the scent of jasmine – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 948: A sign of your freedom, and of mine

The first ghost we saw on Dark Shadows was that of the gracious Josette Collins, who came down from her portrait and danced around the outside of the Old House on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood in #70. We had first heard of Josette in #5, when drunken sad sack Sam Evans told well-meaning governess Vicki Winters about her, and she had been mentioned many times in the first fourteen weeks. From #70 until #191, Josette’s ghost became a steadily bigger part of the story. She rallied the other ghosts of Collinwood to rescue Vicki from crazed handyman Matthew in #126, and from that point until #191 guided Vicki in her battle with undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. By the end of the Laura story, Josette was firmly established as the chief figure in the show’s supernatural back-world, a world which the action is continually tugging into view.

Vampire Barnabas Collins succeeded Laura as the show’s supernatural Big Bad. Josette was well-suited to do battle with the distant and indefinable Laura, but was too wispy to be very effective against the more dynamic Barnabas. In #212, Barnabas addressed Josette through her portrait in the Old House, which we had seen strange and troubled boy David Collins use to carry on conversations with her in #102 and #162. Barnabas spoke to Josette then as if she were his grandmother, who had sided with his father against him in a fateful conflict, and told her he was kicking her out of the house. Over the next few weeks, there were several episodes when David lamented Josette’s absence from the Old House, suggesting that Barnabas had succeeded in banishing her.

As it became clear Barnabas was a hit and would be kept on the show for a while, they decided to connect him to Josette. So they borrowed the story of the 1932 film The Mummy. As Boris Karloff’s undead Imhotep decided that Helen Grosvenor was the reincarnation of his lost love Princess Ankh-Esen-Amun, so Barnabas decided that Josette, retconned as his lost love, had been reincarnated as Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott,) daughter of Sam. As Imhotep abducted Helen and tried to turn her into Ankh-Esen-Amun, so Barnabas abducted Maggie and tortured her in an attempt to erase her personality and upload Josette’s in its place.

In the movie, Helen and Ankh-Esen-Amun were both played by Zita Johann. The original viewers wouldn’t have known it, but Miss Scott, wearing a veil, played the ghost of Josette in #70 and voiced Josette’s lines to Vicki in #126. In the scenes during the Laura story when we caught glimpses of Josette’s face, the ghost was played by frequent stand-in Rosemary McNamara, who looked enough like Miss Scott that viewers may have wondered if she was playing the role. So the idea of a connection between Maggie and Josette had been rattling around the writers’ room for a while. In #240, David saw Maggie wandering around Barnabas’ house. She was wearing Josette’s dress but no veil, in a daze and answering to Josette’s name. Afterward, David said that he had seen Josette and that she looked exactly the same as she did when he had seen her as a ghost. That confirmed that Maggie was at least a Josette lookalike, if not her reincarnation.

Maggie eventually escaped from Barnabas. Her psychiatrist, Julia Hoffman, saw in Barnabas her chance to make a career as a mad scientist, and so she sold Maggie out, using her magical power of hypnosis to delete her memory of what Barnabas did to her and leave her with a feeling of goodwill towards Barnabas. By that time, Barnabas had turned his attentions to Vicki, toying with the idea of Josettifying her. Josette’s ghost made it clear to him that she would try to stop any such effort when she spoke through Vicki at a séance in #280 and 281; after that, Barnabas gave her portrait another talking-to, telling her that she was lost to him forever and must let him live in the present. It sounded like he was going to stop trying to turn girls into Josette, but he kept pushing Josette’s hypnotic music box on Vicki, so if that’s what he meant he didn’t stick with it.

In November 1967, Vicki went back in time to the days when Barnabas and Josette were living human beings. From then until March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. Miss Scott was cast as the living Josette, completing the parallel with the flashbacks to ancient Egypt in The Mummy and suggesting that Barnabas, though he was appallingly cruel and thoroughly crazy, was onto something when he told Maggie she was Josette.

The whole idea of supernaturalism is that what appears to be powerless is in fact most powerful and vice versa, so having been powerful as a ghost, Josette has to be at least somewhat understated as a living being. Making matters worse for her, the 1790s segment moved at a breakneck speed, piling one bizarre disaster on top of another, so that there was no time to develop the kind of subtle strength a lady of her sort might be expected to have or to give us much of a look at Josette and Barnabas as a loving couple before everything went horribly wrong for them. She winds up as a pleasant but ineffectual person. The 1790s period was the show’s first great triumph, but it did knock Josette out of the spotlight permanently.

A couple of weeks after Dark Shadows returned to contemporary dress in March 1968, Barnabas’ vampirism went into remission and he tried to function as a good guy. His bumbling attempts at heroism generated as much trouble for everyone as had his villainy. Julia had made herself a permanent houseguest at Collinwood, and she was the one who was busiest with the work of containing his damage. Throughout the part of the show made and set in 1968, Josette was all but forgotten.

