Tag: the rev’d mr trask

Episode 481: Every time, it will be the same story

Dr Julia Hoffman is in the front parlor of the house of her fellow mad scientist, Eric Lang. She is on the telephone, asking the operator to connect her with the police. Even though she has lived in the Collinsport area for months now, she is still surprised that the sheriff’s office doesn’t have an emergency number.

Julia locked the door to the parlor; Lang is outside it with a gun, and recovering vampire Barnabas Collins is knocking and calling her name. They want to stop her reporting to the police that Lang is building a Frankenstein’s monster with body parts retrieved from the cemetery, and that he was planning to cut a living man’s head off to use as the last piece of the creature. Lang plans to bring the body to life by draining Barnabas’ “life-force” into it. Barnabas hopes this will free him of the vampire curse once and for all, and is desperate to complete the experiment.

Barnabas shouts that Julia should remember “someone.” When he can’t come up with the name, Lang prompts him with a yell of “Dave Woodard!” Barnabas and Julia killed local physician Dave Woodard in #341; Julia hangs up the phone, realizing that if the operator ever does manage to find a police officer any investigation of Lang would likely expose her as a murderer.

Barnabas has told Lang a great deal about himself. For example, in #467, Lang was the first person Barnabas told that his vampirism was the result of a curse placed on him by wicked witch Angelique. So returning viewers can believe that Barnabas might have confided in Lang about the murder of Dr Woodard. But it would be strange for him to have done so off-screen. And just Friday, Barnabas explained to Lang that the reason he thinks Julia can be trusted with the secret of the experiment is that she has a crush on him.* He hasn’t had much time to share more information with Lang since then, and if Lang had already known that Julia couldn’t call the cops without exposing herself to a murder charge Barnabas wouldn’t have needed to mention her crush on him. The likeliest explanation is that the loud and clear exclamation of “Dave Woodard!” is not Lang prompting Barnabas at all; rather, it was Addison Powell prompting Jonathan Frid. The result is a blooper that seriously confuses the relationships among Lang, Barnabas, and Julia. It’s early enough in the episode that it really is odd they didn’t stop tape and start over.

At any rate, they never mention Woodard again. He was introduced early in the vampire storyline. He was the counterpart to Dr John Seward, the physician in Dracula who realizes that all the patients who are suddenly showing up with puncture wounds on their necks and massive blood loss need care he is not trained to provide, and calls in his old med professor, Dr Van Helsing. Julia was the Van Helsing analogue, but she wound up siding with the vampire and killing her onetime friend. It is appropriate that the last reference to Woodard comes in this, the second episode of Dark Shadows with no cast members introduced before Barnabas. From now on, the daylight world Woodard represented and tried to restore is no longer present even as a memory.

Julia lets Barnabas and Lang into the parlor, and asks Lang to promise that he won’t kill anyone. He gives such a promise. She is unconvinced, but agrees not to call the police. She also tells Lang she will continue to oppose the experiment.

On the terrace of the great house of Collinwood, Barnabas and Julia talk about Lang’s experiment. Angelique, wearing a black wig and calling herself Cassandra, lives in the house as the wife of sarcastic dandy Roger, and the terrace is surrounded by trees, fences, and other prime screens for eavesdroppers. Barnabas and Julia know this well, as each of them has eavesdropped on important conversations here themselves.

Of course Angelique/ Cassandra comes by and hears everything. Barnabas does catch her, grab her, call her by her right name, and vow that she won’t stop him. After he lets her go, he moans to Julia that it was foolish of them to discuss their plans there. That underlines the foolishness of an idea key to the plan, that after Lang’s creature has been animated Angelique will never realize that Barnabas is dwelling within it and place a fresh curse on it. Barnabas assumes that Angelique, who has transcended time itself to pursue him, will just give up and go away once she sees that his original body is dead, and won’t have any questions about the new guy living at his doctor’s house.

Angelique summons her new cat’s paw, lawyer Tony Peterson. Jerry Lacy plays Tony. From #365 to #461, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. In that phase of the show, Mr Lacy played the Rev’d Mr Trask, a fanatical witchfinder who inadvertently gave Angelique a great deal of assistance in her campaign to destroy the Collins family and those close to them. Most of the characters in the 1790s segment represent a commentary of some kind on the characters the same actors play in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s. Tony and Trask have seemed to be an exception. In 1967, Tony was introduced through his profession and served mainly as an instance of Mr Lacy’s famous Humphrey Bogart imitation. Trask did end up functioning as a lawyer in a witchcraft trial, and his lunatic shouting about “THE ALMIGHTY!!” and “THE DE-VILLLL!!!!” were occasionally suggestive of what Bogart might have ended up doing if Captain Queeg’s testimony before the court-martial in The Caine Mutiny had gone on for nineteen weeks. Otherwise, there didn’t seem to be any fruitful points of comparison between the two.

Angelique tells Tony that the reason she chose him as her servant was that he reminded her of Trask. She orders him to go to Lang’s and steal a talisman that can guard against witches. At that, Tony shouts “Against you!,” and he sounds very much like Trask. Perhaps we are to think that a secular education and a steady diet of Hollywood movies could have turned the farcically warped Trask into a basically reasonable fellow like Tony, but that there is no strength in those things to stand up to a force like Angelique.

Angelique zaps Tony. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The talisman was a gift to Lang from Barnabas. Lang refuses to keep it on his person, even though it saved his life to clutch it when Angelique was making his heart beat so fast it was about to burst. Lang shows up at Barnabas’ house, under the false impression he received a telephone call from Barnabas. Barnabas, who has no telephone in his house, explains to Lang that Angelique has lured him away. When he learns that Lang has left the talisman in his desk drawer at home, he insists on accompanying him back there.

It is too late. Tony has already stolen the talisman and delivered it to Angelique. She looks at it and says that Lang will not be able to save either Barnabas or himself. Presumably, not even by reminding him of his lines.

*My wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed this out.

Episode 442: For the love of God, Montresor!

