Centenarian Charles Delaware Tate, once a famous painter, is trapped in his parlor with a man who is threatening to kill him. The man is Chris Jennings. Chris tells Tate that there will be a full moon tonight, and he identifies himself as a werewolf. In 1897, Tate painted a portrait of Chris’ great-grandfather, Quentin Collins. That portrait had magical powers that immunized Quentin against both lycanthropy and aging, and Chris is demanding Tate do the same for him. Tate keeps telling Chris that he no longer has the ability to create such things, but Chris won’t listen. Tate does a sketch. He says that his work is finished and tells Chris to take it and leave. Before Chris can comply, he turns into the wolf and attacks Tate.
Chris had been in a secure room at a mental hospital controlled by his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman. He deliberately checked himself out and forced his way into Tate’s house because he wanted to use his condition as a weapon to coerce Tate. Julia is the audience’s chief point of view character these days, and she feels sorry for Chris. We also like two characters who care about Chris and don’t know that he is a werewolf. Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard is attracted to Chris and seems to have some lingering hopes that a romance might blossom between them, and Chris’ little sister Amy loves him and believes in him. Even one of Chris’ surviving victims, prematurely gray Sabrina Stuart, told Carolyn in #889 that while Chris is dangerous, “he is good.”
Despite everything these ladies are doing to help us like Chris, there can be no doubt that his attack on Tate is murder with premeditation and extraordinary cruelty. Roger Davis can usually be counted on to make us sympathize with anyone who is murdering one of his characters, but he plays Tate today with sensitivity and pathos, leaving us no way to avoid seeing a helpless old man locked up with a vicious killer. Chris’ future on Dark Shadows is limited for a number of reasons, chiefly his passivity in the face of his curse and his dependence on Julia and others to initiate action on his behalf. His abuse of Tate suggests that for whatever time he may have left on the show, Chris will be an unsympathetic villain.
Meanwhile, Carolyn is spending the day working as an assistant in an antique shop owned by her friends Megan and Philip Todd. Our first view of the shop today features Carolyn reflected in a mirror, but the main part of it is the taxidermied head of a baying wolf, emphasizing the danger Chris poses to everyone in and around the village of Collinsport.
A pair of hands cover Carolyn’s eyes. When they are pulled away, she expects to find that they belong to Philip’s eight year old nephew Alexander, but instead discovers that a thirteen year old boy she has never before seen has introduced himself to her by creeping up behind her and grabbing her face. The boy tells her that his name is Michael, that he is another of Megan and Philip’s relatives, and that Alexander has gone away. He tries to give Carolyn a pendant, but she recognizes it as one Megan wears and says that Michael can’t very well make a gift of something that doesn’t belong to him. He becomes very stiff and screams “How dare you not believe me!?” He doesn’t get any more pleasant as the scene goes on.
Philip comes in and tries to establish some kind of control; Carolyn takes the opportunity to excuse herself. As Michael and Philip talk, it becomes clear that they are part of a secret group with sinister plans. Returning viewers know that Michael and Alexander are not really human children, but are two manifestations of the same supernatural force. As Alexander, this force was a joyless, hateful little tyrant; Michael is no more appealing.
Dark Shadows originally ran on the ABC television network five days a week, from Monday through Friday. The episodes were numbered in a sequence reflecting the order of their original broadcast. When for whatever reason the show did not air on a given day, they would skip a number to keep the episodes airing on Fridays associated with production numbers divisible by 5. That made it easy to figure out how many weeks the show had been on, which in turn made it easy to keep track of where the show was in the thirteen week cycle that governed its long-term planning and the network’s decision to renew it.
In the last months of 1969, the show was being taped several weeks in advance of airdates, in a couple of instances more than five weeks ahead of time. This was atypical, and it led to a problem with the numbering. They knew that no episodes would air on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, or New Year’s Day, but did not foresee that the network would preempt #891 for live news coverage of the return of the Apollo 12 astronauts to Earth on 24 November 1969. Since they had already shot that episode and many following it with the original production numbers on the opening slate, it wasn’t until this one that they had the chance to get the numbers back in synch. That is why it is listed with the three numbers 919, 920, and 921. The only other time they had to skip two numbers was in November 1966, when coverage of football games on and after Thanksgiving Day blotted out #109 and #110. Since that disruption to the schedule was planned, the slate for the next episode was just marked #111. This is therefore the only episode regularly referred to with a triple number.
Six weeks ago, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins was absorbed into a group serving supernatural beings known as the Leviathans. Also in the group is matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Barnabas and Liz are worried that mad scientist Julia Hoffman, Barnabas’ sometime best friend and Liz’ permanent houseguest, is catching on to the truth about their group. They decide Julia must be absorbed into it.
Barnabas finds Julia on a couch in the drawing room, reading a book about lycanthropy. He strikes up a conversation about Chris Jennings, a young man who suffers from that condition. Julia replies bitterly that she still cares about Chris, unlike Barnabas. He tells her that he does care, and they quarrel a bit. He then strokes Julia’s cheek. He did the same thing with Chris’ little sister Amy in #912, at which point Amy fell asleep. Shortly after Amy woke up, she had become part of the Leviathan group. Julia gets a headache and goes to her room, where she does fall asleep.
We didn’t see a dream sequence when Amy fell asleep, but do see one for Julia today. The visuals alternate between two stock clips of lightning flashes as we hear Jonathan Frid give a dramatic reading of some portentous nonsense, then give way to Julia finding Barnabas in the drawing room inviting her to open a wooden box. We saw a dream of Liz’ in #904; she woke from it already transformed into a faithful devotee of the Leviathans. But when Julia wakes up, she just has a worse headache.
They’ve shown us this clip more times than I can count…… but I don’t think we’ve seen this one before. It’s fascinating to me, like an image David Lynch would have used in Eraserhead or the third season of Twin Peaks.
Julia goes downstairs and find Liz holding the box from her dream. She is urging her to open it. Julia is confused by the situation. A knock comes at the door, and she rushes to answer it. It is Chris, saying that it is time for Julia to drive him to the institution where he is locked up on nights of the full moon. Julia calls back to Liz that she will be back later in the evening.
Barnabas enters and says that Julia will never be absorbed into the cult. If she were suited for absorption, the knock at the door would not have distracted her. He explains that “There are certain people, Elizabeth, whom we are not able to absorb. It has to do with their genetic structure. And Julia Hoffman is one of them.” As a former vampire who is now leading a cult that is trying to bring a race of Elder Gods back into the world where they will destroy and replace humankind, Barnabas is supposed to be strange and unnerving, but hearing him talk about “certain people” and their “genetic structure” is off-putting in a whole other way. Why not just say that she’s Jewish, we know you mean that she’s Jewish.
Barnabas then tells Liz that it is now up to her to handle Julia. So far as we know, Liz does not have any special powers like those Barnabas uses when he fondles people’s faces. Liz doesn’t even know what the cult is all about- today, she asks Barnabas what the goal is they are working for, and he tells her he isn’t at liberty to say. So when Barnabas tells her to deal with Julia, we can only remember the last time we saw Joan Bennett playing a character under the control of an uncanny force, when Judith Collins shot and killed neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond on the orders of vampire Dirk Wilkins in #776.
In #915, one Leviathan ordered Barnabas to kill Julia. When he refused, another caused him to have nightmares, then told him it was OK to leave Julia alive if he could find another way to keep her under control. That episode was written hurriedly and rushed into production at the last minute, three full weeks after this one was in the can, in response to complaints from fans dissatisfied with the Leviathan story in general and Barnabas’ coldness to Julia in particular. It’s anybody’s guess what they were originally planning to do with #915, but today’s episode makes it clear that it did not include the reset of Barnabas’ character that we saw yesterday. He is still leading the Leviathans, and when he delegates the problem to Liz murdering Julia is pretty obviously the likeliest solution.
Not a Portrait of Quentin Collins
Julia’s plan for Chris is to persuade an artist named Charles Delaware Tate to paint a portrait of him. Tate painted a portrait of Chris’ great-grandfather, Quentin Collins, in 1897. That portrait had magical powers. Once it was painted, Quentin’s own werewolf curse went into abeyance. It was the portrait that transformed on nights of the full moon, while Quentin himself remained human. Indeed, the portrait also caused Quentin to remain young and healthy. He returned to Collinsport a couple of weeks ago, and though he is 99 years old he still looks just like he did when he was 28. In #913/ 914, Julia found that Tate, also, is alive, and still looks like he did in 1897.
Quentin and Tate are not the only emigrés from 1897 currently sheltering in Collinsport. Another of Tate’s magical portraits, a concept piece depicting his ideal woman, caused its subject to pop into existence. In 1897, she went by the name Amanda Harris, met Quentin, and fell in love with him. She, too, is unchanged in 1969, though she now calls herself Olivia Corey.
