sedative – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 917: People take too much medicine as it is

Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes has parked his car and is walking up to the great house of Collinwood, home to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her daughter Carolyn Collins Stoddard, among others. He sees a man lying on the ground and asks him what is wrong. The man pleads with Stokes to help him get away. Stokes asks him what he wants to get away from; the man responds “I can’t tell you.” Stokes asks who he is; he says his name is Stoddard. Stokes replies “You’re Paul Stoddard, Carolyn’s father.” Paul brightens momentarily at Carolyn’s name, but then draws up tight and asks “They sent you after me, didn’t they?” Stokes assures him that no one sent him, and tells him he will catch his death of cold if he continues lying on the ground.

Paul asks Stokes to take him to the police. Stokes nods to the house and says they can call the police from there. Paul cries out, “No! No, not to Collinwood. Please, Professor Stokes, you’ve got to take me to the police, it’s the only thing you can do for me. If you don’t, I’ll be dead. No, no, no, I am not being hysterical or melodramatic…” At this, Stokes turns to face his car. He gives Paul his arm, and says he will drive him to the police station.

The police station was a frequent set for about a year after its first appearance in August 1966. It hasn’t changed a bit when we see it today. The officer on duty is someone we haven’t seen before, but that doesn’t mean he is a new character. Four actors took turns playing Sheriff George Patterson between September 1966 and January 1969; this man is not named in the dialogue and there are no acting credits on screen today, so for all we can tell he might be a fifth. He is younger and slimmer than were any of the other incarnations of Sheriff Patterson, but maybe he’s been working out.

Stokes introduces Paul to the policeman, and explains that Paul will speak only to the authorities. The policeman sits Paul down, gives him some coffee, and assures him that everything will be all right.

Paul tells the policeman that “It will never be alright until they stop chasing me” and “They have been after me ever since I got here.” The policeman asks “What are these people doing to you?” and Paul replies that “At first, there were just little hints, phone calls, things like that- veiled threats. It was their way of making me know that I was under their control. And I was, too, because when I tried to get away they took me back to Collinwood.”

The policeman responds “I see,” and Paul bursts out with “No, you don’t see! You think I’m mad!” The policeman tries to reassure him that he will listen, and asks him if he can name any of his persecutors. “Yes, I’ll name one, all right! My [ex-]wife, Elizabeth Stoddard.” The policeman says “That’s a little hard to believe,” and Paul responds “It’s impossible to believe, and yet! You tell me why she took me back into Collinwood, after years of open hatred, unless they wanted me there! And you know this town, you know how they gossip. And you know my wife. Why, why would she risk all that gossip, unless they wanted her to do so?” He answers that even so, “It’s still a little hard to believe.”

Paul does not trust the policeman or Stokes. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Paul angrily says “Yes, and because it’s Elizabeth Stoddard who’s involved, you will do nothing!” The policeman responds “I didn’t say that. I intend to talk to Mrs Stoddard and the doctor and whoever else is involved. If you still feel you’re being held captive, well, we’ll have to do something about it.” Paul visibly relaxes.

Earlier in the episode, we saw Liz forcing medicine on Paul. Returning viewers know that Liz has been absorbed into an evil cult that is trying to do something terrible to Paul, and indeed to the whole human race. We saw today that Liz has assigned her housekeeper, Mrs Johnson, to trick Paul into taking the medicine. It quickly becomes clear that Mrs Johnson has no idea that Liz is involved in anything sinister- she simply trusts her employer to do the right thing, and she follows her orders. Liz owns most of the village of Collinsport, and most of its people would react as Mrs Johnson does.

When we saw the last Sheriff Patterson for the last time in #675, he told a prisoner that he was releasing him because Liz’ cousin Barnabas said he was with him when the crime was committed, and Barnabas is “just about the best alibi you can have in this town.” He shook hands with the prisoner and sent him on his way. Since we know that Barnabas is, off and on, a vampire, and that even when he is free from the effects of that curse he spends most of his time covering up murders, that left us with an impression of Collinsport law enforcement as hopelessly in the thrall of the Collinses. That reinforces the image left by Sheriff Patterson’s predecessor, Constable/ Sheriff Jonas Carter, who was last seen in #32, toddling off after taking Liz’ orders to accept an obvious lie as a way of closing a case against a family member. Paul has every reason to suppose that this new policeman will be as submissive to Liz and her family as were his predecessors.

Now that Paul can hope that the policeman will be different from the others, he asks him to lock him away, to put him under guard someplace where no one can get to him until his daughter Carolyn Collins Stoddard can come for him. Stokes agrees to telephone Collinwood and talk to Carolyn, and the policeman escorts Paul to a back room. Paul awakes from a nap, and smiles at the policeman. He tells him he can’t tell him how much better he feels. The policeman tells him someone has come to see him. Paul’s delight at the thought that Carolyn has arrived gives way to cries of terror when he sees Liz at Stokes’ side. She comes at him with a spoonful of the hated medicine while Paul tells Stokes and the policeman that they are traitors and killers.