Early in 1969, Barnabas came unstuck in time and found himself in 1897, once more subject to the vampire curse. During his eight months in that period, he met two more characters played by Miss Scott. Each of them led him into a fresh bout of Josettery. He gave the music box to neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond; after her death, he met Kitty Soames, dowager countess of Hampshire, who despite her title was a young woman from Pennsylvania. The music box showed up in Kitty’s room at a time when Barnabas could not possibly have been around, and it became clear that this time, it was Josette herself who was trying to take possession of Kitty.

In #884, airing in November 1969, Kitty was assumed bodily into Josette’s portrait. Barnabas saw this happen. He then returned to the 1790s, to the night when Josette originally flung herself to her death from the cliff at Widows’ Hill rather than let Barnabas turn her into a vampire. Josette had only the vaguest memory of 1897 or of Kitty; as far as she is concerned, she was living through this night for the first time, and was experiencing time in the usual linear fashion.

Barnabas tried to prevent Josette’s suicide, but succeeded only in changing the method she used to do herself in. By the time he returned to the twentieth century, he had fallen under the sway of the Leviathan People, a race of Elder Gods who are trying to retake the Earth from humankind. For a time he led a cult that served them in this goal, but eventually became disaffected. He hesitates to take any very definite action against the Leviathans, because they told him they were “holding Josette prisoner in the past” and that they would inflict on her a more horrible death than either of those she has already died if he defied them in any way.

Vicki was written out of the show in 1968, and Maggie succeeded her as governess to the children at Collinwood. The Leviathans have sent a shape-shifting monster from beyond space and time as the harbinger of their conquest. The monster usually takes the form of a young man who initially asked people to call him “Jabe,” but whom everyone instead calls “Jeb.” Jabe is always obnoxious and often homicidal, and has alienated many people from the Leviathans, including Barnabas. He abducted Maggie and thought he had brainwashed her into joining the cult; once he let her go, she made an alliance with Barnabas and Julia to fight the Leviathans.

Barnabas is convinced Jabe is about to do something especially horrible, and so he wants to open the battle. But his concern for Josette is still holding him back. He and Julia talk about this. It dawns on them that the Leviathans may have been lying, and that they may not have the power to make Josette re-die. The only way they can be sure is to ask Josette, so they decide to hold a séance. They enlist Maggie to be the third member of the circle.

The typical Dark Shadows séance involves three roles- the convener, who gives detailed instructions and barks about the importance of following them, even if everyone in the room has attended multiple séances already; the medium, who goes into the trance and channels the voice from the realm of the dead; and the objector, who tries to interrupt and is sternly hushed by the convener. Recent séances have omitted the objector; today, Julia keeps up a running commentary from the time Barnabas starts the incantations until Maggie goes into the trance, but she doesn’t object and Barnabas doesn’t hush her.

Through Maggie, Josette says she had a hard time getting to the séance, but that it had nothing to do with the Leviathans. She says she doesn’t even know the Leviathans. Barnabas doesn’t believe her, and she says that if he wants proof he should come to her grave.

He does. The tinkling tune of the music box plays on the soundtrack; Barnabas does not mention the original signature of Josette’s presence, the scent of jasmine. Her ghost manifests before him:

THE GHOST OF JOSETTE: It is I. And I will tell you what you must know, now and forever. You asked me if the Leviathans held me prisoner. They do not. But you hold me, just as I hold you with my love. But now the time has come for us both to go free.

BARNABAS: I cannot be free without you.

GHOST: But you must. For I belong to the past. For you there is a future with someone else.

BARNABAS: But I don’t want anyone else.

GHOST: Then you must be lonely, for you cannot have me. But you will find someone else. I know it. And when you do, give her this. The ring that you gave to me, give to her, whoever she may be. This ring is a sign of your freedom and of mine. (Returns her engagement ring to him and vanishes.)

Josette says goodbye. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This is Josette’s final appearance on Dark Shadows, not counting a parallel universe version of Josette who will feature in the last weeks of the show, played by another actress. As for the “someone else,” it would be logical for Barnabas to get with Julia, since the two of them are so deeply complicit in each other’s crimes that neither of them will ever be able to make a life with anyone else. But there have been some hints lately that romance might be budding between Barnabas and Maggie, and if that’s going to happen they are going to have to keep us from thinking very clearly about Josette and Barnabas’ attempts to recreate her. We might suppose that her farewell is meant to clear the path for such a development.

There’s also some business about the Leviathan story. In the opening reprise, Jabe catches a bat, which he plans to use to turn Barnabas back into a vampire.

After Barnabas gets the green light from Josette, he meets with Philip Todd, another person whom Jabe has driven out of the Leviathan cult. Philip tells Barnabas how much he hates Jabe and agrees to steal the Leviathan box, an object which does not play music but which is a lot more effective at controlling the minds of people who open it than was that box of Josette’s. At the end of the episode, Jabe catches Philip with the box.

