peter bradford – Page 2 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 575: This rotten collection of death

How Revolting and Disgusting You Really Are

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair has a job for a woman. Talking to his subordinate, vampire Angelique, he says that the job must go to “the most evil woman who ever lived.” At this, Angelique breaks into a smile, then raises her head proudly. Nicholas then says, “Someone like Lucrezia Borgia.” At this, Angelique’s face falls, and she protests that Lucrezia is dead.

Angelique, flattered when she thinks Nicholas is describing her as “The most evil woman who ever lived.”

Nicholas brushes this objection off, saying that “The spirit of evil can be made to live again.” Longtime viewers may have been wondering whether Lucrezia Borgia would make an appearance, since her name has come up more than once. In #152, sarcastic dandy Roger insulted his sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, by comparing her to Lucrezia; in #178, Roger insulted his niece, heiress Carolyn, in the same way; and in #523, Carolyn brought up Lucrezia to insult Angelique, whom she knew when Angelique was calling herself Cassandra and was married to Roger. Perhaps we might have imagined some kind of story where Roger turns out to have some kind of supernatural connection to Lucrezia.

Nicholas continues teasing Angelique, bringing up the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, alleged serial killer and blood drinker of the 16th and 17th centuries. Angelique calls that lady “a vile woman,” in a tone that suggests she knew her personally. From November 1967 through March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and Angelique was its chief villain. She was not a vampire then, but a witch. Her spells were very powerful, but she was quite clumsy in her use of them, suggesting that she was a young woman new to witchcraft. Perhaps this line is meant to open the door to a retcon, one which will make it possible to tell stories about Angelique set in even earlier periods than the 1790s segment.

Nicholas agrees that the countess was “a vile woman,” and repeats that epithet as the first in a list of her qualifications for the job he has in mind- “ambitious, cunning, devious, unprincipled, decadent!” He finally concludes his teasing of Angelique and tells her that he will not hire her for the job. She is disappointed, as one of the benefits of the job is release from vampirism. She leaves the room. In the corridor, she flashes a smile which regular viewers recognize as a sign that she is going to defy Nicholas and try to seize what he would not give her.

The Only Filthy Way It Could Be Done

The job is an unusual one. Nicholas has persuaded Frankenstein’s monster Adam to confront old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman with a threat. If Julia and Barnabas do not repeat the procedure that created Adam and produce a woman who will be his mate, Adam will kill everyone in and around the great house of Collinwood. Subjected to that extortion, they undertake the project.

The procedure not only involves building a body from parts of corpses and running electrical charges through it, but also requires that the body be somehow connected to a person who will serve as its “life force.” It is energy drained from this person that will animate the body. Barnabas was Adam’s “life force.” Before the procedure, Barnabas was a vampire. Serving as Adam’s “life force” put his vampirism into remission. Nicholas talked about this with Angelique, raising her hopes that he would let her escape from vampirism the same way, only to dash those hopes cruelly.

Julia completed the experiment that brought Adam to life after the death of another mad scientist, Eric Lang. Lang had built the body and the apparatus, and had left detailed notes. Julia had studied those notes for some time before she knew which switches to throw and which dials to turn. Under Adam’s threat, Julia has rebuilt the apparatus in Barnabas’ basement and she has a cadaver there which she is using for parts. Barnabas has ordered his servant Willie to help with the grave robbing. Barnabas has also enlisted the aid of Lang’s former grave robber, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. The equipment needs a lot of tending, and Peter/ Jeff is the lab tech on that detail.

A Nice, New, Clean Slab of Flesh

Peter/ Jeff is by himself in the basement lab when Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes walks in. It’s news to Peter/ Jeff that Stokes is aware of the project, but he tells him that he knows everything about it. Stokes stays so calm as he examines the apparatus and looks at the cadaver that one supposes he must know a great deal.

Stokes asks Peter/ Jeff how the equipment runs when Barnabas’ house has no electricity. Peter/ Jeff says that Julia installed a generator. This must be some unusual kind of generator, since it runs in absolute silence. Later in the episode, Stokes will have a conversation with another character about how Barnabas doesn’t have a telephone.

When Barnabas was a vampire, he didn’t want meter readers or other workers dropping by unannounced and he had no use for modern conveniences. So of course he did not connect his house to the electric grid or to telephone service in those days. As for other utilities, it is a fairly prominent bit of lore that vampires cannot tolerate running water, so of course he wasn’t going to have any plumbing. But he’s been unvamped for almost six months now, so he may as well just update his house. Stokes’ lines today lampshade the problems he creates by refusing to do so.

Another unannounced visitor interrupts Stokes’ conversation with Peter/ Jeff. It is Adam. He is upset to find Stokes in the lab. Stokes once took Adam in and taught him English, and in those days Adam considered Stokes to be his best friend. But Stokes shocked Adam when he broke the news to him that he was an artificially constructed man, and has thoroughly alienated him by trying to talk him out of the violent lifestyle Nicholas has persuaded him to adopt.