When vampire Barnabas Collins rose from his grave to prey upon the living in April 1967, he was a bleak, frightening presence. As the show went on, we saw him spend a great deal of time ruminating on murders he might like to commit, but he had few opportunities to act on those thoughts. By November, when well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time and wound up in the year 1795, Barnabas had killed only two people, only one of them with premeditation. Both of those victims, seagoing con man Jason McGuire and addled quack Dave Woodard, had long since lost their relevance to the plot, and neither has been mentioned more than a few times since his death. As a result, Barnabas’ talk of killing comes to seem like nothing more than a series of hostile fantasies.

Soon, Dark Shadows will have to return to a contemporary setting. It was the frightening impression Barnabas created in his first weeks that made Dark Shadows a hit, and to keep it going the show will have to make him seem dangerous again. In the fifteen and a half weeks they have been in the 1790s, he has killed at least six people, including his uncle, his aunt, his wife, two streetwalkers, and a woman named Suki. That’s an adequate rate of murders to reestablish Barnabas as a fiend, but volume will only get you so far. They need to give us some shocking images of cruelty, preferably as the result of crimes committed with slender motives, to get him back in place as a truly scary creature.

Today, the show addresses both that need and the need to give a fitting sendoff to a character who has been one of the standouts of the eighteenth century flashback. The Rev’d Mr Trask, visiting witchfinder, was, along with repressed spinster Abigail, one of the two bright lights of the show’s otherwise dreary reworking of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Now the witch trial is over, Vicki has been convicted, and she is waiting to be hanged. In #437, Vicki gave a speech which left little doubt that at the moment appointed for her execution she would return to the 1960s and the costume drama period would end. Therefore, Trask can hardly reopen the case without confusing the whole plot. As a personality totally warped by fanaticism, he can’t very well branch out into other kinds of stories without a long buildup, much longer than they are likely to stay in the 1790s. Yet Trask has been so much fun that the audience would feel cheated if he simply went back where he came from.

So Barnabas lures Trask to his basement, ties him to the ceiling, and seals him up behind a brick wall. Unfortunately, this homage to Edgar Allan Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” does not adapt the most celebrated line of that story and have Trask cry out “For the love of God, Mr Collins!”

Barney’s bricklaying project. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Closing Miscellany

In a moment of black humor, the closing credits run over an image of the completed brick wall. We might imagine Jerry Lacy still dangling from the ceiling behind the wall. Mr Lacy was often a model of an actor’s devotion to his craft, but I very much doubt that even he took matters that far.

Hey Jerry, you OK in there until tomorrow? Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

A recording of Jonathan Frid reading “The Cask of Amontillado” made in the spring of 1992 can be found on YouTube, posted by Frid’s longtime business partner Mary O’Leary.

In #264, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins visited Barnabas at home. When it was time for a drink, Barnabas offered him a glass of amontillado. Poe’s story is so famous and amontillado is such an unusual variety of sherry that it must have been a deliberate reference. Perhaps the idea of Barnabas sealing someone up behind bricks was floating around among the writing staff for months and months.

Several fansites label it a continuity error that Trask reacts to the sight of Barnabas by exclaiming that he is dead. The family has been covering up Barnabas’ death, putting word about that he went to England. Many think Trask should not be among those privy to the Collinses’ secret. But as Danielle Gelehrter points out in a comment on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Before I Die, Trask and the gracious Josette discussed Barnabas’ death in #412.

I am writing this post on 19 February 2024. In a bit of synchronicity, yesterday, I saw this post on the site that all normal people still call Twitter:

Episode 441: The subject of vicious gossip

When well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795, regular viewers of Dark Shadows could expect certain plot points to be resolved before she returned to the 1960s. We would learn how Barnabas Collins became a vampire, and how he wound up trapped in a chained coffin in the secret chamber of the Collins family mausoleum. We would learn how Barnabas’ little sister Sarah died. We would see Barnabas’ lost love, gracious lady Josette, marry his uncle Jeremiah Collins. We would see Josette jump to her death from the precipice atop Widows’ Hill. And we would see Vicki escape from some dangerous situation and find herself back in her own time.

Now, the only items on that list left unresolved are Barnabas’ chaining and Vicki’s return. The show has made it clear to people paying close attention how each of those events will happen, and they could fit them both into one episode. Into any given episode, in fact- they’ve given us all the foundation we need for both stories.

But they aren’t going home to a contemporary setting quite yet. The eighteenth century segment has been a ratings hit, Dan Curtis Productions owns the period costumes, and several fun characters are still alive. So they have decided to restart some storylines they had shut down earlier and to build up some new ones.

The main thing that happens today is the first step towards restarting an apparently concluded story. Fluttery heiress Millicent Collins had shared a series of wonderful comedy scenes with untrustworthy naval officer Nathan Forbes, become engaged to him, and discovered that he was already married to someone else. Since that discovery, Millicent has been grimly determined to exact revenge on Nathan, and the rest of the Collins family has regarded him with icy disdain.

Nathan has made a discovery of his own. He has learned that Barnabas did not go to England, as his family has been telling everyone, but that he is still in Collinsport, and is the serial killer preying on the young women of the town. Last week, he made it clear to the audience he had a plan to turn this information into money, apparently by blackmailing the Collinses. Today, we learn that his plans are more complicated, and involve a renewal of his relationship with Millicent. Late at night, he shows up at the lodgings of a visiting witchfinder, the Rev’d Mr Trask. He asks Trask to take a letter to Millicent.

Trask does not want to let Nathan into his room, since the corpse of a prostitute is sprawled across his bed. She is Maude Browning. Barnabas murdered her in Friday’s episode. As part of his campaign to make life difficult for Trask, he deposited her remains at his place.

Nathan won’t take no for an answer, so Trask throws a blanket over Maude and lets him in. Nathan notices Maude’s arm sticking out from under the blanket and is delighted to think that Trask is not the fanatical ascetic he seems to be. Trask breaks down and starts telling Nathan what happened. He tells him that he was astounded to find Maude’s body on his bed, and he asks him to help get rid of it. Nathan agrees to do so on condition he deliver the letter to Millicent.

The scene is just marvelous. Danny Horn devotes most of his post about this episode on Dark Shadows Every Day to a rave review of it, to which I happily refer you.