A commenter on Danny Horn’s great Dark Shadows Every Day who identifies herself as “Melissa”* wrote this lyric about Jabe in two comments about the post covering today’s episode:

Come and listen to my story ’bout s man named Jeb,
Poor Leviathan, barely kept his evil web.
Then, one day, he and Barney had a spat,
And out from the cage came a rubberized bat.
(Vampire bat, that is:
Nylon string,
Terror teeth.)

Next thing you know,ol’ Jeb has got a girl.
Cult folk said, “Jeb, come and rule the world!”
They said, “In the attic is the place you want to be,”
So they threw themselves a seance and they called on J.D.C.
(Josette Collins, that is.
Swimming fail.
Newly scarred.)

Comments left 31 October 2016 by “Melissa” on Danny Horn “Episode 948: War Games,” posted 30 October 2016 at Dark Shadows Every Day.

I’m singing that aloud right now. I realize you might be reading this years after I wrote it, but believe me, I’m singing it right now.

*Apparently also an FotB here.

Episode 238: This place is becoming a prison

Well-meaning governess Vicki goes to the front door of the great house of Collinwood and brings in an afternoon paper dated 16 April 1967. There is the headline on the front page: “Pfizer Dropping Its Patent Suits on Tetracycline.” Right next to it, “Factory Labor Costs Reached Five Year High Relative to Output in October, Agency Says.” The New York papers had these stories on 24 November 1966, and ran them in the business sections. Apparently Collinsport’s afternoon paper doesn’t believe in rushing into print. There’s also some stuff there about the disappearance of Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town.

Vicki looks directly at the paper for less than four seconds, yet when reclusive matriarch Liz asks her if the articles about Maggie provide any new information, she says no. Speed reading courses were a big fad in the 1960s, evidently Vicki must have taken one. Liz forbids Vicki or flighty heiress Carolyn to go out after dark until Maggie is found.

As soon as Liz leaves the room, Vicki suggests to Carolyn that they go for a walk to the Old House on the grounds of the estate. She wants Carolyn to see the restoration work that has been done since the courtly Barnabas Collins and his irritable servant Willie Loomis have moved in. Carolyn reluctantly agrees. We see a video insert of the women walking through the woods towards the house, with audio of their voices dubbed over it. I believe this is the first new exterior footage we have seen since #174, and the first to include actors since #130.

We see the women from an increasing distance, so that they appear to shrink; then through foliage, so that they appear to be in a trap; and finally from a high angle, as if they are small and weak. Since we know that Barnabas is a vampire and they are on their way to enter his lair, this is effective visual storytelling. In fact, it is the only good scene in the episode.

The beginning of the walk- Carolyn and Vicki at their largest

Approaching the house, they reach their smallest size

Carolyn says that it is much colder around the Old House than it is at the great house, and Vicki mentions that they are closer to the ocean. This is something of a retcon. When strange and troubled boy David first took Vicki through the woods to the Old House in #70, not only was it news to her that the place existed, but the trek was a long one, suggesting it was far inland, deep into the grounds of the estate. That impression was reinforced a number of times, and Vicki’s remark is the first to contradict it. Apparently the writers are planning some story point that will require the Old House to be by the shore.

Vicki knocks on the door several times without an answer. As she and Carolyn turn to go, we see the doorknob turn and the door open. When the women see that no one is in the front part of the house, Vicki guesses that her knocking loosened the door. What we saw of the doorknob tells us that some agency opened it. It is still daylight, so Barnabas’ powers are unlikely to be at work, and it doesn’t seem that he would want people wandering into his house.

The Old House has also been the abode of the benevolent ghost of Josette Collins, and it is possible Josette might want Vicki and Carolyn to figure out what Barnabas is up to. But nothing they do today gives them a clue about him, and since it is almost nightfall it is extremely dangerous for them to be there. Josette would be unlikely to put them in that situation without good reason.

That leaves us wondering what other supernatural beings might be operating in and around the Old House. The first time Dark Shadows told a story that was modeled on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it centered on blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. In the first weeks of that arc, it seemed that Laura was not simply a single physical body, but that she was a whole complex of material and immaterial presences, some of them working at cross-purposes to each other.

Now we are using another set of ideas from the same book. Barnabas is more dynamic than Laura was in those early days, but he too seems to have brought company with him, perhaps including companions he does not know about and whom he does not control. This is most obvious when he is planning some evil deed and the dogs start howling. Occasionally the dog-noise helps him by intimidating his victims or scaring away their would-be protectors, but more often it gets in his way by acting as a warning that trouble is brewing. If an unknown force that upsets the dogs emerged when Barnabas rose from his tomb, then perhaps still another force has appeared that is fiddling with the doors to the Old House.