Adam goes on a self-pitying rant when Stokes tries to reason with him. Peter/ Jeff interrupts and tells Adam something Stokes left out of his birds and bees talk, that he was built out of parts of dead bodies. Peter/ Jeff taunts Adam about this in a speech that is full of such gems that I suspect it was written, not by the credited author of today’s script, Gordon Russell, but by Russell’s frequent uncredited collaborator Violet Welles. Welles’ name will start to appear in the credits in 711, and fans of the show recognize the sparkle that marks her dialogue.

Peter/ Jeff tries to stab Adam. Adam easily disarms him and holds the knife at his throat. Stokes tells Adam that without Peter/ Jeff the project will be delayed. Adam then flings Peter/ Jeff to the floor. Peter/ Jeff is played by Roger Davis, an actor who had a big television career and was irritating in every part. Mr Davis is so annoying on Dark Shadows that Mrs Acilius and I can’t be the only ones who are disappointed when Adam doesn’t kill his character off the show and who cheer when he throws him to the floor.

Peter/ Jeff gets up and leaves the lab. Adam demands Stokes bring him back to resume working. Knowing how violent Adam is, Stokes follows Peter/ Jeff to the great house of Collinwood. Peter/ Jeff is meeting his fiancée, well-meaning governess Vicki, there, planning to take her out for a date. Stokes tells him that they will be in grave danger from Adam unless he goes back to the lab at once. Peter/ Jeff looks out the window, and sees Adam peering in. Adam actually opens the window and reaches into the drawing room while Vicki and Peter/ Jeff are there; it is hard to understand how Vicki doesn’t notice him. Peter/ Jeff makes an excuse, and goes back to the lab.

We see him back at work. The camera pans up to a mirror. It holds on the mirror for several seconds while we see Angelique’s reflection. Previously, they have stressed that vampires do not cast reflections. There have been several moments when actors have missed their marks or other production faults have occurred that left us seeing a vampire in a mirror, but this is obviously intentional, and it is jarring to regular viewers.

Angelique and Peter/ Jeff talk for a moment, then she bites him. Evidently she plans to enslave him and use his access to the laboratory to force her way into the role of “life force” for Adam’s mate. So far, almost every victim of a vampire we have seen has been left unable to do the work s/he was doing before being bitten, so regular viewers might suspect that Angelique’s ploy will simply incapacitate Peter/ Jeff from helping with the project. This expectation becomes all the more substantial when we remember the many times Angelique’s schemes have blown up in her face. The less likely it seems to us Angelique will succeed, the less effective this week-ending cliffhanger will be.

Episode 567: You will help me

A tall, strange man named Adam is taking a stroll outside the great house of Collinwood. On the terrace, he meets well-meaning governess Vicki and Vicki’s fiancé, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Vicki recognizes Adam as the man who recently kidnapped her, and Peter/ Jeff tries to fight him. Adam is much stronger than Peter/ Jeff, so he flings him to the ground, where his head smashes against the pavement. Adam runs off.

Recovering vampire Barnabas and mad scientist Julia happen by. They know what Vicki does not and Peter/ Jeff only suspects, that Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster. They brought him to life after the death of the originator of the experiment, a doctor named Lang. Now Adam is threatening to kill Vicki and every other resident of Collinwood unless Julia and Barnabas make a mate for him. When they hear Vicki and Peter/ Jeff’s story, they go back to Barnabas’ house in case Adam checks up on their progress.

We cut to the laboratory in Barnabas’ basement, and see that Adam is already there. He startles himself when he bumps his head on some equipment. Coupled with the head wound he inflicted on Peter/ Jeff, this amounts to a minor theme in the episode.

Barnabas and Julia enter, and Adam confronts them. He demands to know why the procedure is taking so long. They try to explain that building a human body from dead parts and bringing it to life takes at least four weeks, but he is unimpressed. Finally Julia volunteers that she is under the weather and claims that the procedure is on hold while she recuperates. Adam agrees to wait four weeks before he starts murdering everyone. Barnabas says that it would help if he would stay away; Adam refuses to do so, and says he will pop in occasionally.

We might think it would be to Barnabas and Julia’s advantage for Adam to stay and watch the whole procedure, so that he can see just how difficult and time-consuming it really is. But they have another problem he knows nothing about. There is a vampire on the loose, and he bit Julia the night before. Barnabas has decided to lock Julia up in the house and use her as bait to draw the vampire in. He declares that he will be ready to destroy the vampire when he comes.

After Adam goes, Barnabas sits down and talks about his plans. Julia puts her hand on his shoulder and looks at him sadly. It is as tender a moment as the two of them have shared, and it makes us feel what Julia has missed because Barnabas does not requite her romantic feelings for him. As Christine Scoleri puts it on Dark Shadows Before I Die, “Poor Julia. At long last, Barnabas says he’s going to take her and lock her up in the Old House and she’s unable to appreciate it.”

An affectionate moment. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Meanwhile, Peter/ Jeff has called the police, and they have agreed to send six men to the estate to search for Adam. Peter/ Jeff asks Vicki to wait in the great house while he goes off to check on a hunch. He makes his way to Barnabas’ house. He gets there just in time to see Adam exiting the front door.