Amanda/ Olivia and Julia are both hunting for paintings by Tate, and met each other through that pursuit. They have also met Quentin, and vied with each other to decide which would be the one to keep him. He has amnesia and knows only that he was carrying papers identifying him as Grant Douglas. He is open to the idea that this is not his real name, but he finds Julia’s attempt to convince him that he is a 99 year old man ludicrous and is frustrated with Amanda/ Olivia’s unwillingness to tell him when and where they first met.
Amanda/ Olivia comes back to her suite at the Collinsport Inn and finds Quentin there, swilling her booze and enormously drunk. He tells her that he finds his room depressing, because it doesn’t have a bar. He says he can’t stand not knowing who he is. She points out that he has taken this in his stride up to now, and asks why today is different. He says he doesn’t know why it is different, but it very much is. When the show was a costume drama set in 1897 and we saw Amanda, she did not know about Quentin’s lycanthropy, and now that she calls herself Olivia she still does not think of the full moon when she sees him in anguish.
Later, Julia shows up at Amanda/ Olivia’s door. She has brought one of Tate’s portraits of Amanda Harris. Amanda/ Olivia staggers back at the sight of it. She composes herself and says that it is of no interest to her, since she already has several of Tate’s paintings of her “grandmother.” Julia tells Amanda/ Olivia that the real reason she is not interested in it is that it is not a portrait of Quentin Collins. She replies that Julia is the one who is fascinated by Quentin, not she. Julia says that she wants to show the portrait to Quentin. Amanda/ Olivia does not bother pretending that his name is “Grant Douglas” or that it might be something other than “Quentin Collins”; she simply tells Julia that he is in his room sleeping off an alcoholic binge. Julia adopts her most unmistakably Mad Scientist manner when she responds “Then this is definitely the right time to see him!” She marches out, and Amanda/ Olivia follows her.
Julia had told Chris that if Quentin’s portrait has been destroyed, his lycanthropy will be back in force. If that is so, she wants to be with him when he transforms. This was a doubly confusing thing to say. First, if the portrait had been destroyed, Quentin would not only be a werewolf, he would also look his age. She therefore knows it is not so. Second, she does not have anything with her to protect her against werewolves. If she is with Quentin when he transforms, he will kill her immediately.
When Julia and Amanda/ Olivia let themselves into Quentin’s room, they find that it is a shambles and he is gone. As a closing cliffhanger, this is supposed to leave us with the fear that a werewolf is stalking Collinsport. But since we know what the portrait does for Quentin, it only leaves us wondering if Amanda/ Olivia will have to pay an extra housekeeping charge because he trashed the room she was renting for him.
When Julia met Tate in #913/914, she could not get him to engage her in any kind of conversation, much less agree to paint a portrait of Chris. She did not mention Amanda/ Olivia. Since Tate was maniacally obsessed with Amanda in 1897, Julia should have known that her acquaintance with her was the strongest card she had to play. So when she goes to Amanda/ Olivia’s suite today, returning viewers were hoping that she was going to propose they team up to persuade Tate to paint Chris. Perhaps that will still happen. If it does, it might be a lot more interesting than is the revelation that Quentin doesn’t keep his hotel room clean.
For eight months in 1969, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the year 1897. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman traveled back in time from the 1960s to keep us company in that year. It was nice to have them around, but we didn’t really need them. Rakish Quentin Collins was the star then, and now that the show has returned to 1969 we are unsurprised that he has turned up, alive, well, and 28 years old.
Quentin has amnesia, which Julia is determined to cure. He spends all day today listing the things he doesn’t know about himself, such as his name, which of his hands is dominant, and why Julia and Broadway star Olivia Corey are fighting each other to see which one will keep him in the style to which he might like to become accustomed. He’s such a good-looking guy that this latter really can’t be all that mysterious to him, but maybe he’s just being tactful when he claims not to understand that part.
Quentin and Olivia go to her hotel room, which she has decorated with framed copies of her professional headshot and a bit of folded stage dressing that could be used to suggest windows. Apparently that’s just how actresses make themselves feel at home.
Quentin asks Olivia why she is interested in him. She tells him that they met a long time ago, but that she can’t tell him any more than that. This angers him; he knows nothing at all about his past, so it strikes him she is being cruel by withholding the information she has.
Regular viewers know that Olivia and Quentin were lovers in 1897, when she was known as Amanda Harris. Both of them owe their youth to magical paintings done by an artist named Charles Delaware Tate. Julia knows all about this, and has come into possession of a landscape Tate painted in the 1940s. Amanda/ Olivia came to Collinsport in hopes of getting the painting from her. The other day Amanda/ Olivia managed to have it x-rayed, and found that there was a portrait on the canvas underneath it. The x-ray could not show whose portrait it was. Later today, Julia will have the same examination made. When she gets the results, Julia arranges to have the landscape removed. It turns out that the underpainting is a portrait of Amanda Harris herself.
The expert who exposes the underpainting also brings bad news. He tells Julia’s sidekick Chris Jennings that Tate died about ten years before. Julia knows that Quentin’s portrait not only keeps him alive and youthful, but also prevents him turning into a werewolf. Since Chris is Quentin’s great-grandson and has inherited the werewolf curse, he and Julia were hoping that Tate was still alive and still empowered to paint magical portraits.
Closing Miscellany
Nowadays, Donna McKechnie says that, while she had been on Broadway as a singer and dancer before appearing on Dark Shadows, she was only a beginner in acting. It’s true that she is noticeably uncomfortable delivering her lines, but her scene partners- David Selby, Grayson Hall, and Don Briscoe- all give her such good support that she gets through it quite smoothly. Besides, she is so charming that the audience is willing to forgive her anything.
Danny Horn’s post about this episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day is one of his occasional tours de force, a spoof of the postmodernist literary terminology that he learned in graduate school. I learned the same terminology when I was in graduate school, and I think his spoof of it is hilarious. But in the course of it, he has some really good insights. For example:
Chris: Olivia Corey… I don’t get it! Why is she so interested in him?
Julia: She must either know — or suspect! — that he is really Quentin Collins.
It’s telling that she puts the dramatic stress on the phrase “or suspect!” rather than the knowledge itself. To Dr. Hoffman, it’s the existence of suspicion! that is itself suspicious. Anybody can know something. It’s the act of suspecting! that reveals a new range of discursive positions.
Danny Horn, “Episode 910: Epistemology of the Portrait,” posted 8 August 2016 on Dark Shadows Every Day
Which is a great point! When the characters know facts about each other, those facts don’t move the story an inch unless they are clues that they can use to build on the suspicions they have about them or tools they can use to manipulate them into doing what they want. So Julia knows that Quentin lived in a particular room in the long-deserted west wing of Collinwood and that he obsessively listened to a particular sickly little waltz on his record player. Those facts are nothing in themselves, but when she takes him to the room and plays the waltz on the record player at the end of today’s episode, we have hope that Quentin might become himself again soon.
Towards the end of the 1897 segment, Judith Collins Trask and Tim Shaw bricked the evil Gregory Trask up in Quentin’s room. In #884, we heard her telephone Tim and instruct him to remove the bricks. When Julia takes Quentin into the room today, there is no trace of bricks. Evidently Tim did a good job clearing them out.
By the time Julia became best friends with Barnabas in 1968, she was in the habit of addressing him as “Barnabas, Barnabas.” In the 1897 segment, she addressed Quentin as “Quentin, Quentin.” Now she and Barnabas are on the outs, and Quentin isn’t answering to his name no matter how often you repeat it. So she addresses her henchman Chris as “Chris, Chris.” Don Briscoe was a likable actor and Chris has his points, but the character has some weaknesses that tightly circumscribe his future on the show. I suppose the point is that Julia has a higher opinion of Chris’ potential than the other characters do, but she so frequently represents the audience’s state of knowledge that it is a bit odd she thinks he belongs in a category with those breakout stars.
I believe this episode also marks the first time Julia addresses matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard as “Liz.” She has been living in Liz’ house since the summer of 1967, so I guess it’s time she stop calling her “Mrs Stoddard.”
In #701, broadcast at the beginning of March 1969, recovering vampire-turned-bumbling protagonist Barnabas Collins was trying to solve some problems his distant cousins were having, and inadvertently came unstuck in time. He found himself in the year 1897, where his vampirism was once more in full force. Barnabas spent the next eight months in that year, precipitating one disaster after another around the estate of Collinwood and the village of Collinsport.
As summer gave way to fall of 1897, Barnabas’ friends managed to put his vampirism back into remission. In #844, he met Kitty Soames, the dowager countess of Hampshire. Despite what her title would suggest, Kitty was an American woman in her twenties. Barnabas recognized her as the reincarnation of his lost love Josette. In February of 1796, Josette found out that Barnabas had become a vampire and that he wanted to kill her and raise her from the dead as his vampire bride. She flung herself to her death from the cliff on Widows’ Hill rather than let him do that to her.
