The ghost of Quentin Collins drove all of his living relatives out of the great house on the estate of Collinwood the other day, and now he has fetched two of them back. They are twelve year old David Collins and nine year old Amy Jennings. Today, governess Maggie Evans, old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, and Barnabas’ bedraggled servant Willie Loomis search the great house looking for the children.
When they find Amy, she is possessed by the evil spirits and insists that the house is where she belongs. She willingly leaves with Willie. When they get back to Barnabas’ house, she calmly tells Willie that he will never again have reason to worry about Maggie. “Maggie is not anywhere anymore… anywhere at all. You’ll see.” In the great house, Barnabas finds that Maggie has been dressed in clothing appropriate to the period when Quentin lived, the 1890s. She does not recognize him or respond to her own name. When he asks who she is, she struggles, then faints.
Dark Shadows first became a hit in May and June of 1967, when Barnabas was a vampire trying to erase Maggie’s personality and overwrite it with that of his lost love Josette. Since then, Maggie’s memory has been wiped, Barnabas has been cured, and the show has made it clear they will not be revisiting the question of whether he will have to pay for his crimes against her. They are great friends now. It is ironic that Barnabas is the one trying to get Maggie to return to herself, but it does further confirm that Maggie’s memory of her days in his dungeon is gone for good.
I remember this episode well. At first I thought the Victorian dress Maggie suddenly was wearing didn’t add up to anything Josette-essential until I took a good look at the colours. I thought the dark green sash was horribly out of place, and then? I realized all three of those colours are representative of Josette’s bedroom at The Old House. The green sash represented her drapes. Wild, eh?
Comment left 25 February 2019 by “D. Wor” on “Dark Shadows Episode 696: 2/24/69” (25 February 2019) at Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri.
In Friday’s episode, Barnabas meditated on the idea that he and Quentin never knew about each other. Longtime viewers, seeing Maggie out of touch with her own identity and her proper time, might wonder if Quentin now knows what Barnabas did to her in 1967 and if he is taunting him with a reminder of it.
For months, the evil ghost of Quentin Collins has been gaining strength, secretly manipulating children Amy Jennings and David Collins as he prepares to drive everyone from the great house of Collinwood so that he can have the place to himself. Now he has cast aside all secrecy and he openly menaces the adult residents of the house. Today, they give up and leave. Once they are all gone, Quentin stands on the walkway at the top of the staircase in the foyer and laughs heartily.
Collinwood belongs to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Liz’ brother Roger, David’s father, lives there as her guest. Up to this point, Liz and Roger have served primarily as blocking figures. Each is devoted to denial as a way of life. Occasionally a fact bursts upon them that is so enormous that one or the other of them has no choice but to face it for a little while. Usually they snap back into their characteristic mode of willful ignorance the moment the crisis is past, and even while it is going on the other responds by digging even deeper into the insistence that nothing is happening. When I first watched Dark Shadows, I could imagine the characters fleeing Collinwood one by one, then venturing back to get Liz and Roger, only to find them sitting serenely in the drawing room, assuring their would-be rescuers that everything was all right while leather-winged demons fluttered about their heads.
On Monday, Liz saw enough of Quentin’s power that she gave up her attitude of denial, apparently forever. Today, Roger does what we have been led to expect, and loudly declares that the whole issue is imaginary and that the other adults should be ashamed of themselves for encouraging the children to be afraid of ghosts. When the whole house starts to resound with the crepuscular tones of an old-timey waltz Quentin plays when he is exercising power, Roger declares that it is a trick the children are playing on them. The others go to pack their things while Roger stays in the drawing room.
Alone there, Roger sees Quentin materialize before him. On their way out, Liz and occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes check the drawing room one last time, and find Roger sitting motionless in a chair. For a moment we wonder if he will fall over dead. He starts speaking, though, and admits that he was wrong. As they leave, Roger looks back into the house and shouts a defiant pledge to return. Apparently the makers of Dark Shadows have decided they no longer need two major characters whose primary function is to put the brakes on the action.
After everyone has gone, the camera pans across sets representing several rooms in the great house. This must have taken some doing. The foyer and drawing room were the only standing sets; the others were built as needed. The show was done live to tape, so these sets must all have been standing simultaneously. The studio was not very big at all. I wonder if they crammed some of these into space that was not generally used for action.
The walkway at the top of the foyer stairs is a commanding position, and the show has been sparing in its use of it. Quentin’s triumphant laugh is the first time we see a villain stand there and exult in his new position as Master of Collinwood. In the early days of the show, the dashing and enigmatic Burke Devlin threatened to take control of the house. He never came very close to doing that, but it could have been interesting to see him stand on the walkway, survey the foyer, and think about the day when the house would be his. For a long period in 1967, seagoing con man Jason McGuire was bossing Liz around; there were several days when he might have stood on the walkway, looked around with smug satisfaction, and chuckled.
Yesterday’s episode ended with the drapes in a bedroom in flames. That was a real fire, not a special effect, and you could see it spreading rapidly and putting out a lot of smoke. Having failed in that attempt to murder everyone in the building, the technical staff in today’s reprise of the sequence settles for lighting some gas burners behind a window dressing.