Peter/ Jeff finds the door locked, but lets himself in through the window in the parlor that so many uninvited visitors to Barnabas’ have used. He goes to the basement. Lang had forced him to assist with his project, so he recognizes the equipment. He raises the blanket that covers the cadaver Julia is using for materials and reacts with horror. Barnabas enters and confirms that he and Julia are going to “create another one.”

Episode 565: I keep hearing the sea

One mad scientist built a Frankenstein’s monster, and another brought it to life. The builder, Eric Lang, had forced a man to dig up freshly buried corpses he used as materials. That man, an unpleasant fellow named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff, left Lang’s employ after he awoke on a surgical table and found Lang trying to cut his head off. Shortly after that, Lang died, and his colleague Julia Hoffman completed the experiment.

Lang and Julia’s creation is known as Adam. Adam is under the mistaken impression that Julia’s friend, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins, was his maker. He is now threatening to kill all the Collinses unless Barnabas and Julia provide him with a mate. They are complying. They have collected Lang’s journals, and are keeping a cadaver and some equipment in Barnabas’ basement.

Well-meaning governess Vicki is engaged to marry Peter/ Jeff. Barnabas is fond of Vicki, and Adam’s original threat was to kill her. He kidnapped her and held her prisoner for a couple of days; it was when he released her that he extended his threat to the whole family. When he was holding her, Adam gave Vicki’s engagement ring to Barnabas as proof of his seriousness. Now Barnabas has told Vicki that her ring turned up outside his house, and she drops by to pick it up.

Barnabas is alarmed that Vicki came to the house after dark. He knows not only that Adam is still at large, but also that a vampire named Tom Jennings is on the prowl. Vicki doesn’t remember her time as Adam’s prisoner and knows nothing about Tom, but she has heard enough about strange goings-on that she appreciates Barnabas’ concern. She assures Barnabas that she didn’t walk through the woods, and she isn’t alone. Peter/ Jeff is just outside, waiting in her car. Barnabas tells her he’s sorry Peter/ Jeff didn’t come in with her. As he says this, he looks at the door, giving the impression that he is sincere. Earlier, Peter/ Jeff had told Vicki that he was jealous of Barnabas; this scene makes it clear that he has nothing to worry about on that score. Regular viewers know that Julia has a crush on Barnabas; his behavior towards Vicki, whom he sometimes claims to love and want to marry, leaves her looking blissful.

Vicki notices that Julia is carrying one of Lang’s journals; Barnabas tells her that he and Julia are thinking of writing a book about Lang. Vicki knows only that Lang was a doctor who was a friend of theirs, so she accepts this explanation easily. When she goes, Barnabas insists on accompanying her to the car.

Barnabas returns, and tells Julia that he and his servant Willie Loomis will go out and try to find Tom before he bites someone. He speaks tenderly to her; she smiles.

Julia, content with the state of her relationship with Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Julia goes to the basement to close down the experiment for the night. She is still in a blissful mood as she listens to the radio playing the Jackie Gleason Orchestra’s truly appalling version of George Gershwin’s “Love is Here to Stay.” Since they have a stolen corpse in the basement and incriminating documents scattered throughout the house, the front door is of course unlocked. Peter/ Jeff lets himself in and is shocked to find Lang’s journal on the desk in the front parlor.

Julia comes upstairs and finds Peter/ Jeff. He explains that he wanted to see Barnabas and asks why they have Lang’s journal. Julia repeats the story Barnabas told Vicki. Peter/ Jeff laughs at the idea that Barnabas and Julia would write a book about Lang’s attempt to build a man from stolen body parts; Julia says it won’t be about that part of his life. Peter/ Jeff is still laughing when he leaves the house.

It’s odd Julia sticks with Barnabas’ story. A few days ago, Peter/ Jeff confronted Barnabas and Julia with his suspicion that Adam is Lang’s creation. Had she said they were disturbed by his suggestion and were checking Lang’s records to make sure there was no way he could be right, he wouldn’t be in a position to contradict her. He certainly wouldn’t be bothered that they lied to Vicki to cover up what they know about Lang’s experiment, since he is at one with them in his desperation to keep her from ever finding out what he did. Later, we see her writing a note to Barnabas explaining that Peter/ Jeff had not believed “my- really, your- story.” Perhaps she is embarrassed that she did not live up to her usual standards as Dark Shadows’ most fluent and most plausible liar.

Julia heads back to the basement, and we see a figure peering in the window. It is Tom. Coming on the heels of her failure to deceive Peter/ Jeff, this leaves us with no doubt that Julia’s happy night will soon give way to misery.

Bad news for Julia. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

While Julia is writing her note for Barnabas, Tom appears in the basement. Julia sees him, realizes who he is, and screams as he bares his fangs and approaches the camera.

Dead eyes, sharp fangs. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This ending comes as an anticlimax. The sight of Tom at the window was enough to let us know what Julia was in for; there was no real need to continue the episode beyond it. Moreover, the scene is poorly executed. When Tom walks toward the camera, he twice stops himself awkwardly because he’s running out of set. He also stops in the middle of opening his mouth, apparently realizing he has started that move too soon. Julia’s scream doesn’t help, either. Grayson Hall was a brilliant actress, the heart of the show, but she was terrible at screaming. This is actually one of her better attempts, but coupled with Don Briscoe’s stumbling it still brings a bad laugh.