This one is primarily a showcase for Dennis Patrick as Paul, but all of the acting is excellent. My wife, Mrs Acilius, found it very difficult to watch the episode to the end, saying that they did too good a job- she felt as trapped as Paul. It really is one of those episodes you could show to a person who had never before seen Dark Shadows with a reasonable confidence that they would understand why we like the series so much.

Episode 815: The gentleman he appears to be

One night in 1797, nine Rroma men trapped sorcerer Count Petofi in the forest of Ojden. They amputated his right hand, and with it took most of his magical powers. Some time after, Petofi learned that he had exactly one hundred years to reattach the hand. If he managed it within that time, he would become immortal. Otherwise, he would die on the anniversary of the amputation.

Now that anniversary has come, and Petofi has succeeded in regaining his hand with only minutes to spare. Time-traveling vampire Barnabas Collins and his distant cousin, desperately handsome werewolf Quentin, have decided that because Petofi’s spirit is in possession of Quentin’s twelve year old nephew Jamison and Jamison is as close to death as is Petofi himself, only by surrendering the hand to Petofi can they save the boy. Barnabas did get Petofi’s servant Aristide to promise to free Quentin of lycanthropy once he has the hand back, but he put little faith in that promise.

Now Petofi is jubilant and Jamison is still sick. Barnabas tells Petofi about the deal Aristide made, and also says that he wants Jamison and the rest of the Collinses to be freed from the ill effects Petofi has had on them. Petofi could not be less interested. Instead, he wants Barnabas to tell him how he traveled in time from 1969 and how he will travel back there.

Petofi lets slip that he is anxious to go to another period of history because he is afraid of the Rroma people who are still after him. We know, not only that it was Rroma who cut off his hand, but that when Petofi saw a young Rroma woman in a tavern in #794 he couldn’t get out fast enough. While it may have taken nine Rroma men to take his hand, evidently a single Rroma woman, and a tiny one at that, is capable of doing him considerable harm. Barnabas has a Rroma friend, broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, who has considerable magic powers of her own, and he knows of a Romany band currently camped near Boston. So Petofi’s apparently well-founded ziganophobia is a sign that Barnabas may be able to defeat him, even though Petofi’s powers were formidable even before he was reunited with his hand.

Petofi says that he will cure Jamison only if Barnabas explains how he traveled to 1897 from 1969. Barnabas tells Petofi he has no idea how he made that journey. This is so. He meditated on some I Ching wands, a process which he was told might have any of an infinite number of effects, and found himself in 1897. Nor does he have any idea how to get back. He might have enlarged on the theme of his complete lack of useful knowledge in this area. In 1968, Barnabas traveled back to his original era, the 1790s, by going to the grave of a man named Peter Bradford on the anniversary of Bradford’s death. Bradford’s ghost had been haunting him, and Barnabas called for Bradford to take him back to the year 1796. After he did so, Barnabas found that he could return to the 1960s only by having himself sealed in his coffin and waiting inside it for 172 years until friends let him out. He doesn’t tell Petofi about that incident, but it does not seem likely to be of any more help to him than the story about the I Ching would be.

Petofi does not believe that Barnabas is so hapless. First he squeezes Barnabas’ hand, depriving him of the power to dematerialize. Then he opens a cupboard and tells Barnabas to look in it. It takes a while to warm up, but eventually it gets an ABC affiliate showing Dark Shadows. Barnabas sees the parlor of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood in 1969. His best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD, is sitting there reading a book. We haven’t seen Julia since #700, but she might be on our minds today. At one point Aristide lights his cigar on a candle burning in a large candelabra. In #296, Julia very memorably did the same thing with her cigarette.

Barnabas sees strange and troubled boy David Collins come staggering downstairs, raving deliriously about Quentin. Julia tells him to reject Quentin, who in 1969 is a ghost haunting Collinwood and draining the life from David. David passes out, and Julia injects him with a powerful sedative, as you do with unconscious children.

The cupboard loses the channel, and Barnabas asks Petofi what else is happening in 1969. Petofi cannot answer any questions; it quickly becomes clear that he couldn’t see or hear the scene. Barnabas is intrigued to learn of another of Petofi’s weaknesses, and walks out.

Aristide then speculates that Barnabas might be telling the truth. Petofi rejects this at once, reveals more of his cupboard’s limitations:

No, he’s not a fool, Aristide. He thinks he can win, accomplish whatever he wants to do here, and disappear without me…

Had Petofi ever seen even one episode of Dark Shadows, it would not occur to him to say that Barnabas is “not a fool.” Nor would he surmise that Barnabas is pursuing a plan that includes a plausible method of escape. If Barnabas had a plan of any kind, Petofi would know all about it, since it would have failed spectacularly the moment he took the first step towards putting it into effect.

Petofi and Aristide then go to the Old House. They find Magda there. At the moment, she is under Petofi’s power. Like Julia, Magda is played by Grayson Hall. We may have thought the glimpse into 1969 was a videotaped insert, but evidently it was done live, because Magda is not wearing her usual heavy brownface makeup. She may have a bit of an artificial tan, but Julia’s blue eyeshadow is clearly visible through it.