There are two ongoing narrative threads in this part of Dark Shadows. One is the story of mysterious drifter Chris Jennings. Mad scientist Julia Hoffman knows Chris to be a werewolf and she is trying to help him. The other is the story of Quentin Collins, a ghost who is gradually gaining power and planning to drive everyone away from the great estate of Collinwood so that he can have the place to himself. Chris’ story had been the fast-paced A plot that kept expanding to involve more and more characters, while Quentin’s was the slow-paced B plot that consistently involved only Chris’ nine year old sister Amy, strange and troubled boy David Collins, and their governess Maggie Evans, with intermittent small parts for other established characters and the occasional chance for a day player to act a death scene. That changed yesterday, when Quentin decided that he had grown so strong he no longer needed to conceal himself from matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard or the other adults in the great house. Quentin’s story is now the main topic, and Chris is the secondary feature.
We open today with Liz telling Julia what happened the night before. Julia tells Liz that she and old world gentleman Barnabas Collins had suspected that an evil ghost was at work in the house, and that they have seen another spirit that seems to be opposed to it. Liz says she has called occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes arrives and questions everyone.
Liz is alone at the desk in the drawing room when a secret panel leading to a passage to the long-deserted west wing opens. A cutout meant to suggest a disembodied hand appears on the screen. It picks up a letter opener from the desk and is about to stab her when Stokes enters.
Stokes shouts. The hand drops the letter opener and vanishes. He tells Liz what he saw. He notices the panel is open, and asks Liz about it. She says that it leads to the west wing, but that, as far as she knows, no one has used it in years. That answers a question that has been on the audience’s minds since October 1966. In that month, we saw Liz’ brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, use the panel to play a dirty trick on well-meaning governess Victoria Winters. The panel was not seen or mentioned again until David and Amy started using it to do Quentin’s bidding several weeks ago. This line is our first confirmation that Liz knows that the panel and the passage behind it exist. Stokes asks Liz’ permission to perform an exorcism.
Meanwhile, Julia gets a telephone call from Chris. Liz’ daughter, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, has taken a fancy to Chris and installed him in a cottage on the estate. Chris tells her that he is facing an emergency. Someone has come to the village of Collinsport who might know his secret.
In the cottage, Chris tells Julia that an unpleasant man named Ned Stuart has brought his sister Sabrina to the village and that he is demanding Chris meet with Sabrina. Chris had assumed Sabrina was dead, because she was in the room with him one night two years before when he underwent the transformation into his lupine form. Ned had told Julia and Barnabas that he was looking for Chris because he wanted to know what happened to his sister; he had always referred to Sabrina in the past tense, leading them to assume she was dead. Now Chris is in a panic, convinced that Sabrina will tell the police about him and that he will be punished for the many, many homicides he has committed as the werewolf.
Julia points out that if Sabrina were going to do that, she could have done so at any time. He would already have been arrested. Sabrina must not have told Ned or anyone else what she saw, and Ned must be telling the truth when he says he does not know what happened the last time Chris and Sabrina were together. She persuades Chris to go to visit the Stuarts in their suite at the Collinsport Inn.
Julia accompanies Chris on the visit. Ned is irritated that Chris did not come alone. His remarks are uncomfortable to hear, chiefly because of actor Roger Davis’ habit of clenching his anal sphincters when he raises his voice, making him sound like he is suffering from agonizing constipation.
After Ned makes this fingernails-on-a-blackboard noise for a couple of minutes, he lets Chris and Julia into Sabrina’s room. She is in a catatonic state. Her hair is white, and her face is tinged with light blue makeup. The makeup makes her look haggard in color, but most TV sets in the USA in the 1960s received only in black and white. In black and white, the makeup is not very effective.
Ned says that Sabrina was like that when he found her, the morning after she paid her last visit to Chris’ apartment. Several takes of a framed copy of actress Lisa Blake Richards’ professional headshot invite us to imagine the before-and-after. Ned calls Sabrina’s attention to Chris; she rises from her chair, starts towards him, and collapses.
Throughout its first 73 weeks, Dark Shadows was usually very slow-paced, even by the standards of a 1960s daytime soap. Major characters like matriarch Liz and her brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, often seemed to exist solely for the purpose of refusing to accept the facts in front of their faces and thereby slowing down the progression of the plot. Even characters who did face facts would often as not have the memory of goldfish, so that weeks of character development would evaporate with a sudden display of inexplicable ignorance.
That changed when well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time in #365. For the next few months, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and events came thick and fast. When Vicki returned to the present and Dark Shadows returned to contemporary dress in March 1968, the show was a genuine hit. They tried to sustain the breakneck pace of the 1790s segment throughout 1968, with mixed success. That period was a Monster Mash, featuring multiple witches, vampires, mad scientists, Frankensteins, ghosts, and the Devil himself, or perhaps one of his middle managers. That attracted a new audience of preteen viewers, but all too often left the characters spinning their wheels as they tried to make room for each other within one small fishing village near Bangor, Maine.
A few months ago, they dumped all of those larger than life but ultimately unproductive figures and started concentrating on two storylines. The A story so far has been that of werewolf Chris and the efforts old world gentleman Barnabas and mad scientist Julia have made to keep him from killing quite so many people. That one has been moving along at a steady clip.
The B story has not progressed nearly as fast. At times, it has matched the leisurely pace of the show’s early days. Today is dedicated to that story, and in today’s pre-title teaser it appears that it has brought narrative progression to a total halt.
Maggie is the new governess in the great house of Collinwood, charged with the education of Chris’ nine year old sister Amy and of strange and troubled boy David. As usual, we open with a reprise of the previous episode. This time, the reprise is 5 minutes and 45 seconds of Maggie wandering around the house looking for the children and hearing voices, while doors open themselves. That was OK at the end of Friday’s installment, but on its own it is stupefying.
