quentin collins – Page 12 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 742: Barnabas, Quentin, and the advantage of being seen together

We open in the cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, where the rakish Quentin Collins has triumphantly confronted his sister-in-law and sometime lover, Laura Murdoch Collins, with a telegram from the authorities in Alexandria, Egypt, declaring that she died in that city the year before. Laura points out that the fact that she is standing in front of him and breathing would tend to limit the credence such a document might be expected to command. Quentin hadn’t thought of that. He looks puzzled for a moment, then says that even if no one else is convinced, he is now sure that she is dead.

Laura, unable to believe that Quentin really is this stupid. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Viewers who have been with Dark Shadows from the beginning will particularly enjoy this exchange. Another iteration of Laura, also played by Diana Millay, was on the show from December 1966 to March 1967, when the dramatic date was contemporary with the broadcast date. In those days, the authorities in Phoenix, Arizona, kept sending messages to the residents of the great estate of Collinwood concerning their reasons for believing that Laura was dead. Most of those messages were received with a laugh, then with irritation that a bunch of brain-dead bureaucrats wouldn’t stop pestering them with reports that were obviously false. But there were a few times when characters took them with an inexplicable seriousness. It’s a relief to see that this part of the show, set in the year 1897, will not include any of those jarringly foolish reactions.

Quentin and Laura argue about her children. She wants to take them and leave Collinwood; he asks what she will accept instead. Quentin’s pretense that he would have anything to offer her that might be tempting so amuses Laura that she doesn’t bother to be insulted. When he says that he will give her money, she laughs. The penniless Quentin says that he will steal any amount she names. He claims to “have powers.” Before Laura returned to Collinwood in #729, we twice saw Quentin take part in unholy summoning rituals on this set (#711 and #718,) each of which did result in communication with the spiritual forces of darkness. It does seem to be a bit of an exaggeration for him to claim to “have powers,” though. Especially so when he is talking to someone whom he believes to have transcended death.

A male servant comes to the door. Quentin believes this man to be Laura’s lover, and nearly says so today. In fact, Quentin has severely underestimated Laura in every way. She did die in Alexandria. But she has also died in other places, at other times, and will do so again. She is an undead fire witch who periodically incinerates herself and rises from the ashes as a humanoid Phoenix. The man is not her lover in any human sense. Rather, one of the ways she keeps herself more or less alive is by draining heat from his body in a kind of dry vampirism.

Quentin leaves Laura alone with the servant. Opposite David Selby, Diana Millay had shown her gift for dry comedy to great advantage. Once he exits and she is alone with the servant, her manner shifts abruptly. She suddenly starts overacting and sounding false. I think that is down to the actor who plays the servant, Roger Davis. Mr Davis was notoriously abusive of his female scene partners, and she has to play her scene in his arms. It would have been difficult for anyone to relax sufficiently to give a good performance when she was stuck in that unenviable position.

Laura is not the only vampiric presence at Collinwood these days. Time-traveler Barnabas Collins is the old-fashioned blood-sucking kind, and we see him rise from his coffin. He summons his blood thrall Charity Trask to come to him at the Old House on the estate. Charity comes. Several of Barnabas’ female victims have gone through a particular series of stages. First, they are elated at their new connection with Barnabas, and want to devote themselves to him as slavishly as possible. Then, they become reluctant to go on serving as his breakfast, and make anguished protests about wanting to return to their previous lives. Finally, they rebel. Charity has entered the second stage. She says that her father expects her. Barnabas has seen all this before, and has learned to have fun with it. He tells Charity that he needs her more than her father does. He bares his fangs and bites her, after which she is back to elated servility.

Barnabas tells Charity that she will be assisting him in a ceremony. She waits in the Old House while Barnabas goes to the great house on the estate to fetch something he needs for that ceremony.

We cut to Quentin’s room in the great house, where we see a mirror. It shows the reflection of Quentin kissing maidservant Beth. When we first saw them talk to each other in #701, Beth was fighting her attraction to Quentin and trying to resist his attempts to seduce her. That’s what was supposed to be going on, anyway, but we didn’t actually see it. Terrayne Crawford played Beth’s lines according to the literal meaning of the words, with the result that for the first six weeks of the part of Dark Shadows set in 1897 Beth seemed sincerely uninterested in Quentin, and his overtures were just sexual harassment. Now Ms Crawford no longer has to play conflicting emotions. Beth is simply in love with Quentin. She gets that point across adequately.

Beth pulls away from Quentin, explaining that she has to get back to work. He talks about ending his marriage so that they can be together permanently; he says that it may serve their cause to stop being so discreet, since a little scandal may prompt the rest of his family to drop their opposition to any change in the status quo. While they get ready to part, we see the window, outside of which a bat is squeaking incessantly. They exit, and Barnabas appears.

Barnabas rummages through Quentin’s desk and finds a book. Beth reenters and catches him. He tells her he came for the book and was planning to leave a note. A smirk on her face, Beth says that it will not be necessary to do so, as she will tell Quentin all about what she has seen.

Beth goes downstairs and meets Quentin in the foyer. Quentin asks what book it was Barnabas took. She says that all she saw of the title was the word “dead.” Evidently Quentin has quite a few books with the word “dead” in the title, because he has to ask where exactly Barnabas found it. She says it was in the desk, and he rushes off to the Old House.

It was the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and Barnabas used it to perform a rite calling on Amun-Ra to cause the spirit of one of Laura’s previous incarnations to appear before him. At that, we cut to the cottage, where the currently alive-ish Laura grows weak and vanishes. Back in the Old House, we see the ghost take shape. Charity sees it too, and runs screaming out the front door. Quentin enters just in time to see the end of Barnabas’ conversation with the phantasmal Laura. The phantom looks at Quentin, screams, and disappears.

On Friday, Laura said that no one knew just how deeply Quentin was obsessed with the occult. His own absurd claim today to “have powers” so great that he could make it worth Laura’s while to leave without her children confirms that he is very far gone in this obsession. So when he sees that Barnabas is not only doing battle with the same adversary whom he is trying to confront, but is also able to conjure up spirits from the vasty deep, we can be confident that Quentin’s hostility to his recently arrived “cousin from England” will soon be evaporating. As Tony Peterson might say, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Episode 738: The rest of the truth

This episode ends with one of the most thrilling moments in all of Dark Shadows.