Magda, looking more like an actual Rroma woman than she ever has before.

Petofi forces Magda to lead her to Barnabas’ hiding place. He has a cross and Aristide has a chain and a padlock. Petofi puts the cross inside the coffin, and orders Aristide to chain the coffin closed. Petofi declares that Barnabas is in for a long journey.

Episode 654: After you see what happens, you will never be the same again

One of the duller storylines in the first several months of Dark Shadows was the relationship between hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell and flighty heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard. Carolyn and Joe were thoroughly bored with each other before we ever saw them, and we were treated to scene after scene of them having nothing to say while they were out on dates. They only kept going out to humor reclusive matriarch Liz, who was both Carolyn’s mother and Joe’s employer.

Eventually Joe and Carolyn went their separate ways, and Joe struck up a much happier romance with Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. There were too few obstacles between Joe and Maggie to make for exciting drama. There were long stretches when the show had established that they wanted to get married and couldn’t give us a single reason why they didn’t. Occasionally one of them would be caught up in the strange goings-on, and then we would see the other being all anguished and determined to get to the bottom of all this. As Dark Shadows‘ principal representatives of the working class of the village of Collinsport, Maggie and Joe were appealing when they went into that mode, suggesting a whole community of people who struggle to make sense of the inexplicable disasters that continually emanate from the big house on the hill.

Joe is on his way out of the show now. Actor Joel Crothers has taken a part on another soap, and will be leaving any day. In recent months, supernatural beings have cast spells on Joe and Maggie that have caused each to think the other had fallen out of love. Yesterday they met at her house. He told her he would be leaving town soon, probably never to return. They agreed to part as friends.

This scene of parting was cut short when a telephone call came summoning Maggie to the great house of Collinwood. Joe drove her there, and was downstairs when Liz offered Maggie a job as governess to the two children living there, strange and troubled boy David Collins and Joe’s orphaned cousin Amy Jennings. Maggie accepted the job, which Liz stipulated would start immediately. Joe drove back to her house to get the things she would need to stay the night.

Joe had only been in the Evans cottage a moment when a window burst open and a werewolf entered in a shower of broken glass. We open today with Joe fighting the werewolf. He manages to stab the werewolf with a pair of scissors. The werewolf does not appear to be gravely wounded, but he does run away.

The werewolf drops in on Joe. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Back at Collinwood, Maggie is worried that it is taking Joe so long to get her things. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins suggests that Joe might be having trouble finding the items on the list she made; she rules that out, saying that it was a very short list. She calls home. Joe picks up the telephone and immediately passes out. This alarms Maggie. She stays at Collinwood while Barnabas goes to the cottage to investigate.

Barnabas finds an unconscious, bloodied Joe in the midst of the wreckage strewn throughout the Evans cottage. Joe comes to, and resists Barnabas’ offer to call a doctor.

Shortly after, Barnabas enters Collinwood, Joe leaning heavily on his shoulder. Barnabas went to the Evans cottage alone, and he cannot possibly have carried Joe all the way back. Later, it will come up that Joe’s car is still at the cottage. So Barnabas must have learned to drive and acquired a car at some point in the last several months.

In the drawing room, Joe receives medical attention from permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD. When Julia asks if he is ready to talk to the police, she is surprised to find that he hasn’t called them, isn’t going to call them, and doesn’t want anyone else to call them. She and Barnabas try to reason with him. When Julia points out that the werewolf might attack someone else tonight, Joe asks if it did any good when Liz saw the werewolf and called the sheriff. Julia looks down and, sounding like a chastened child, says “No.” Regular viewers know that calling the sheriff’s office never does any good in Collinsport, and Julia’s reaction is so much that of a person who is aware of this fact that I suspect the humor is intentional.

Barnabas and Julia reluctantly agree not to call the sheriff. They leave Joe alone with Maggie, who says she feels guilty that this terrible thing happened to him while he was doing her a favor. He says he’s just glad it didn’t happen to her. She says “We keep on hurting each other, and it just isn’t right!,” apparently expecting to finish the parting-of-the-ways scene that was interrupted yesterday. He is not interested. She notices that he is clutching a strip of fabric, and asks him what it is. He says that it is “nothing at all.”

The next day, we see mysterious drifter Chris Jennings in his apartment. We hear his thoughts in voiceover as he worries that he may have killed his cousin Joe the night before, when he was the werewolf. This does not imply that Chris remembers what he did in his lupine form; he knew that a pentagram had been seen on Joe’s face, and that this marks the werewolf’s next victim.

Chris goes to Collinwood to see Julia. He had hoped she would give him a sedative powerful enough to make him sleep through his time as the werewolf. Had he told her his real problem, she would likely have been very helpful, since she specializes in treating patients who are based on monsters from Universal Studios movies of the 1930s, but all she knew when he came to her was that he was a hobo demanding narcotics. It’s against Julia’s nature to deny anyone sedatives, so she did give him a few pills, but they didn’t help.