The story is that the evil spirit of the late Quentin is taking possession of David and Amy in order to destroy the Collins family and have the house to itself. It made sense that that story would start slow. Quentin was at first very weak. He existed only in a sealed chamber the children stumbled upon while exploring the long deserted west wing, and could influence events outside that chamber only by persuading them to do his bidding. He gradually gained the power to control one child at a time, and to manifest himself outside his little room. A while ago he was able to put strychnine into Chris’ drink; by the end of Friday’s episode he had Amy and David under his power simultaneously.
Once the action finally gets underway in today’s episode, Quentin is about to strangle Maggie and the children are screaming at him to stop. Housekeeper Mrs Johnson and Liz enter the room. Mrs Johnson sees Quentin, Liz does not. Maggie is unconscious and the children are in a state. By the end of the episode, Liz, Maggie, and Mrs Johnson know Quentin’s name, his plan, and his power. He has managed to create some kind of bubble around the house so that the people inside it cannot hear the rain. The children pass out. David comes to, and announces that it is too late to be afraid. He laughs maniacally, and in the background we also hear Quentin’s laughter.
With this slam-bang ending, the Haunting of Collinwood takes over as the A story and Liz forever sheds her role as a blocking figure. This phase of the show is approaching its climax, and there is a chance that what comes next will be exciting.
We open with governess Maggie Evans entering the bedroom of strange and troubled boy David Collins. She had heard David’s screams and a man’s laughter coming from the room; the man is gone, and David is unconscious on the floor. He has a nasty burn on his arm, and as he is coming to he pleads with “Quentin” not to hurt him.
Once David is fully awake, Maggie asks who Quentin is. David frantically denies that there is any such person, and claims that the laughter she heard was his own voice as he was playing a make-believe game. She says that she knows he couldn’t have made those sounds. He points out that they are the only people in the room. Maggie does not even try to explain how anyone could have left the room unseen; she seems already to have concluded that Quentin is a supernatural being. Maggie identifies Quentin with a strange and frightening man she and housekeeper Mrs Johnson have both seen. David keeps trying to deny everything, and Maggie keeps telling him she wants to help. David sobs, and Maggie holds him.
Maggie holds David.
Quentin is indeed a ghost who is taking possession both of David and of Maggie’s other charge, nine year old Amy Jennings. With their help, Quentin has so far killed two people, tried to kill two others, and set about trying to drive everyone off the estate of Collinwood. Up to this point, Maggie has failed completely to represent any sort of obstacle to Quentin. She is a poor disciplinarian who lets the children run rings around her even when they are themselves, and is altogether at sea when they are doing Quentin’s bidding. This scene promises a breakthrough. Maggie is the first of the adult characters to learn Quentin’s name, she does not flinch from the evidence of his uncanny nature, she vows to fight him, and David finds comfort in her arms.
The breakthrough does not come today, however. After a moment, David declares that no one can help him, and he rushes out of the room. He goes downstairs to the foyer and hears a knocking at the door. He opens it and sees notoriously abusive actor Roger Davis standing there. He reacts to that sight as anyone might, running away without a backward glance.
Maggie follows David downstairs. There is again some question as to how much of the body language in the next scene is the blocking the director gave as an interpretation of Maggie’s response to the character Ned Stuart and how much is Kathryn Leigh Scott’s reaction to Mr Davis. Maggie tells Ned she can’t talk because she must go out in search of David; as she prepares to exit, she circles around with as much space as possible between her and him, never quite making eye contact but glancing back every time he moves towards her. This is not a pattern of movement we have seen before on the show, even when a character was dealing with a vampire or some other murderous foe. Miss Scott looks very much like a woman alone with a man whom she does not trust not to assault her. If he had, it wouldn’t be the first time he has physically abused a castmate on camera.
She keeps her eyes on his hands
A child’s voice is heard, singing the song “Inchworm.” It is Amy, and she is working a jigsaw puzzle in the drawing room. The drawing room brings out Amy’s musical side. She played “London Bridge” on the piano there in #656 and tapped a few random keys on the same instrument in #676. She is quite a good singer, perhaps not surprising since actress Denise Nickerson had been in the cast of the short-lived James Lipton/ Laurence Rosenthal Broadway musical Sherry! in 1967.
Ned enters and introduces himself to Amy. His lines are all perfectly polite and friendly. Amy is supposed to gradually sense that Ned is hostile to her big brother Chris and to become uncomfortable around him, but that is supposed to come at the end of their time together. As it plays out, she already seems uncomfortable when he first enters. A minute or so into the scene, Amy smiles at Ned. Nickerson was remarkably good at flashing quick smiles, but it doesn’t work this time. She looks like she is displaying her teeth to the dentist. When Amy is supposed to start edging away from him, Nickerson turns around and proceeds to her next mark at full speed. The camera pans back, but does not capture her movement- she has gone clean out of the shot, leaving Mr Davis alone in the frame.
She goes as far as she can as fast as she can.
Ned approaches Amy; he grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her back into the shot. Chris enters. Amy starts to warn him against Ned, and he tells her not to be afraid for his sake. Indeed, Chris is safe. It is only women and children who have to be afraid of Roger Davis.
Ned confronts Chris. Evidently something bad happened to Ned’s sister Sabrina. She can’t tell Ned what it was, but he thinks Chris is responsible and wants him to go with him to the Collinsport Inn to see her. Returning viewers know that Chris is a werewolf and that Sabrina saw him transform. He assumed that he had killed her while in his beastly form, and he is surprised to learn from Ned that she is still alive. Chris is a character we are supposed to sympathize with, so it is a bit disturbing that he does not seem particularly relieved to find that he did not kill Sabrina.