The show’s first supernatural menace was undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, who was on it from December 1966 to March 1967. Its second was vampire Barnabas Collins, who first appeared in April 1967. Laura herself was presented with many tropes that conventionally mark vampires; for example, they laid great emphasis on the fact that Laura was never seen eating or drinking. And Laura’s story was structured very much like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with well-meaning governess Vicki taking Mina’s role as the driving force behind the opposition to her. Presumably, if Barnabas had been staked and destroyed as the original plan envisioned, Vicki would have led the fight against him as well, and in #275 driven the stake into his heart. But Barnabas brought the show a new audience, and so Vicki was never called on to go to battle with him. Her character withered and was written out, and he replaced her as its chief protagonist.

In early 1967, Vicki learned that Laura had appeared at least twice before, and had died in strikingly similar ways each time. In 1767, Laura Murdoch Stockbridge was burned to death with her young son David; in 1867, Laura Murdoch Radcliffe was burned to death with her young son David; and in 1967, Vicki found Laura Murdoch Collins beckoning her young son David to join her in the flames consuming a wooden building. At the last second, Vicki broke through David’s trance and he ran to her, escaping the flames.

In November 1967, the show established that Barnabas lived on the great estate of Collinwood as a human in 1795, and that he became a vampire as a result of the tragic events of that year. If Barnabas were the same age in 1795 that Jonathan Frid was in 1967, he would have been born late in 1752, meaning that he would have been a teenager when Laura Murdoch Stockbridge and little David Stockbridge went up in smoke. The Stockbridges were a very wealthy family, so they would likely have been on familiar terms with Barnabas and the other rich Collinses of Collinsport, and the deaths of Laura and David would have been one of the major events in the area in those days. So longtime viewers have been wondering ever since whether Barnabas knew Laura, and if so what he knew about her.

Now Barnabas has traveled back in time to the year 1897, and there he meets another incarnation of Laura. He is thunderstruck at the sight of her. In her bland, enigmatic way, she expresses curiosity about his reaction, and he collects himself sufficiently to make some flattering remarks about her beauty. As soon as he is alone with his blood thrall, Miss Charity Trask, he declares that Laura has been dead for over a hundred years. So has he, but apparently when a woman rises from the dead to prey on the living that’s different, somehow. We saw this same old double standard a couple of weeks ago, when libertine Quentin Collins expressed shock at Laura’s return from the dead, when he himself had died and been a zombie just the week before.

If Laura did know Barnabas when she was as she is now and he was an adolescent, it is no wonder she does not seem to recognize him. She knows that there is a Barnabas Collins on the estate, and has heard that he is a descendant of the eighteenth century bearer of the same name. She would expect him to resemble the boy she knew, but would not necessarily know what that boy looked like when he was in his forties.

This is the first time we’ve seen Charity since Barnabas bit her in #727. She lives in the town of Rockport, which in the 1960s was far enough away from Collinwood that in #521 it was worthy of note that you could dial telephone numbers there directly. In 1897, when automobiles were rare and roads weren’t made for the few that did exist, a long-distance relationship between vampire and blood thrall would seem quite impractical. Still, in #732 we saw a character make two round trips between Rockport and Collinwood in a single evening, so I suppose it could be managed.

Barnabas’ recognition of Laura is a fitting conclusion to a fine episode. Much of it is devoted to a three-cornered confrontation between Laura, her twelve year old son Jamison Collins, and her brother-in-law/ ex-lover/ mortal enemy, Quentin. Danny Horn analyzes this in his post about the episode at Dark Shadows Every Day. I recommend that post highly. All I would add is that as it plays out today, the confrontation makes me suspect that the writers of the show may have done more planning than Danny usually credits them with. Jamison is the only person Quentin loves, and so far we have seen that Jamison loves Quentin back. When he learns that Quentin is his mother’s foe, Jamison turns against Quentin. Barnabas traveled back in time after Quentin’s ghost had made life impossible for everyone in 1969. The evil of Quentin’s spirit fell heaviest on David Collins, whom Quentin had possessed, turned into another version of Jamison, and was in the process of killing. Nothing yet has explained why Quentin’s ghost would focus its malignity on the image of Jamison. Actress Diana Millay used to claim that Laura was added to the 1897 segment at the last minute because she told Dan Curtis she wanted to work, but Millay famously enjoyed testing the credulity of Dark Shadows fans with outlandish remarks. I wonder if a falling-out between Quentin and Jamison over Laura was in the flimsies all along.

Charity makes her first entrance in the great house of Collinwood. Quentin is apologizing to her for some boorish behavior when he realizes she hasn’t been listening to him at all. She is completely absorbed in the eighteenth century portrait of Barnabas that hangs in the foyer. She excuses herself and wafts out the front door.

In Barnabas’ house, Charity says that he makes her feel beautiful, and that she wants to see herself in a mirror. Barnabas is a bit sheepish about the particulars of vampirism, and so he changes the subject. We cut from this exchange to Laura’s room in the great house, where she is with a servant named Dirk whom she has enthralled to serve as a source of body heat. That scene opens with a shot in a mirror, making the point that Laura’s relationship with Dirk is a reflection of Barnabas’ relationship with Charity. Earlier, there had been a clumsy attempt at an artsy shot of Laura reflected in Quentin’s sherry glass. That does show us that Laura casts a reflection and that her relationship with Quentin has been affected by his drinking, but it calls too much attention to itself to do much more than that.

The portrait in the foyer is hugely important to Barnabas. It made its debut on the show in #204, the day before his name was first mentioned and more than a week before he himself premiered. His thralls stare at it and receive his commands through it. He himself uses it as a passport, appealing to his resemblance to it as proof that he is a descendant of its subject and therefore a member of the Collins family. Today, Barnabas is surprised when Charity comes to his house; he wasn’t transmitting a message through the portrait summoning her. Instead, it was functioning as another mirror, in which Charity, who has become a part of Barnabas, could see the motivating force within her own personality.

Dirk is played by Roger Davis, a most unappealing actor. At one point he makes this face while Dirk is involved in some kind of mumbo-jumbo:

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

At one point today, Quentin tells Jamison that he shouldn’t be afraid of telling the servants what to do, since after all he will someday be the master of Collinwood. Jamison takes this altogether too much to heart, and spends the rest of the episode ordering everyone around. David Henesy is a good enough actor to extract the comic value from this. For example, when he turns to Quentin, says “I’ll talk to you later!,” and keeps walking, we laughed out loud.

Episode 737: The suffering of some people

Laura Collins is the estranged wife of stuffy Edward and the mortal enemy of Edward’s brother, libertine Quentin. Only Quentin knows that Laura is an undead fire witch. He has found the Egyptian urn housing the magic flame that gives life to Laura, and has extinguished the flame.