In the eight weeks following Kitty’s first appearance, Josette’s personality irrupted into her conscious mind more and more frequently. Josette wanted to live again and to be with Barnabas. By last week, Kitty could hear Josette’s voice talking to her through the portrait of her that hangs in the Old House on the grounds of Collinwood. Josette suggested that if Kitty stopped resisting her, the two of them could both live, resolving themselves into a composite being.
In Thursday’s episode, the boundary between Kitty and Josette had become very indistinct. As Kitty, she agreed to marry Barnabas that night, later to wonder why she had done so. She was holding Josette’s white dress in her hand and struggling with the idea of putting it on when she abruptly found herself wearing it. Barnabas entered the room just in time to see her bodily assumed into the portrait. He reached up to the moving image of Kitty overlaid on the painted likeness of Josette, and both he and Kitty vanished at the same instant.
In Friday’s episode, Barnabas found himself lying on the ground, wearing clothes he had last put on in 1796. He learned that it was the night of Josette’s death. He is a vampire in this period, but he is confident he can again be free of the effects of the curse. He does not want to kill Josette, but to take her back to 1897 with him. His efforts to that end were not at all successful, and Friday ended with her on the edge of the cliff. She hears footsteps, which she and the audience have every reason to think are Barnabas’. If she sees him, she is prepared to jump.
Neither Kitty’s assumption into the portrait nor his own translation to 1796 prompt Barnabas to ask a single question about what forces are at work around him. Regular viewers would not expect him to. He lives in a universe where time travel is easy. Not only did he travel from March 1969 to 1897 without even trying to do so, but in #661 he managed to get from January 1969 to 1796 by standing in a graveyard at night and shouting for one of the residents to give him a ride. And in #365, he was present at a séance where the ghost of his little sister Sarah, speaking through well-meaning governess Vicki Winters, said that she would “tell the story from the beginning.” Vicki then vanished from the circle and Sarah’s governess, Phyllis Wick, materialized in her place. For the next four months the show was a costume drama set in the 1790s, where Vicki flailed about helplessly while Barnabas became a vampire, Sarah died of exposure, and Josette jumped off Widows’ Hill.
Barnabas and we also know that portraits are powerful in the universe of Dark Shadows. When he is in full vampire-mode, he communicates with his victims and potential victims through a portrait of him that hangs in the foyer of the great house of Collinwood. Much of the action in the 1897 segment had to do with a magical portrait that keeps Barnabas’ distant cousin Quentin from turning into a werewolf. Quentin had a romance with Amanda Harris, a woman who came to life when another magical portrait was painted.
Barnabas knows, not only that portraits in general have power, but also that Josette’s portrait in particular is powerful. In his second episode, #212, he went to the Old House and talked with strange and troubled boy David Collins, who often communed with Josette through her portrait. After David left him alone there, Barnabas addressed the portrait and told Josette that she would no longer function as the tutelary spirit of the Collins family. At that point Josette was supposed to be Barnabas’ grandmother who sided against him in a fateful family battle, but even after she was retconned as his lost love he felt the portrait’s power. So in #287, Vicki had invited herself to spend the night at Barnabas’ house. While she slept, Barnabas entered the room, intending to bite her. But he looked at the portrait of Josette and found that something was stopping him from doing so.
Barnabas would not have any way of knowing it, but in #70 Dark Shadows‘ first major special effect came when we saw Josette’s ghost take shape in front of her portrait and take three steps down from it to the floor of the room where it was hanging then, the front parlor of the Old House. She then turned, looked at the portrait, and went outside, where she danced among the columns of the portico. Longtime viewers will see Kitty’s assumption into the portrait as a reversal of this momentous little journey.
Most people nowadays who have been watching the show for some time will therefore take the strange goings-on as much in stride as Barnabas does. But viewers at the time may have had a different reaction. Friday’s episode and today’s originally ended with announcements over the closing credits. These announcements were not on the original master videotapes from which Amazon Prime Video and Tubi and the other streaming apps take their copies of the episodes, and so most viewers these days don’t hear them. But evidently one of the DVD releases reproduces them as they were preserved on some kinescopes. One promises that in Tuesday’s episode “one of the most terrifying tales ever told” will begin; the other, that it will be “one of the most unusual tales ever told.”
A terrifying tale suggests a mighty villain. By the end of the 1897 segment, all the villains have either turned into protagonists, as Barnabas, Quentin, and wicked witch Angelique had done; been heavily defeated, as sorcerer Count Petofi had been; or were dead and forgotten. So “one of the most terrifying tales ever told” would seem to require a new villain, or perhaps a new group of villains. And if it is also “one of the most unusual tales ever told,” those villains will have to be strikingly different from anything we have seen before.
So, having heard those announcements, we will be less inclined to chalk Barnabas’ latest adventure in anachronism up to the usual way things are on Dark Shadows. We will be looking for signs that some previously unknown and hugely formidable malevolent force is luring him into a trap.
At first, no such signs seem to be forthcoming. The footsteps that alarm Josette turn out not to be Barnabas’, but those of her aunt, the Countess DuPrés. The countess talks Josette down and takes her back to the great house of Collinwood. Having saved Josette’s life, the countess takes her to a room occupied by fluttery heiress Millicent Collins. The countess asks Millicent to sit with Josette while she runs an errand.
Millicent means well, but always makes everything hilariously worse. Seeing that Josette is shaking, she observes that she is suffering a shock. She asks very earnestly “Was your shock a romantic one?” Josette responds by wailing. Millicent keeps talking about the dangers of love, causing Josette to get more and more upset. Longtime viewers will remember that Millicent will turn from a comic figure to a tragic one soon after this, when she falls in love with an evil man. That tinges our reaction with sadness, but Millicent’s total insensitivity to the effect she is having on Josette makes for an effective comedy scene. No matter how much the oblivious Millicent is worsening Josette’s mood, this hardly seems likely to be part of a grand evil scheme.
It turns out that the errand the countess had to run was a visit to Barnabas, who is waiting in Josette’s room. This time Barnabas has actually had a sensible idea. Rather than go to Josette on top of the cliff as he did the first time through these events, he asked the countess to go. The countess confronts him about his status as a walking dead man. Barnabas will not explain- how could he? He asks the countess if she thinks he is a ghost; she does not answer. He insists on seeing Josette; she says she will not allow it. He says he does not want to force her to help him; she declares that he cannot force her. Finally, he ends the exchange by biting her.
The countess goes to Millicent’s room and tells Josette to go back to her own room. Millicent is surprised the countess doesn’t go with her, protesting that Josette is in no condition to be left alone. The countess responds numbly.
The countess is one of three characters we have so far seen Grayson Hall play. The first, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, offered herself to Barnabas as a victim in #350; he declined the offer. Julia was motivated by a mixture of despair over the failure of her first attempt to cure Barnabas’ vampirism, an obligation to prevent him harming others, and her own unrequited love for him, so she was disappointed when he said no. The other, broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, told Barnabas to “Bite me!” when they were at the grave of her husband, his onetime blood thrall. He refused to do that, too. Magda was angry and defiant, wanting to get something horrible over with, so her reaction was more ambiguous. The countess didn’t know Barnabas was a vampire until his fangs were in her neck, so she is just dazed.
That Hall’s other characters expected Barnabas to bite them, and in Julia’s case hoped he would do so, shows that no new force is needed to explain why he bites the countess. And bad as a vampire’s bite is, from what we have seen in previous segments of the show we can be sure that the countess will forget all about her experience as Barnabas’ victim once he leaves. Besides, when he came back in time in January Barnabas triggered a chain of events that led to the countess’ death- we can assume that whatever he has put in motion this time will have a different outcome for her. So while the bite still has its echoes of rape and is therefore a horror, it in no way shows the presence of any fresh villain that is about to set off “one of the most terrifying tales ever told.”
Josette is in her room. The secret panel opens, and Barnabas enters. She is shocked to see him. He assures her that he does not want to kill her and raise her as his vampire bride; after a bit of prodding, she gets him to admit that this was, at one point, his plan. He starts explaining to her that he has come to her after a sojourn in the 1890s. She reacts with disbelief and confusion. He keeps talking. He asks her if she remembers Kitty Soames. At first the name does not ring a bell, but as he goes on she recognizes what she had thought to be a dream in which she was talking with her portrait. He tells her that it was no dream, but that just a few hours before they were together in that other century.
Finally, Barnabas persuades Josette to meet him at the Old House. He says they must go separately, since he has to go to his friend Ben Stokes and ask him to stand guard for them while they disappear into the portrait. She wants to say goodbye to her aunt the countess, and Barnabas tells her to write a note. They kiss passionately. One wonders if Josette notices the taste of her aunt’s blood on Barnabas’ lips.