In the woods, Amy finds David. She learned some days ago that Quentin wants to hurt Chris, and she has been resisting Quentin’s influence ever since. She and David talk about ways they can work together to fight him. David says that he has decided to tell Maggie what has been happening; Amy objects that this is too dangerous. They seem to be getting somewhere when Quentin appears to them. They are terrified, and then resign themselves to their fate.
Later, the children are in the drawing room with Maggie. Amy is still working her jigsaw puzzle, and David is staring into the fireplace. Longtime viewers will remember that this is something his mother used to do. She was the show’s first supernatural menace and tried to lure David to his doom. Maggie’s predecessor, well-meaning governess Vicki, led the other characters in the campaign that saved David then. We wonder if Maggie will be able to match her success.
Maggie admires the puzzle and calls David over to look at it. David makes a show of being bored, leading Amy to remark airily that boys don’t like jigsaw puzzles. David complains that there is nothing to do. Maggie suggests the three of them sit down together for a heart-to-heart talk, an idea the children reject. They suggest a variety of games they might play. Maggie notices that their manner is quite different than it was earlier in the day. David is more assertive, Amy supercilious. She finally agrees to let them play dress-up.
In the first year of the show, the opening voiceovers often involved a weather report. “A cold wind blows from the sea to the great house of Collinwood, but the fog still hangs heavy on its vast lawns” that sort of thing. They stopped doing that some time ago, but today they slip in an almost comically detailed bit about atmospheric conditions- “Soon dark, threatening clouds will gather over Collinwood, and long, ever-lengthening shadows will creep menacingly toward the great house. By late afternoon, rain will come, a rain that will begin slowly but steadily increase into a raging storm.” You expect them to go on with “Expect cooler temperatures and clear skies after 8 PM, with a chance of frost in the morning.” But the rain, at least, plays a part in the story. It explains why David and Amy have to stay indoors, and a roar of thunder gives Amy a chance to sneeringly ask Maggie if she is frightened. It also occasions the use of this still of the exterior of the house, one which I do not believe we have seen before:
We don’t usually see that much of the lawn.
Later, Maggie goes to look for the children. She enters the study. This set has been familiar since early 1967, but today is the first time we see the outside of its door. Lately we have been seeing more of the little spaces that are supposed to join one room to another, part of a strategy to make the house seem like a bigger place.
The sequence before this suggests Maggie is heading into the long-deserted west wing, but once she goes through the door it is clearly the study.
Once in the study, Maggie hears Amy and David calling to her from no particular direction while Quentin laughs. She is bewildered, then the children join Quentin in laughing. His laughter is hearty, theirs is maniacal. Maggie goes out into the corridor, sees something frightening, and retreats into the study. She is only there for a moment when the doorknob starts turning. We end with Maggie staring directly into the camera, its lens representing the point of view of whatever it is that is terrifying her.
Maggie terrified.
This is the first of only two episodes credited to writer Ralph Ellis. Dark Shadows never had more than three writers on staff at any time. I often wish they had had many more. Ellis is one of those whom I would have liked to see as a senior writer on the show right the way through. The episode is well-paced, the characters are clearly defined, and the dialogue is smooth with just a touch of wit. If he had been in charge of, let’s say, every Monday’s script, the whole series would have been a cut above what it actually was. Since he only contributed two scripts, it is especially sad that Roger Davis had to crap on one of them, but even when Mr Davis is on camera you can still tell that Ellis did his job well.
Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins finds his distant cousin, strange and troubled boy David Collins, trying to pull the metal ring that opens the secret chamber hidden inside the old mausoleum.
Barnabas asks what David was doing. He says he was upset with his governess, Maggie Evans, and was hiding from her. Barnabas gestures around the publicly known part of the mausoleum and says “There’s no place to hide here.” David vigorously agrees, and says he didn’t expect Maggie to come there at all. Barnabas asks if David was trying to get into the hidden chamber.
Panicked, David claims not to know what Barnabas is talking about. Barnabas reminds him that he caught him at the mausoleum in #315. Longtime viewers will recall that he subsequently found part of David’s pocket knife in the hidden chamber and confronted him with it, and David seems to remember that as well. He drops his attempt to deny knowing about the chamber, and tells Barnabas he heard an animal inside it.
This goes to the heart of the issue that has brought Barnabas to the mausoleum. Barnabas has befriended mysterious drifter Chris Jennings and has learned that Chris is a werewolf. When Chris is in his beastly form, Barnabas locks him in the hidden chamber to keep him from hurting anyone. The werewolf is in there now. He was growling and snarling when David arrived, but fell silent when Barnabas entered.
Barnabas asks how an animal could have got into the hidden chamber; David admits he can’t think of a way. He then asks David if he can hear the noise now; he says he can’t. He asks if he might have imagined the whole thing; he doesn’t disagree.
Barnabas takes David back home to the great house of Collinwood. His governess Maggie is waiting up for him. She stays in David’s room until he seems to be asleep, then kisses him on the forehead and goes.
Yesterday, David told Maggie that she is a pretty girl. He’s twelve now, old enough to get excited about that very conspicuous fact, so when he opens his eyes immediately after she leaves the room returning viewers might think the reason he faked being asleep was that he was angling for the kiss.
David went to the mausoleum to release the werewolf because the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins made him do it. Quentin has been dominating David lately. After Maggie goes, Quentin appears in the room and David confronts him. He says he does not want to be part of Quentin’s cruel schemes any longer. In response, Quentin causes David to suffer extreme pain. Passing by in the hallway, Maggie hears David’s scream and Quentin’s laugh, and she opens the door to find David curled up on the floor.