Over Carolyn’s objections, Vicki insists on exploring the Old House. Carolyn protests that this is trespassing. They have been confusing about the legal status of the place. In #220, they said explicitly that Liz would continue to own it and would let Barnabas stay there. There hasn’t been any indication since that Barnabas has paid Liz anything or that she has done any paperwork. If the house belongs to Liz, Carolyn, as Liz’ daughter and heir, would be speaking figuratively when she uses the word “trespassing.” But in #223, Liz talked about the house as if it and its contents were Barnabas’ property. So who knows, maybe she signed the place over to him when the show was busy with a day of recapping.

Whether Barnabas is the proprietor of the house or a guest there, Vicki and Carolyn are certainly intruding on his privacy when they go upstairs and examine the bedrooms. Carolyn at least has the presence of mind to point this out, but Vicki just keeps repeating that Barnabas once told her she was welcome to come over any time and she interprets this to mean that she can go anywhere in the house whether he’s there or not. This is one of the most sustained, and most bizarre, of all the Dumb Vicki moments we’ve seen so far. Alexandra Moltke Isles usually tries to find something to put behind her eyes during these scenes to suggest Vicki has a thought we will find out about if we keep watching, but Vicki’s behavior today is so senseless Mrs Isles just grins and looks off into the middle distance like a crazy person. Who can blame her, really.

They find the bedroom of Josette all appointed as if Josette herself were living there, complete with jasmine-scented perfume. The door mysteriously closes, trapping them inside. Again, no one we have met, either living or ghostly, would have any motive to do this. After a moment, Willie comes to the door and demands to know why they are there. Vicki asks about the room and complains about Willie’s manners, as if she had a right to be there.

Downstairs, Vicki asks Willie to tell Barnabas how impressed she and Carolyn are with all the work that has been done. Barnabas shows up and is extremely gracious to the women. After they leave, he scolds Willie for his unfriendliness to them. Maybe he does want visitors letting themselves in and roaming freely about the house while he’s resting in his coffin and keeping a girl prisoner, who knows. That would seem foolish, but no more so than Vicki’s activities today. It was the 1960s and people’s blood had a lot of lead in it. Maybe that’s getting to Barnabas.

Vicki and Carolyn go back to the great house and tell Liz what they saw at Barnabas’. Liz is annoyed that they went to a place where they were likely to see Willie, whom she remembers from his pre-blood thrall days, when he was dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis. She wonders why Barnabas has chosen to restore Josette’s room.

We return to the Old House, where the episode ends with its only scene not including Vicki. Barnabas stands before a small table in the parlor. It is set for a dinner for two. There are two plates, and two glasses. Barnabas has appeared to drink coffee at the restaurant in the Collinsport Inn, Amontillado in the study at the great house, and some kind of booze at The Blue Whale tavern. These glasses also seem to hold something other than human blood, indicating that Barnabas is not sticking strictly to the diet of his people. He tells Willie to bring their guest. Maggie enters, wearing Josette’s bridal gown and offering her hand when Barnabas addresses her as Josette.

It is by no means clear where Maggie has been up to this point. She wasn’t in Josette’s room, and doesn’t seem to be coming from the basement. The secret chamber behind the bookcase is no secret anymore, least of all from Vicki, who was held prisoner there by crazed handyman Matthew Morgan. Perhaps we are to think that her entrance, along with Barnabas’ insouciant attitude towards unexpected visitors, implies that there are spaces in the house only Barnabas can find.

Episode 190: Always

Strange and troubled boy David Collins has run off to be with his mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson had been keeping an eye on him yesterday, and only let him out of her sight long enough for him to escape because she had to answer a telephone call from well-meaning governess Vicki. Vicki had set Mrs Johnson to watch David, because she knows that if he gets loose Laura is going to burn him to death. So it was an act of inexplicable stupidity on Vicki’s part to make that call.

Today, the show lampshades this problem, having Vicki say that she assumed someone else would answer the phone. But the whole reason Vicki was giving orders to Mrs Johnson in the first place was that no one else was at home. They take a moment that made Vicki look dumb yesterday and turn it into one that makes her look twice as dumb today.

Vicki and her allies, dashing action hero Burke and hardworking young fisherman Joe, remember something that happened at a recent séance. David had channeled the ghost of David Radcliffe, the son of one of his mother’s previous incarnations, whom she had burned to death one hundred years ago. David Radcliffe had said that there would soon be a deadly fire in a “little house by the sea.” Laura has been staying in a cottage on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, and it could meet that description. Burke and Joe head for the cottage while Vicki and Mrs Johnson stay in the great house.

We see David enter an old fishing shack on the estate. As he does so, he shines a flashlight directly into the camera, creating a halo of light that fills the screen. He does this three more times during this brief scene.

While David settles in at the fishing shack, Burke and Joe go to Laura’s cottage. When they arrive at the cottage, Burke shines a flashlight directly into the camera. He’s way behind David, he only creates a halo effect once.