We then cut to the great house at Collinwood, where Millicent is studying a layout of Tarot. All the Dark Shadows fansites point out that Millicent misidentifies the Queen of Cups as the High Priestess. This is not the fault it is often made out to be. On Dark Shadows Before I Die, Christine Scoleri reminds us that the Countess DuPrés made the same mistake in #368. Since the countess introduced the Tarot to Collinwood and presumably taught Millicent how to read the cards, it would have been a break in continuity had she called it anything else.

Millicent looks at the cards and addresses the absent Nathan, telling him that she is filled with hatred for him and that he faces certain destruction as punishment for his mistreatment of her. Naomi Collins, mistress of the house, enters and asks Cousin Millicent to whom she is speaking. When she answers that she is talking to Nathan, Naomi tells her Nathan is not there. Millicent replies that he does not need to be present to hear her voice. Since Barnabas was able to magically project his own taunting voice across space into Trask’s hearing in Thursday and Friday’s episodes, this claim of Millicent’s has a curious resonance for returning viewers.

Trask shows up with Nathan’s letter. He wants to meet with Millicent alone in the drawing room to give it to her, but Naomi insists on being present. They stay in the foyer. When Naomi forces Trask to tell them that the letter is from Nathan, Naomi takes it and tears it to pieces. Millicent says that she approves of Naomi’s action, but we can see a flicker in her eye and hear a quiver in her voice that suggest the hatred of Nathan she spoke of a few minutes before may not be quite so undiluted as she would like to believe. Trask leaves the house, Naomi leaves the foyer, and Millicent gathers up the shredded pieces of the letter.

Back in his room, Trask goes to sleep. He has a dream. The dream sequence begins with an image reminiscent of pieces moving in a kaleidoscope.

Trask goes into a dream world. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

That kaleidoscopic pattern was part of a visual effect we saw when Dark Shadows was still set in 1967. That effect introduced scenes that took place in #347, #352, and #354, when mad scientist Julia Hoffman hypnotized Vicki and took her to the Old House at Collinwood. At Collinwood, Barnabas’ helper Carolyn spotted Julia and Vicki, putting Julia in great danger.

The echo of those episodes is startling coming on the heels of the scene we just saw, in which Millicent figures as a student of the countess. Julia and the countess are both played by Grayson Hall, and Millicent and Carolyn are both played by Nancy Barrett. The relationships between their characters are different now, shifted as the colored pieces shift in a turning kaleidoscope. But remembering those earlier episodes, we might remember that what is seen in a semiconscious state might be a message sent to manipulate and deceive, and we certainly remember that people who go to the Old House are in danger from Barnabas.

Trask’s dream brings him face to face with the ghost of Maude, accusing him of having her remains dumped in the sea, so that she cannot rest. She predicts that everyone will learn that her dead body was in his bed. He denies both her accusation and her prediction, but does not convince either her or himself.

The ghost of Maude tells Trask the score. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Another ghost then appears. It is that of Trask’s great supporter, repressed spinster Abigail Collins. Trask tries to tell Abigail that he is innocent of Maude’s charges, but she tells him she has no idea what he is talking about. She wants to tell him that there is a great evil he must destroy. Trask has a vision telling him the evil is lurking in the Old House. He resolves to go there.

All of the acting is excellent in this one. That’s no more than we would expect from most of the cast members we see today, but Vala Clifton’s two turns as the living Maude were pretty bad, so that it is a pleasant surprise that she is so good as Maude’s ghost. The physical space gives her a hard job. She is standing a very few feet in front of Jerry Lacy with only a couple of wispy stage decorations indicating that she is separated from him, but she strikes a pose and maintains a degree of stillness that really does create the sense that she is speaking to him from another realm. She also manages to keep up an ethereal quality while making it clear that Maude is determined to be avenged. I wonder what her first appearances would have been like if she had had more time to rehearse. If they had been as good as this one, Ms Clifton and Maude would be among the more fondly remembered parts of the eighteenth century segment.

Episode 440: You’re bein’ more stupid now

Vampire Barnabas Collins arises from the dead, goes to the front parlor of his house, and finds a friend of his passed out drunk in an armchair. The friend, much put-upon servant Ben Stokes, had left the house the night before after saying that he would no longer help Barnabas in his murderous schemes. Barnabas brings this up, but apparently Ben has decided he has nowhere else to go, so he’s back.

Barnabas tells Ben that he has two projects going at the moment. He dropped his cane with its instantly recognizable silver handle in the shape of a wolf’s head at the scene of an attempted murder last night; the victim, a streetwalker named Maude Browning, screamed and someone came running. Barnabas orders Ben to find the cane and bring it back before it leads to his exposure.

The other project is Barnabas’ attempt to take revenge on the Rev’d Mr Trask, a visiting witchfinder who has wrought considerable havoc in town. Barnabas recently discovered he had some magical powers, and he has been using those powers to drive Trask insane. He says that he will stay in the house and cast more spells on Trask while Ben goes to Maude’s room over the feed store to look for the cane.

In his room at a local inn, Trask can’t keep a candle lit. He hears Barnabas’ laughter, and declares that it is the voice of the Devil. Or as Trask calls him, THE DE-VILLL!!!! A knock comes at the door. Trask is fearful, but answers when the knocker identifies himself as naval officer Nathan Forbes.

Trask believes hapless time traveler Vicki Winters to be the witch. A court has agreed with him, convicting Vicki of witchcraft and sentencing her to hang. Trask tells Nathan that the witch has started tormenting him. Since Nathan testified against Vicki, Trask warns that she might do the same to him next. When Nathan takes Trask’s warning lightly, he responds with some overheated rhetoric. To this, Nathan remarks that it’s never man-to-man with Trask. When he listens to him, he gets the feeling that sitting in a pew and that the rest of the congregation is absent.

Trask then tries to tell Nathan about the terrible visions he has been suffering. While he does so, he hears Barnabas’ voice and sees his hand. Nathan, of course, can neither see nor hear these manifestations.

Lately Nathan has established himself as a rather cold villain, but he used to be a good-hearted sort, though with some glaring personality defects. We catch another glimpse of the friendly Nathan when he tells Trask the trial must have taken a toll on him. He offers to take Trask out of his room and give him a place to rest. Trask responds indignantly to this offer, and demands Nathan leave him alone.

