tells Laura that “his nibs”* Guthrie can’t hide everything from her with his whispers. She saw the table and four chairs they took to the Old House, and it’s her guess that they are going there to have another séance. She also tells Laura that Guthrie is by himself on the road into town at the moment. Laura seems very interested, as if this is information for which she will find a use.

Vicki and David enter the Old House. Vicki sets up the table for the séance and tells David that they will be trying to reach Josette. He is jubilant at the prospect.

Drunken artist Sam Evans shows up for the séance. He and David have a pleasant conversation about the portrait of Josette hanging above the mantle. Sam is impressed by its artistic achievement, and amazed at its fine condition amid the decay of the long-vacant mansion. Indeed, the fact that the canvas is unstained by mold after decades in an unheated building is some of the most blatant evidence that more is going on in the Old House than meets the eye.

On the road, Guthrie starts talking to himself, complaining about the other drivers using their high-beams. Eventually it dawns on him that Laura is causing him to see a blinding light. This realization takes a frustratingly long time. It does make sense if you stop and review what we have seen so far. Laura’s spells disorient and confuse the people subjected to them, so we can figure out that Guthrie might still have some brain fog as the result of his experience at the beginning of the episode. But as this scene is written, it feels like Guthrie is just an idiot who doesn’t know that he should pull over when he can’t see the road.

The car crashes. We see Laura in her cottage, a satisfied look on her face. In the flames of her hearth, we see Guthrie’s car blazing. We’ve just seen the first on-screen murder in Dark Shadows.

I’ll miss Guthrie, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that he is killed at this point in the show. His role was to figure out what the audience knows about Laura, to present this information to Vicki and her friends, and to isolate Laura from any potential allies. He has completed all of these tasks. That leaves only three paths forward for him.

The first is what actually happens, for Laura to kill him. That gets him off the show, precipitates a crisis that gives the “Phoenix” storyline its climax, and establishes Laura beyond all doubt as a deadly threat who must herself be destroyed in order for the other characters to be safe.

The second path would be for Guthrie to defeat Laura. Within the series as it has been developed so far, that would be unsatisfying. Laura has deep relationships with all of the main characters who were on the show before Guthrie joined the cast in #160, and she has been driving the story for months. If Guthrie is the one to stop Laura, we’ll be left wondering why we bothered with the first 32 weeks.

In particular, the only relationship on the show that has been interesting every time the characters are on screen together is that between Vicki and David. At first David hated Vicki, then they became fast friends, now we are afraid Laura will turn him against her. The logical way to crown that storyline would be for Vicki to rescue David from a danger that has been looming over him all his life. So the Laura story really ought to end with Vicki saving David from Laura.

That resolution comes with its drawbacks. It is so logical an outcome that we’re all expecting it. So it won’t come as a surprise, and we don’t know whether the show is up to developing a convincing, dramatically powerful sense of inevitability.

An even more serious problem is that once Vicki has rescued David from Laura, there won’t be anywhere for the show to go. The other stories have all either been resolved or been lying around doing nothing for so long that there is no reason to think they will ever become interesting. If Guthrie, rather than Vicki, rescues David, that might represent a new start. Dark Shadows would relaunch as the occult files of Dr Guthrie. If they had gone that way, it’s hard to see what use a show like that would have for the existing characters and setting.

The third path was suggested yesterday. Guthrie tipped his hand to Laura, telling her virtually everything he knew. He explained that he was doing this because he wanted to study her. He wants to stick around as the friend and associate of a domesticated Laura.

Laura laughed at Guthrie’s idea. She has her plan, and she is uninterested in any alternative Guthrie might present. Further, she is the wrong sort of character to keep on Dark Shadows indefinitely. When she was first introduced, Laura was thoroughly mysterious, vague, and insubstantial. She was the perfect adversary for Josette, the Widows, and the other wispy presences that make up the supernatural back-world behind the action that we see.

In recent weeks Laura has become more dynamic and has forced Josette more and more into the foreground. If she were to have a friend with whom she could discuss her problems and plans openly, Laura would be so strong that her mere presence would rip the crêpe-paper world of Josette, the Widows, and the rest of them into tiny shreds. If they are going to scrap that side of the show’s universe, they would probably be better off doing it with a fresh character who hasn’t already been defined in relation to everyone else, and certainly better off if the character came with a more familiar mythology than they have given Laura.

Besides, if they keep Laura on the show they’ll face complications with the actress. Diana Millay is getting more and more visibly pregnant, a big problem for a character who is supposed to be something other than alive. And after her son was born, she scaled back her acting career. After Dark Shadows, she appeared briefly on The Secret Storm, then retired altogether to concentrate on writing. So even if they had wanted to keep Laura on the show, Millay might not have wanted to commit to an indefinite run on a daily production.

So, death it is for Dr Guthrie. It’s too bad they didn’t bring actor John Lasell later in some other role. He had a tremendous range- an actor who could play both the understated, virtuous, and thoroughly Yankee scientist Dr Guthrie and the flamboyant, sinister, and very Southern John Wilkes Booth of the Twilight Zone episode “Back There” could be effective in any part.

John Lasell as John Wilkes Booth in “Back There.” Image by imdb.

*The first time we hear this expression on Dark Shadows.