He and Joe don’t find Laura or her luggage at the cottage, but when they see the wood-fire still blazing in the hearth they know that she must have been back since leaving on a bus early this morning. Burke wonders if David might have gone to meet Laura at the long-abandoned Old House on the estate. This leads to a spectacular dialogue flub:

Burke: Maybe she asked him to meet her up at the Old House. I think I’ll go and check.

Joe: Want me to go with you?

Burke: No, I think we should stick together… No, no… we can’t stick together. You go down to the greenhouse and look through the woods. I’ll go up to the Old House.

This may not look like much on the page, but as Mitch Ryan delivers it his mangled lines are good for a laugh out loud. Joel Crothers can’t hide his confusion while Ryan is stumbling:

Back in the drawing room at the great house, Vicki has called the bus company. We see her on the telephone protesting “I don’t understand!” As Dumb Vicki becomes a bigger and bigger part of the character in the months ahead, we will hear those words many, many times.

The bus company tells Vicki that the driver reported a weird story about Laura. She was sitting next to an old lady. The old lady nodded off and when she woke up, Laura was gone. The bus had not stopped while she was asleep- Laura simply vanished into thin air. As a frequent user of mass transit, I enjoyed the idea of something uncanny happening on a bus. That was definitely the high point of the episode for me.

In the fishing shack, David hears Burke and Joe approach. He hides in a wooden crate. They don’t think to walk around it, or turn it over, or tap on it. Apparently whatever has knocked three or four standard deviations off Vicki’s IQ is contagious. Joe does give us one flashlight halo, but otherwise the scene is a bust.

The Three Stooges couldn’t have missed that kid

Laura materializes in the corner of the fishing shack, holding a lantern. David sees her and expresses only very mild surprise that he didn’t hear her coming in. Within seconds, he is acting as if it is perfectly natural for her to be there. Considering that there is only one door and he is standing directly in front of it, his rapid acceptance of the fact that she has somehow managed to insert herself into the shack ought to be a chilling sign of the power she already has over his mind. We’ve seen too much dumb behavior on the part of Vicki, Burke, and Joe today for that to land, so the impact of the scene is blunted.

Laura gives David her lantern and instructs him to look into the center of the flame. Several times we have seen her sit with him by a hearth and urge him to look deep into the flames, but this is the first time she or anyone else on Dark Shadows indicates an object held in the hand and directs someone to “look into the center” as a means of inducing a trance-like state.

Alone in the drawing room, Vicki senses the presence of her chief patroness, the ghost of Josette Collins. She catches the scent of Josette’s jasmine perfume while spooky music plays on the soundtrack and the picture goes out of focus. She keeps asking Josette what she is trying to tell her. It takes her quite a long while to figure out that Josette is reminding her of the fishing shack.

While we were watching this scene, my wife, Mrs Acilius, wondered how exasperated Josette must be getting with the dimwitted living beings she has to work with. She imagined Josette at each turn of the Phoenix story starting to get her hopes up- “OK, they’re getting it!”- only to be disappointed time and again. In #149, she literally paints a picture for them, and they still can’t figure it out.

Meanwhile, David is complaining of the cold and saying that he’s tired. Laura refuses to take the lantern from him, quietly urging him to peer into the center of the flame, then talking about sleep. When he drops the lantern and sees the floor catch fire, he says they should get out. She tells him everything will be all right so long as they stay inside. We end with animation effects suggesting that fire is starting to surround them, while David stands quite still.

Episode 154: Died by fire!

Eventually, Dark Shadows became the kind of pop culture phenomenon that even people who never saw the show couldn’t really avoid. Most such things spawn catchphrases that become widely familiar and remain so for years. Think of Star Trek with “Beam me up!” or “Warp speed.” To my knowledge, Dark Shadows was an exception to that, with no phrases or expressions spreading beyond its fans. But if it had already been a hit when today’s episode aired, I think a character we meet in it would have been the source of two catchphrases. That character is Cemetery Caretaker, played by Daniel F. Keyes.

Under the influence of the ghost of Josette Collins, well-meaning governess Vicki has ordered her boyfriend, instantly forgettable lawyer Frank, to take her to a graveyard out in the country someplace. Vicki knocks on the door of a building there, and at length an aged figure in a celluloid collar and wire-frame glasses opens the door. He stands mute for the first minute Vicki and Frank talk to him. When he finally starts speaking, he asks them if they are alive.

Frank doesn’t show any surprise at the question. You wouldn’t really expect him to- with his personality, he must get that a lot. He assures the caretaker that yes, he and Vicki are alive. The caretaker explains that he often hears knocking at the door, but it is usually the unquiet spirits of the dead.

Some months from now, the caretaker will introduce his second memorable phrase, “The dead must rest!” At this first appearance, we learn why they must. If the dead aren’t resting, they’re going to be keeping him awake all night, and he has things to do in the morning.

Frank tells the caretaker that they are lost. Vicki contradicts him and insists that this is where she is supposed to be. Frank apologizes for bothering him and tries to go; Vicki insists on staying. The caretaker lets them into the building.