The laugh is noteworthy. Maggie hears it, and it is not a sound David could have made. She has already seen Quentin, but now she has further evidence that he exists. Moreover, it is the first time Quentin has broken his silence. We first met Quentin when he was in company with another ghost, a woman named Beth Chavez. Beth has spoken since then; we wonder when Quentin will have lines to deliver.
Governess Maggie Evans saw the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins yesterday, and she tells housekeeper Mrs Johnson about it today. Mrs Johnson saw Quentin a few days ago; she and Maggie are the only adults in the great house of Collinwood who know that Quentin exists, and not even they know his name. Quentin is gradually taking control of Maggie’s charges, nine year old Amy Jennings and twelve year old David Collins. Yesterday, David led Maggie and his aunt, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, to the room in the long deserted west wing where Maggie saw Quentin. There is a mannequin there wearing a coat like Quentin’s; David says that he and Amy call it “Mr Juggins,” and Liz chooses to believe that Mr Juggins is what Maggie saw.
We see Maggie in bed. She gets up, goes back to the room, and sees Mr Juggins. We dissolve to a shot of Quentin in Mr Juggins’ place. Horrified, Maggie watches Quentin approach with a length of fabric. He chokes her with it. She falls to the floor. She is lying there when we cut to commercial. Maggie was introduced in #1 and has for long stretches been a central character, one of the most recognizable on Dark Shadows. Kathryn Leigh Scott tells a story of going to a wilderness area in Africa when the show was a hit and being greeted with cries of “Maggie Evans!” For the moment, it looks like they have decided to kill her off in the middle of a Tuesday episode.
Of course they haven’t. We come back from the break to hear Maggie telling old world gentleman Barnabas Collins about the dream in which she was strangled. She is surprised that Barnabas believes her story about seeing the man when she was awake, shares her suspicions that David and Amy are connected with the man, and is open to the idea that the dream is “a warning.” Barnabas tells Maggie that he and his inseparable friend, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, saw a woman dressed in clothes of the same period as Quentin’s clothes, that the woman’s presence could not be explained, and that she led them to Amy’s brother’s Chris at a moment when Chris needed medical help to save his life. Barnabas has concluded that the man and the woman are ghosts and that they represent something very dangerous.
Barnabas enlists the aid of occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes agrees to conduct a séance in the drawing room in the hopes of contacting Madame Janet Findley, a psychic researcher whom he brought to the house in #647 to investigate the early signs of Quentin’s haunting. Amy and David tricked Madame Findley into going to Quentin’s stronghold in the west wing in #648, and she did battle with him there in #649. After that confrontation, Madame Findley appeared at the head of the stairs in the foyer and tumbled down them, dead.
This is the tenth séance we have seen on Dark Shadows. They usually come with four roles to be filled. In all séances, someone acted as organizer and leader. In eight of the first nine séances, someone else objected to the idea of a séance, but reluctantly took a place around the table. In seven of the nine, someone went into a trance, becoming a medium. Every time the trance began, someone grew alarmed at its first signs and tried to end the séance before the dead could speak; that drew a stern rebuke from the leader. The medium then spoke, more often than not passing out after struggling to utter a few mysterious words.
The roles of reluctant participant and objector are often combined. Today, Mrs Johnson is the first to combine the role of reluctant participant and medium. This is also the first time the trance does not draw an objection from someone wanting to stop the séance. Mrs Johnson does pull her hands back early on, breaking the circle of contact, and Stokes delivers the requisite stern rebuke. But no one speaks up when she starts to moan. As Madame Findley, she at first produces the usual jumble of words (“The children! Panel! Room!”) She manages to cry out “He killed me! He killed me!” before collapsing face first onto the table in the orthodox manner.
In their post about this episode on Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri compare Mr Juggins with Otto the Automatic Pilot from the 1980 film Airplane! Perhaps inspired by the dissolve from Mr Juggins to Quentin today, they go on to Juggins-ize Otto:
The Scoleris also list all the séances on the show up to this point. They name the leaders and mediums, but not the reluctant participants or the objectors. I have added those:
Dark Shadows Before I Die Séance Tracker
Episode 170/171: Dr. Peter Guthrie conducts; Carolyn, Vicki, Roger and Laura Collins participate; Josette speaks through Vicki in French; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Roger and Laura join reluctantly; Carolyn objects]
Episode 186: Vicki conducts; Sam and David participate; David Radcliffe speaks through David; held in the drawing room at the Old House [Sam is both reluctant joiner and objector]
Episode 280/281: Roger conducts; Liz, Vicki, Burke, Barnabas, Carolyn participate; Josette speaks through Vicki; held in the drawing room at the Old House [Liz, Burke, and Barnabas are reluctant; Barnabas objects]
Episode 365: Roger conducts; Liz, Julia, Vicki, Carolyn and Barnabas participate; Sarah Collins speaks through Vicki after Carolyn pretends Sarah is speaking through her; Vicki is transferred to 1795; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Liz and Barnabas are reluctant; Liz objects]
Episode 449: Countess duPrés conducts; Joshua Collins participates; Bathia Mapes shows up, claiming she was called; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Joshua is reluctant; no trance]
Episode 510/511: Professor Stokes conducts; Julia and Tony Peterson participate; Reverend Trask speaks through Tony Peterson; the basement wall breaks open to reveal his skeleton; held in the basement at the Old House [Tony is reluctant, Julia objects]
Episode 600: Professor Stokes conducts; Barnabas and Julia participate; Phillipe Cordier speaks through Barnabas; held in the drawing room at the Old House [No conspicuously reluctant participant. Julia objects]
Episode 640: David conducts; Amy participates; unsuccessful attempt to contact Quentin Collins; held in Amy’s bedroom at Collinwood [Amy is reluctant; no trance]
Episode 642: Professor Stokes conducts; Liz, Vicki, Carolyn, Chris participate; Magda speaks through Carolyn; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Chris is reluctant and is objector]
Today’s episode: Professor Stokes conducts; Barnabas, Maggie and Mrs. Johnson participate; Janet Findley speaks through Mrs. Johnson; held in the drawing room at Collinwood [Mrs Johnson is reluctant; no objector]
This is Maggie’s first séance, and they’ve been spending a lot of time lately showing us that she is unsure of herself. So it would have been expected for her to become frightened and try to stop the séance when Mrs Johnson goes into the trance. Maybe that’s why they left it out- it was too obvious a move. But the pattern is so familiar now that it feels like they’ve forgotten something when they leave the objection out.