Chris sees Maggie. She tells Chris that she just left his sister Amy playing at Barnabas’ house. She explains that she is the governess now, a fact in which Chris feigns interest for almost five seconds. “Oh, that’s… that’s really great, that’ll be great for her” he says. He then tells Maggie he has been looking for Joe. When she indicates that Joe was attacked the night before, he grabs her by the arms so hard he hurts her and shouts his questions in her face.

As it happens, Joe is also looking for Chris. At nightfall, Chris returns home to find Joe waiting for him. Joe had brought the strip of fabric that Maggie had seen him holding at Collinwood and matched it to a gap torn in Chris’ shirt. He confronts Chris, who tries desperately to get him to leave. When he realizes he cannot get rid of Joe, he tells Joe where he keeps his gun, and tells him to use it “when it happens.” Joe sees Chris turn into the werewolf and does empty the revolver into his chest, but it only slows him down. As the episode ends, the werewolf is closing in on Joe.

In his posts about this episode and the preceding one, Danny Horn remarks on Maggie and Joe’s inability to have an extended breakup scene as a sign that Dark Shadows is very different from other soap operas, and on Maggie’s inability to get anyone interested in her new job as a sign that Dark Shadows has changed- “This is not that kind of show anymore,” her writes. I would go further, and say that they amount to a programmatic statement. The first 38 weeks of the show were all about the well-meaning Victoria Winters’ attempt to find her place as a governess; Maggie can’t get us to pay attention to her thoughts about the position for 38 seconds. Carolyn and Joe’s months-long relationship amounted to about one-fifth of a breakup scene, the part where the former lovers realize they’ve said everything they had to say but neither wants to be the first to leave the room. But Joe and Maggie no sooner start talking about the end of their far more substantial relationship than it is time to rush off and do battle with a werewolf. That’s what Dark Shadows is about now, and they want us to know it.

Maggie’s brief remark to Chris that she left Amy playing at Barnabas’ house will also strike longtime viewers as a programmatic statement. That house, the Old House on the estate, was introduced in #70 as a haunted ruin. David’s habit of sneaking into it caused the adults no end of concern, especially after Barnabas moved into it in #220. Barnabas was a vampire then. That was a secret, but everyone could understand that he did not want to look up and find David in his house. In those days, the governess would never have dreamed of leaving her charge to play in Barnabas’ house.

That Maggie is now the governess adds an extra charge to this moment. In May and June of 1967, Maggie was Barnabas’ victim and he held her prisoner in the Old House. Julia used her preternatural powers of hypnosis to erase Maggie’s recollection of that ordeal, but several times since the show has teased the idea that her memory might come back. When Maggie so blithely mentions that she left Amy at Barnabas’ house, it is clear to use that Dark Shadows has no further plans for its previous storylines about the place.

I was puzzled as to why Joe suspected that the strip he tore from the werewolf’s shirt would match Chris’. There is nothing at all distinctive about Chris’ clothing even in the full light of day, and in a few moments of pitched battle in a dimly lit room there is no way anyone would have recognized the werewolf’s clothes as the ones Joe had seen Chris wearing earlier that evening. I think it would have been better if, when Joe saw Chris in his room in yesterday’s episode, Chris had spilled some brightly colored fluid or powder on his shirt. He could easily have done that, it is a small room and the two of them were both very upset. Joe could then have recognized the smudge during the fight, and that would have explained why he thought that it was his cousin under the fur.

Episode 651: The tomb is ready, and I am ready

Mysterious drifter Chris Jennings telephones the great house of Collinwood. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins answers. Chris asks to speak to permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD. Barnabas tells him Julia is busy with a patient, and Chris says that it is extremely urgent Julia call him back the moment she is free.

Julia comes downstairs. She had been tending to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Liz is mentally ill. She is deeply depressed and fixated on the idea that she will soon be buried alive. Barnabas starts talking about the witch whose spell started Liz’ illness; Julia points out that the origin doesn’t really matter. Indeed it does not. Liz’ condition is quite logical when we realize that she has been exposed to a long series of traumatic events of supernatural character. Of course she feels helpless- her world really does not make rational sense, and there really are forces beyond her control that are determined to bring misery to her and those she loves. And of course she is preoccupied with death- she is surrounded, not only by people in mortal jeopardy, but also by figures who are at once dead and alive. Unknown to her, Barnabas is one of these- he died in the 1790s, became a vampire, and was restored to humanity less than a year ago. The story of Liz’ depression is not really a tale of the supernatural, but of a person responding to her environment in a perfectly natural way.

Liz’ depression is not exactly a fun story, and the show hadn’t done anything with it for months. We might have hoped it was all over. What has brought it back is the disappearance of well-meaning governess Victoria Winters. The other day, Vicki embraced her husband, an unpleasant man known variously as Peter and Jeff, and vanished into thin air as Barnabas and Liz watched. She and Peter/ Jeff were traveling back in time to the 1790s, never to return. Liz was very close to Vicki; the show spent its first year hinting heavily that she was Vicki’s biological mother, though they never got round to saying so explicitly or telling us anything about Vicki’s father. Now that Vicki is gone, Liz is inconsolable.