We cut to Ben searching Maude’s room. When Ben leaves, Nathan catches sight of him. Nathan follows Ben back to Barnabas’ house. Nathan stands at the window and eavesdrops as they talk about Ben’s search of the docks and of Maude’s room, of his failure to find the cane, and of the drunken ramblings with which Maude has been confusing the barroom patrons who want her to tell them about the attack she suffered.

Nathan eavesdrops on Barnabas and Ben. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When the show was set in 1967, we saw several characters stand at this window and listen as Barnabas held incriminating conversations with his henchmen. Most notably in #274, seagoing con man Jason McGuire eavesdropped as Barnabas handled a box of jewelry and told his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie Loomis of his evil plans for Vicki. As Nathan has become more and more a villain, he has become more and more reminiscent of Jason. The night after Jason listened to Barnabas and Willie, Barnabas killed him. Seeing Nathan in this position, regular viewers will wonder if it implies that his death is as near today as Jason’s was then.

Barnabas and Ben leave the house. Ben suggests they leave Collinsport and go someplace where Barnabas will not be recognized. Barnabas will not hear of it. He moans that the house is the place where he and his lost love Josette were supposed to live and be happy. Ben pleads with him to let go of the memory of Josette. Having seen Barnabas in 1967, we know that this plea will fall on deaf ears. Barnabas calls himself “stupid” for leaving the cane at the scene of the crime; the ever-forthright Ben tells him he’s being more stupid now. None of Barnabas’ twentieth century confederates would have dared say a thing like that to him, making Ben’s boldness a refreshing change for regular viewers.

We cut back to Maude’s room. Nathan is bringing Maude home. She is much the worse for drink. He urges her to stay in her room with the door and window locked, then goes.

A bat squeaks at the window, Maude panics, and Barnabas materializes in the room. He asks her about the cane. She tells him she doesn’t have it, and he strangles her. It’s one of the most brutal on-screen murders we have seen so far.

From Maude’s room, we cut to the door to Trask’s. He stands in front of it and we hear him deliver a monologue in a recorded voiceover. This is the first time we have heard an interior monologue from Trask. He shouts so much that it often seems that if you could read his mind you’d see nothing but all-caps disquisitions about THE ALMIGHTY! and THE DE-VILLL! But in fact, he’s telling himself that Nathan must have been right and that all the visions he saw and voices he heard must have been the result of nervous strain brought on by his hard work during Vicki’s trial. He goes into his room, telling himself to calm down. He looks at his bed, and finds Maude’s strangled corpse sprawled there.

Episode 438: A night he will never forget

Dark Shadows often signaled a commercial break by playing an ominous three note motif on the soundtrack. Even in 1968, DUN DUN DUNNNN! was a pretty corny way to punch up your dramatic values. It was even cornier when, as was often the case, it followed a three syllable clausula. So today’s first act ends with vampire Barnabas Collins vowing that he will kill the Rev’d Mr Trask, a visiting witchfinder whose fanatical pursuit of bewildered time-traveler Vicki has helped precipitate many disasters. After Barnabas says Trask is “Going To Die!,” Mrs Acilius and I sang along with the motif- “Going- To- Die!” The missus pointed out that many among the 8-13 year olds who made up so much of the show’s original audience probably sang exactly the same refrain when the episode was first broadcast.

There are a couple of missing transitions in quick succession today. The opening scene between Barnabas and Ben takes place in the Old House on the estate of Collinwood; they take care to show a clock to establish the time of this scene as 4:00 AM. We then cut to the great house on the same estate, where it appears to be dark out. A knock comes at the door; the mistress of the house, Naomi Collins (Joan Bennett,) answers and finds Trask. It isn’t 4:00 AM anymore- Ben enters after a moment, and mentions that the sun is about to set. Inserting a still photo of a daytime scene would have been enough to tell us that many hours have passed, and the lack of that insert really is confusing.

Trask has come demanding the keys to the Old House so that he can gather Vicki’s things and burn them. A different kind of transition is omitted in the scene this demand initiates. Lately, Naomi has become assertive and independent, primarily in her refusal to go along with the persecution of Vicki. She does that for a while in her response to Trask, ordering him to leave, telling him he disgusts her, slapping him in the face, and daring him to hit her. But when Trask threatens to go to her husband, haughty tyrant Joshua, and enlist him against her, she gives in immediately, without any visible change in affect. That is puzzling, and not at all in keeping with Joan Bennett’s usual style. Typically, she makes the most of every chance she gets to show us why she was one of the biggest movie stars of the late 1930s.

Rough patches like these, along with the many many line bobbles from all the actors throughout the episode, make me wonder if writer Gordon Russell was late delivering the script. The show never had more than three credited writers at a time, and there must have been occasions when they couldn’t get the documents to the directors and actors early enough that they could get everything nailed down. It would take considerable thought for any performer to choose the best way to play a brief moment within which Naomi moves from fearless defiance to capitulation. Perhaps the reason she wound up doing nothing was that she didn’t have time to think about the question.

Ben accompanies Trask to the Old House. While Trask goes to Vicki’s old room, Ben meets Barnabas emerging from the basement and apprises him of the situation. We see Trask upstairs and hear Ben and Barnabas’ voices in the distance. Trask reacts, but goes ahead with his mission. He waits until he is downstairs with all of Vicki’s stuff in a bundle before confronting Ben and demanding to know who else is in the house. Ben claims that he was talking to himself. Trask is unconvinced.

Later, we see Trask in his own room at a nearby inn. He hears the rattling of chains and the disembodied voice of Barnabas taunting him. After a while, Barnabas’ hand comes floating towards him. When this happened, Mrs Acilius called out “Got your nose!” We both burst out laughing and were still laughing hard when the closing credits started to roll.

Trask talks to the hand. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Despite the rough spots and the bad laugh at the end, this installment was a lot of fun. I can’t give it the “Genuinely Good Episode” tag, but we won’t be tempted to skip it if we do another watch-through of the series someday.