Barnabas’ decision to go to Ben and send Josette to the house on her own doesn’t make much sense. This is the first we have heard they need someone to stand guard, and there is no apparent reason why they should. Moreover, the countess is right there in the house with them, and she is under Barnabas’ power. The three of them can go to the house together, Josette can say goodbye to her there, and if they need someone to stand guard she can do it. Afterward she can tell Ben what she saw and tell lies to anyone else who has questions about where Josette went. Besides, regular viewers of Dark Shadows know that when two people are supposed to go to a place separately, they never actually meet there. A smart character who understood how things work in this universe would know that Barnabas’ decree that he and Josette must take their own paths to the house means that they are doomed. But contrary to the glimmers of brainpower Barnabas showed earlier, he has never been that smart. He is so much a creature of habit that his decision to send Josette to the Old House by herself bears no traces at all of any outside influence, least of all the influence of the new villain we are looking for.
Barnabas is on his way across the grounds of Collinwood to meet Ben when it dawns on him that he is lost. This is the first thing he has done today that is out of character. He has been on the estate for centuries, and knows it surpassingly well. He looks around and sees a cairn, a large stone structure. The cairn has a flat surface in the middle and is flanked with torches and decorated with carvings resembling coiled serpents. Though he does not know where he is, he knows he has been following the same path he used shortly before, and that no such thing was there at that time or in the area ever before. Hooded figures approach, a man and a woman. They make gestures that he cannot understand. He cannot see or feel anything binding him, but neither can he move his feet or use his vampire powers to dematerialize. At last we have encountered the new presence that is supposed to deliver “one of the most terrifying tales ever told.”
Back in the great house, Millicent and the countess discover that Josette is gone. They read the note. When Millicent reads that Josette has gone to be with Barnabas, she is puzzled. All she knows is that Barnabas is dead. As a visitor from light comedy, she assumes that death is a full-time occupation. She tells the countess that to be with Barnabas, Josette will have to die. The countess replies that “Many have died for love.” Millicent is shocked by the countess’ resigned tone, and declares that she will not give up on Josette even if the countess does.
It would have been impossible for Barnabas to explain the situation to the countess while she was actively opposing him, but one might have thought that after he had bitten her and broken her will he might have tried to reassure her that his plans for Josette were now benevolent. The utter hopelessness in her voice when she says that no one can help Josette suggests he didn’t even try. Again, it wouldn’t have taken the influence of any outside force to cause Barnabas to skip this. As a vampire, he is a metaphor for extreme selfishness, and when he is pressed for time he is especially unlikely to take other people’s feelings into account in any way. Though it is a bit of a shame he didn’t try to smooth things over with the countess, there is nothing in his behavior that needs explaining, and too little at stake here for us to imagine that the mysterious forces launching “one of the most terrifying tales ever told” would care much about it.
In the Old House, Josette is looking at her portrait and wondering why Barnabas is late. She talks herself into believing that he was lying when he told her the story about 1897. She jumps to the conclusion that he really is going to turn her into a vampire, and declares she has nothing left to live for. She takes out a vial she had with her when she was with Millicent and drinks it. It is poison, and she dies.
Back in the mysterious clearing in the woods, Barnabas loses consciousness. The hooded figures say some prayers to Mother Earth, then lay him on the cairn. They place some foliage on him. This action recalls the sprinkling of grain on the necks of animals led to altars in ancient Indo-European paganism, an act known in Latin as sacrificium- it was this ritual act, not the killing of the animal, that made the animal sacer, that is, set aside for the gods. The man declares that when Barnabas awakens he will recognize him and the woman, and that he will then lead them “to a new and everlasting life.” My wife, Mrs Acilius, and I reacted to the idea of Barnabas as a guide to enlightenment the same way every regular viewer of Dark Shadows would, viz. with gales of laughter.
If the hooded figures represent the force that has directed the events of this episode and Friday’s, the force that we have been promised will bring us “one of the most terrifying tales ever told,” then something that happened in them must have been a necessary precondition for the sacrifice of Barnabas. After all, that force had him under its power when he disappeared from 1897 and found himself lying on the ground. He could just as easily have materialized on the cairn, accompanied by the hooded figures with their foliage.
The only development in these two installments that would seem to be significant enough to qualify as such a precondition is Josette’s poisoning of herself. That Josette jumped to her death from Widows’ Hill is one of the most firmly established parts of the show’s continuity. Artist Sam Evans told Vicki about it in #5. In #185, a very different version of Sam saw Josette’s portrait for the first time and identified her as “the lady who went over the cliff.” In #233, Barnabas gave a vivid and rather indiscreet account of Josette’s death to Vicki and heiress Carolyn. We saw Josette make her leap in #425, and in #876 the leap was reenacted with maidservant Beth Chavez in Josette’s role and Quentin in Barnabas’. So having Josette poison herself instead of taking the jump is an example of something Dark Shadows did several times in the later phases of the 1897 segment, making a retcon into a self-conscious plot point. That leaves us with a puzzle. Why does it matter so much just how Josette went about killing herself?
Josette’s original death was a desperate flight from vampirism. It barely qualified as a suicide at all. Josette was cornered at the edge of the cliff, seeing no way but a mortal leap to escape transformation into a bloodsucking fiend. She went over the cliff in a spontaneous act that prevented the killings and enslavements that she would have inflicted on others had Barnabas succeeded in making her into the same kind of monster he was. This time, she has been keeping a vial of poison with her, so that her suicide is a premeditated act. Moreover, she drinks it when she is still alone, motivated not by a clear and present danger but by her purely intellectual, and as it so happens faulty, analysis of the situation. She still has options, and she is helping no one. So it could be that “one of the most terrifying tales ever told” is supposed to begin with the audience disapproving of Josette’s suicide on moral grounds.
This doesn’t seem very promising, but we should mention that writer Sam Hall probably did not approve of suicide. He was a churchgoer, serious enough about his Lutheran faith that he insisted Shirley Grossman convert from Judaism before they married and she became Grayson Hall. Christians have traditionally regarded despair as a sinful state and suicide as a religious offense. And Hall does seem to have been in a religious mood at this period. Lately his episodes have shown evidence that he was reading the novels of George MacDonald, a nineteenth century Congregationalist minister whose works of fantastic fiction were enormously popular in their day, but which are suffused with such a heavily Christian atmosphere that by the late 1960s their readership was a subset of that of such self-consciously Christian fans of MacDonald’s as C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and W. H. Auden. Indeed, the three priests who hosted the podcast God and Comics admitted in a 2022 installment of their show that MacDonald’s novels reminded them a little too strongly of their day jobs to count as fun reading for them.
If Hall was feeling pious enough to keep reading MacDonald, he may well have seen Josette’s intentional and unnecessary self-poisoning as a prelude to “one of the most terrifying tales ever told.” Still, nothing we have seen so far explains just how that would work. Maybe we will find out later that Josette’s soul is in need of some kind of intervention from the other characters to avoid damnation. Lutherans aren’t supposed to think in those terms, but not even MacDonald, churchy as he was, ever let any kind of orthodoxy get between him and a good story.
Today marks the final appearance of both Millicent and the countess. It is also the last time we will visit the 1790s.
The hooded figures Barnabas meets today are identified in the credits as Oberon and Haza. Oberon, King of the Fairies, was a figure in medieval and Renaissance folklore whom Shakespeare used as a character in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Also, MacDonald mentioned Oberon occasionally in his novels. I don’t know where Hall came up with “Haza.” Bookish people pick up vocabulary items all the time, so any of the various words in the world that take that form might have popped into his head when he was writing this episode.
Oberon is played by Peter Kirk Lombard, Haza by Robin Lane. Miss Lane’s acting career seems to have peaked with her turn as Haza, but for the last six years she has been releasing videos on various platforms under the title Badass Women 50+. As of this writing, her bio on YouTube says that she is 89 years old. Until 2022, her videos ran on a cable TV service in NYC, where she was still living then and for all I can tell is still living now.
Peter Lombard died in 2015. He worked steadily on Broadway for a couple of decades. From the point of view of a Dark Shadows enthusiast, the most interesting work he did there was in the original production of 1776, a cast which also included Dark Shadows alums David Ford, Daniel F. Keyes, Emory Bass, and Virginia Vestoff. Those four were all principal members of the cast, while Lombard was a stage manager and Ken Howard’s understudy in the role of Thomas Jefferson. When the cast appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, Howard was absent, but the part of Jefferson was played not by Lombard, but by Roy Poole. I think I can spot Lombard in the background in the costume worn by Poole’s main character, Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island.*
The old age makeup makes it impossible to be sure, but I suspect this is Lombard as Stephen Hopkins.
Lombard bore a resemblance to Carel Struycken, the actor who played the very tall man in Twin Peaks. So much so that when I first saw this episode I was certain he was the same person. But they aren’t related. I do wonder if David Lynch or Mark Frost or casting director Johanna Ray saw this episode and had Lombard in mind when they cast Mr Struycken as “The Fireman,” who like Oberon appears unexpectedly and represents a remote and mysterious world.