Inside, Vicki and Frank find a strange combination of archive and mausoleum. By the standards of Dark Shadows, it’s a big, elaborate new set, a definite sign that something important is happening.

The front room of the caretaker’s building

Vicki keeps talking about how fresh the air is, and how full of the scent of jasmine. The caretaker is bewildered by her words, and Frank says the only scents he can detect are must and mold. The audience knows that the scent of jasmine is a sign that the ghost of Josette Collins is trying to attract a character’s attention.

Vicki declares that the source of the scent is in a connected room. The caretaker is reluctant to let Vicki and Frank into that room. He says that it is the final resting place of those members of the illustrious Stockbridge family* who died particularly gruesome deaths. Vicki pleads with him, and he gives in. He does insist that while in the crypt, they must be very quiet- “So quiet, even they can’t hear.”

The caretaker talks in a not-particularly hushed stage voice the entire time they are in the crypt, so he must not think the dead have such great hearing after all. He tells the stories of the crimes and accidents that took the lives of each of the people whose remains lie behind the large stone plaques on the wall. When he comes to the last of them, L. Murdoch Stockbridge, Frank interrupts him. “L. Murdoch! I’ve seen that name on legal documents around the office a hundred times!” Frank is handling the divorce of high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins from his mysterious and long-absent wife, Laura Murdoch Collins.

Frank asks about L. Murdoch Stockbridge. The caretaker doesn’t know what the L. stood for. He does know that she was a woman, and he can describe the circumstances of her death. One night in 1767, a candle set the curtains around her bed ablaze, and she burned to death. Such remains as are in the niche are little but ashes. He says, and then repeats, “L. Murdoch Stockbridge died by fire! L. Murdoch Stockbridge died by fire!” Once Vicki learns about L. Murdoch Stockbridge, the scent of jasmine disappears and she is in the same dank musty space as Frank and the caretaker.

It’s been three years since Mrs Acilius and I first saw these episodes, and I can still make her laugh by putting on an old man voice and saying “Died by fire!” Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where everyone is being very serious, and someone mentions that a person “died by fire.” I glance at her, and find her biting her lip to keep from laughing out loud. That’s why I say that if Dark Shadows had been at the peak of its popularity in January of 1967, “Died by fire!” would have been one of the great pop culture catchphrases of the period.

Back at the great house of Collinwood, wildly indiscreet housekeeper Mrs Johnson comes into the drawing room while Roger is at his usual station, leaning on the cabinet where the brandy is kept and draining a snifter. She asks him if she can bring him anything. Those are the words, but the voice spells out a stern sermon about the evils of alcohol. Roger goes to sit down, saying nothing of consequence but saying it in a way that makes clear he dislikes and resents her.

Laura enters. Roger sends Mrs Johnson off to make coffee. Alone in the drawing room, Roger and Laura argue about all the things they have been arguing about since she returned from her long absence. There is no new information in the dialogue, but it is good to see another side of Roger. Lately we’ve seen him almost exclusively as the bratty little brother of reclusive matriarch Liz, and his interactions with other characters are dominated by the narcissism that is most fully expressed in his scenes with Liz. When he is the unloving father of strange and troubled boy David, the unsettlingly flirtatious uncle of flighty heiress Carolyn, the cowardly foe of dashing action hero Burke Devlin, or the malign co-conspirator of drunken artist Sam Evans, we see vices that we can trace back directly to his certainty that Liz will always shelter him from the consequences of his actions, whatever they may be. When he stands up to Laura in this scene, we see that there is a semi-functional adult somewhere inside Roger.

Roger and Laura realize that Mrs Johnson has been eavesdropping on their conversation. They are worried about what she might have heard. They do not know what regular viewers know, that she is a paid agent of Roger’s enemy Burke, placed in the house to spy on the Collinses. They do know that she has a big mouth, though, and since the last words they spoke were about a crime they want to keep covered up that’s enough to give them pause.

Frank brings Vicki home to Collinwood. Standing outside the front door, they remark on the caretaker’s frequent muttering of “died by fire! Died by fire!”

Vicki reviews all of the strange occurrences that have taken place since Laura’s return. She sums up the whole course of any story about people investigating the supernatural- “It seems connected- and yet so unconnected.” By the laws of nature as science describes them, by the ordinary logic of waking life, none of the events she lists means anything. It’s only after you accept the idea that uncanny forces are at work that they form a pattern pointing to Laura. The audience can accept that, because we can hear the theremin on the soundtrack. Vicki and Frank have a harder time.

Frank tells Vicki he has to get home. She invites him in for a drink. He replies “You make it a stiff one, and you’re on!” That’s what you need before a long drive on dark, winding roads, to get tanked up on a lot of booze. They open the doors and walk into the house. The camera dwells on them as they make this procession. As they had gone through doors that led to L. Murdoch Stockbridge, now they go through the doors that lead to L. Murdoch Collins.