Episode 437: It’s gone on too long

Bewildered time traveler Vicki tells her lawyer/ gaoler/ boyfriend/ accomplice/ therapist/ assailant Peter that her time in the late eighteenth century seems like a nightmare. She then does something she often did in the early months of Dark Shadows, reminiscing about her childhood as an inmate of the farcically horrible Hammond Foundling Home. She says that she had so many nightmares when she was there that she became a connoisseur of nightmares. When she realized she was having a bad dream, she would choose to remain asleep right up to the moment she was about to be killed so that she could see how the whole thing would play out. I suppose that might have been useful training for a career as a character in a horror story, but if so Vicki has not benefited from it. She’s done nothing but make matters worse for herself since she arrived in the year 1795, and she is now in her last day as the defendant in a witchcraft trial which has been going very badly for her.

During this scene, Vicki gets very upset. Peter demands that she calm down and slaps her in the face when she doesn’t. That was a time-honored form of treatment for anxiety in fiction back then. It’s always gross to see, but is especially bad when the actor administering the slap is Roger Davis. Mr Davis was, shall we say, uninhibited in his physicality when dealing with his female scene partners. In his post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn includes screenshots of 10 distinct moments in this episode when Mr Davis aggressively rubs himself all over Alexandra Moltke Isles. Later in the series, he would, in separate incidents, hurt both Terrayne Crawford and Joan Bennett while on camera. His fake slap does not make contact with Mrs Isles today, but his sense of personal boundaries is so severely underdeveloped that we can hardly blame her for visibly ducking to avoid his hand.

Seriously, who needs that guy? Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Vicki takes the stand and says that she is a native of the twentieth century, whisked back in time by what force she knows not. Cross-examined by visiting witchfinder/ fanatical bigot/ prosecuting attorney Rev’d Trask, Vicki admits that her last memory of 1967 was when she was at a séance, and that this was not the first séance she had taken part in. Trask declares that this is an admission of witchcraft, which, if you think about it, it is. Vicki becomes upset, and we cut directly to a commercial break without a musical sting. This is a technique the show very rarely uses, and it is always effective when it does.

One of the witnesses against Vicki, untrustworthy naval officer Nathan, has a scene alone with Trask while they are waiting for the verdict. Nathan tells Trask he never thought he would meet a preacher whose specialty was blackmail. Trask denies that he blackmailed Nathan into testifying against Vicki. He has a point- it was more a matter of extortion, followed up with bribery. Anyway, actors Jerry Lacy and Joel Crothers were sensational together. Mr Lacy is exciting to watch when he’s wound up tight, the usual condition of a character on Dark Shadows, and Crothers always moved loosely and fluidly. The two of them strike an ideal balance.

The episode ends with the judges finding Vicki guilty and sentencing her to hang by the neck until dead. If we take her recollection of her childhood nightmares as a programmatic statement, we should expect her to mount the gallows and stick her head in the noose, then immediately find herself back at the séance.

Episode 434: No business to run

Some people have conversations relating to the ongoing witchcraft trial of bewildered time traveler Vicki Winters. The trial itself is a waste of time, so a half hour listening to people talk about what might happen during the trial is a grim prospect. Indeed, none of today’s scenes is necessary to the overall development of the plot or of any major themes. Still, they give the actors an opportunity to show us what they can do, and four of the five members of the cast turn that opportunity to good advantage.

The exception is of course Roger Davis as Vicki’s defense attorney Peter Bradford. Mr Davis was usually tolerable when he delivered his lines in a normal conversational tone, but when he had to raise his voice, as characters on Dark Shadows have to do very frequently, the results were painfully bad. Voice teachers sometimes tell their students to sing from way down in their bodies; the more indelicate among them have been known to tell boys’ choirs that “The music escapes from the testicles.” Such a teacher would be displeased with Mr Davis. When he raises his voice, the muscles he is tensing are not those around the pelvic floor, but the sphincters in his buttocks, with the result that he seems to be having difficulty evacuating his bowels. I realize this is rather a distasteful discussion, but the topic is impossible to avoid when you listen to Davis going through one sentence after another, in each case building up to one word and grunting it out loudly. Yesterday, young Daniel Collins mentioned that repressed spinster Abigail’s personality was that of someone suffering from indigestion, and when today we hear Peter ask untrustworthy naval officer Nathan Forbes (Joel Crothers) “Why did you LIE!” or tell him “You already DID!” he sounds so much like someone struggling with constipation that we can think of nothing else.

The episode opens with a long scene between Peter and Nathan. One of Crothers’ great strengths as an actor was his ability to relax. He stays loose and moves fluidly, never stiffening in response to Mr Davis’ muscular tension, much less reacting to his straining sounds with either a giggle or a misplaced expression of disgust.

Nathan and Peter’s scene involves a fistfight, the first we have seen on Dark Shadows since dashing action hero Burke Devlin fought dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis in #207. The fight is well-choreographed and Crothers does a good job falling down and looking like he has been beaten, but that result stretches credibility. Not only was Crothers the taller man, but his easy physicality would have given him a great advantage in hand-to-hand combat against someone as rigid and awkward as Mr Davis.

Peter and Nathan do battle. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We cut to the drawing room of the great house at Collinwood, where Naomi Collins (Joan Bennett) wants to talk to her husband, haughty tyrant Joshua Collins (Louis Edmonds.) Joshua is moping after the death of his sister Abigail, and doesn’t want to talk to Naomi or anyone else. At first they exchange a few words about Abigail. Naomi doesn’t try to hide her dislike of her late sister-in-law, saying that she led a senseless life. This of course offends Joshua, but Naomi stands her ground.

This part of the conversation includes two lines that are interesting to fans who are curious about the details of the characters’ relationship to their society. When Naomi says that it was because Abigail had too few responsibilities that she became a religious fanatic and a dangerous bigot, Joshua says that she did have some things to do. “She had her church,” he says. Not “the church,” not “our church,” but “her church.” This is not the first indication we have had that Abigail differed from the rest of the family in religion, but it is the most definite confirmation. As aristocratic New Englanders of the eighteenth century, presumably the family would be Congregationalists. Abigail might just have gone to the another, stricter meeting within the Congregationalist fold, or she might have joined a different group.