*Stephen Hopkins is not only a character in 1776, but also figures in H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward.” Lovecraft says that (the fictional) Joseph Curwen had been a friend and supporter of his when (the historical) Hopkins was first governor of Rhode Island, but that when Curwen was exposed as a menace Hopkins personally took part in the raid on Curwen’s place. Since the story beginning today is based on another of Lovecraft’s tales, a connection between Lombard and Stephen Hopkins qualifies as a mildly amusing coincidence.
We open with a reprise of yesterday’s closing scene. It is November 1897, and time traveler/ recovering vampire Barnabas Collins is about to be reunited with his lost love, Josette DuPrés, who threw herself to her death from the cliff on Widows’ Hill in February 1796. Josette is now reincarnated in the person of Kitty Soames, the dowager countess of Hampshire. Josette’s personality has been emerging from the substrata of Kitty’s unconscious mind in the eight weeks she has been staying at the great estate of Collinwood. Now Kitty and Josette are merging into a symbiont, and that combined being has agreed to marry Barnabas tonight. Kitty/ Josette is in the Old House on the estate, in the bedroom once meant for Josette, waiting for Barnabas to return from the great house where he has told his distant cousin Judith of their wedding plans.
Barnabas enters the bedroom just in time to see Kitty/ Josette assumed bodily into the portrait of Josette that hangs over the mantel. He reaches up to touch Kitty/ Josette, and the two of them both vanish.
Barnabas finds lying himself on the ground, wearing clothes he last put on in the 1790s. He stands up and calls out for Kitty. “Kitty! Kitty! Where are you, Kitty?” He calls her name several more times. Oddly, he stops short of calling out “Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!” In a comment on Danny Horn’s post about the episode at his great Dark Shadows Every Day, user “kosmo13” wrote “It would’ve been cool if they’d had a cat wander into the scene at that moment and had Barnabas say ‘No. Not you!'”*
Barnabas comes face to face with Ben Stokes, who was his indentured servant and fanatically devoted friend in the 1790s. Ben has no idea why Barnabas is talking as if they haven’t seen each other for a long time- they saw each other last night, as far as he is concerned. Barnabas realizes that he has traveled back in time again. He was in 1897 after being dislocated from the 1960s. Now he has returned to February 1796, to the very night Josette killed herself.
Barnabas tries frantically to keep Josette from repeating her suicide. He sends Ben to the great house of Collinwood to see if Josette is in her room there, as she is supposed to be. He is concerned that, since the trip through the portrait left him on the ground near the woods, there is no telling where it may have dropped Kitty/ Josette.
He needn’t have worried about that. We see Josette in bed, as she was in #425, the first time the show took us through this night. Her aunt Natalie, the Countess DuPrés, is with her, and is intensely afraid of a prophecy foretelling Josette’s death this night. That much is identical to what we saw in the previous timeline, when the show was set in the 1790s in February 1968. Josette does tell the countess that she had an odd dream in which she was wearing an unfamiliar dress and having a conversation with a portrait; that dream, which Josette herself dismisses as not at all important, is evidently the only trace of Kitty left in Josette’s conscious mind.
This scene plays on the iconography of these two actresses. From the moment Kathryn Leigh Scott showed up as Kitty in #844, her title has reminded us of Josette’s aunt. So it is with a nice sense of inevitability that we see the show’s first countess again. Moreover, Miss Scott first joined the cast as Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town; Grayson Hall as Maggie’s psychiatrist, Julia Hoffman, MD. So it seems right to us when the countess becomes a therapist and listens intently to Josette’s account of her dream, growing only more interested as Josette insists that the dream was unimportant.
The first time through, Barnabas was trying to kill Josette and turn her into his vampire bride. Wicked witch Angelique, who had made Barnabas a vampire in the first place, lured Josette to the top of Widows’ Hill and showed her a vision of herself as a vampire. When Barnabas showed up, Josette ran from him and jumped off the cliff, flinging herself to a death on the rocks below rather than let him make her what he was.
This time, Barnabas wants Josette to live. He knows what Angelique is planning. During his eight months in 1897, he and Angelique became allies, almost friends. So it is logical that he meets with her and asks her to leave Josette alone. But this is Angelique as she was in #425. She is enraged with Barnabas, and full of hate for Josette. She does listen to him, and for a moment she seems to be considering his request that she stay with him through the night. One wonders how she would have reacted had Barnabas leveled with her about what happened in 1897, explaining why he thinks they can be something other than enemies. But he holds back, telling her nothing. She makes a hostile remark, and vanishes.
Angelique does just what she did the first time- she tricks the countess into leaving Josette’s room, projects a voice that Josette mistakes for Barnabas’ voice calling her to go to Widow’s Hill, and causes Josette to see a vision of herself as a vampire once she is on top of the hill. At the end, we hear footsteps approaching. The last we saw Barnabas, he announced he was hastening to Widows’ Hill to keep Josette from jumping; if he arrives now, that is exactly what he will prompt her to do.
In the 1897 segment, Grayson Hall played broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi and also had a few weeks as Julia. Today she returns to the cast after an absence of more than five weeks. She spent that time in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, where she had a part in a movie called Adam at 6 AM. The cast included Michael Douglas, Joe Don Baker, Dana Elcar, Louise Latham, and Meg Foster. Actor Steve McQueen was one of the producers. Hall and Elcar were the only Dark Shadows alums in the company, though Foster later played an ultra-soapy story opposite David Selby in a miniseries called Washington: Behind Closed Doors.
We haven’t seen the countess since #666. In that one, Barnabas had traveled back to a night a few weeks after the one he arrives in today. He made a terrible mess of things, which is his function on the show, and Ben wound up inadvertently killing the countess. Seeing her today, regular viewers can hope that, whatever misfortunes Barnabas brings with him this time, at least that won’t happen. The countess is a likable character, and while there was a point to showing Ben becoming a murderer it is a point they have already made. They won’t lose anything if they imply that the events we are about to see prevent it from happening.
*Posted 25 December 2024 on Danny Horn, “Not in Canvas Anymore,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 21 June 2016.
It is November 1897, and time traveler/ recovering vampire Barnabas Collins is searching through the burned remains of a cottage recently occupied by famed artist/ criminal lowlife Charles Delaware Tate. Barnabas finds a pair of glasses just outside the front door and a length of chain just inside. The glasses belonged to Tate’s master, evil sorcerer Count Petofi, the chain to a creature named Garth Blackwood whom Petofi and Tate summoned from the depths of Hell. When Barnabas was last in the house, Blackwood had taken Petofi prisoner there and announced his intention to kill him. Petofi couldn’t get far without his glasses, and the chain was Blackwood’s very favorite murder weapon. So Barnabas has reason to believe both of them died in the fire.
Tate shows up. Barnabas demands he paint another portrait of Quentin Collins to replace the one destroyed in the fire. Quentin is Barnabas’ friend and distant cousin, and, because of some magical powers Petofi long ago gave Tate, the portrait kept Quentin from turning into a werewolf. Tate is a jerk about Barnabas’ demands, as he is a jerk about everything, but finally says he will comply. He tells Barnabas to come back to the ruins of the cottage at 10 PM to pick up the portrait. Barnabas is surprised to hear that Tate can work so quickly, and Tate does not explain why he needs so little time. But after all, the important thing is simply that the magic spell is renewed- the portrait doesn’t have to have any particular aesthetic quality. Perhaps a simple sketch will serve that purpose as effectively as did the full oil painting Tate did previously.
Meanwhile, back at the great house of Collinwood, Quentin’s sister Judith is busy with a project of her own. She is torturing her husband to death. He is the odious Gregory Trask, so she has the audience’s sympathy, at least up to a point. She has had Trask bricked up in Quentin’s old room. There is a telephone there which can receive incoming calls, but not make outgoing calls. Judith has been using it to torment Trask. Today, she directs Trask’s attention to two objects which he has somehow overlooked in his time in the room. One is a portrait of Amanda Harris, a woman he tried to seduce while he had Judith imprisoned in a sanitarium. The other is a loaded gun. When she calls him for the last time, she does not receive an answer, evidently because he has shot himself to death.
Judith is the third role Joan Bennett played on Dark Shadows. In the parts of the show set in the 1960s, she plays matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Liz is a depressive personality who keeps trying to kill herself. When from November 1967 to March 1968 the show was set in the 1790s, she played Naomi Collins, Barnabas’ mother, who actually did kill herself when she found out that her son was a vampire. Now she plays someone who, though she was introduced as a psychologically fragile individual, does not kill herself, but drives one of the major villains to commit suicide. Judith’s method of disposing of Trask is not morally defensible, but it is interesting to see Bennett playing a more assertive character.
Trask’s discovery of the portrait of Amanda leads to an interlude in New York City, a place the show hasn’t taken us since #8. Quentin is in a hotel lobby there, waiting for Amanda. She is surprised to see him. They had been lovers, and had planned to leave Collinsport together. He did not meet her at the train station. She had told him that if he did not, she would understand that he had given up on their relationship, so she had gone ahead without him. She says she is so overjoyed at the sight of him that she won’t ask for explanations, but he gives one anyway. He tells her about the portrait. Since she herself came to life as the result of another of Tate’s magical paintings, she can’t very well dismiss the story out of hand. He says that because he does not know where the portrait is, he cannot be sure he won’t become a mindless ravening beast at the next full moon, so he will have to leave her.