In the great house of Collinwood, Quentin and Edward’s spinster sister Judith notices that Laura has taken ill. Judith goes off to order a servant to prepare a hot cup of tea for Laura, and is alarmed when she returns to the drawing room and finds that Laura has gone. Quentin enters, and Judith asks him if he saw Laura. Judith explains that Laura is ill, and is appalled at Quentin’s indifference.

Laura has gone to the gazebo on the grounds, where she hid her urn under an armillary sphere. She finds that the urn is gone. Surly groundskeeper Dirk Wilkins chances upon her; she clutches at him. He is shocked at how cold she is, and is afraid of how the scene would be interpreted if anyone saw them in each others’ arms.

Dirk takes Laura back to the great house. Quentin insists on walking her upstairs to her bedroom. While she lies in bed, he taunts her with her doom, reminding her that she had treated him the same way a few nights ago when she thought he was dying. Quentin’s behavior is really abominable in this scene, but as David Selby plays him he keeps the audience’s affection. He visibly thinks about each line before he says it, so that we can really believe he is finding his way through what is after all a bizarre situation and is deciding what to say to Laura. He is relaxed and easy in his physical movement, and modulates his delivery subtly in response to every cue.

After Quentin leaves, Laura prays to the gods of ancient Egypt to take possession of Dirk and send him to her room. They oblige; Dirk finds himself standing by the fire in the drawing room and speaking a few words of old Egyptian, then heads upstairs.

Dirk and Laura take hold of each other while she is in bed. There are a few moments of dissonance when Diana Millay has to reposition herself to get Roger Davis’ hands onto more broadcast standards-friendly parts of her body while Laura insists Dirk hold her ever closer and he protests he must not, but it isn’t as bad as we might expect considering Mr Davis’ usual practice of assaulting his female scene partners. They speak each line more rapidly and more breathily than the one before. Mr Davis has both feet on the floor, but the result is still the most sex-like encounter we have seen so far on Dark Shadows.

Dirk takes hold of Laura while she is in bed. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Mr Davis’ performance is the opposite of Mr Selby’s. He is as stiff as Mr Selby is relaxed, holding himself rigidly still even when he is grappling with Diana Millay in bed. He tends to take a deep breath and deliver each speech as a single exhalation, making it impossible for him to show thought or adjust his approach while speaking. So even though today’s action shows us Quentin at his most despicable and Dirk at his most innocent, our loyalties are firmly with Quentin.

Joan Bennett famously said that Mr Davis was show business’ answer to the question “What would Henry Fonda have been like if he had had no talent?” Not only does his face resemble Fonda’s, but by his own admission he often mimicked Fonda while acting. There is nothing wrong with mimicry- John Gielgud was as good an actor as any, and he used to say that from the time he first saw Claude Rains in a play, his acting style consisted of imitating Claude Rains. He also said that imitating Rains was a great improvement over his previous style, which was imitating Noel Coward. Mr Davis’ readings of his one-line speeches today are distinctly Fonda-like, and the longer speeches may also have been if he had been breathing normally while delivering them. Today Mr Selby also sounds very much like the actor he tends to mimic, Joseph Cotten. I suspect Cotten would have been more flattered than Fonda had the two of them watched this episode!

Episode 736: Quentin and Magda find Laura’s urn

In this episode, libertine Quentin Collins teams up with broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi to find an Egyptian urn belonging to Quentin’s enemy, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Quentin has learned that the urn contains a magic fire, and that if the fire goes out Laura will die.

Quentin and Magda find the urn hidden under an armillary sphere near the gazebo on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. Quentin takes the lid off the sphere, and the flame jumps out. He then takes some sand from a decorative pot near the gazebo and starts heaping it on the flame. If the flame keeps burning when the lid is on the urn, you’d think only magic could put it out. Then again, it is Collinwood- maybe they have magic sand around. The flame does fade from view, and we cut to a scene of Laura losing her strength.

Quentin and Magda find the urn under the armillary sphere. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In a movie that runs two hours or less, the characters can be frantically absorbed in a search for any old thing. Alfred Hitchcock famously made that point when he called the objects of these searches “MacGuffins.”

But when a show that fills a thirty minute time slot five days a week and a storyline can stretch on for months, a MacGuffin has to represent something important about a character or a relationship between characters. So when, in the early days of the show, strange and troubled boy David Collins tried to kill his father Roger by sabotaging his car, it was fitting that the resulting plot spent a lot of time on the bleeder valve David removed from the car’s braking system. David is interested in mechanical work, and in his hostility to his son Roger refuses to share that interest or do anything to support it.

It was less successful when Roger was suspected of murder and the piece of evidence he spent several weeks obsessing over was a filigreed fountain pen belonging to his friend-turned-nemesis Burke Devlin. There was some obvious sexual symbolism in the question of where Burke’s pen is, and that symbolism did focus our attention on the question of what exactly Burke and Roger’s relationship was like before they turned against each other. Had writers Art Wallace and Francis Swann stayed with the show, they might have used that question to make the pen a powerfully evocative image. But Ron Sproat and Malcolm Marmorstein took over the writing duties as the fountain pen story was getting started. Sproat was gay himself, and perhaps for that reason made a point of avoiding any suggestion of homoeroticism in his work. Marmorstein was just clueless. In their hands, the pen was just a pen, and the 21 episodes devoted to the search for it were not among the great artistic achievements in the history of television.

The urn does remind us that Laura is supposed to have a mystical connection to Egypt, which is more meaning than Sproat dared or Marmorstein could attach to Burke’s pen. But her relationship to that country is not central to anything we see, as David’s relationship to his father was central to what we saw in the early days. So as metonymy for Laura and Egypt it is marginally more exciting than the pen was as a metonymy for Roger and Burke, but significantly less exciting than was the bleeder valve as a metonymy for David and Roger.

At the beginning of the episode, we have one of the most preposterously bad special effects we’ve seen so far, which is saying a lot. Teacher Tim Shaw is rescuing Laura’s daughter Nora from a burning school building. The school as seen in the green screen is hilariously unconvincing.

Episode 732: The possessor and the possessed

This episode features two undead blonde fire witches. Laura Collins was Dark Shadows‘ first supernatural menace when she was on the show from December 1966 to March 1967. In those days, the show was set in contemporary times, and it was slow-paced and heavy on atmosphere. Laura began as a vague, enigmatic presence and gradually came into focus as a dynamic villain.