The other line marks Naomi as a remarkably advanced feminist for her time and place. She says that Abigail was “Like a businesswoman with no business to run.” The concept of “businesswoman” was hardly familiar in the days when this episode is set. Even the word “businessman” was not widely known then- the earliest citation of it in The Oxford English Dictionary dates to 1798, two years after this episode is supposed to be taking place, and its first appearance in the modern sense came several years after that. The same dictionary can find no use of “business-woman” until 1827, and then in only a strongly pejorative sense. But the audience, seeing Joan Bennett on this set, will think of her character matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s runs the family’s business enterprises from this room. Naomi is looking towards the future, and she sees Liz.

Edmonds and Bennett are both wonderful in this scene. She is steady and authoritative throughout; he is alternately gloomy, irritated, and sullen. It is as compelling to watch her hold her single mood as it is to watch him navigate from one to the other. Joshua at no point concedes anything to Naomi, and he ends by turning his back on her and going away. But he is not at all in command today, as he has always been in command before. He is hurting too deeply to give orders and compel obedience by the force of his presence.

In the village of Collinsport, Nathan meets with the Rev’d Mr Trask (Jerry Lacy,) visiting witchfinder. The other day, Nathan capitulated to Trask’s blackmail and testified against Vicki. Now he wants Trask to intercede with Joshua and to talk him out of informing the Navy of his many crimes. He tries to sell Trask a bill of goods, claiming that all the things he did wrong were simply the result of his pure and innocent love for fluttery heiress Millicent Collins. The audience knows that this is entirely false, but Trask doesn’t even let him start on it- he responds that “Physical love is beyond my comprehension.” Mr Lacy is an accomplished comic, and he doesn’t fail to get a laugh with this line. Trask realizes that Nathan’s testimony would lose much of its persuasiveness if he were exposed as the scoundrel he is, Trask agrees.

Joshua comes to meet with Trask. Mr Lacy is a great shouter, and Trask is always on full volume. When he insists that Joshua meet with Nathan and forswear his plan to send a letter to the Navy, he builds Trask into a tower of hypocrisy and repression, and we remember all of the scenes where Joshua has demolished people he disdains, Trask among them. But Joshua is not going to demolish anyone now, not while he is mourning everyone he ever loved. He mutters, frowns, and finally caves in to Trask’s demand. The contrast between the overweening Trask and the fusty Joshua is electrifying to returning viewers.

Joshua then consents to meet privately with Nathan. He tells Nathan that he will keep quiet on condition he secure a transfer to another port as soon as possible. Nathan tells some lies and makes some excuses that impress neither Joshua nor anyone who has been watching the show for any length of time, but again, the actors are fascinating to watch together. The chaos and evil Trask represents has turned the world upside down, weakening the strong Joshua and emboldening the degenerate Nathan.

More bad news awaits Joshua when he goes home. Unhappy as Joshua was with Naomi’s insistence on discussing the faults of his recently deceased sister, he is much more upset when she tells him she has decided to go to court and testify in Vicki’s defense. Joshua is appalled she would do this. He is sure Vicki is to blame for the deaths of both of their children, of both of his siblings, and of various other people, some of whom he cared about when they were alive. He threatens to lock Naomi up in her room to prevent her going to court, but she replies that if he does that she will escape, and he will never see her again. The children are dead and she has no work of her own; she has no reason to stay.

Episode 432: Cousin Abigail’s religion

In the deserted Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, repressed spinster Abigail Collins has stumbled upon the coffin in which her nephew Barnabas spends his days. She arrives just as he is rising for the evening. Abigail knows that Barnabas is dead, but she has never heard of vampires, so she has no idea what to make of what she sees.

Barnabas taunts Abigail. When she cries that the Devil is trying to touch her, he cynically asks why she thinks that the Devil always wants to touch her. The broadcast date is 1968, when Freudianism was riding high in the circles frequented by the sort of people who wrote and produced Dark Shadows. The dramatic date is 1796, when that school of thought was undreamed of. Still, there were various strands of folk wisdom about the adverse psychological effects of celibacy, so Barnabas’ smirking comment undoubtedly means exactly what the original audience would have taken it to mean.

From the moment Barnabas saw Abigail at the end of yesterday’s episode, we’ve wondered how he would go about killing her. She is his aunt, after all; the vampire’s bite is so widely recognized a metaphor for the sexual act that we could hardly expect the ABC censors to have allowed him to make a meal of her. In the end, he simply bares his fangs and she dies of fright.

Barnabas scares Abigail to death. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Abigail has been a villain; even the opening voiceover refers to her as “a woman who has been responsible for much grief.” During their confrontation, Barnabas tells Abigail many truths that, had she known them earlier, would have kept her from causing that grief. If she accepts them now, she will be remorseful. To the extent that we want Abigail to know what she has done, we identify with Barnabas during this scene. That might lead us to think that her death by fright is a way of letting us see Barnabas as the good guy, since he does not kill her by physical contact. But throughout the confrontation he has been telling her that she is about to die. Before he bares his teeth, he makes a dramatic announcement that clearly tells us that he is bringing matters to their climax, and when he sees her die he does not look the least bit unhappy. He seems to have known that the sight of his teeth had the power to kill his aunt, and to have deliberately used that power.

Abigail is the sister of Barnabas’ father, haughty overlord Joshua Collins. Before he even became a vampire, Barnabas killed Joshua’s brother Jeremiah in a duel. By his clumsiness, Barnabas inadvertently caused the death of his own sister, little Sarah Collins. Things are getting rather lonesome for Joshua.

In the great house on the same estate, young Daniel Collins is trying to slip out into the night. Yesterday, he arranged to meet secretly with much put-upon servant Ben so Ben could give him pointers on how to run away from this depressing house. The lady of the house, Joshua’s wife Naomi, intercepts Daniel. She asks if he plays whist, and he complains that he isn’t allowed to play cards because that is “against cousin Abigail’s religion.” Naomi says that so long as it isn’t against his religion, it’s no problem for her.