Episode 553: The five captivities of Victoria Winters

The First Captivity

In #83, strange and troubled boy David Collins repaid his governess, the well-meaning Vicki, for her determined attempts to befriend him by locking her in a room where he hoped she would die. The room was located deep in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood, and Vicki found that she could neither open the door nor reach the window.

Vicki had two visitors during her time trapped in this dusty chamber. In #85, the ghost of local man Bill Malloy appeared and sang to her; this was the first sustained and direct interaction between a living person and a supernatural being on Dark Shadows, and it left Vicki terrified and confused. In #87, David’s abusive father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, knocked on the door and pretended to be a ghost, scaring Vicki further. When Roger then opened the door and rescued Vicki, she threw her arms around him, sobbing and saying that he was right and David really was a monster. In those days, Vicki’s attempt to win David over was the only storyline on the show that worked; when it seems that she will join all the other grownups in giving up on the little guy, the audience’s hearts break.

The Second Captivity

In #108, Vicki had come to the conclusion that Roger killed Bill. Unsure where to go, she stopped in the cottage on the estate where handyman Matthew Morgan made his home. Talking to him, she prompted him to make an indiscreet remark that revealed that he, not Roger, pushed Bill off the cliff from which he fell to his death.

Matthew would not let her leave the cottage. He acknowledged that she had done nothing wrong, but said that he would have to kill her now that she knew his secret. She tried to dissuade him, but it was only a chance visit from matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard that prevented the murder. Matthew ran away, and Vicki was free.

The Third Captivity

In #116, Vicki went to look for David in the long-deserted Old House on the estate. She did not find him, but instead found Matthew, a wanted fugitive with a grudge against her. Until #126, Matthew kept her bound and gagged in the secret room behind the bookcase in the front parlor.

Others came and went. David, no longer homicidal, is convinced Matthew is innocent of Bill’s death and unaware he is holding Vicki, and he sneaks Matthew food he has stolen from the kitchen in the great house. Vicki’s friends Burke and Joe search the Old House, and she can only listen while Matthew hides with her in the secret room.

Matthew was fetching an ax with which to kill Vicki when the ghost of the gracious Josette Collins appeared to her and told her not to be afraid. When he came back, Josette led the ghosts of Bill Malloy and of the legendary Widows of Widows’ Hill as they surrounded Matthew and scared him to death.

The Fourth Captivity

From #365 to #461, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late eighteenth century. Vicki had come unstuck in time, and found herself at Collinwood as it was in those days. Her total failure to adapt to her new environment led to her arrest, trial, and condemnation as a witch. From #401 on, she was in gaol, with a couple of brief and disastrous excursions.

Vicki had several visitors during her time in gaol, most of them people who had at some point wished her well but whom she alienated by her compulsive sharing of information she had learned when she was in the 1960s. By the time she had been sentenced to hang, she had only two friends left. One was her gaoler/ defense attorney/ boyfriend/ co-conspirator/ fellow prisoner, an unpleasant man named Peter Bradford. The other was Barnabas Collins, a vampire. Neither was able to do her much good, so in #460 and #461, Vicki mounted the gallows, was hooded, a noose placed around her neck, and the lever pulled to open the trap door under her feet. She then found herself restored to her own time, mere moments after her departure, but wearing the clothes she wore in the 1790s and bearing the marks of the wounds she sustained then, including the rope burns on her neck.

The Fifth Captivity

Shortly after Vicki returned to 1968, Barnabas’ vampirism went into remission. Peter also turned up, suffering from total amnesia and calling himself Jeff Clark, but still disagreeable to look at or listen to. Vicki and Peter/ Jeff became engaged the other day. Yesterday, Vicki left Peter/ Jeff to wait for her in the great house while she went to the Old House, which is now Barnabas’ home. She wanted to give him the news.

What freed Barnabas of the vampire curse was the creation of Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Now, Adam wants a mate, and is under the mistaken impression that Barnabas can create one for him. He has decided to extort Barnabas’ cooperation by taking Vicki as his hostage.

Adam is wanted by the police for abductions and assaults he committed before he learned to talk. Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, who is acting as mistress of Collinwood while Liz is in the hospital, took pity on Adam and has been hiding him in a dusty room in the west wing. It is not the room Vicki was trapped in back in 1966; there is a window within reach. But when she comes to and finds herself there, she tells Adam she knows where she is. He responds “No!” She says that it’s the west wing, and she has been there before Most of the audience joined the show long after Vicki’s first captivity, so it will be as much news to them as it is to Adam that Vicki is on familiar ground.

Adam agrees that Vicki has done nothing to harm him, but tells her that he may nonetheless have to kill her. In this, he reminds us of what Matthew said to Vicki when he held her prisoner in his cottage.

Peter/ Jeff is still waiting for Vicki in the foyer of the great house when Carolyn finds him. He tells her Vicki went to Barnabas’ house more than two hours before, promising to return in an hour. Carolyn smiles and, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, tells Peter/ Jeff that Barnabas and Vicki are “such good friends” it’s no wonder the two of them would lose track of time when they were alone together. This bothers Peter/ Jeff almost as much as it was obviously intended to do, and he goes to the Old House.