Strange and troubled boy David Collins and nine year old Amy Jennings are falling under the sway of the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins. Quentin has been gaining strength gradually; at first he was confined to a small chamber hidden behind a wall in a storage room in the long deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood, and was dependent on Amy and David to do his bidding elsewhere. Now he can move around the estate and do things for himself. He is still able to control only one of the children at a time, though, and when Amy found out that Quentin had poisoned her brother Chris she made up her mind to fight him.
Today, David goes to the west wing to tell Quentin that Amy will cooperate with him if he promises to leave Chris alone. When David puts this to Quentin, he nods in agreement. If Quentin is still weak enough that he must give in to Amy on this point, he is still weak enough to be stopped before he does any great harm. That builds suspense- the show has invested so much time in building up the threat Quentin poses that it would feel like a cheat if he were defeated now, but we can look forward to seeing him survive a series of close calls between now and the time when his storyline approaches its climax.
David was not the only one who went from the main part of the house to the west wing. Governess Maggie saw him go there, in direct defiance of her orders that he stay in his room. Maggie followed David down the corridor and saw him go into the storage room. By the time she entered that room, David had gone into Quentin’s secret chamber and closed the panel behind him, leaving Maggie baffled as to where he could be. She went back to the main part of the house to wait for David.
In David’s room, Maggie sits in the armchair by the wall. She is still there when David comes back. This recreates a pair of scenes in #667, when David sat in the chair and was still there when Amy entered. That was supposed to be a power move, and it worked, more or less. David asserted his role as Quentin’s spokesman, and Amy acquiesced.
But Maggie can’t pull it off. She doesn’t give in to David when he denies everything, tells her her eyesight must be failing, claims that she doesn’t have the right to punish him, and yells at her that he will “get even.” But her visible nervousness encourages him to try each of these tactics. It’s only when she reminds him that he had his flashlight with him when he went into the west wing and says she will look for it in the storage room that she shuts him down, and then only for a moment.
David protests his innocence to Maggie, but he tells us that the sky is falling.
Maggie goes back to the west wing, where she sees Quentin. David looks directly into the camera and recites the epigram “I do not love thee, Dr Fell.” In the first months of the show, David was the only character who made eye contact with the audience. He stopped doing that late in 1966, when he stopped being a menace, and several other characters have been called on to do it since. It’s good to see him revisit the technique, and he is quite effective at it today.
Closing Miscellany
As my screen name may have led you to suspect, I make my living as a Latin teacher. So I would be remiss if I did not mention that “I do not love thee, Dr Fell” is a translation of a piece often used on the first day of introductory Latin classes, Martial’s Epigram 32:
Non amo te, Sabidi, nec dicere possum quare.
Hoc tantum possum dicere: non amo te.
When poet Tom Brown translated the epigram in 1680, he changed the name “Sabidius” to “Dr Fell” in memory of the dean of the Oxford college which he had briefly attended. A literal translation should enable you to figure out the meaning of each of the Latin words: “I do not love you, Sabidius, and I cannot say why. I can say only this: I do not love you.”
In a conversation with housekeeper Mrs Johnson, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard says that “David is twelve years old.” This is the first time in a while David’s age has been specified explicitly.
Liz orders Mrs Johnson to take David’s dinner to him on a tray and sit in his room while he eats. Longtime viewers may remember that when Mrs Johnson started working in the house in #77 and #79, David was afraid she would be his “jailer”; in #189, she actually did sit in his room and function as his jailer for a little while. She is reluctant to do that again today, because she has caught on that David and Amy are involved with something uncanny and she is afraid of them.
Danny Horn devotes his post about this episode on his great Dark Shadows Every Day to a tour of the props and decor of David’s room. It’s a lot of fun. One of his commenters, “Jayson O’Neill,” links to a 2014 post on the Dark Shadows News blogspot page focusing on David’s posters; another, “John E. Comelately,” points out that famed rock and roll band The Turtles released a track in 1967 called “Chicken Little Was Right.” I made a comment myself finding fault with the acting and blaming director Dan Curtis for it; I don’t agree with that anymore, but you’re welcome to read it if you want.
Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman have figured out that mysterious drifter Chris Jennings is a werewolf. Last night, Barnabas took Chris to the room hidden behind the secret panel in the old Collins family mausoleum and locked him up there. That had the desired effect- Chris transformed, but couldn’t get out and didn’t kill anyone.