Oddly, Judith takes time out from her torture of Trask to perform the same function of motherly talk-to that Liz and Naomi often served. Kitty Soames, the dowager countess of Hampshire, has been staying at Collinwood for the last eight weeks, and is engaged to marry Judith’s stuffy but lovable brother Edward. Contrary to what her title would suggest, Kitty is an American woman in her twenties. Judith sees Kitty coming downstairs with two leather overnight bags. Kitty explains that she will be leaving at once and never returning. She has realized that she cannot marry Edward. She says that she has not told Edward this. Judith says that she is disappointed that they will not be sisters, but that she admires her for facing the truth and doing something about it.
Later, Barnabas comes to the great house. He finds Judith worried that Kitty’s bags are still in the foyer, though she has been gone for hours. He says that he knows where she is. She is waiting for him. They will be married later tonight. Judith is bewildered by this. Barnabas says that they will come back after their wedding and tell Edward what they have done, and that they will then leave Collinwood forever. She is sad to think that they will be going.
In fact, Kitty is two people at once. The young dowager shares her body with the soul of the late Josette DuPrés, whom Barnabas loved when he was a living being in the 1790s and whom he tried to recreate when he was a vampire in the 1960s. Ever since Kitty arrived at Collinwood in #844, Josette has been forcing her way into her conscious mind, triggering psychotic episodes and from time to time pushing Kitty aside and living through her body. Now Kitty is in the bedroom once meant for Josette in the Old House on the grounds of the estate. Josette’s voice keeps speaking to Kitty through the portrait of her that hangs there, urging her to let go and accept her place as part of a combined entity that will love Barnabas and live with him in the bonds of matrimony. Kitty struggles against the voice. For a time she hopes Barnabas will help her thwart Josette’s attempt to come back to life and take the leading part in their symbiotic existence, but when he enters he urges her to give up the fight and become Josette.
Kitty is alone in the room when she suddenly finds herself wearing Josette’s white dress. She floats off the floor and into the portrait. Barnabas enters just in time to see Kitty merge with the portrait. He reaches up to the Kitty/ Josette entity in the frame above the mantel, and he and Kitty both disappear from the screen at the same time.
Josette was first mentioned in #5 as the lady who went over the cliff at Widows’ Hill, and her ghost emerged as the tutelary spirit of Collinwood in the months that followed. In #70, our first view of the Old House involved the first truly ambitious special effect, when Josette’s ghost, who was Kathryn Leigh Scott in a veil and a white dress, emanated from the portrait and took three steps from it down to the floor. When Miss Scott’s Kitty rises up into the same portrait today, longtime viewers will see that momentous little journey in reverse.
Barnabas was not dreamed of until long after Josette’s ghost emerged. When we first saw him in the Old House in #212, he delivered a speech to her portrait telling her that her power on the estate was ended, and for several weeks afterward strange and troubled boy David Collins, who had been the ghost’s close friend, lamented that he could no longer feel her presence. In those days it sounded like Josette was Barnabas’ grandmother, and she had sided with his father in the fateful conflict that led to his becoming a vampire.
Later, Josette was retconned as Barnabas’ lost love. In a plot borrowed from the 1932 film The Mummy, Barnabas decided that Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, was Josette’s reincarnation, and he tried to torture her into accepting this fact. Maggie resisted Barnabas. She ultimately escaped, only to have her memory of his abuse wiped clean by her psychiatrist, Barnabas’ accomplice and future best friend Julia Hoffman, MD.
Maggie was another Kathryn Leigh Scott character. When Miss Scott played Josette in the 1790s segment, the show was sticking to its source material, in which Zita Johanns played Imhotep’s victim Helen Grosvenor in the contemporary sequences and his lost love, Princess Ankh-Esen-Amun, in the flashback to ancient Egypt. It also left us with the uncomfortable feeling that perhaps Barnabas was onto something when he devised his horrifying program of cruelty towards Maggie. Sure, his methods were wrong, but if she “really” was Josette, he wasn’t just crazy.
With Kitty, they take us a step further. Barnabas’ attempt to Josettify Maggie made the show so bleak for so many weeks that longtime viewers will flinch at the thought that Kitty would be right to yield to Josette’s importunings, and even more at the idea that this will lead to a happy marriage between the Kitty/ Josette symbiont and Barnabas. Yet within the context of what we have seen in the 1897 segment, these would seem to be plausible conclusions. The body they share is as much Josette’s as it is Kitty’s, and Kitty has nothing to lose by merging fully into the being who lurks in the substrata of her mind.
For his part, Barnabas’ relationship to Kitty represents almost as drastic a departure from the personality he showed in his relationships to Miss Scott’s previous characters as the reinvention of Josette as his lost love rather than his estranged grandmother did in his early days on the show. He does not abduct her, torture her, or even give her Josette’s hypnotic music box. It is Josette’s ghost, always before shown as a benevolent force, that keeps pressing the transformation on Kitty. Barnabas is a gentle and considerate lover to the Josette part of the Kitty/ Josette complex, and is solicitous to the Kitty part. When Barnabas disappears with Kitty, we reverse not only the walk Josette’s ghost took in #70, but also the speech he gave in #212. So far from wanting to expel Josette from the world of the living as he did then, or turn her into his vampire bride as he tried both with Maggie in 1967 and with the living Josette in 1796, he wants to revive her as herself.
Barnabas’ function on the show, both when he is an outright villain and when he is trying to be the good guy, is to create problems that other characters will have to solve. So this moment of benevolence and rationality cannot last. It is the ultimate indication that the 1897 segment has indeed ended. But it is a beautiful little thing, for the few minutes it lasts.
This episode marks the final appearance of Trask and of Judith. We will see Kitty again tomorrow, but only in a reuse of today’s closing scene. After that she will only be implied as a feature of Josette’s unconscious mind.
Ever since its first time-travel storyline, when it spent November 1967 through March 1969 visiting the 1790s, Dark Shadows has been committed to treating its cast as a repertory theater company. Now, we are coming to the end of the 35th week of an arc set in 1897, and most of the actors are not only playing characters unique to that year but are playing two characters at once. So David Selby joined the cast as rakish libertine Quentin Collins, and Thayer David, who has played several parts on the show, had been playing sorcerer Count Petofi. But a few weeks ago Petofi cast a spell to trade bodies with Quentin. I refer to the villainous Petofi who looks like Quentin as Q-Petofi and to the forlorn Quentin who looks like Petofi as P-Quentin.
Q-PetofiP-Quentin
In #819, Petofi found uptight minister’s daughter Charity Trask to be an irritant, and so he erased her personality. He replaced it with that of late Cockney showgirl/ mentalist Pansy Faye, whom Charity had never met. Pansy has been residing in Charity’s body ever since. Charity had run out of story, and Pansy is a lot of fun, so it would be a pure loss if this transformation were reversed.
Pansy Faye, occupying the former body of Charity Trask.
In #844, a young American woman named Kitty Soames arrived at the great house of Collinwood. Kitty is the dowager countess of Hampshire. The late Earl was a friend of Quentin’s stuffy but lovable brother Edward, and because of his involvement with Petofi he died penniless. Kitty is hoping to marry Edward and rescue her financial position. Since Edward is also penniless and looking for a way out of his troubles, we might look forward to a comedy resolution where each finds out about the other’s poverty on their wedding day.
But that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. From the day of her arrival, Kitty has been having psychotic episodes. These are triggered by the irruption into her consciousness of the mind of the late Josette DuPrés. In the 1790s, Josette was engaged to marry Barnabas Collins. A wicked witch sabotaged their engagement, turned Barnabas into a vampire, and drove Josette to kill herself. Barnabas became obsessed with recreating Josette; in 1967, when the show was set in contemporary times, he tried to achieve this by abducting women and torturing them. Now Barnabas has traveled back in time to 1897, and he is apparently not being evil when he urges Kitty to allow Josette to take over as her primary consciousness.
Barnabas and Kitty, under Josette’s watchful eyes.
Petofi’s magical powers are concentrated in his right hand, and he took them with him when he moved into Quentin’s body. Today we see that he is losing these powers. Q-Petofi confronts Barnabas, who is for the time being free of the effects of the vampire curse. Q-Petofi announces he will restore those effects and touches Barnabas’ forehead with his right hand. When nothing happens, Barnabas taunts him. Later, Q-Petofi confronts Pansy, who has figured out about the body swap. He announces he will turn her back into Charity. He touches her with his right hand, and again nothing happens. She complains that he makes her feel creepy acting like that. The scene between Q-Petofi and Pansy really is hilarious.