Now the show is fast-paced, action-packed, and set in the year 1897. Laura is once again the estranged wife of the eldest brother of the matriarch of the great estate of Collinwood. This time, she has come back to Collinwood after running off with her husband’s brother, Quentin. Unlike her 1960s iteration, this Laura is not at all happy about the periodic immolations that renew her existence as a humanoid Phoenix. She bears a grudge against Quentin for betraying her to the priests of a secret cult in Alexandria, Egypt, who incinerated her some months before. For his part, Quentin is shocked that Laura is alive now. When he tries to remedy the situation by strangling Laura, a feeling of intense heat overwhelms him and he collapses.

The other undead blonde fire witch is Angelique, who was first on the show from November 1967 to March 1968, when it was set in the 1790s. She appeared in 1897 when Quentin and one of his fellow Satanists conjured her up out of the fireplace in the caretaker’s cottage on the grounds of Collinwood in #711. They wanted a demon to come from the depths of Hell and help them do battle with Quentin’s distant cousin, the mysterious Barnabas Collins. Unknown to Quentin, Barnabas is a vampire and Angelique is the witch who originally made him one. Barnabas has traveled back in time to prevent Quentin becoming a ghost who will ruin things for everyone at Collinwood in 1969. Angelique is delighted to find herself back at Collinwood. She is determined to make Barnabas love her, no matter how many of his friends and relatives she has to kill along the way.

As it turns out, it was Angelique who caused Quentin to collapse before he could kill Laura. She summons Barnabas and tells him she will let Quentin die unless he lives with her as man and wife. When Angelique points out that if Quentin dies now, the results will be disastrous for the Collinses of 1969, Barnabas capitulates.

Barnabas takes Angelique to the great house. There, he introduces her to governess Rachel Drummond as his fianceé. Rachel has been falling in love with Barnabas, and their relationship has been the only bright spot in the otherwise extremely stressful time she has had at Collinwood. At one point today Rachel is on the telephone to someone she and Barnabas both hate; Barnabas takes it upon himself to press on the hook, hanging the phone up in the middle of the conversation. Many men do this to women in Dark Shadows, and it is usually very clear that the women don’t like it at all. Rachel objects only mildly, and quickly accepts it. That she isn’t bothered by such an aggressive act suggests that she already feels a very strong bond with Barnabas.

When Rachel hears that Barnabas is committed to someone else, she rushes out as quickly as possible. Later, Barnabas will meet her on the terrace and intimate that his relationship with Angelique is not what it seems. Rachel does not quite know what to make of this, but at moments we catch her rolling her eyes like someone who knows malarkey when she hears it.

Rachel listening to Barnabas explain that they shouldn’t let his fianceé come between them. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Angelique wakes Quentin. They talk about Laura. By magical means, Angelique discovers that Laura’s life depends on an Egyptian urn that she keeps with her at all times. This is another retcon; we saw every worldly possession Laura had in 1966, and there was no urn in sight. Quentin resolves to find this urn and destroy it, ridding himself of Laura forever.

Episode 731: Your greatest weakness

One of the first “Big Bads” on Dark Shadows was crazed handyman Matthew Morgan, played by Thayer David. Matthew was the most devoted employee of reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Joan Bennett.) Matthew took his devotion to Liz to such an extreme that he was a menace to everyone else. In November and December of 1966, we learned that Matthew had decided that Liz’ second most dedicated employee, plant manager Bill Malloy, was a threat to her. Matthew had tried to put a stop to Bill’s doings. Not knowing his own strength, Matthew accidentally killed Bill. When well-meaning governess Victoria Winters discovered what had happened, Matthew abducted Victoria, held her prisoner in the long-deserted Old House on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, and was about to murder her when a bunch of ghosts emanated from the show’s supernatural back-world and scared him to death.

In those days, Dark Shadows was a slow-paced “Gothic” drama set in contemporary times. From November 1967 to March 1968, it was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and its plot often moved at a breakneck speed. Among the characters then was much-put-upon indentured servant Ben Stokes, who like Matthew was played by Thayer David. At first Ben made a stark contrast with Matthew. He was as relaxed, friendly, and reasonable as Matthew was tense, forbidding, and paranoid. But when his one ally among the Collins family, scion Barnabas, was cursed to become a vampire, Ben’s devotion made him resemble Matthew ever more closely. In his development, we saw a retrospective reimagining of Matthew. The curses that were placed on Barnabas and the rest of the Collinses from the 1790s on had burdened the village of Collinsport, and people who grew up there labored under the consequences of those curses and of the Collinses’ attempts to conceal them. Ben was what Matthew might have been had he not been warped by the evil that began when black magic was first practiced in the area so many generations before.

In January 1969, the show briefly returned to 1796, to a time coinciding with the last days of the earlier flashback. We saw that by that point, the curses had already transformed life on and around the great estate. In that period, Ben’s efforts to protect Barnabas led him inadvertently to kill a man, not knowing his own strength, and then to cover that crime up by killing a woman, not at all inadvertently. He had become Matthew. The curse placed on Barnabas had become the curse of all those who work for the Collinses and all of those who live in the shadow of their wealth and power.

Before Matthew, Dark Shadows‘ chief villain was high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins (Louis Edmonds); after, it was Roger’s estranged wife, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins (Diana Millay.) In this episode, the makers of the show take a page from its 1790s flashbacks. They have Edmonds and Millay reconceive the Roger and Laura of that atmospheric, sometimes almost action-free soap as characters appropriate to the fast-paced supernatural thriller it now is.

Since #701, Dark Shadows has been set in the year 1897. Louis Edmonds plays Roger’s grandfather Edward; Diana Millay plays Edward’s estranged wife, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. In his days as a villain, Roger’s defining characteristic was his unnatural lack of family feeling. He had squandered his entire inheritance, a fact which did not bother him in the least. When his sister Liz confronted him in #41 about the difficulties he had created by putting his half of the family business up for sale, he airily replied that he had enjoyed his inheritance. When in #273 Liz and Roger discussed a blackmail plot of which she had been the victim, Roger admitted that had he known her terrible secret, he probably would have used it to force her to give him her half of the estate so that he could squander that, as well.

It wasn’t only the family’s material possessions and Liz’ right to them to which Roger was indifferent. He openly hated his son, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy.) He continually insulted David, badgered Liz to send David away, and in #83 coldly manipulated David’s fears to lead him to try to murder Victoria.

In the 1897 segment, Edward is as stuffily serious about the family business as Roger was in 1966 nihilistically apathetic about it. Edward loves his children, twelve year old Jamison (David Henesy) and nine year old Nora, but his rage at Laura has come between himself and them. Laura left Edward the year before to run after Edward’s brother, breezy libertine Quentin (David Selby.) Edward tried to conceal the fact that his brother cuckolded him. He has repeatedly declared that Laura “No longer exists!” and has forbidden her name to be mentioned in the house.