This isn’t the first indication that Abigail’s religion is different from that of the rest of the family. As rich New England landowners in the eighteenth century, we can assume they are all Congregationalists, but the loose polity of Congregationalism left room for a lot of variation from one congregation to another. She may well have attended a stricter meeting than did the other members of the family, though she seems to have taken her greatest satisfaction in imposing her austere ways on the other members of the household.

Naomi suggests that Daniel and his older sister Millicent might stay at Collinwood with her and Joshua indefinitely. Daniel is clearly not a fan of this idea, and struggles to find a polite way to say that he is desperate to go back home to New York City. He is still struggling when a knock comes at the door. It is the Rev’d Mr Trask, whom Abigail called in from out of town to find witches. Trask is currently prosecuting Victoria Winters, former governess to Daniel and the late Sarah. Abigail asked Trask to meet her because she thought she would find evidence against Vicki in the Old House. Since she found Barnabas instead, she will not be keeping the appointment.

While Naomi goes to look for Abigail, Trask takes the opportunity to work on Daniel. At first Trask seems to be far more agreeable than we have ever seen him before. So when Daniel apologizes for telling him that he looks like the Devil and that he sees no reason they should exchange any words, Trask smiles and calmly says that he appreciates his honesty. Trask holds Abigail up as an exemplar of Christian virtue; Daniel says that he cannot bring himself to want to emulate Abigail, since she “is always so, so unhappy, as if whatever she has eaten doesn’t agree with her.” Trask takes this remark in good turn.

Daniel keeps insisting that Vicki is not a witch, but is very nice. Trask takes everything he says as evidence against Vicki. For example, when he tells Trask that Vicki extolled the virtues of curiosity, Trask exclaims that “Curiosity is the Devil’s money! What you buy with it is disbelief in everything it is right to believe in!” Even in this portion of their encounter, Trask seems far smoother than the screaming fanatic we’ve seen up to now. Daniel complains that Trask keeps talking about the Devil when “I want nothing to do with him.” At that, Trask leans in and says that if Daniel feels that way, he can still be saved. When Daniel asks how he can be saved, we can see how Trask might have managed to win a new follower, if he hadn’t gone straight to a demand that Daniel testify against his friend Vicki.

Trask and Daniel have a man-to-man talk. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Trask finally loses his temper. Naomi returns and is appalled when she hears Trask telling Daniel that he bears the mark of the Devil. Daniel runs out into the night, and Naomi tells Trask he is to blame for that.

Daniel wanders about in the woods, looking for Ben. He quickly concludes that he must have missed Ben, and he thinks of going back to the house. Remembering that Trask is there, he chooses to stay outside.

Naomi is in the woods looking for Daniel; Trask joins her, much to her displeasure. Daniel sees Abigail’s corpse propped against a tree. He shouts for Naomi. She and Trask come, and he points the corpse out to them.

Daniel shares his gruesome discovery. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Abigail is the second character Clarice Blackburn has played on Dark Shadows. She joined the cast in #67 as housekeeper Mrs Johnson. In her first months on the show, Mrs Johnson was out to get revenge on the Collins family for their treatment of her former employer and the object of her unrequited love, the late Bill Malloy. Blackburn was told to think of the character as if she were Mrs Danvers, the terrifying housekeeper in Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca. After the Death of Bill Malloy storyline ended, Mrs Johnson transformed into a warm-hearted old biddy whose wildly indiscreet chatter gave the other characters just the information they could use to advance the plot.

Mrs Johnson was always fun to watch, and one of the reasons to look forward to the show’s return to a contemporary setting is that she is waiting for us in 1968. But after her first few weeks, her appearances were rare and usually brief. Abigail gave Blackburn her first chance to show viewers of Dark Shadows what she could do when she had the chance to work on a big canvas. In later storylines, she will have more such opportunities, but we will always miss Abigail.

Episode 429: Dark conquest of the grave

Viewers who have been with Dark Shadows for some time will remember that in May and June of 1967 vampire Barnabas Collins imprisoned Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, in an effort to erase her personality and replace it with that of his lost love, the gracious Josette. When Maggie escaped, he planned to repeat the experiment with a new subject, well-meaning governess Victoria Winters.

Now Vicki has traveled back in time to the late 18th century and taken us with her. We have seen Barnabas become a vampire and Josette die. Today, much put-upon servant Ben Stokes is busily digging Josette’s grave. At the top of the episode, he urges his friend Barnabas not to come out of the secret chamber where his coffin is hidden. Barnabas is grumpy about the fact that Josette is dead, and expresses his unhappiness by choking Ben. He lets Ben go without seriously harming him. At the end of the episode, Barnabas tells Ben that he does not know what powers he acquired when he was cursed to become a vampire, but that he will use them to raise Josette from the dead.

When Barnabas vowed to do that, my wife, Mrs Acilius, said that he had reached the absolute nadir of selfishness. Barnabas has every reason to suppose that Josette is resting in peace, and he knows that his own existence is utterly miserable. He claims that love for Josette is his deepest feeling, yet he is determined to inflict his own curse on her. He is now unmistakably the annihilating ghoul who made the show so memorably bleak at the beginning of the summer of 1967.

In between the scenes with Barnabas and Ben, we see the fanatical Rev’d Mr Trask, visiting witch-hunter. Trask meets with repressed spinster Abigail Collins in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. They discuss ways to speed up the witchcraft trial of the hapless Vicki. Trask and Abigail are great fun to watch together; during this episode, Mrs Acilius said she wished the two of them had got married. That’s a thought to hold onto…

Trask and Abigail light up the screen. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Every Day.

Abigail and Trask come up with a plan to exploit the Collins family’s position in the community to bring the trial to a speedier conclusion. Abigail leans on Ben to testify against Vicki, telling him he could be sent back to prison at any moment if he displeases the Collinses. Trask goes to Vicki’s defense attorney, Peter, and tells him that he will never rise above his present poverty if he goes on making enemies of the mighty Collins family. Neither man gives them what they want.

Peter is hiding a book Vicki brought with her from the 1960s, and he knows it will seal her fate if it is found. During his scene with Trask, he scrambles to keep it buried under his coat. After Trask leaves, he thinks of throwing it in his fireplace, but instead goes to the cemetery to bury it within sight of the grave Ben is digging. He catches Barnabas’ attention and nearly discovers Barnabas; Ben intercepts him, shoos him off, then persuades Barnabas not to kill him.