That is the in-universe explanation for Liz’ trouble. There are two real-world reasons. First, Joan Bennett was going away for a few weeks to do a play in Chicago, and the show needed to explain why Liz wasn’t going to be around when so much of the action was taking place in her house. Second, the key figure in both of the ongoing storylines is Chris’ eleven year old sister Amy, who is staying at Collinwood. Barnabas is the show’s chief protagonist, and so far he does not have any particular connection to either of those stories. Plunging Liz into a paralyzing depression completes the task they started by sending her brother Roger on a business trip overseas. It means that Barnabas has a reason to camp out in the main house and act as a father figure to Amy.

Barnabas had a vague notion about a romance with Vicki, though he did almost nothing to develop such a relationship. His basic feeling towards her seems to have been that he might want her someday, and so he reacted with petulant anger to any person or event that made her unavailable to him. Thinking about Vicki’s departure with Peter/ Jeff, he spends several minutes pouting while Julia tries gently to reason with him.

Barnabas is very upset that Vicki was so inconsiderate as to move on with her life when he might someday have wanted her. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

At the end of his tantrum, Barnabas declares that he and Julia should go back upstairs and talk with Liz. As they are going, he sees the telephone and says “Oh. By the way, Chris Jennings called. He said it was urgent.” It’s even funnier that Barnabas remembers this call so late in the scene than it would be if he had forgotten it altogether. Chris may use words like “emergency” and “extremely urgent,” but in Barnabas’ world there is only one truly urgent matter, and that is whatever his feelings are at the moment.

Vampires are metaphors for extreme selfishness. Barnabas may not be a vampire anymore, but he is still very selfish. But perhaps is attitude towards Vicki is not so unsympathetic as I have made it out to be. When he was still under his curse, he thought he might be able to remake Vicki as an eighteenth century woman, then turn her into a vampire and take her as his bride. Vicki did indeed have an attachment to that era, so much so that she traveled back in time to the 1790s. And when he became human again, Barnabas was immediately embroiled with a succession of witches and monsters, to none of whom did he want to expose Vicki. He wanted to clear them out of the way so his life could start, and once it did he would be free to approach her. But her life was already underway, and of course his was too. The nemeses Barnabas and Julia fought together throughout 1968 are gone now, but so is Vicki, and it is the two of them who are alone together.

The other day, Chris dropped by to ask Julia for sedatives. She was unimpressed with his drug-seeking behavior, and so when Barnabas tells her about Chris’ call she says that he can wait. What she does not know is that Chris is a werewolf, and he was hoping that strong enough pills could knock him out throughout the night of the full moon.

Chris and Amy’s cousin Joe Haskell has been trying to fill in for Chris in the big brother role. He and Amy have gone to the movies, and we see them on their way back to the great house, looking at the moon. Amy tells Joe that she is terribly afraid of the moon, for reasons she can’t explain. Joe asks if she really saw a pentagram on his face in #648; she confirms that she did. Joe knows that someone else saw it too, visiting medium Janet Findley. He also knows that when he told Chris about it he was terribly upset. Neither Joe nor Amy knows what Chris and Madame Findley knew, that it is the sign that he will be the werewolf’s next victim.

Amy is alone in the foyer of the great house when Liz comes down the stairs, apparently in a trance. She does not respond when Amy calls out to her, but walks out into the night. Amy is standing in the open doorway, watching her, when Barnabas comes and asks what she is doing. She tells Barnabas what happened. He tells her to go to bed; she refuses. He then decides it will be good enough if she waits in the drawing room until he brings Liz back. She goes to the drawing room, but when he goes off to tell Julia what has happened she slips out to look for Liz. Barnabas learns that she has left when Julia, whom he has sent to sit with her, reports that she is not in the drawing room.

Barnabas is out looking for Liz and Amy when Chris comes to Collinwood. He is upset that Julia did not call him back; she is skeptical of him. He tries to give a reasonable-sounding explanation; if only he knew of her background treating vampires and Frankensteins, he would realize that he has everything to gain by telling her the truth. She finally gives him a bottle of sleeping pills, along with a wary look and an injunction to use the pills only as directed.

Liz goes to the old Collins family mausoleum. Barnabas’ parents and sister are buried there, and he was himself trapped there for 172 years when he was a vampire. She thinks of it now as her tomb, and tells herself that she is ready to be buried there now. She collapses. Amy finds her, fears that she is dead, and cries out. Her voice brings Barnabas, who tells Amy that Liz is alive. He also says that they must get her back to the house at once. Barnabas puts his arms under Liz’ left side, Amy puts hers under her right, and they lift her. This brief glimpse of the two of them working together goes a long way towards establishing Barnabas’ closeness to Amy.

I’ve altered the saturation and exposure a bit in this still. Though the original is darker and the fog machine was working overtime, in the moving image you can see what Amy is doing clearly enough.