Peter/ Jeff arrives and demands Barnabas take him to Vicki. Barnabas is taken aback by Peter/ Jeff’s tone, and for good reason. When actor Roger Davis shouted his lines, which he did most of the time, he projected his voice not from the muscles of the pelvic floor, as singers are often taught to do, but from the sphincters in his buttocks, with the result that he sounded like he was trying to defecate. Barnabas has some nice rugs on his floor, so an angry Peter/ Jeff is an alarming visitor.

While Peter/ Jeff yells at him, Barnabas remembers that Adam had been in the house just moments before Vicki came, and that he had threatened to make Barnabas “very sorry” for not doing what he wanted. It was odd that Barnabas didn’t offer to walk Vicki home after that, a fact which has apparently dawned on him. He rounds on Peter/ Jeff and says that they are both to blame if anything happened to Vicki, since neither of them should have let her walk through the woods alone. Peter/ Jeff agrees with that, and his yelling moderates a bit. They get some flashlights and go out to search for her.

As they are searching, Peter/ Jeff proves that he is a true member of the Dark Shadows cast when he shines a flashlight directly into the camera. Barnabas tells him they should split up. This may or may not be a logical step towards finding Vicki, but it definitely will reduce Barnabas’ exposure to Peter/ Jeff, so it is no wonder he is eager to do it.

Peter/ Jeff carries on the tradition. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas goes to the great house and talks to Carolyn. He tells her that Vicki is missing, that he and Peter/ Jeff have searched the woods thoroughly, and that he suspects Adam has abducted her. He insists that she tell him where Adam is, and she denies knowing. He tells her he does not believe her, and says that if Adam harms Vicki, she “will be held responsible.” Jonathan Frid and Nancy Barrett were always interesting to watch together, and this is the first time they have played a scene where their characters were adversaries facing each other down. The dialogue is nothing special and the situation is all too familiar, but their performances make for a few fresh and exciting minutes.

Carolyn goes to Adam’s room. As Barnabas had been reading when Peter/ Jeff called on him, so Adam, who shares a mystical connection with Barnabas, has a book in his hand when Carolyn stops by. As David sneaked food from the kitchen to Matthew at the Old House, so Carolyn has been sneaking food from the kitchen to Adam in the west wing.

Adam is very slow to let Carolyn into the room. She notes that he has always invited her in before, and does not go away when he claims to have been asleep. He lets her in. As Burke and Joe had searched the Old House when Matthew was hiding Vicki in the secret room there, so Carolyn looks around the room while we know Vicki is somewhere inside it. Adam denies having been out of the room, and tells her Barnabas was lying when he said he had gone to his house. Adam has not lied to Carolyn before, so she accepts what he says. After she leaves, Adam opens the door to his own secret room, a closet in which Vicki is bound and gagged as Matthew had once bound and gagged her.

This is the twelfth episode directed by John Walter Sullivan, but the first credited to him as “Sean Dhu Sullivan.” The name “Jack Sullivan” appeared on the previous installments.

Episode 552: He talk so good

In the great house of Collinwood, well-meaning governess Vicki is talking to her fiancé, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. She asks Peter/ Jeff to wait there for an hour while she goes to the Old House on the estate to break the news of their engagement to old world gentleman Barnabas. It has been established in previous episodes that the Old House is no more than a fifteen minute walk from the great house, so we know that Vicki expects the conversation to last about half an hour. Peter/ Jeff seems worried that it might have consequences that go on even longer. He tells Vicki that Barnabas loves her. She agrees that he does, but says that she loves only Peter/ Jeff, and tells him he needn’t be jealous.

Vicki arrives at the Old House and tells Barnabas the news. She tells him she knows how he feels about her. In a mild tone, he says that she and Peter/ Jeff don’t seem to have known each other very long. Vicki isn’t worried about that, so Barnabas wishes her well, tells her nothing will ever change his feelings for her, gives her a peck on the cheek, and sees her to the door. She leaves the Old House about four minutes after she got there, much less time than she had expected.

Vicki tells Barnabas the news. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas’ calm reaction and quick dismissal of Vicki suggests that he might not be quite so hung up on her as she and Peter/ Jeff imagine him to be. The end of her visit corroborated this far more powerfully than Vicki could know. Moments before she came to the Old House, a man named Adam had left. Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster. He mistakenly believes that Barnabas created him. He came to the house to demand that Barnabas create a mate for him. When Barnabas told him he could not, Adam said he would wreak a terrible vengeance. Evidently he did not intend to attack Barnabas directly, since he then turned and left. Even though Barnabas knows that Adam is nearby and is out for someone’s blood, he does not offer to accompany Vicki home through the woods; it doesn’t even occur to him to do so.

For over a year, Barnabas has been saying that he and Vicki are going to wind up together, but he has done next to nothing to make this happen. In recent months, he has been pushing her away every time they are together. In #490, he went so far as to tell her that “loving me would have been the greatest mistake of your life.” My wife, Mrs Acilius, wonders if Vicki backed Barnabas into a corner when she told him “I know how you feel about me.” After that, he couldn’t very well have done less than tell her he would always feel about her as he does now. A girl has her pride, after all.