Edward trapped between the enigmatic Laura and the exuberant Quentin. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

For his part, Quentin bears a striking similarity to the early, wicked Roger. He wants money only to spend it, a fact which he cheerfully admits. He tried to forge a will in his grandmother Edith’s name to cheat his sister Judith (Joan Bennett) out of her inheritance, having previously threatened to kill Edith. He does have great affection for Jamison, but since he often uses the boy as a pawn in Satanic ceremonies, his fondness for his nephew is not much of an improvement over Roger’s hatred for his son. Indeed, Quentin’s resemblance to Roger connects the 1897 segment not only to the early months of the show, but also to the weeks immediately preceding it. Early in 1969, Quentin’s ghost had taken possession of David Collins and was causing him to die. When we see that Quentin is now what Roger was originally, David’s ordeal takes on a new dimension. He is dying for the sins of his father.

In this episode, Laura has returned. Edward has offered her a great deal of money to go away and never come back; she refuses. She threatens to tell the world about her relationship with Quentin if Edward does not let her stay at Collinwood. Edward buckles to this blackmail. Laura tells him that “Family pride is your greatest weakness,” making him Roger’s exact opposite.

When Laura was at Collinwood from December 1966 to March 1967, her old boyfriend Burke Devlin kept pestering her with his suspicion that he, not Roger, was David Collins’ father. Burke was not the first character to bring this idea up. Roger had mentioned it to Liz in #32, when they were talking about an attempt David had made to kill Roger. At that time, Liz was horrified that Roger seemed to want to believe that David was Burke’s natural son.

It seems unlikely that Quentin is Jamison’s father. They have been firm about 1870 as Quentin’s date of birth, and in 1897 Jamison is quite plainly twelve. Laura may have gone on to marry her own grandson, but it would be a bit of a stretch for her to have started sleeping with her brother-in-law when he was fifteen, even if he did look like David Selby.

But Roger’s anger and jealousy about Burke and Laura do mirror Edward’s about Quentin and Laura. It was abundantly clear that Roger and Burke’s deepest pain regarding Laura was that their intense attachment to each other was disrupted when she left Burke for Roger; Diana Millay used her gift for dry comedy to make this explicit in a scene the three of them played in the groundskeeper’s cottage in #139. Likewise, Edward’s frustration with and disappointment in his brother is at least as deep a source of anguish to him as is his loss of Laura’s love.

Laura, too, is quite different this time around. The first Laura story took shape gradually over a period of weeks, as Laura herself emerged from the mist. Now Laura is a forceful presence from her first appearance. Originally we heard that Laura had married into several of the leading families of the Collinsport region; now they have given up on the idea of developing other leading families, and Laura just keeps coming back to the Collinses. In the first story, they laid great emphasis on the interval of precisely one hundred years between her appearances; now, the number of years doesn’t seem to have any particular significance. As we go, we will see an even more important difference. When we first met Laura, she was utterly determined to make her way into a pyre so that she could rise as a humanoid Phoenix; now she is unhappy about the whole thing, and angry with people who have helped her on her fiery way.

Edward lets Laura live in the cottage where Roger and Liz would put her in 1966. In the final scene, she goes there and finds Quentin, drunk and trying to conjure up an evil spirit. Quentin keeps telling Laura that she is dead. Frustrated with her persistent refusal to concur with this statement, Quentin puts his hands around her neck and announces that whether or not she is dead now, she will be by the time he gets through with her.

Roger was uncharacteristically sober at the beginning of his three-scene in the cottage with Burke and Laura in #139, but he did enter brandishing a fire-arm. So Quentin’s homicidal intentions on this set further cement his affiliation with his great-nephew in the eyes of longtime viewers.

Millay and Edmonds are not the only actors whose screen iconography the show turns to advantage today. We first saw Kathryn Leigh Scott and Don Briscoe together in #638, when she was playing ex-waitress Maggie Evans and he was playing mysterious drifter Chris Jennings. They met in the foyer at Collinwood. Maggie was angry with Chris, and Chris was guilt-ridden. Today, Miss Scott plays governess Rachel Drummond and Briscoe plays teacher Tim Shaw. They meet in the foyer at Collinwood. Rachel is angry with Tim, and Tim is guilt-ridden.

Though the same actors are playing the same basic emotions on the same set, the situations are different, and the characters are very different. Maggie is Dark Shadows‘ principal representative of the working class of the village of Collinsport. She speaks directly and bluntly, using the plainest language she can to dare Chris to try to excuse his inexcusable behavior. Chris occupies a lowly and unsettled place in the world, and he dodges her gaze and evades her questions, saying as little as he can, almost mumbling.

But Rachel is a neurotic intellectual, and she expresses her anger in complex sentences featuring vocabulary that only a very well-read person would have used in 1897 (for example, the word “sadist.”) Tim retreats from her anger into a defense of his job that quickly devolves into the tiredest platitudes imaginable. At one point he actually intones “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” Miss Scott makes Rachel’s highly literate onslaught on Tim as forceful as was Maggie’s unvarnished challenge to Chris, and Briscoe makes Tim’s pompous posturing as pitiable as was Chris’ broken burbling. Writer Gordon Russell must have been delighted that the actors did such good work with his ambitious pages.

Episode 729: A tired family

Libertine Quentin Collins has learned that his estranged wife, madwoman Jenny, is being kept locked up somewhere in the great house of Collinwood. He learned this when Jenny escaped and stabbed him. He also learned that his brother, stuffy Edward, and maidservant Beth Chavez are involved in the plot to keep Jenny in confinement. He spends time today trying to find out where Jenny is, openly telling both Beth and Edward that when he finds her, he will kill her.

Edward is estranged from his own wife, and just yesterday we learned that her name is Laura. Evidently she is the same sort of creature as we came to know from December 1966 to March 1967. In those days Dark Shadows was set in contemporary times, and Edward’s grandson Roger Collins was dismayed at the return of his estranged wife, who was also named Laura. That Laura was an undead blonde fire witch, a humanoid Phoenix who sought to be incinerated with her son, strange and troubled boy David Collins, so that her own life could be renewed.

Today, the year is 1897 and Edward and Laura’s nine year old daughter Nora is convinced that her mother will return after a year when she has been away and it has been forbidden to mention her name. Nora has a vision of Laura’s face in the fireplace, a vision of flames in the corridor, and a dream in which she meets Laura in the woods outside the house. At the end of the episode she wakes up, sneaks out to the woods, and finds the cloak Laura was wearing in her dream lying on the ground.