This morning, Barnabas walks with Chris as he returns home to the caretaker’s cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood. They find Julia already there. Barnabas had neglected to tell Chris that Julia also knows his secret, so he is puzzled to find her in his house. When she explains that she knows he is the werewolf, she also says that she advised Barnabas against helping him. She seems to be in quite a snippy mood.
Chris says that Julia was right; Barnabas replies “Right or wrong, I have made my decision and I intend to follow it through!” That’s a perfectly characteristic remark for Barnabas, who often shows great tenacity but never shows any signs of a functional conscience. Julia warms up and tells Chris that she will come back the following morning and begin a series of tests meant to discover a medical intervention to deal with his condition. Later, Chris will call Barnabas “a good man.” When Barnabas says that some would dissent from this view, Chris says that those who do are “wrong, very wrong.” Chris hasn’t been watching Dark Shadows!
While werewolf Chris was cooped up in the mausoleum, strange and troubled boy David Collins was at home in the great house of Collinwood. David is friends with Chris’ nine year old sister Amy, and both children are coming under the sway of the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins. Last night, Quentin showed David a bottle of strychnine and ordered him to poison Chris with it. David refused that order. A moment after Barnabas and Julia leave the cottage, David knocks on the door.
David asks who it was he saw “sneaking out” of the cottage. Chris tells him that he may have seen Julia and Barnabas, but that they probably weren’t “sneaking”- they had simply stopped by to visit him. When David is surprised that they came so early in the morning, Chris points out that he dropped in only a few minutes later. David declares that he always gets up early, and is surprised Chris doesn’t know that. Chris does not seem to believe that it is reasonable for David to expect him to know what time he gets up.
David tells Chris he likes what he has done with the interior of the cottage. Chris says he hasn’t changed a thing- it is just as he found it. This will interest longtime viewers. The last person to stay in the cottage was David’s mother, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, who occupied it early in 1967. David often visited her there in those days. We remember those scenes when he takes a seat in front of the fireplace, where he and Laura used to sit.
David in a familiar spot.
Chris tells David he was up all night and has to get some sleep. He offers him a soda “to give you some energy for your hike through the woods.” Once they have collected their sodas, Chris tells David “Well, I tell ya, I like a carbonated grape soda myself. It reminds me of the vineyards in the south of France.” He delivers this line in the voice of W. C. Fields. This is the first unmistakable occurrence of Briscoe’s W. C. Fields imitation; it is a seed from which much will grow. In August, another character of Briscoe’s will make an appearance wearing Fields’ signature costume, top hat and all.
David’s comment about the figures he saw “sneaking” from the cottage shows that he is worried about Chris, and he keeps talking and asking questions until Chris all but pushes him out. His concern is quite understandable in the light of the command Quentin gave him the night before.
After David leaves the cottage, the camera stays in the front room by itself and focuses on the door for such a long time we begin to wonder whether anyone else is coming. Maybe they just want us to see what a nice door the set department has put together. Finally it does open, but we do not see anyone enter. The stopper rises from a decanter of brandy on the table, apparently by itself. The strychnine bottle Quentin showed David comes into view; it tips over, and its contents are emptied into the decanter.
When the day is done, we are at the great house. Julia and Barnabas have had a conversation about a book she is reading, The Lycanthrope of Angers. Coupled with Chris’ joking reference to the south of France, this mention of a city in northwestern France suggests that there is something French about being a werewolf. Barnabas used to be a vampire; that condition came upon him because of his involvement with some French people. Perhaps the makers of the show were planning to turn to the same country to explain the origin of Chris’ troubles. It might not be so far-fetched. The show is set in Maine, after all, home to a great many Franco-Americans.
Alone in the cottage, Chris decides to celebrate the end of the Moon’s “cycle of fullness” by taking a drink of whiskey before bed. He sickens. At first he thinks he is transforming into the werewolf. He collapses, but does not go into the convulsions typical of strychnine poisoning.
Julia is in bed in her room in the great house. She is awakened by the sound of sobbing. A tall, very thin blonde woman in a long white dress appears. She beckons Julia and leaves the room. Julia pauses to put on a robe.
Barnabas is downstairs; he sees the woman. He initially mistakes her for heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, the only blonde woman in the house, but by the time the woman in white has reached the bottom of the stairs and gone out the front door he knows it is not her.
Given their shared hair color, it is unsurprising Barnabas mistakes the woman in white for Carolyn. But there is a bit of an Easter egg here for sufficiently obsessive fans. As the Dark Shadows wiki notes, actress Terry Crawford appeared in a 1969 commercial for the “Barnabas Collins Dark Shadows Board Game” with her hair styled so that she would look like Nancy Barrett as Carolyn.
Julia arrives downstairs and asks if Barnabas saw the woman. The two of them go out the front door and spot her in the distance, on the path to Chris’ cottage. We cut to the cottage, and see the woman enter. Barnabas and Julia enter a moment later, at which point she is gone. They find Chris unconscious, and Julia says he is dying.
Returning viewers recognize the woman in the white dress as Quentin’s associate Beth. We do not know why Quentin wants Chris to be poisoned, or why Beth wants Julia and Barnabas to find him while he is still alive. Perhaps they are working at cross-purposes, and Beth is trying to keep Quentin from killing Chris. Or perhaps they are working together, and their shared plan was to injure Chris but to get Julia, who is after all a doctor, to him in time to prevent the worst.
Chris Jennings turns into a werewolf when the moon is full, which it is about half the time in the universe of Dark Shadows. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins has learned of Chris’ plight and decided to help him. As they make their way through an old cemetery to the hidden chamber where Barnabas will lock Chris up so that he doesn’t hurt anyone tonight, Barnabas asks Chris to confirm that he doesn’t remember anything he does in his lupine form. Chris does, saying that waking up and not knowing what he did the night before “is the most agonizing part of the whole thing.” You might think that he would find it even more agonizing to know that he has been killing one or two random human beings a month for the last seven years, but different things bother different people.