Once Vicki is in the woods, Adam shows up and grabs her. He announces that she will help him persuade Barnabas to give him what he wants.

Episode 550: Much given to melodrama

Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes is just the person to consult if you need to know what kind of amulet will ward off the spells of the nearest wicked witch, but as a committed bachelor and a workaholic, he does not have a very sensitive touch when called upon to give advice in matters of the heart. We saw this in #544. Stokes’ friend Adam had questions for him. Adam is a mysterious man who has no memories prior to ten weeks ago and no conception of human relationships beyond a vague happiness associated with the word “Friend!” and an intense rage associated with the word”Kill!” He wanted Stokes to explain what was wrong with his attempts to kiss his patroness, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard. Stokes, usually the most self-assured of men, reacted with a sudden display of insecurity, squirming a bit before admitting that his solitary lifestyle left him at a loss for answers to Adam’s questions.

Yesterday, Adam took the advice of suave warlock Nicholas Blair and assaulted Carolyn. He forcibly kissed her and pushed her to the floor of the room where she is hiding him from the police. We ended the episode unsure how far Adam took his attack. As we open today, we see Carolyn in the main part of her house looking shaken and with her hair mussed, but with her clothes intact. Perhaps she managed to stop Adam before he went beyond what we saw, or perhaps he didn’t try to go further. Not since the references to strange and troubled boy David Collins’ uncertain paternity in #32 and #147 has it been clear that sexual intercourse even exists in the universe of Dark Shadows, and it doesn’t seem that anyone would have told Adam about it. So he may have stopped with kissing because he doesn’t know there is anything more involved in a rape.

Carolyn telephones Stokes and asks him to come to the house at once. By the time he gets there, she is unavailable. Well-meaning governess Vicki greets him, explaining that Carolyn is in the kitchen mediating a dispute between housekeeper Mrs Johnson and Mrs Johnson’s son Harry. Vicki smiles, laughs a little, and describes this dispute sarcastically as a potential tragedy, suggesting a condescending attitude towards the Johnsons that doesn’t really fit with her character as it has been developed up to this point. Stokes flatly tells Vicki that he is not interested in her, and she turns to go. He apologizes, and she comes back. They talk a little about some recent plot points. When Carolyn comes in, she and Stokes dismiss Vicki.

Carolyn tells Stokes what Adam did, and he goes to the big guy’s room in the long deserted west wing of the house. Stokes decides that the time has come for a birds-and-bees talk. This is not the standard version. Adam does not have parents; he is a Frankenstein’s monster. When Stokes tells him what he knows of the circumstances of his creation, Adam is horrified. He tells Stokes they are no longer friends and orders him out of the room. Once he is alone, Adam looks in the mirror, focuses on the scars where he was stitched together, and pronounces himself ugly. He smashes the mirror, picks up a knife, and declares that because no one will ever love him, he must die.

Broken Adam. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In 2020, Wallace McBride wrote that “On Dark Shadows, your reflection always tells the truth.” But the characters do not always interpret their reflections correctly, so that they sometimes miss the truth. When Dark Shadows began, Vicki was on a quest to find out who her parents were. As Wallace McBride points out, that story was hobbled from its beginning. In episode #1, reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard opens the doors to Vicki, and the resemblance between Joan Bennett and Alexandra Moltke Isles is so strong that it looks like the two women are reflections of each other. Indeed, Mrs Isles was cast as Vicki largely because she looked so much like Joan Bennett, and Bennett famously mistook Mrs Isles for her daughter when she first saw her. As the show went on Liz came to treat Vicki so much like a daughter that it would have been hard to find a point in a story confirming that she really was, and so the whole question of Vicki’s parentage fizzled out.

As Vicki failed to interpret the reflection that told her the truth about her origins, so Adam misinterprets what his reflection means about someone who came into the world as he did. It’s true he has conspicuous scars and some odd coloring, but you get used to that pretty quickly, and aside from those he is movie star handsome. So “I am ugly!” is a misinterpretation. Stokes told Adam in so many words that at the rate he has been learning he will soon be indistinguishable from people who were born and grew to maturity; regular viewers have seen him acquire so many skills so rapidly that we cannot doubt this is true. His attempt at suicide, like his decision to take Nicholas’ advice and try to rape Carolyn, is the result of his underestimation of his own capacity to develop. That underestimation, in turn, is the result of his failure to fully absorb the information about himself his surroundings are reflecting back to him.

Adam’s plight is thrown into stark relief for us by a scene that took place before Stokes’ visit to him. He looks out the window of his room and sees the terrace, where Vicki is with her boyfriend, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Peter/ Jeff proposes marriage to Vicki, and she receives the offer warmly. Peter/ Jeff, like Adam, has memories that go back only a few months. As Stokes has told Adam of his unusual origin and elicited a deeply hostile response from him, so Vicki has told Peter/ Jeff that she has reason to believe he has a supernatural origin, and he reacted just as bitterly. Peter/ Jeff is surprised that Vicki would marry someone with his background, but she makes it clear it doesn’t bother her at all. If Peter/ Jeff could find love with Vicki, then there must be a woman somewhere who would love Adam.