All of this is recapped from previous episodes, but actors David Selby, Louis Edmonds, and Denise Nickerson make it worth watching. As Beth, Terrayne Crawford is stiff and literal, and her awkward performance does detract from her scenes. But everyone else is so good that you don’t notice her weaknesses too much.

This episode marks the second time we hear the name “Mrs Fillmore.” In #707, we learned that Beth took substantial sums of money into the village of Collinsport to a lady of that name as part of the plot to cover up Jenny’s presence in the house. Today Beth has to remind Edward of that fact, and Quentin looks through the envelope with hundreds of dollars in banknotes meant for Mrs Fillmore.

When Nora screams that there is a fire in the upstairs hallway, Edward and Beth run towards it. Quentin just sulks in the drawing room; evidently the idea that the house is on fire bores him. By the time Beth and Edward get upstairs, the flames Nora saw have vanished, and nothing is burned. She swears that there was a fire, they cannot believe her. This echoes #400, when wicked witch Angelique cast a spell that caused time-traveling governess Vicki to see flames in her room in the Old House on the estate, and subsequently Vicki’s friends were puzzled that there was no indication there of anything burned. That confusion led to trouble for Vicki, and longtime viewers can imagine it is a sign of trouble for Nora as well.

Yesterday, Nora drew a series of Egyptian hieroglyphics saying that her mother was coming home. At the beginning of her dream, a maniacal Edward holds an oversized copy of that drawing and rips it up, declaring Laura will never be back. The oversized drawing harks back all the way to episode #722, when Nora’s governess, neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond, had a dream in which the daffy Carl Collins held a gigantic pocket watch. That was a striking enough image that not even the Vaseline almost entirely covering the lens could ruin it. But today even less of the picture is legible, and the gambit isn’t fresh anymore. Louis Edmonds does do a fine job of laughing maniacally, though, I will grant that.

The picture really does look like that, and it is supposed to look like that. Director Henry Kaplan was not much of a visual artist. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 728: Mother is coming home

Repressed patrician Edward Collins enters his study in the great house on the estate of Collinwood and finds his brother, libertine Quentin, riffling through his desk. Quentin does not feel an obligation to apologize for going through Edward’s things since Edward is among the conspirators holding Quentin’s estranged wife, madwoman Jenny, prisoner somewhere in the house. Quentin learned that Jenny was around only when she escaped from her cell and stabbed him. He is looking for information about where she is now so that she will not get another chance at him. Edward says that Quentin does not need to know where Jenny is, since he is confident she will not escape again.

Quentin is not at all reassured by Edward’s promise. He brings up another topic, Edward’s own estranged wife. For the first several weeks of the portion of Dark Shadows set in the year 1897, the audience was led to believe that Jenny was Edward’s wife, and the mother of his children, twelve year old Jamison and nine year old Nora. When we found out that Jenny was Quentin’s wife, we wondered not only who Edward was married to, but also whether Jenny had borne children by Quentin. After all, she is obsessed with her “babies,” and in #707 we learned that the enterprise of concealing Jenny’s presence in the house involved taking substantial sums of money into the village of Collinsport and giving them to a Mrs Fillmore. Perhaps Mrs Fillmore is taking care of Jenny and Quentin’s children.

Today, Quentin mentions that Edward’s wife, whom Edward said in #705 and says again today “no longer exists” as far as he is concerned, is named Laura. This rings a very loud bell for longtime viewers. The first supernatural menace to dominate the plot of Dark Shadows was Laura Murdoch Collins, estranged wife of high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. That Laura was on the show from December 1966 to March 1967. In the first week of the show, newly hired governess Vicki was surprised to learn that Roger’s wife was still alive, and was told in no uncertain terms that she was not to be discussed. In #705, during the first week of the 1897 portion, newly hired governess Rachel Drummond was surprised to learn that Edward’s wife was still alive, and was told in no uncertain terms that she was not to be discussed. Like Roger, Edward is played by Louis Edmonds. When we learn that Edward’s wife, too, is named Laura, we can only assume that she, too will prove to be an undead fire witch out to incinerate her children for the sake of her own immortality.

Quentin reminds Edward that Laura followed him the year before when he was banished from Collinwood. Indeed, Laura followed Quentin all the way to Alexandria, Egypt. The other day, Quentin admitted to Jamison that he had been a police spy in that city. Edward does not want to hear about any of it.

Nora enters. She asks Edward if she can use his desk to draw with crayons. Edward says that he was just leaving, and she can do what she wants. Quentin stays behind with her for a moment. Nora asks her uncle if he thinks her mother will come back. He looks uncomfortable, says he doesn’t know, and exits.

Barnabas Collins, a distant cousin recently arrived from someplace far away, enters. He looks at what Nora has drawn and recognizes Egyptian hieroglyphics. He asks if she copied them out of a book; she says that they just popped into her head. He says he wonders what they mean; she looks directly into the camera and tells the audience she knows exactly what they mean. They say that her mother is coming home soon. And indeed, they do include actual hieroglyphic symbols for “Mother,” “Come,” and “Home.”

Nora is quite the scribe. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Nora starts talking about her mother. Barnabas encourages her to continue with the topic, and Edward enters. Edward is quite stern with Barnabas; he had made it clear that his wife was not to be discussed with anyone in the house, least of all with his children. Barnabas explains that Nora brought her mother up. He goes on to show Edward the drawing and tell him that he finds it profoundly disturbing. Edward accepts that as a sufficient excuse for going along with Nora while she talks about her mother, but he attributes the drawing to Quentin’s influence.

Whenever we saw Laura alone indoors during the “Phoenix” storyline, she was staring blankly into a fire burning in a hearth. She kept urging her son, strange and troubled boy David, to join her in this pastime, and every time he did we were led to believe that she had taken a sizable step towards her terrible goal. Now we see Nora in the drawing room, staring into the fire that always burns in its hearth.

Nora hears gurgling noises, like indistinct voices rising from below or behind the fire. Frightened, she runs into the foyer, into her father’s arms. She tries to explain to Edward what she heard, and he insists there is nothing to be afraid of. He carries her into the drawing room, where he declares they will look into the fire together and will both realize that nothing out of the ordinary is going on. His plan fails when Nora sees a face wearing a blonde wig starting to take shape in the flames. Nora cries out that it is her mother’s face. We pan to Edward. He is also looking into the fire, and he looks shocked. We wonder whether he is shocked because he can also see the face, or if he is merely alarmed by Nora’s reaction.