Joe pays another visit to Chris’ room. Chris has taken a bunch of sleeping pills from the bottle Julia gave him. Joe scolds Chris for his failure to visit Amy. Chris knows that he could transform at any time, and is desperate to get Joe to leave. Joe does leave. Chris goes to bed. He falls asleep. The camera pans to his hand, which has already become a werewolf’s paw.

Episode 649: Why did that music stop?

Cavada Humphrey plays Madame Janet Findley, a medium who has come to the great house of Collinwood and is doing battle with the ghost of Quentin Collins. This battle takes the form of Humphrey alone in a room arguing with a series of inanimate objects. The only bipedal presence with whom she shares any of the ten minutes she is on camera is that ever-faithful member Dark Shadows’ supporting cast, a skeleton wearing a wig. Her most intense scenes are with Quetin’s record player.

Madame Findley gives Quentin’s record player a piece of her mind. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Humphrey’s style was more like pantomime or puppetry than it was like anything native to screen acting; she strikes a series of poses, and tells the story through them, producing the dialogue as a sort of incidental accompaniment. She has such a complete mastery of this approach that she could hold the audience’s interest for any length of time, regardless of what she had to do or with whom she had to do it. Unfortunately, today is her final appearance- at the end of the episode, Madame Findley falls down the stairs in the foyer of Collinwood, dead.

Madame Findley’s scenes give Humphrey about half the episode’s running time. Most of the rest is taken up with chatter between matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, who is worried about Madame Findley, and permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman, MD, who is not.

There are also two scenes with mysterious drifter Chris Jennings. In the first, Chris is in his apartment, dreading the upcoming full moon and feeling guilty about a barmaid he killed during the last one. We know that Chris is a werewolf. Chris’ cousin Joe Haskell knocks on the door and insists he be let in. He tells Chris that he will be leaving town soon, probably forever. Joe chastises Chris for spending so little time with his little sister Amy, who has been staying at Collinwood. Joe mentions that when he was visiting Amy earlier to pass on Chris’ message that he was yet again too busy to see her, she saw a pentagram on his face. Chris knows this means that he will be the werewolf’s next victim, and he is horrified.

Joe has been on the show since #3. From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and actor Joel Crothers played roguish naval officer Nathan Forbes. Both as Joe and as Nathan, Crothers has been a mainstay of the show’s appeal, even more so than the bewigged skull. He is about to leave the cast, and he deserves a spectacular exit followed by a huge and long-lasting display of grief. A fatal werewolf attack would fit the bill, especially since the werewolf is, in his human form, one of Joe’s closest relatives and dearest friends. If they play their cards right, Chris could be mournful and racked with guilt about Joe’s death for the rest of the show’s run, even if that goes for decades.

Later, Joe drops by Collinwood to see Julia. Julia specializes in treating monsters, vampires and Frankensteins particularly, so if Chris had disclosed his lycanthropy to her she may well have had a prescription handy. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know about that, so he just demands that Julia give him a super-powerful sedative right away. Julia routinely dispenses sedatives to address any and all conditions, including sleepiness, but she draws the line here. She has never examined Chris, looked at his medical records, or talked with a doctor who has. Still, she does finally agree to prescribe something, though apparently not the knockout drops he was hoping for.

Episode 564: Three stooges

Julia Hoffman, MD, is in the hospital looking for information about Tom Jennings. Tom was never her patient, but she knows that he was bitten by a vampire and will become a vampire himself if he dies.

Julia meets Tom’s cousin Joe Haskell. Joe tells her that Tom is already dead. Seeing how distraught Joe is, Julia says she will call his doctor. When he says he doesn’t need medical attention, because “I’m upset, that’s all,” Julia responds “There’s medication for that, too, you know.” Joe tells Julia Tom will be buried before the day is out.

Meanwhile, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins is in his basement, examining a new arrival. Barnabas and Julia are being forced to create a Frankenstein’s monster, and Barnabas’ servant Willie Loomis brought a cadaver home last night for material. Willie comes downstairs and declares that the project is too dangerous and too horrible for him to participate any further. Willie refers to himself in the third person, telling Barnabas that “Willie Loomis” has something to tell him. In this, he reverts to a habit he had in his first week on the show, when he was played by James Hall. He stopped doing this shortly after John Karlen took over the role, long before he gave up trying to imitate Mr Hall’s Mississippi accent. Maybe he will go back to that next. Barnabas tells Willie that he will do as he is told, and that Julia will give him a sedative next time he comes back with a corpse. Willie storms out, and Julia comes in with the news about Tom.

Barnabas says they must drive a stake through Tom’s heart before he rises to prey on the living. He calls Willie in. At that, my wife, Mrs Acilius, laughed. “He’s going to make Willie do it!” But this time, Barnabas has decreed that all three of them will go to the cemetery.

They are clustered near a tree, looking for all the world like the Three Stooges, when they spot Joe standing at the grave. They haven’t caught on that Joe is himself the victim of a vampire. That’s a bit odd. You’d think they would be among the very first to spot the signs of such a condition, and in the opening scene Joe was even sitting directly under a “Give Blood” poster. But they are oblivious.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas and Willie dig up the coffin. Barnabas is ready with the mallet and the stake when Willie opens the lid. He is shocked to find that it is empty.