Episode 527: Without the face

Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes has been harboring a fugitive in his apartment for some time. The fugitive, known only as Adam, is a very tall, extremely strong man whose vocabulary was limited to a handful of words when he met Stokes. He has been learning at a prodigious rate, and can now carry on conversations. Stokes gives Adam a break from reading the dictionary and asks him to recount his earliest memory.

Adam speaks once more in isolated monosyllables as he tells the story of waking up on a table and seeing old world gentleman Barnabas Collins. Barnabas’ friend, psychiatrist/ blood specialist Julia Hoffman, then jabbed him with a needle. After a car ride, he found himself chained to a wall in a small room where Barnabas’ servant Willie Loomis was bad to him. Adam broke the chain and attacked Willie, then Barnabas beat him. Stokes is trying to decide what to make of this story when a knock comes at the door. He sends Adam to read the dictionary quietly in the back bedroom while he deals with his visitors.

They are well-meaning governess Vicki Winters and her boyfriend, an unpleasant man named Peter. Vicki wants Stokes to hypnotize Peter in hopes of breaking through the total amnesia that covers all of his life up to the last few months. Stokes sends Vicki away, and puts Peter under.

Peter tells him that a mad scientist named Lang compelled him to assist in the construction of a Frankenstein’s monster, and that Barnabas and Julia were in on the project. Stokes puts two and two together. He brings Adam into the room, and Peter identifies him as Lang’s creation. Still under hypnosis, Peter refuses to regress any further into his past, fearing that he, too, might be one of Lang’s products.

Peter identifies Adam. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Stokes calls on Vicki at the great house of Collinwood. Vicki says that it makes no difference to her what Peter’s background is; Stokes tells her that she is lying, because if that were the case she would not have taken Peter to him to be hypnotized. When Dark Shadows began, Vicki represented the audience’s point of view; since then, she has tended to be simply a Good Person. It is extremely rare to hear any suggestion that she might have a selfish motive, and even rarer for her to be credibly accused of deception. For Vicki fans, it is intriguing to think that the show might allow her to be a complex character who has secrets and behaves unpredictably.

Stokes meets the suave Nicholas Blair, whom Vicki introduces as the brother of Cassandra Collins. Stokes knows that Cassandra is a wicked witch, and he recognizes Nicholas as a man he saw months ago in an antique shop handling a curio associated with Cassandra. Nicholas denies that he was that man, saying that he is new to the area and there are many people who look like him. Nicholas is such a distinctive looking man that he must know that Stokes will know that he is lying, but it does put a stop to the conversation.

Stokes tells Vicki that she must leave Collinwood at once. He explains that if she does not, she “will have the dream,” that “Barnabas Collins will be your beckoner,” and that this means Barnabas will die. She protests that she cannot have “the dream,” because Sam Evans died before he could tell it to her. He insists that Nicholas and Cassandra will find a way to make her have it. This will be total gibberish to anyone watching for the first time. Regular viewers will know what it means, but most of them will wish they didn’t, since it refers to a slow-moving, heavily repetitious plot that they had hoped the show had decided to abandon.

Episode 526: Tell me now

In the woods, an unpleasant man named Peter finds his girlfriend, well-meaning governess Vicki, wandering about in a trance. He thinks she has been sleepwalking, and takes her home to the great house of Collinwood.

In her bedroom, Vicki tells Peter that she has never walked in her sleep before. He tells her that he had a dream which persuaded him that she has been right all along. He now believes that the two of them lived in the 1790s, that they were lovers then, and that they were both unjustly sentenced to die. He describes a dream he had that broke down his resistance to this idea. Vicki tells him that the events in the dream did not take place, and wonders if she has been wrong about him all along. Perhaps he just dreamed about the stories she has been telling him. It does not occur to either of them that the dream was one Peter might have had while awaiting execution, so that even if it did not match what he would have seen during his waking hours, it still might have been an experience he had in the eighteenth century.

Peter tells Vicki about his dream. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, was very much impressed with Alexandra Moltke Isles’ performance as Vicki in this scene. Every time Roger Davis speaks, and certainly every time he shoves his face into hers for a kiss, we recoil from Peter and expect Vicki to do the same. Yet Mrs Isles conjures up a look in her eyes and a tone in her voice that makes us believe Vicki loves Peter. She has to do that every time they have a scene together, and she pulls it off again and again. Mrs Acilius marveled that Mrs Isles could do this as convincingly with Mr Davis as if she were playing opposite an appealing actor.

Episode 525: Tree in the forest

Beginning in #365, well-meaning governess Vicki Winters spent nineteen weeks in the 1790s. Ever since Vicki brought Dark Shadows back to a contemporary setting in March 1968, the show has been dealing with the consequences of her journey.

Today, we open with a dream sequence. The boyfriend who followed Vicki from the 1790s, a man named Peter, came to the twentieth century with total amnesia and a belligerent personality that kept him from listening when Vicki tried to explain who he was. His dream is about people and events from 1796, and it finally breaks down his insistence that he is someone else. That insistence was never at all interesting- it wasn’t as if his name were Watt Iduno Hu, in which case he and Vicki could at least have done a version of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?” But now that it is over, there are no obstacles at all between Peter and Vicki, and no reason for either of them to be on the show.