Roger and his sister Liz, the adults in the generation of Collinses who live at Collinwood in the 1960s, are Jamison’s children. So Edward and Laura are their grandparents. If this Laura is indeed the same immortal humanoid Phoenix who was David’s mother, Roger therefore married his own grandmother. In #313, Roger had a line about his “ancestors,” which Louis Edmonds bobbled. When he said “incestors,” he giggled, repeated the misspoken word, then corrected himself, calling the maximum possible attention to his error. Many fans bring that rather bizarre blooper up when we come to this story. The writing staff picked up ideas wherever they could, and I suppose the cast’s line difficulties might have been as good a source as any.

Episode 727: The lost lamb

Well-meaning time-traveler/ bloodsucking abomination from the depths of Hell Barnabas Collins has found himself in the year 1897, where he must take action to prevent his distant cousin Quentin from becoming a malevolent ghost who will ruin everything for everyone on the estate of Collinwood in 1969. He has no idea what that action will be, so has decided to intrude as aggressively as he can in as much of the family’s business as he can until something turns up.

At the moment, Barnabas is strenuously trying to keep Judith Collins, the mistress of Collinwood, from sending her twelve year old nephew Jamison to a boarding school called Worthington Hall. Worthington Hall is run by the Rev’d Gregory Trask, a descendant of one of Barnabas’ old nemeses. Yesterday, Trask had an unsettling encounter with Jamison during which the camera dwelt heavily on Jamison’s nervous habit of fiddling with his belt, prompting us to wonder why Trask gives Jamison the feeling that he ought to make very sure he remains fully clothed.

Today, Trask’s daughter Charity shows up. Nancy Barrett, who previously played the sometimes-capricious, always likable heiress Carolyn and the fragile, highly comic heiress Millicent, makes Charity just as imposing a heavy as her father.

Jamison’s governess, neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond, tells Barnabas that she was a student at Worthington Hall for many years, and that the place was gruesome. The Trasks kept the children separated from one another, locked them in cupboards for weeks on end when they incurred their displeasure, and generally exploited and abused them. She herself was forced to stay at the school as a teacher when Trask lied to her and claimed that she owed him money, and she escaped with the aid of a fellow sufferer.

Trask confronts Rachel in the drawing room. She tries to stand up for herself, but he breaks her resistance down expertly. Trask’s one moment of weakness comes when he starts talking about Rachel’s lovely hair, and he suddenly turns away. The mask has slipped, and the audience has seen that Trask’s interest in Rachel is sexual. But Rachel is too intimidated to recognize what has happened, and when he resumes his righteous tone she crumbles. When she next sees Barnabas, she rushes away in tears.

Rachel is terrified by Trask. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Rachel had another traumatic experience over the last few days. Quentin died, turned into a zombie, and abducted her. No one has given her the news yet, but Quentin came back to life yesterday. She is horrified when he comes into the drawing room and sees Quentin. At first he takes on a lumbering gait, and she screams. Then he laughs and starts walking normally. He explains what happened, as best he can, and they have a strangely pleasant conversation. Again, this is a testament to the high quality of the acting. It is hard to imagine that anyone less charming than David Selby could make us believe a woman would be so comfortable with Quentin after what Rachel has been through.

Barnabas takes on the form of a bat and bites Charity in her bedroom. Presumably he does this so that he can use her as an agent against her father. This raises the question of why he didn’t just bite Trask and put an end to the whole thing. Of course, the real-world explanation is that the writers wanted to keep the story going, but usually they take care to maneuver Barnabas into a situation where he is compelled to bite one person rather than another. So it’s rather sloppy to end the episode this way.

Still, this is a very good installment. Too good for some viewers; my wife, Mrs Acilius, refuses to watch the Gregory Trask episodes, because Jerry Lacy plays him so effectively that it ruins her day to spend half an hour in the presence of such an overpowering evil. Kathryn Leigh Scott brings Rachel’s self-doubts and final defeat vividly to life as well. By the time I got to the end of their scene, I was shouting at the screen “Bring back the zombies and werewolves and witches!” So I cheered when Barnabas bit Charity.

Episode 726: A boy’s dislike

When Dark Shadows began in June 1966, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy) was frantically afraid that he would be sent away from the great house of Collinwood. In #10, David overheard his father Roger (Louis Edmonds) telling his aunt Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Joan Bennett) that they ought to do just that. As the owner of the house and holder of all the family’s wealth, it is up to Liz to make the decision. Hearing his father press to send him away, David responded by sabotaging the brakes on Roger’s car, nearly killing him.

Roger told Liz that David belonged in an “institution,” but David was just as terrified when it was suggested that he might go to an ordinary school. It was not entirely clear why he had this attitude. David and Roger had only lived in the vast gloomy house for a few weeks when the show started. Roger openly hated David, as did Liz’ daughter Carolyn. Liz loved him, but as a recluse and an aging grande dame had little in common with a young boy. Moreover, David hated his governess, the well-meaning Vicki, as much as he could hate any school. His mother, who did not live in the house and whose name was in those days was never to be mentioned there, was the only person for whom David expressed fondness; when in #15 David watched Roger drive off in the car whose brakes he had sabotaged, we saw him standing by himself, saying “He’s going to die, mother. He’s going to die!” So it is difficult to see why David was so intensely committed to staying at Collinwood.

Today, we see a suggestion that David may have been influenced by an ancestral memory of bad times at a boarding school. It is 1897, and David’s grandfather Jamison Collins (David Henesy) is twelve. Jamison’s father Edward (Louis Edmonds) has asked the Rev’d Mr Gregory Trask to come to Collinwood to urge his sister, Judith Collins (Joan Bennett,) to send Jamison and his nine-year old sister Nora to be students at Worthington Hall, a boarding school Trask runs. As the house’s owner and holder of all the family’s wealth, it is up to Judith to make the decision.

Trask wins Judith’s confidence by performing a ceremony after which Jamison and her brother, Jamison’s uncle Quentin, are restored to themselves after a spell that had made Quentin a zombie and put his spirit in possession of Jamison. Recently arrived, thoroughly mysterious distant cousin Barnabas Collins sputters with rage at the very sight of Trask, and exasperates Judith with his insistence that Trask is evil. Judith does not trust Barnabas, and Barnabas’ inability to either explain or contain his hostility only confirms her favorable judgment of Trask.

Once Quentin and Jamison are themselves again, Trask sends Barnabas and Quentin out of the drawing room. Quentin raises his eyebrows in response to Trask’s order and asks his sister “Are you sure you’re still in charge of this house, Judith?” She does not respond.