Episode 491: What we do with him now is up to us

Vampires and mad scientists are both metaphors for extreme selfishness. The vampire exists only to feed on humans, gaining a night’s nourishment for himself at infinite cost to them; the mad scientist takes skills and equipment that could bring great boons to humanity and uses them only to further some perverse private whim. The Frankenstein’s monster emerges as the logical synthesis of these metaphors. As a botched resurrection and a parody of the Christian story, the Frankenstein’s monster evokes the vampire; as the helpless product of the mad scientist’s hubris, he is a child neglected and abused by a narcissistic parent, bringing home the real-world stakes of the issues raised in stories of uncanny horrors.

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman and vampire Barnabas Collins have finally got round to creating a Frankenstein’s monster of their own. His name is Adam. Julia and Barnabas had expected Barnabas to die and his “life force,” what the opening voiceover today refers to as his “spirit,” to animate Adam. They are surprised that the experiment has ended with Barnabas and Adam both alive. They are entirely bewildered about what to do with this 6′ 6″ newborn. Julia goes to her usual default, and injects him with a sedative.

Matriarch Liz comes from the great house of Collinwood to the house where Julia and Barnabas are working. She brings some information about the B plot. Barnabas makes it clear that he and Julia are deeply involved in an experiment begun by the house’s previous owner, the late Dr Lang. Liz is mystified by Barnabas’ new interest in science. She and Julia go to Collinwood, while Barnabas stays downstairs in Lang’s old consulting room. He is waiting for the dawn, wondering if the process of creating Adam cured him of the symptoms of vampirism or if he will crumble into dust when the sun rises.

In the lab upstairs, Adam regains consciousness. He plays with some of the shiny objects around him. It’s rather an odd playpen for a baby, with its electrical equipment spraying sparks, vials of boiling acid, loaded gun, and medical sharps. But he seems delighted with everything until he grabs a scalpel by the wrong end. Then he starts smashing things.

What newborn wouldn’t love that? Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

By that point, Julia is back, the sun is up, and Barnabas has learned he is human again. Julia and Barnabas hear the crashing sounds from upstairs. They try to stop Adam. He flings them aside. The episode ends with him sticking his arm out the door while they press it shut. Grayson Hall and Jonathan Frid do such a good job of playing Julia and Barnabas as farcically clueless that the sequence left me and Mrs Acilius roaring with laughter.

There is a bit of self-reference in this one. The first person Adam sees when he opens his eyes is Barnabas. When he can see Barnabas, he is calm. When he cannot, he becomes agitated and dangerous. Most of the people watching Dark Shadows at this point first tuned in because they were curious about Barnabas, and have stayed with the show because they are fascinated with him. The viewer mail whenever Barnabas was not getting enough of the spotlight to please his fans must have been unpleasant for the writing staff to read, and might have made them apprehensive of the crowds that gathered every weekday outside the studio at 442 West 54th Street. Perhaps Adam’s rampage was their nightmare dramatized.

Episode 331: Not always sure of the answers

Strange and troubled boy David Collins is at his wit’s end. A bat entered his room and menaced him. He can’t even convince the adults in the great house of Collinwood that the bat existed. Still less can he get a hearing for his correct surmises that his cousin, courtly gentleman Barnabas Collins, used magical powers to send the bat against him.

David’s aunt and father call the family doctor, addled quack Dave Woodard. Woodard gives David a sleeping pill, waits a few minutes, and starts asking him questions. David tells him about his friend, mysterious girl Sarah. He asks if Woodard believes that Sarah is a ghost. Several times, the audience has seen Woodard wrestle with evidence pointing in this direction, so we know that he is telling the truth when he answers David’s question with “I don’t know what I believe.” Robert Gerringer does a fine job of acting today, and draws the audience into Woodard’s struggle to come to terms with the idea that he lives in a world where supernatural forces are at work.

Later, Sarah wakes David up. She says she’s angry with him. In her last apparition, she specifically told him to stay away from Barnabas’ house, but the very next morning he went there, sneaked in through a window, and was trying to get into the basement when Barnabas’ co-conspirator Julia Hoffman caught him. He keeps asking for more information, and she complains that he asks too many questions. She keeps insisting that he stay away from Barnabas’ house.

The messenger. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Sarah gives David an antique toy soldier and tells him to keep it with him. She says it belonged to someone who played with it long ago, and that it will keep David safe as long as he has it with him. Returning viewers know that Sarah is the ghost of Barnabas’ sister, so the “someone” must be Barnabas himself. Also, we saw Sarah give a doll of her own to Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, with the same instructions, so we know this is her usual mode of operation.

When Sarah is complaining that David asks too many questions, she says that she isn’t always sure of the answers. This makes an interesting contrast with Woodard’s earlier remark that she seems to know everything. It also brings up a mystery from recent episodes. In #325, David had a dream in which Sarah led him to a basement where they saw Barnabas rise from a coffin. This must have been a dream visitation, since it includes information only she would have. But in #327, David sees Sarah in the woods and surprises her when he tells her about the dream. Later in that same episode, she makes it clear that she does not want him to know the information he gained from it.