Vicki and Frank join Roger and Laura in the drawing room. The men drink brandy, the women sip coffee. Vicki asks Laura about her family background, claiming that David is curious about it. Laura responds merely that her family is a distinguished one and had been in the area for a long time.

Roger tells Frank that he will be hearing from Lieutenant Riley of the state police tomorrow. Laura objects that she doesn’t want to talk about Riley’s message, Roger says there won’t be any conversation- he will simply announce the lieutenant’s laughable news. The authorities in Phoenix, Arizona are convinced that a charred corpse found in Laura’s apartment there is hers, and that she died when the apartment building burned to the ground. Vicki looks at Laura, and with a strange smile says “Laura Murdoch Collins died by fire.”

*The caretaker was deeply versed in the lore of the Stockbridge family, and told Vicki and Frank that most of the graves in this eighteenth century cemetery were theirs. Yet he showed no glimmer of recognition when Vicki mentioned Josette Collins to him. That suggests that the Stockbridges were leading citizens of the area before the Collinses rose to prominence.

It might be interesting if someone would write a story in which the first Collinses were servants of the Stockbridges who got rich by doing their dirty work. Maybe the first and darkest shadow of all was that some colonial Collins scabbed on his fellow employees when they were trying to get a fair deal from the Stockbridges. I’m not up on Dark Shadows fanfic, for all I know there may be whole novels out there on this theme.

Episode 149: The scent of jasmine

Yesterday’s episode gave writer Ron Sproat six major points to communicate to the audience:

None of the characters yet believed that the relationship between mysterious and long-absent Laura Collins and her son, strange and troubled boy David, involved physical danger or crime, much less a threat from the supernatural realm.
An police investigation taking place off-screen and centered in Phoenix, Arizona will advance the plot.
Well-meaning governess Vicki is a credible protagonist in the storyline about Laura.
Dashing action hero Burke Devlin is too smitten with Laura to be of much help to Vicki in her efforts to protect David from Laura.
The budding romance between Burke and flighty heiress Carolyn is at an end.
Vicki has decided the time has come to start fighting Laura.

With more help from the actors than he really deserved, Sproat managed to get all six of these points across. Today, Malcolm Marmorstein has only two themes to deal with. First, he shows us Carolyn processing her feelings about Burke. Then, he shows us the characters discovering that they are living in a ghost story.

Carolyn comes home to the great house of Collinwood in a grim mood. Vicki asks Carolyn who has upset her. She says that Burke has put an end to their budding romance. She asks Vicki to guess who has caught Burke’s eye now, and Vicki names Laura.

Later, Carolyn puts the same question to Laura’s estranged husband, her uncle, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins. Roger also names Laura, also without batting an eye. When Carolyn is surprised at his calm reaction, he assures her he has no interest in anything Burke and Laura might get up to.

In her anguish, Carolyn tells Roger that he would take an entirely different attitude if he could see Burke from a woman’s point of view. As Roger, Louis Edmonds replies to this remark by raising an eyebrow ever so slightly.

The episodes Art Wallace and Francis Swann wrote in the first twenty weeks of Dark Shadows gave more than a few hints that Burke and Roger’s enmity has its roots in a past homoerotic relationship. In the months since Sproat and Marmorstein took over the writing duties, that idea has only cropped up a couple of times in Sproat’s scripts, and not at all in Marmorstein’s.

Edmonds’ raised eyebrow here will bring a chuckle to regular viewers who have caught on to the theme. As the look passes from his face, Carolyn turns to look at her uncle. When Nancy Barrett saw Louis Edmonds, she must have been glad the scene was ending, as she didn’t have to worry about keeping herself from laughing out loud.

In the village of Collinsport, drunken artist Sam Evans and his daughter Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town, are at home. Maggie is trying to cheer her father up after a recent mishap with fire injured his hands, leaving him temporarily unable to hold either a paint brush or a whiskey glass. Losing his ability to paint is not as upsetting to Sam as it might be at another time. Lately, an occult power has compelled him to paint nothing but pictures of Laura, naked and in flames, a subject which he and everyone else, especially the lady herself, finds horrifying.

Maggie tries to talk sense to Sam. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

What is weighing most heavily on Sam at the moment is a mystical feeling that something is happening to the first of these paintings. It now hangs at Collinwood in the bedroom of Laura and Roger’s son, strange and troubled boy David. An occult power, presumably the same one that took possession of Sam, made Vicki take it back to Collinwood and show it to David. David took the painting because it depicted the scene of a recurring nightmare that had afflicted him and that Sam had no way of knowing about. In the nightmare, Laura had beckoned David to join her in the flames. Again, the nightmare seems to be a communication from an occult power, and there is no reason why it could not be the same one that possessed Sam and Vicki.

The painting has a blank spot the size and shape of David. Sam’s mystical feeling suggests to him that the painting is being completed. He goes to Collinwood to investigate.