Judith makes a remark about Quentin’s influence on Jamison, saying that “He’s been like this ever since [Quentin] came home.” Since Jamison was just freed from possession a few minutes before, it is unclear what she could mean, and Jamison objects “That’s not true!” Trask unctuously replies “Now, your aunt does not tell lies, Jamison.” Returning viewers know that Judith lies constantly. Nor is Trask unaware that Judith is less than perfectly truthful. When he first arrived in Friday’s episode, Judith and Barnabas tried to conceal the situation with Quentin and Jamison from him, and she told a series of lies in pursuit of that objective.

When Jamison continues his attempts to tell the truth, Trask silences him with “Now, there is only one who is constantly right, Jamison, and He is not on this earth, but above. Now, I want you to go out into the hall and consider all the wonderful things your aunt has done for you recently. I am sure you will have much to think about.” Jerry Lacy brings such an inflexible authority to Trask’s personality that we cannot imagine a rebuttal to this sanctimonious little speech. We share Jamison’s helplessness and frustration.

Alone with Trask, Judith agrees to let him take Jamison and Nora to Worthington Hall. Jamison barges back in and declares that he will not go. Trask assures him that he will not take him unless he is willing to go. He then obtains Judith’s permission to talk with Jamison alone in his room.

While Jamison is taking Trask upstairs, we cut to the study. Quentin and Barnabas are alone there. Quentin asks Barnabas if Trask really was his “savior.” Barnabas replies “Apparently.” Quentin asks Barnabas what he thinks really happened; he sidesteps the question. Quentin keeps probing for Barnabas’ interpretation of his recent experience; Barnabas alludes to Quentin’s adventures in Satanism, saying “You dabble in odd things, perhaps one of your interests resulted in this.” Quentin observes that this is “Delicately put,” and goes on to remark on “what an interesting life” he has had.

Barnabas then takes his turn as the questioner. He asks Quentin about his wife, a tall, beautiful, homicidally crazed woman named Jenny who is being held prisoner somewhere in the house. Quentin grows tense, and does not give direct answers. He explodes at Barnabas, saying that he has no interest in making a friend of him. Barnabas observes that he has in fact made an effort to turn him into an enemy; Quentin interjects “Your fault!” Barnabas says they could be useful to each other; Quentin exclaims “Wrong!” When he thinks of Barnabas, Quentin says, only one question comes to mind- “What does he want from me?”

Jonathan Frid said that his favorite scene in Dark Shadows was one he had with Anthony George in #301. Barnabas tells local man Burke Devlin that their relationship to each other is like that of “two superb swordsmen with highly sharpened blades. You thrust, and I parry. I thrust, you parry.” That scene has never impressed me. The Barnabas/ Burke conflict did not have enough grounding in the story to come to life, and having the characters tell the audience that they were like “superb swordsmen” does not make it so. But this showdown really does pay off. Barnabas and Quentin are the show’s two great breakout stars, and we are in the middle of a long run of episodes where everything works. This scene brings out all the values they might have hoped that Burke and Barnabas’ confrontation would put on screen when they planned it.

We return to Jamison’s room, the same bedroom David Collins occupied in the 1960s. Trask is still being friendly. When Jamison says that he would miss his pony if he had to go away to Worthington Hall, Trask says “You must bring him with you!” When Jamison refuses to tell Trask his pony’s name, the friendliness vanishes. Trask darkens, tells him “You’re going to have to learn to answer questions, boy,” and insists they pray together. When Jamison resists, Trask tells him that he must change his ways lest he go on being a disappointment to his father. Jamison protests that his father loves him, and Trask asks incredulously “Does he?” He asks Jamison if he wants his soul to be saved. Jamison can’t very well say anything but yes to that, and so Trask says “Then I think I can help you.” Jamison is trapped.

After a scene in the drawing room where Quentin demands Judith tell him where Jenny is locked up, we return to Jamison’s room. The scene begins with a closeup of the rope belt of Jamison’s robe. Jamison is retying it. He keeps fiddling with it, perhaps a nervous habit, but it is the first thing we see and they hold the shot for a long time. We cannot but wonder whether the belt was untied at some point while Jamison and Trask were alone off camera.

Trask orders Jamison to tell Judith that he wants to go to Worthington Hall; Jamison says he will not. The dialogue does not explain how Jamison’s robe came undone, and neither he nor Trask seems concerned with the matter. Their blasé attitude turns an uncomfortable image into a lingering mystery.

In the drawing room, Trask announces to Judith that Jamison has something to say. Jamison says that Trask threatened him and tried to make him lie. Trask says that Judith will have to find another school for him, and she declares that she will not. Jamison will go to Worthington Hall.

Trask exits. Jamison finds Quentin and asks him to help him escape the grim fate in store for him. Quentin promises to do so, and by the end of the episode Jamison will be safely hidden somewhere in the house. Meanwhile, Barnabas throws a fit before Judith, saying that he cannot understand why “You would believe that maniac before you believe Jamison.” Judith scolds him and tells him to treat Trask with respect.

Trask returns. Barnabas asks him if his family is from Salem, Massachusetts. Trask affirms that it is so. Barnabas claims to have seen ink drawings of a Rev’d Trask who was at Collinwood in the 1790s; Trask says that he was his ancestor. He says that the earlier Rev’d Trask disappeared shortly after leaving Collinwood, and that his disappearance was never explained.

Longtime viewers know that Barnabas is a vampire who lived in the 1790s, and that the original Trask is one of those he blames for the many misfortunes that befell the family in those days, including his own transformation into a bloodsucking abomination. We remember the first Trask as a case study of a type much on people’s minds in the 1960s, Eric Hoffer’s “True Believer.” That Trask was so deeply and unshakably convinced of his own understanding of the situation around him that when he set out on a witch hunt, the real witch was easily able to manipulate him into doing her work for her. Barnabas murdered the original Trask in #442 by bricking him up in an alcove, one of the most famous moments in all of Dark Shadows. He seems pleased to hear that people are still wondering what became of the late witchfinder.

Gregory Trask seems to be a different sort. He can change his tune in a way that his forebear never could, putting on a friendly mask when it serves his interests to do so. While the original Trask was single-mindedly trying to live up to his own twisted idea of virtue, the second sometimes responds to bad news with a delighted grin, suggesting that he sees an opportunity to profit from it. The first Trask’s fanaticism sometimes led him to hypocrisy, when he thought that his ends were so good that they justified dishonest means, but this Trask seems to be a hypocrite who has kidded himself into acting like a fanatic. Mr Lacy’s performance makes him a formidable presence; the writers have made him a powerful adversary.