The sight of Sarah in the corner of David’s room, lit from below, might cast the minds of regular viewers back to the first supernatural being to make an entrance in that spot. David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, drove the story from #126 to #191. In the early part of the Laura arc, the show made a great deal out of the uncertainty about how the various events and appearances associated with her related to each other. There was a more or less substantial, apparently living woman who comes to stay in the cottage on the estate of Collinwood; an image of the same woman that occasionally flickers on the lawn of the estate; and a scorched corpse in the morgue in Phoenix, Arizona. These three, and an undetermined number of other phenomena, might all be aspects of the same being, or they may not. They may be pursuing the same objective, or they may be working at cross-purposes. They may be organs of a single mind, or they may be entirely unaware of each other. As the story went on, Laura became an ever-more dynamic personality, but it was never made altogether clear just how many of her there were.

The difference between the Sarah who led David to Barnabas in his dream and the Sarah who demands that he stay away from Barnabas when he is awake raises the same question. Sarah used to be a little girl, and she still looks and sounds like one. But she isn’t really that, nor is she anything else that belongs in our world anymore, and she can’t be expected to follow any rules we can understand. She is a focal point around which uncanny phenomena gather, and through which information passes into our world from an alien plane of existence. Sarah is not only a messenger- she is herself the message.

The uncertainty Sarah admits to today, along with our uncertainty about how her various manifestations fit with each other, show that David is wrong if he finds her a reassuring presence. She is part of a world in which the living have no place, and her irruption into David’s experience thrusts him into the company of the dead. David cannot fully understand Sarah’s world, much less control it. If he keeps trying to find his own way to safety, he will quickly meet his doom.

Episode 275: To the end of the Earth

Part One. Her name is not Victoria Winters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part Three. He gets what he came for.

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 104: Chamber of horrors

In the great house of Collinwood, well-meaning governess Vicki is terrified of high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. She had found evidence that led her to suspect Roger of murdering beloved local man Bill Malloy. Roger learned of her suspicions and told her a story that has left her unsure what to think.

In yesterday’s episode, someone unlocked the door to Vicki’s room and started to enter while she was in bed. She screamed, and the door slammed shut. Seconds later, Roger came. He denied having unlocked the door or seen anyone else in the hallway.

Today, Vicki is discussing that event with reclusive matriarch Liz. Vicki won’t explicitly say anything against Liz’ brother Roger, and Liz will not draw any conclusions about him in front of her. When Liz says she can’t imagine who might be in the house that Vicki could have reason to fear, gruff caretaker Matthew enters. This is not the least subtle clue the show has given us that we should consider Matthew a potential threat to Vicki.

Vicki tries to call her friend Maggie Evans. She talks to Maggie’s father, drunken artist Sam. Sam asks her to meet him at the local tavern to discuss a painting he did long ago of a woman to whom Vicki thinks she might be related.

After Vicki has left, Roger comes home. Liz is unhappy that he did not return her call when she telephoned him at his office in the business she owns. He is unrepentant. When she questions him about Vicki, he tells her that he thinks Vicki should leave Collinwood. He says that she is not safe there because she knows too much about the death of Bill Malloy. This does not leave Liz with a particularly sunny view of her bratty little brother.

At the tavern, Sam admits to Vicki that he doesn’t have anything to tell her about the painting. He wants to pump her for information about her suspicions. Vicki says she has something to say to Maggie about that subject, but only to her- she doesn’t want to go through it any more often than necessary. She refuses to tell Sam anything. When Sam gets overheated, she gets up to leave the table. He touches her sleeve. She gives him a look that goes from startled to commanding to wondering to pitying to just sad in the space of fifth of a second. He shrinks into his seat, and she sits back down. He offers her a ride home, she says she would rather walk. After she goes, he gulps a drink, then follows her out.

On the road, a car tries to run Vicki down. They’ve introduced a new set dressing for this scene. I like the signpost:

Vicki must have lost her keys when the car was coming at her, because she pounds on the front door of Collinwood until Liz lets her in. Vicki describes the incident, saying that the car deliberately swerved to hit her. In answer to Liz’ questions, Vicki says she couldn’t see anything but the headlights, and declines to call the sheriff. “I can’t talk to the sheriff. I can’t talk to anyone.” Liz mentions that Roger has left the house, and says it’s too bad he didn’t find her. Vicki replies “Maybe he did.” Liz responds to that by fetching a sedative and insisting Vicki take it.*

While Liz is out of the room, Vicki telephones dashing action hero Burke Devlin and tells him of the incident with the car. We hear only her side of the conversation, but we can presume Burke will do something about it.

*The first of countless sedatives that will be consumed in the drawing room of Collinwood in the years ahead. If the show had lasted another decade, the Ramones might have written a replacement for Robert Cobert’s piece for theremin as its theme song .