Chris asks how Barnabas knew that he didn’t remember what he did as the werewolf. Barnabas replies “Well, it’s obvious you’ve forgotten that you attacked me in this graveyard the night before last.” Chris says that “It’s a wonder you’re still alive.” To which Barnabas replies “No, it’s a wonder YOU’RE still alive!” For a moment we wonder how long this will go on, but Barnabas explains that werewolves can be killed by silver weapons. The head of the cane he carries is silver, and he struck him with it.
Barnabas shows Chris to the hidden room in the back of the old Collins family mausoleum. Barnabas himself was kept in a chained coffin in this room for over 170 years, when he was a vampire. He tells Chris that the room was originally constructed to hide ammunition from the British during the Revolution, which we have heard before. The coffin is still there; he tells him it is empty, and denies knowing anything about it. He says that the walls of the tomb are solid granite a foot thick; this is the first we’ve heard this detail. When Chris asks if anyone else knows about the room, Barnabas concedes that “A few” do. He assures him that none of them will be around tonight. Regular viewers will start making up a list of all the characters currently on the show who know about the room; Barnabas’s friend Julia Hoffman and his servant Willie Loomis know about it, as does strange and troubled boy David Collins. Barnabas can tell Julia and Willie to stay clear, and David has no reason to come to the cemetery tonight.
Barnabas explains that he will not show Chris the mechanism that unlocks the door from the inside, but promises to come back to release him after dawn. Chris urges Barnabas to leave at once; Barnabas insists on sticking around and asking more questions, saying that the moon isn’t up yet. Chris tells him that he first transformed shortly after he graduated from architecture school. “Oh, I was going to be an architect to be reckoned with, bold, imaginative, revolutionary. I thought nothing could stand in my way. Then something did.”
After Chris delivers a monologue about what a soulful and remorseful serial killer he is, Barnabas finally does close the secret panel. He sticks around until he hears the sounds of the werewolf snarling in the hidden room.
Chris’ nine year old sister Amy is staying at the great house of Collinwood. David finds her standing outside the front door, staring at the moon. She tells him that the moon scares her sometimes. His response is “Well, then don’t look at it,” which does seem logical. But she tells him that she can’t help it. David complains about how odd she is. We will hear more of this grumbling; it makes them seem like an old married couple, and is hilarious.
Amy and David are coming under the influence of the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins. Quentin keeps trying to get them to set various members of the Collins family up for lethal traps; they haven’t succeeded yet in killing anyone, but housekeeper Mrs Johnson has caught on that there is something peculiar going on with the two of them, and she is frightened.
Mrs Johnson enters the drawing room to do some straightening up and finds the children playing a game with a deck of stage magician’s oversized cards. She and they stare silently at each other for a minute or two, and she protests. They say they were just watching her work, and she orders them to go to bed. They object that it isn’t bedtime yet. Of course it isn’t, Mrs Johnson doesn’t work around the clock. They get even more intensely on her nerves by bringing up a recent incident when she saw Quentin’s ghost, and in her exasperation she chases them out of the room.
There isn’t anything about Quentin in the episode prior to that scene, so I cannot imagine what viewers would make of it. It’s late in the day, a domestic is tired, and a couple of kids are trying to annoy her. That is a relatable situation, but it doesn’t match with the heavy, melodramatic Dark Shadows music and the terrified affect with which Clarice Blackburn plays Mrs Johnson. I suppose that by January 1969, Dark Shadows was so widely known as a supernatural thriller that most people tuning in for the first time would assume that something paranormal was going on, but if they turned the television on after the opening titles and didn’t realize what show they were watching, they could only have concluded that they were witnessing an utterly ludicrous case of exaggerated seriousness. After David and Amy are out of Mrs Johnson’s sight, we see them go upstairs laughing, but that proves only that they are trying to upset her, not that they are connected to a malign power greater than themselves.
Barnabas enters and sees that Mrs Johnson is upset. She begins to tell him why, but interrupts herself to declare that he won’t believe her. He assures her that he will, and keeps asking her to go on. After she has told him everything she and the audience both know, he asks her to start over. The scene cuts out, suggesting that Barnabas is taking pains to get as much information from Mrs Johnson as he possibly can.
The children go to the little room in the long-deserted west wing of the house where they first met Quentin. Quentin is there when they arrive. This is the first time we have seen Quentin waiting for them; previously, they have had to summon him. Quentin does not speak; David can sense that he wants Amy to go back to the main part of the house so that they can talk privately.
Alone with Quentin, David asks where “the bottle” is. Quentin opens a rolltop desk, and David sees a bottle. He is shocked to find that the bottle is labeled “strychnine.” He declares that he won’t hurt Chris, and he runs out of the room.
Downstairs, Amy is in the drawing room, where she presses a few keys of the piano. We heard her play “London Bridge” in #656, but this doesn’t seem to be a part of any song. She is just idly pecking at the keyboard. When David comes, Amy complains about how long he was gone. He is distant, refusing to maintain eye contact or to answer any of her questions. He says they won’t be playing tonight.
We cut back upstairs, where Quentin is picking up the bottle of strychnine. Mrs Johnson saw Quentin in Chris’ cottage, so we know that he can go there. If David won’t poison Chris, perhaps Quentin will do it himself.
Dark Shadows Commentary 