For her part, Kitty/ Josette has gone to P-Quentin, whom she believes to be Petofi. She insists he touch her with his magic hand and clear up her identity crisis; unable to convince her he has no powers, he plays along. To his amazement and delight, it works. She realizes she is both Kitty and Josette, and he realizes that he now has Petofi’s powers.
Kitty/ Josette goes to her room in the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Josette has communicated with the living through her portrait since its first appearance in #70; longtime viewers will remember a one-sided conversation strange and troubled boy David Collins had with it in #102. Kitty hears the portrait talking to her, urging her to become Josette, assuring her they will be happy once they meld into a symbiont. Barnabas shows up, and Kitty/ Josette has a candid and endearing conversation with him. She realizes the whole truth about him; she knows everything Josette knows. She cannot decide what she ought to do.
At the beginning of March 1969, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins meditated on some I Ching wands and found himself transported back in time to 1897. Ever since, Dark Shadows has been a costume drama set in that year. For the first several months of the 1897 arc, there were multiple intertwined storylines, each involving several characters, threatening to negate the version of the Collins family we see in the parts of the show set in the 1960s, and requiring a lot of intricate action to unravel.
Now, the original stories are all resolved. Most of the things keeping us from returning to a contemporary setting qualify as fairly minor loose ends- we can see that Judith Collins will get rid of her evil husband Gregory Trask one way or another, and we can see that Kitty Soames, a young American woman who is the dowager countess of Hampshire, will realize she is really the reincarnation of Barnabas’ lost love Josette and will then become unavailable to him. Both of these could be wrapped up in the same episode, and the fates of the other characters don’t need any further explanation. The one exception is the story about sorcerer Count Petofi and rakish Quentin Collins. Petofi has used his magic powers to swap bodies with Quentin. I refer to the villainous Petofi who has hijacked Quentin’s body as Q-Petofi, and to the forlorn Quentin trapped in Petofi’s aging form as P-Quentin.
Now, Q-Petofi has found out that meditating on the right lineup of I Ching wands releases powers that can transport a person to a different period of history, and he makes arrangements for a departure to 1969. Barnabas tries to stop him, but at the end of the episode we see him standing in the drawing room of Collinwood in that year.
Episodes like this present a challenge to someone blogging about the 1897 segment of Dark Shadows. It’s taken up with intricate plot mechanics that depend on story points that would sound ridiculous if you explained them to someone who hasn’t been watching for the last few months, and as Danny Horn explains in his post about the episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day, many of the scenes don’t make logical sense if you stop and think about them. But it is well-paced, the dialogue is good, the through-line of Q-Petofi’s busyness and Barnabas’ scheming is effectively realized, Nancy Barrett has some charming scenes as Cockney showgirl/ mentalist Pansy Faye, and the image of Q-Petofi in 1969 is a strong ending. So it really is a half hour well spent, but if you aren’t going to watch it you will just have to take my word for that.
The drawing room figures in five scenes set in 1897 before it appears in its 1969 configuration. Since the show was done live-to-tape, the stage hands had to change the furniture gradually in between those scenes. Danny lists the changes we can see:
The drawing room set changes from the 1897 set to the 1969 set over the course of the episode, but the change actually happens in stages rather than all at once. The couch and chairs are replaced while they’re still doing 1897 scenes, and then the lamps, telephone and desk are changed for the final scene.
There are six scenes set in the drawing room, but in some of them, you only see a small part of the set, so it’s hard to say exactly when the switches are made. But here’s what you can see:
Act 1, Tate tells Pansy that he’s seen the future: She’s sitting on a red couch. There are red padded chairs facing the couch. Various round lamps around the room, old telephone on the credenza. Act 2 picks up with Tate and Pansy again, no visible change to the set dressing.
Act 3, Barnabas tells Pansy a secret: They huddle in a corner of the drawing room, where you can’t see much. It’s all shot by one camera.
Act 3, Petofi and Pansy drink champagne: The couch has changed from the 1897 red couch to a green 1969 model. We still see the round lamps and the old telephone.
Act 3, Barnabas finds Pansy’s drunk the rest of the champagne: There are now green chairs facing the green couch. There’s also a sideboard with a clock and a green shaded lamp.
Act 3 finish, Petofi enters the 1969 drawing room: All of the lamps have been changed to modern style, and the old telephone has become a modern telephone. The green chairs are facing the green couch. The sideboard has been replaced with a desk, holding some books, a lamp, and the newspaper.
Danny Horn, “Episode 872: Tick Tock,” posted 4 June 2016 on Dark Shadows Every Day.
There is one important set decoration they left in its 1897 position. In the 1960s, a portrait of Jeremiah Collins hangs above the mantel; in 1897, a portrait identified in #3 as that of Isaac Collins hangs there. Isaac is still in place when Q-Petofi enters the 1969 drawing room.
In October 1897, the hypocritical Rev’d Mr Gregory Trask is married to the vastly wealthy Judith Collins, owner of the estate of Collinwood and of the Collins family businesses. For more than thirteen weeks, everything seemed to be going Trask’s way. He had gaslighted Judith into a mental hospital and had almost free rein over all of her assets. In her absence, he invited the lovely and mysterious Amanda Harris to stay in the great house on the estate, and set out to seduce her.
Piece by piece, Trask’s little corner of paradise fell apart. First, 150 year old sorcerer Count Petofi orchestrated a series of events that led Trask to sign a confession to the murder of his first wife, and no matter how many times he destroyed the confession new copies of it kept materializing. Then Petofi erased the personality of Trask’s daughter and enforcer Charity, replacing it with that of late Cockney showgirl/ mentalist Pansy Faye. Later, Amanda fell in love with Judith’s brother Quentin, told Trask off, and wound up leaving for New York by herself. Now, Judith has returned from the mental hospital, all sane and deeply suspicious.
The front door of the great house is Trask’s enemy today. No sooner does he enter it than he finds Pansy in the foyer, singing her song. He demands she stop and tells her he is her father. She laughs at this claim, and reminisces about the late Bertie Faye. Trask goes into the drawing room, and to his horror sees a large oil painting of Amanda on an easel. We saw Pansy setting it up earlier in the episode, and saw her buy it a few days ago. But Trask didn’t see those things, and when she tells him she doesn’t know anything about it, he seems to accept her denials. She exits upstairs.
The front door opens again, and Judith’s brother Edward enters with two other men. One appears to be Quentin, but is in fact Petofi in possession of Quentin’s body. The other appears to be time-traveling vampire Barnabas Collins.
Trask and Edward both believe that Petofi is Quentin; since he is played by David Selby, I call him Q-Petofi. The man who appears to be Barnabas is very weak. He says that his name is indeed Barnabas Collins, but that he is not the vampire. He claims to have arrived from England, to have been attacked by a vampire who looked just like him, and to have little memory of what happened after.
In #845, Pansy went into a cave and found a coffin containing what appeared to be Barnabas. She drove a stake through his heart. When Edward and Q-Petofi met this weak Barnabas yesterday in the doctor’s office, they were skeptical of his story. They took him to the cave, opened the coffin, and saw the body Pansy had staked inside, the stake still lodged in its heart. Since they could see the two of them side by side, Edward could only conclude that the weak man is different from the vampire, and that his story is therefore true. Q-Petofi, well aware of the many magical and science-fictional entities in Barnabas’ orbit, is not at all convinced.
Trask sees the weak Barnabas and is enraged that Edward and Q-Petofi have brought the vampire back from the dead. While Q-Petofi takes the weak Barnabas upstairs to a bedroom, Edward tries to reason with Trask. This is seldom a fruitful exercise. When Edward finally points out that it is broad daylight and the weak Barnabas is alive and moving, Trask is left speechless.
Alone with the weak Barnabas, Q-Petofi tries to trick him into believing that he is Quentin and that he can trust him. When Q-Petofi goes on about all the secrets that Barnabas and Quentin have shared, the weak Barnabas responds only with bewilderment.
Q-Petofi goes back to the cave and sets the coffin on fire, acting on the hypothesis that the destruction of the staked Barnabas will have some kind of effect on the weak Barnabas. We cut back to Collinwood and see that it has none. Trask lets himself into the bedroom. After some small talk, he thrusts a large wooden cross at the weak Barnabas’ face and stands silently for a moment. The weak Barnabas looks up from his bed and asks if Trask is all right. He hurriedly says that he only brought the cross to help him pray for his recovery. The weak Barnabas observes that this is very kind, and closes his eyes while Trask kneels beside the bed.
My wife, Mrs Acilius, points out that not only the actor Jerry Lacy, but the character Gregory Trask, seems to enjoy himself very much when there is something to be righteously indignant about. Not only does Trask have a whole set of self-aggrandizing mannerisms and techniques for silencing everyone else when he is furious, but as a con man an atmosphere of crisis provides him with an opportunity to think on his feet and devise new schemes for bilking people out of whatever they have that he wants. Mr Lacy’s joy in performance runs throughout the whole episode, but Trask’s goes through wild fluctuations, peaking each time he thinks he has found a new way to present himself as the champion of The Almighty and plummeting each time his understanding of the situation is deflated. In his first several appearances, Trask was so overwhelmingly evil and so frequently successful that he was hard to watch. When we see him repeatedly brought up short in an episode like this, all of the discomfort of those early days pays off.