Meanwhile, suave warlock Nicholas Blair has carried a portrait of wicked witch Angelique from the bedroom where he is staying in the great house on the estate of Collinwood down to the drawing room. He makes a tremendous display of effort as he concentrates on the portrait, talks to it in an urgent voice, and makes many movements with his hands, all in an attempt to make contact with Angelique’s spirit so that he can reconstitute her body. Vicki walks in on him as he is doing this, and he breaks off, embarrassed. He finds out that Vicki owns the portrait, and she refuses him permission to borrow it.

Later, Nicholas finds out about Vicki’s visit to the 1790s. He is intrigued that in those days the same witchfinder who has disincorporated Angelique mistook Vicki for a witch and tried to perform an exorcism on her. He decides that the spot on which this rite took place must be the same as that where Angelique’s ashes are now deposited. So he casts a spell on Vicki, causing her to lead him to the place.

Other fansites feature complaints that Nicholas could just have cast a spell on Vicki during their first scene together. In his post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn writes of their first scene that “Nicholas actually has the power to mesmerize Vicki and get her to do whatever he wants, so technically he could just put the whammy on her right now, and tell her to clear the room.” And on Dark Shadows Before I Die, Christine Scoleri wonders “If Blair could make Vicki ‘listen and obey’ so easily, then why didn’t he just make her give him the portrait instead of getting all pissy when she refused to loan it to him?”

That didn’t bother me. When Vicki walked in on Nicholas in the drawing room, he was straining himself to make contact with the spirit of Angelique. He again puts himself deeply into his mumbo-jumbo when he casts his spell on Vicki. So it seemed perfectly reasonable to me that he couldn’t just drop what he was doing with the portrait and go directly into another spell.

The obvious sexual symbolism of the scene in the drawing room reinforces that point. On the Dark Shadows Daybook, Patrick McCray describes the display Nicholas makes while interacting with the painting depicting his putative sister as suggestive of incestuous feelings;* and the awkwardness Humbert Allen Astredo and Alexandra Moltke Isles bring out when Vicki walks in on Nicholas getting all worked up as he stares at a woman’s picture and puts all his energy into imagining her physical presence will likely seem familiar to anyone who has ever had a room-mate. Since Nicholas’ mind is so intensely engaged with the idea of Angelique, it isn’t hard to imagine that he would need time to redirect his attention to Vicki.

*His actual words were “uncomfortably Kentuckian,” but Mrs Acilius was born in Kentucky and is tired of incest jokes about her onetime neighbors. [UPDATE: Patrick points out his own Kentuckian heritage, and protests that his little joke was an irony fondly intended.]

Episode 524: Nothing but a ghost

In November 1967, well-meaning governess Vicki Winters came unstuck in time and found herself marooned in the late eighteenth century. She took the audience with her, and for 19 weeks Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in that period.

Joel Crothers, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s plays hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell, played roguish naval officer Nathan Forbes in the 1790s segment. Crothers was too capable an actor for Joe ever to be uninteresting to watch, but his scrupulous honesty and unfailingly wholesome desires keep him from making anything happen. Nathan comes as a revelation. Starting as a basically friendly fellow with some conspicuous weaknesses, Nathan steadily evolved into a very cold villain. Along the way, he figured in genuinely funny comic scenes and displayed rich psychological complexity. When Vicki brought us back to a contemporary setting in March 1968, it was more than a little sad to see Crothers return to duty as earnest Joe.

We get another visit from Nathan today. In the eighteenth century, Vicki stumbled into a romance with an unpleasant man named Peter Bradford. Peter has followed her to the present, but has amnesia and angrily refuses to believe Vicki when she tells him who he really is. Today, Peter has a dream in which he confronts Nathan. He fires a gun at Nathan, and is bewildered when Nathan only laughs. Nathan explains that Peter can’t kill him, because he’s already dead.

Peter amuses Nathan. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This scene plays out in front of a table and mantelpiece which we saw together in #459. In that one, it was Nathan who fired a shot with results that bewildered him. His target was Barnabas Collins, who smiled and told Nathan he could not kill him because he was already dead. Barnabas, a vampire, strangled Nathan not long after.

Joe is in the next room while Peter has this dream. He hears Peter talking in his sleep, and comes in to wake him up. When he does so, Peter mistakes him for Nathan and tries to strangle him.

This is not the first time Peter has picked up where Barnabas left off. Barnabas had some vague intention of joining with Vicki in one or another sort of relationship, and now Peter is the one who is in a confusing and unsatisfying relationship with her. Mad scientist Eric Lang built a Frankenstein’s monster, intending for Barnabas to leave his own body and wake up in it; Lang intended to cut Peter’s head off and sew it onto the creature. Had that plan succeeded, actor Roger Davis would have traded the part of Peter for that of Barnabas. It is not immediately clear why the makers of Dark Shadows want us to bracket Peter and Barnabas together, but evidently they do.