We can be sure the book will be found. Buried in a cemetery near the graves of so many of the people Vicki is accused of having killed, it will be even more damning than it would be were it found anywhere else. Not for the first time or the last, it occurs to us that Peter is not a very good lawyer. Vicki probably would have had a better chance of acquittal if Ben had stepped aside and Barnabas had killed Peter.

In a comment on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day, Park Cooper lists a number of direct references to Hamlet in the dialogue of this episode. Before he played Barnabas, Jonathan Frid was best known for his work as a Shakespearean actor, so he has fun with those lines.

Episode 427: I object

The opening voiceover melds into a sequence in which we cut back and forth between repressed spinster Abigail Collins and the fanatical Rev’d Mr Trask standing in front of black backgrounds, looking directly into the camera, and declaring that the trial of bewildered time-traveler Vicki for witchcraft must begin at once.

Trask against a balck background. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.
Abigail against a black background. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Soap Opera Land famously does not observe the legal codes that prevail elsewhere. If that is going to bother you, you probably aren’t in the right frame of mind to enjoy the show at all. But there is an art to depicting a fictional trial. You can deviate as much as you like from the rules that prevail in the real world, but there have to be some kind of rules the audience can understand. We can either see those rules applied with the result that a disorderly world is reduced to order, or see them flouted so that our heroes’ hopes of justice are cruelly dashed. If we aren’t aware of any rules, there is no point in setting the play in a courtroom.

That’s the first problem with Vicki’s trial. Now and then her lawyer/ gaoler/ boyfriend/ etc Peter will object to some question or move that a statement be stricken, and once or twice the judges will agree with him. But they are just as likely to respond to identical protests by ordering him to stop interrupting. The witnesses respond to questions with extended free association sessions. Vicki herself interrupts testimony repeatedly, usually to make self-incriminating remarks, and no one tries to stop her. Trask is for some reason simultaneously the prosecutor and one of the witnesses. Opposing counsel periodically engage in shouting matches with each other while the judges watch. The whole thing is so chaotic that it may as well be taking place in a bar-room or at the county fair or on the waterfront after dark.

The second problem with the trial is that it requires Peter to raise his voice repeatedly. Actor Roger Davis can deliver dialogue more or less competently when he is speaking in a normal conversational tone, but his loud voice always tends toward an ugly snarl. This is a major limitation for any performer on a show as shouty as Dark Shadows, but the opposition of Peter to Trask puts Davis head to head with Jerry Lacy, who is a virtuoso of shouting. Next to Lacy’s, Davis’ shouting is not recognizable as a performance.

Peter shouting.
Trask shouting.
Vicki shouting.

When I’m watching a scene on Dark Shadows that suffers because of an actor’s shortcomings, I sometimes try to make it bearable by imagining what it would have been like had someone else who may have been available for the part been cast instead. Harvey Keitel was an extra on the show in #33; no doubt he would have accepted a speaking part if offered. Roger Davis plays Peter as a deeply angry man, and Mr Keitel is one of the very best at making audiences empathize with such characters. So it’s interesting to try to picture him as Peter.

On the other hand, there’s nothing in the scripts that requires Peter to constantly seethe with barely contained rage. That was Mr Davis’ contribution. Had the show gone with a more amiable Peter, they might have been able to cast Frederic Forrest in the part. In #137, Forrest was a background player. While Forrest played his share of angry men over the years, he also excelled as goofily cheerful characters, most famously as Chef in Apocalypse Now. I would have liked to see Peter played that way. I think he would have had some real chemistry with Alexandra Moltke Isles’ Vicki, and that we would have had protective feelings for him as he went up against the formidable Trask.

There is a third problem with the trial that neither Harvey Keitel nor the late Frederic Forrest could have done any more with than could Mrs Isles. That is that Vicki and Peter are written as phenomenally stupid. Vicki hasn’t done a single intelligent thing since arriving in the late eighteenth century in November,* but she has become, if anything, even dumber since 1795 gave way to 1796. Peter’s behavior has also been deeply foolish, and today he hits rock bottom when he blurts out to the court that he abused his position as gaoler to help Vicki sneak out, to commit a burglary at the great house of Collinwood, and to steal evidence against her so that it could not be presented to the court. Even under Soap Opera Law, that’s three felonies.

Some claim that the phrase “Dumb Vicki” is ableist. I disagree. “Dumb” really does not mean “mute” anymore, so that using it isn’t ableist against people who do not have the power of speech. And the intelligence characters like Peter and this version of Vicki lack is not the intelligence that IQ tests are supposed to measure. One of the most interesting characters in the part of Dark Shadows set in the eighteenth century is fluttery heiress Millicent Collins, who would probably fall far short of a triple digit score on a Stanford-Binet scale, but whose behavior makes sense to us because we tell what she wants out of life and how she thinks her actions will help her get it. That’s really all we mean when we talk about a “smart character.” A well-crafted story about someone with profound developmental disabilities can depict that person as a smart character, in that sense, as easily as can one about a great sage or a brilliant scientist. Vicki and Peter are not smart characters, no matter how what kind of school we might suppose would best suit them as students, because there is nothing for us to learn by observing their behavior and no suspense as to what their several actions will add up to. They just do one damn thing after another.

Clarice Blackburn and Jerry Lacy do some fine acting today, as does Grayson Hall in a brief turn as the Countess DuPrés. The pre-title bit with Blackburn and Lacy in front of the black backgrounds is so specific to theater in the 1960s that I can’t help but smile at it, but I’m glad it’s there. It isn’t as though you could ever really forget that the show is 56 years old, and I like to see that they preserved something that would have been so typical of the off-Broadway productions that would have been such a big part of the working lives of the cast and other creatives in those days.

*In her testimony today, Abigail gives the dramatic date of Vicki’s arrival in the past as 12 October 1795. The episodes in which the events she describes happened were broadcast on 17 November and 20 November 1967. In the last few weeks, the show has explicitly told us that the day and month of the dramatic setting in 1796 is the same as the broadcast date in 1968, so it’s confusing.