In the drawing room, Edward tells Pansy that there is a sick man in a bed upstairs who looks like the vampire Barnabas and is named Barnabas Collins, but is not the man she staked. She is horrified at the thought. Barnabas was indirectly responsible for the death of Pansy as a physical being, and later murdered her fiancé, the childlike Carl Collins. He also took Charity as one of his victims for a time. Besides, in her manner of dress, quantity of makeup, working-class accent, and brashly friendly manner Pansy is the representative of all the “girls at the docks” upon whom Barnabas has fed down the centuries. So no one has more reason to fear Barnabas than does Pansy in the form of Charity. Edward reassures her as best he can, then goes up to look in on the patient.
Pansy absorbs the news that another Barnabas Collins is in the house.
The scene between Pansy and Edward will remind longtime viewers of the characters the same actors played between November 1967 and March 1968, when Dark Shadows was set in the 1790s. Nancy Barrett was fluttery heiress Millicent Collins, while Louis Edmonds was haughty overlord Joshua Collins. In #450, Millicent had discovered the horrible truth about Barnabas and it had proven to be too much for her rather fragile grip on sanity. She decided that the vampire was not her cousin, but an impostor, and she told Joshua that it was wrong of him to have “That man who says he is Barnabas” in the house.
Not only is Pansy’s horror at the thought of a man who says that he is Barnabas staying at Collinwood reminiscent of Millicent, but her relationship to Charity also reflects the development of Millicent throughout the 1790s segment. Millicent’s transformation from a lighter-than-air comedy character to a darkly mad victim, first of her wicked husband Nathan, then of Barnabas, marked the transition to the climactic phase of the 1790s segment. Charity’s replacement by Pansy in #819 came at a time when the show was flashing many signals that the 1897 segment was nearing its end. Those signals may well have reflected an earlier plan, but 1897 was such a hit that they kept passing by the off-ramps back to the 1960s and restarting the uncertain and frightening journey into the past. Now it seems they really are getting ready to move on, and Pansy’s prominence reminds us of just how radically different a place Collinwood is now than it was when we arrived in this period in #701, at the beginning of March.
Pansy is still quaking at the thought of another Barnabas Collins when Q-Petofi enters and closes the doors of the drawing room behind him. Pansy hasn’t quite figured out his true identity, but she knows that he is not really Quentin, and that he does not mean her well. She is terrified and says she will scream unless he opens the doors.
Regular viewers have reason to believe Pansy will do more than scream. In #829, she tried to stab Quentin. And those who have been with the show for a long time will remember what happened in #204, broadcast and set in April 1967. Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, another Nancy Barrett character, found herself in the drawing room with dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis. When Willie closed the doors and refused to open them, Carolyn didn’t bother screaming- she pulled a loaded gun on him.
Q-Petofi has magical powers that neither Quentin nor Willie could match, so he is not in mortal jeopardy as they would be were they to put themselves in his position. But he has created a volatile situation, and unless he resolves it within a few seconds he is likely to find himself with a huge mess on his hands. Rather than falling back on his occult talents, Q-Petofi takes a page from Quentin’s book and charms Pansy into cooperating. He tells her that he is as frightened of Barnabas as she is. That intrigues her sufficiently that she starts listening to him. He tells her that only she can discern whether the man in the sick bed upstairs is what he claims to be. A moment later, Q-Petofi has persuaded Pansy to go with him to see the weak Barnabas. The episode ends with Pansy looking at the weak Barnabas lying in bed, her eyes widening in a strong but unspecified reaction. We will have to wait until tomorrow to find out whether she is terrified at the sight of her nemesis or amazed to see an innocent man wearing the hated face.
It is 20 October 1897. Angelique, immortal witch and time-traveler, has discovered that her sometime fiancé, Quentin Collins, is not himself. He is 150 year old sorcerer Count Petofi, and Petofi is him, having used his magic powers to force Quentin to trade bodies with him. I will refer to the villainous Petofi who looks like Quentin as Q-Petofi, and to the forlorn Quentin who looks like Petofi as P-Quentin.
Q-Petofi
Yesterday, Q-Petofi caught Angelique trying to help P-Quentin. He attacked her, and we open today in a cave where he has imprisoned her. He tells her he has stripped her of her powers. He demands she tell him what she and time-traveling mad scientist Julia Hoffman have been doing. Regular viewers know that Julia is gone, having vanished from 1897 and returned to the 1960s in #858. That Q-Petofi does not know this is one of the few signs we have had recently that he has limitations.
Q-Petofi leaves Angelique in the cave with a chained coffin. He tells her that it is the one in which her ex-husband, vampire Barnabas Collins, was staked (#845.) She looks at the coffin and gives a little soliloquy about how she needs Barnabas, but he cannot help her.
Q-Petofi is not the only resident of the great house of Collinwood who is not the person he seems to be. Kitty Soames, a young American woman who is the dowager countess of Hampshire, came to Collinwood intending to get Quentin’s stuffy but lovable brother Edward Collins to marry her by concealing some key facts about her financial status. But the very day she arrived, in #844, Kitty found that she was the one most gravely deprived of information about herself. As soon as she saw the portrait of Barnabas that hangs by the front door in the foyer, she became possessed by the spirit of Barnabas’ lost love Josette.
Kitty’s episodes of Josettification have continued. Today’s begins with another look at the portrait and a longing sigh. As sight of the chained coffin sets off Angelique’s yearning for Barnabas, so the portrait is the visual cue that triggers Josette to come to the surface of Kitty’s mind. By the end of the episode, she will be in Josette’s bedroom at the Old House on the estate, telling an unseen person that she is waiting for him.
Kitty is still herself most of the time. And we can assume that sooner or later, Petofi will be defeated and Quentin will return to his right body. But a third resident of the great house has made a permanent and irreversible change of spirit. Her body is that of Charity Trask, whose father, the odious Gregory Trask, is married to Quentin and Edward’s sister Judith. But in #819, Petofi annihilated Charity’s personality and replaced it with that of Pansy Faye, a Cockney showgirl/ mentalist who came to Collinwood in #771 and was killed that very night, without ever having met Charity.
Angelique and Kitty/ Josette yearn for Barnabas’ return. Increasingly, the audience does too- there doesn’t seem to be anywhere the story can go until he comes back. That sets them and us against Pansy. She doesn’t share our concern for narrative progression- she is such a daffy invention she can amuse us all by herself. And she knows that Barnabas was a vampire, who preyed on Charity and was ultimately, if indirectly, responsible for Pansy’s death. Indeed, it was she who drove the stake in #845. So Barnabas is absolutely the last person Pansy wants to see again. But now someone else has emerged in next to last place.
On Friday, Pansy looked at Q-Petofi and realized that he was not Quentin. She confronted him with questions that Quentin could answer but he couldn’t, exposing him to Angelique as an impostor. When Pansy shut herself in her room, Q-Petofi went upstairs and through her door threatened that if she didn’t keep quiet “her days [would be] numbered.” Now, she has passed a note to Edward reporting on the incident. Edward and Q-Petofi meet with Pansy in her room. She tells Edward about the visions and sensings that led her to conclude that the man with him is not really Quentin. Edward thinks Pansy is just a delusion Charity is having, and so cannot ascribe much evidentiary value to these experiences. Q-Petofi claims that when he said “her days are numbered” he meant that her days as a resident of the house were numbered if she went on saying bizarre things about him. Edward asks Pansy if she might be mistaken in her interpretation of her psychic data. She says she never has been before, but allows, in a very reasonable tone, that it is possible she could be this time.
Pansy is, at the moment, the only person who could possibly be an ally for P-Quentin in his attempt to return to his own body. She does not seem to be a match for Q-Petofi’s magical powers, and so others would have to be recruited to help in the fight. But if she is now as unsure as it seems, P-Quentin doesn’t even have a place to start.
When Kitty/ Josette is in the room at the Old House, she looks at the portrait of Josette and sees that it is signed and dated. We’ve seen the portrait many times since its first appearance in #70, and it has never before borne either a signature or a date. The signature is “Coswell,” which is as good as any.
The date on the portrait is 1797, which is rather less good. In #402, set early in January 1796, we saw the portrait delivered to the Old House. Moreover, it was in #425, set in February 1796, that Josette flung herself to her death from the top of Widows’ Hill. So if this portrait is a replacement for the original, it was painted at a time when the subject was unavailable for further sittings.
Moreover, Kitty misstates the current date as 1797 in a letter to her mother, which is supposed to be a sign of her Josettification. Viewers who remember the 1790s flashback will just be puzzled by this, while those who do not are unlikely to see much significance in the date at all. It is hard to see why they’ve decided to retcon this particular point.
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