While Sam is on his way, we see David’s room. The painting glows, as both it and the portrait of Josette Collins hanging in the long-abandoned Old House have done when supernatural beings were about. Josette herself manifests. She looks around. She turns to the painting and touches the blank spot.

Josette’s ghost is played here by stand-in Rosemary McNamara. We get a fair glimpse of her face. Her hair and makeup looks very much like those we just saw Kathryn Leigh Scott wearing as Maggie. Miss Scott has played the ghost of Josette several times already and will be closely associated with Josette later in the series. If resemblance is intentional, as it would seem it must be,* why not simply have Miss Scott play Josette today?

The ghost of Josette in David’s room. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die

Roger, Carolyn, and Vicki are gathered in the drawing room, talking about the painting. Carolyn reminds Roger that David is out of the house, and suggests that he take the painting now and destroy it. Vicki objects that David would take that as a grave betrayal.

A knock comes at the door. Vicki answers it and greets Sam. She shows concern for his injured hands, and very gently takes his coat. She tells him that she is as mystified by her own actions in taking the painting and giving it to David as Sam is mystified by his compulsion to paint it in the first place. Sam asks to speak with Roger. Vicki ushers him into the drawing room, where he meets Roger and Carolyn.

Roger and Sam hate each other, but in front of the young ladies they behave almost correctly. Certainly their hostility doesn’t slow down the exchange of story-productive information. Sam asks to see the painting. Roger and Carolyn send Vicki up to David’s room to fetch it.

That’s an interesting moment. When Sam knocked, Vicki had gone to answer the door at once, and had presented him to Roger and Carolyn very much in the person of a household servant. When Roger and Carolyn send her for the painting, she is all smiles, happy to be on the job. Yet when she and Carolyn were in the drawing room earlier discussing Burke, Vicki was functioning entirely as Carolyn’s equal. The two of them sound like old friends, or like the sisters the show has been hinting they might be. Vicki can move with remarkable facility between the roles of servant and family member. That extraordinary flexibility is one of the qualities that we can imagine will come in handy as she confronts the spiritual forces of darkness gathering in the background.

When Vicki enters David’s room, spooky music starts to play. Vicki walks in slowly, looking from side to side. She senses an eerie presence. She looks at the painting, and sees that where it once was blank it now sports an image of David. She screams.

Roger, Carolyn, and Sam are momentarily stunned by Vicki’s scream. By the time they leave the drawing room, Vicki is already on the stairs holding the painting. Seeing David’s face depicted there, Roger exclaims that he saw the painting earlier that day, and that the spot was still blank then. Sam touches it, and says that is impossible- it is oil paint, and would take days to dry. Roger says that the painting now shows the whole scene of David’s nightmare.

As the four of them try to figure out what could have happened, Vicki says that when she entered the room she felt a weird presence. She says there was a specific perception accompanying this vague feeling- she could smell jasmine perfume. None of the ladies in the house wear that scent. Vicki says that she smelled it once before- in #126, when she saw the ghost of Josette Collins. The association of Josette with the scent of jasmine will continue throughout the series.

Vicki and Carolyn wonder how David will react to his own likeness in the painting, and Roger replies that he never will see it. He throws it in the fireplace. As it burns, the sound of a woman’s scream rings through the room.

This episode is a turning point. Hints of supernatural activity have been cropping up in the show from week one, the audience has been seeing evidence of it for months, and both Vicki and David have seen and talked with ghosts. But the completed painting and the scream that emerges from the fireplace are the first unambiguous tokens of the occult that have been presented to a group like these four.

The only other time more than one person had seen anything like it came in #88, when Roger and his sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, found seaweed on the spot where Vicki reported that the ghost of beloved local man Bill Malloy had dropped it. But Roger and Liz both want to keep the stories of Collinwood’s haunting to a minimum, and they threw the seaweed into the fire without telling Vicki or anyone else that they had found it. Denial, the psychological defense mechanism, is the ruling passion of their lives, and when the two of them found the evidence it was a foregone conclusion that it would be destroyed.

There is no such unity among Sam, Vicki, Carolyn, and Roger. Now that the only way any of them can deny that supernatural powers are operating in connection with Laura and David is to lie, we see that the four of them are strikingly ill-appointed to be the members of a plot to keep a secret. Sam is an outsider and no friend of the Collinses. Vicki is too conscientious to be part of a coverup. Carolyn is a loose cannon, and might tell anyone anything. Roger is unburdened by a conscience and is quite happy to tell lies, but he is also so cowardly and irresolute that he might be the weak link in any conspiracy he might join. So, not only do these characters now know that spirits are at work in connection with Laura’s relationship with David, but everyone else is likely to find out as well.

*Rosemary McNamara’s face is of the same general type as Kathryn Leigh Scott’s, but I think the hair and makeup above emphasize the similarity. Here’s the picture from her imdb profile: