Tag: timothy eliot stokes

Episode 889: Remember the night

The Departures

At the end of 1968 and beginning of 1969, two supernatural menaces were growing in tandem. The malign ghost of Quentin Collins was becoming steadily more powerful until it made the estate of Collinwood uninhabitable. As Quentin’s power grew, the curse that made Chris Jennings a werewolf also gained force, so that Chris could no longer be sure of keeping his human form even on nights without a full Moon. By the end of February, the Collins family had evacuated the great house on the estate, and Chris was in his lupine form permanently.

Trying to contact Quentin’s ghost, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins meditated on a set of I Ching wands. To his surprise, Barnabas found himself relocated in time to the year 1897, when he was a vampire and Quentin was a living being. Over the next eight months, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in that year. Barnabas learned that Quentin had been a werewolf, and that he was Chris’ great-grandfather. He also learned that a magical portrait painted by an artist named Charles Delaware Tate had freed Quentin of the effects of the werewolf curse. In #839, we saw that the characters in the 1960s are aware of time passing in Barnabas’ absence; we also saw the haunting of Collinwood break in that episode. The characters remember what happened in the previous episodes, and are relieved that Quentin has found peace and they can now move back into the great house. We did not hear anything about Chris at that time. Last we saw him he was locked up in the hidden chamber inside the old Collins mausoleum in the cemetery north of town. For all we know, he’s still there.

When Barnabas went to the past, his entranced body remained in place sitting before the I Ching wands in the basement of his home, the Old House on the grounds of Collinwood. In September, mad scientist Julia Hoffman and Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes were visiting the basement and saw Barnabas’ body vanish before their eyes. Julia then sat down to meditate on the wands, and found herself transported back to 1897. She was there for a couple of weeks, during which time she initiated a treatment for Barnabas like the one that had freed him of the effects of the vampire curse for a while early in 1968. She snapped back to 1969 before the treatment was completed, but other friends of his were able to pick up where Julia left off and finish it successfully.

The portrait of Quentin would appear to have been destroyed in a fire in #883. Some unspecified supernatural agency whisked Barnabas out of the year 1897 at the end of #884, but it did not send him to 1969. Instead, he found himself in 1796, the year he first became a vampire. Amid some sinister doings, Barnabas found himself in a mysterious clearing in the woods where he saw a massive stone structure. Two hooded figures stood by this cairn. He was unable to resist or escape them. He lost consciousness, and they laid him on the cairn. They used it as an altar, covering him with foliage and consecrating him to whatever unknown beings they served. When he awoke, he knew all about the hooded figures and the cult they represented. They greeted him as their master. He spoke a ritual formula, gave some orders, and prepared to leave the eighteenth century.

The Returns

On Tuesday, we saw that Julia has been hanging around the Old House for the five weeks since she returned to 1969. She explained to heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard that Barnabas would have to reappear in the place from which he disappeared. So she locked the basement from the outside, evidently expecting to hear Barnabas calling to be let out. There is another way out of the basement, a tunnel from the prison cell there to the beach outside, but Julia must have forgotten about that.

At the opening of today’s episode, we learn that Julia was right about Barnabas reappearing in the place from which he disappeared. But she does not know that the last place the audience saw him was at the cairn. The cairn opens, and Barnabas materializes in front of it. He delivers an incantation, and goes on his way.

We cut to the great house at Collinwood, where Julia is showing Stokes a painting she bought yesterday. It is one of Tate’s works, a landscape painted sometime around 1949. Seeing that Tate was still doing work as good as any he ever did only twenty years ago, Julia wonders if he might still be alive in 1969. Stokes scoffs at this possibility, since Tate would be a hundred years old or more, but Julia is determined to search for him. When Stokes asks why she is so interested, she says that she cannot tell him, because it is a confidential favor she is doing for a friend.

While Stokes knows about the haunting of Collinwood and about Barnabas’ trip back in time, he does not know that Chris is the werewolf. If he did, he would probably turn him in to the police. So Julia can’t very well tell him that she is hoping Tate will be able to paint a portrait that will do for him what Quentin’s portrait did 72 years earlier. Fortunately for her, Stokes readily accepts her refusal to explain herself.

Stokes tells Julia about a project of his own. He says that local physician Dr Reeves has enlisted him to help with a patient. Stokes is a scholar of occult lore, not a clinician or therapist of any kind. Reeves’ decision to enlist Stokes’ aid would admit of either of two possible explanations. It could be something that often happens on soap operas, a genre in which all forms of authority tend to become interchangeable with each other, so that scholars can function as doctors, doctors can function as lawyers, and anyone who dresses up for work can function as a cop. The other possibility is that Reeves has caught on that the village of Collinsport is rife with supernatural phenomena and has decided that Stokes’ expertise might enable him to diagnose his patient. Julia’s amused disbelief when Stokes announces that he is going to see “a patient” counts against the first possibility. She is closer than any other character in the parts of Dark Shadows to a representative of the audience’s point of view, so if she is still aware of Stokes as someone whose competence is limited to a specific field we are as well. So we can assume that Dr Reeves has concluded that there is something uncanny about what ails his patient.

Stokes identifies the patient to Julia as Sabrina Stuart, a young woman who, a few years previously, was discovered with a head of white hair and without the ability to speak. He says that he and Reeves have managed to get her to start saying words but that she cannot describe the origin of her trauma. Julia knows that Sabrina’s trouble began when she saw Chris transform into the wolf, and so she is alarmed at the prospect that she will begin talking. She tries to persuade Stokes to give up, but he is nothing daunted.

Stokes exits, and Chris enters. Julia scolds him for having checked himself out of Windcliff, the mental hospital she controls. This is the first we learn that he left the hidden chamber in the mausoleum; it is also the first we learn that he has reverted to human form. He acknowledged that he can change back to the wolf at any time, and that something has to be done, but he can’t take solitary confinement any longer. Longtime viewers, remembering that every time he changes he kills people, will find this to be a stupefyingly selfish decision. It alienates whatever sympathy we may have for Chris.

Chris tells Julia that even if he is cured, he will not be truly free so long as Sabrina is around. He does not say what he plans to do about Sabrina, but if he is willing to commit all the murders that will surely follow from his decision to leave the hospital we can’t help but suspect it won’t be good for her.

We cut to Sabrina’s room in the facility where she is staying. Stokes is providing her with a sort of therapy. The audience will be surprised to see Sabrina again. Sabrina, played by Lisa Blake Richards, appeared in episodes #692, #697, and #698. The show went to 1897 in #701; Miss Richards could easily have been cast in a part in the costume drama segment, but was not. Surely no one could have expected that she would be waiting for us when we returned to contemporary dress, but here she is.

Miss Richards is pleasant enough, but she bears an ill omen. Julia and Stokes talk about Sabrina’s brother Ned, to whom Stokes refers as “a rather surly fellow.” That’s putting it mildly. Not only does he shout at his scene partners and violate their physical space, traits common to all characters played by Roger Davis, but he had a habit of groping his sister’s breasts and rubbing his cheeks on her face. These habits led us to wonder how much of Sabrina’s catatonia was a symptom of the shock of seeing Chris’ transformation and how much was the result of her brother’s constant abuse. Julia is already threatening to bring back Tate, another of Mr Davis’ characters. If Roger Davis winds up playing two parts concurrently, the show might become entirely unwatchable.

Dr Reeves is another character we haven’t seen for a long time. Fred Stewart appeared as Dr Reeves in #17, where he treats Roger Collins after an auto wreck, and in #158, where he examines Elizabeth Collins Stoddard after she has fallen down the stairs. Actors have been returning from long absences lately; Miss Richards’ surprising reappearance today reminds us of all-time champ Alfred Hinckley, unseen since his turn as a train conductor in episode #1, who came back as a doctor in #868, and of John Harkins, who played a policeman in a scene set in Phoenix, Arizona in #174 and returned as a very different law enforcement officer from another faraway place in #878. Perhaps the reference to Dr Reeves means that Stewart will rejoin the cast. Stewart didn’t have much to offer, but I’ll take a thousand of him over one Roger Davis any day.

Be that as it may, what I really wonder about is where writer Gordon Russell found Dr Reeves’ name. Neither he nor any other member of the writing staff was connected with the show when Dr Reeves appeared, and line producer Peter Miner just started three weeks ago. Executive producer Dan Curtis and director Lela Swift were with the show from the beginning, but Curtis was busy getting ready to make the feature film that became House of Dark Shadows at this time, and Swift doesn’t seem to have interacted much with the writers. Even Harriet Rohr, Costello’s assistant who often attended table reads and seems to have helped with continuity, wasn’t around much at this period. So there must have been pieces of paper floating around listing seldom-seen characters and other points of trivia for the writers’ reference. I’m sure fandom would go nuts if those papers ever turned up!

During their therapy session, Sabrina suddenly looks at Stokes and asks him who Carolyn Stoddard is. She then declares that Carolyn is in danger, and demands to meet with her at once.

As it happens, Carolyn dated Chris for a while around New Year’s 1969. Stokes knows Carolyn well enough that he must have been at least dimly aware of this. Ned is obsessed with his hostility to Chris and is rarely far from Sabrina, so Stokes must have heard about Chris and Sabrina’s relationship. But Stokes does not make the connection. He can’t imagine why Sabrina is suddenly talking about Carolyn.

Back at the great house, Chris and Carolyn have a conversation. She is irked that he went away for so long without a word to her. It’s understandable he does not want her to know that he is the werewolf, but why can’t he tell her he was confined to a mental institution? It isn’t as if he is worried about making a good impression on her. On the contrary, everything he says to her is part of his effort to convince her he does not want to renew their relationship.

That terrible beating

By this time, Julia has moved on to her chief concern. She has heard a heartbeat pounding from the portrait of Barnabas that hangs in the foyer of the great house, a sign that he is near. Julia goes to the Old House and finds Barnabas coming down the stairs. She is delighted to see him, but puzzled he is not locked in the basement. He tells her he returned by means of the I Ching. She is sure this cannot be true.

Julia had already returned to 1969 when sorcerer Count Petofi used the I Ching to project himself into that year for a few minutes in #872 and #873 in a way altogether unlike the one Barnabas had used. No one in 1969 saw Petofi while he was then, nor did Barnabas or any of his allies know about the trip. But Julia herself went back to 1897 by yet another radically different I Ching-mediated path, and both of them really ought to be aware that they are dealing with forces that work unpredictably. So it does not make much sense that Julia is so certain whatever it is that is released when one contemplates the I Ching could send Barnabas only to the basement.

Barnabas does not return any of Julia’s warm emotional displays. When she bursts into a smile and hugs him, he stands still and stares icily ahead. This is quite startling to regular viewers, who have seen the two of them grow quite cozy over the last year and a half.

Julia welcomes Barnabas back to the 1960s. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas also refuses to answer any of Julia’s questions about what happened in the last weeks of the 1897 story. This will be even more startling. Barnabas and Julia gave each other huge amounts of information even when they first met and he saw her as an enemy. Since they became fast friends in the summer of 1968, their conversations have been the heart of the show. The show burned through so much story in the final weeks of the 1897 segment that it brings us up very short when Barnabas declares that he is too tired to talk about any of it. He won’t even say that everything was settled- his only explanation of anything is that he returned because he wanted to. For all he tells Julia today, their enemies might have triumphed completely in 1897.

While Julia is looking at him, Barnabas picks up a box that he has placed on the mantel. This seems to be a way of calling her attention to it, so she politely asks what it is. He becomes flustered and demands she disregard it. Returning viewers know that it is the one thing he brought with him from his encounter with the hooded figures in 1796. In his conversation with them, he said that it must not be opened until the proper time, lest their whole vast eternal plan come to ruin. Barnabas’ function in the story is to make a mess of everything, so of course he leaves the box out in the open and waves it in front of the face of the world’s most inquisitive person.

Meanwhile, Carolyn visits Sabrina. Sabrina insists Stokes leave them alone; when he does, she insists Carolyn not repeat their conversation to Stokes. She tells Carolyn that Chris, even though he is good, will kill her if they stay together.

We would be hard put to defend the idea that Chris is good, or to regret it if Stokes or any other law-abiding person were in a position to end his reign of terror. It is also surprising that Sabrina, who can barely say her own name when Stokes is working with her, talks quite fluently once he is out of the room. Maybe Dr Reeves was not so wise to choose him as Sabrina’s therapist.

Back in the Old House, Julia tells Barnabas that “Today, I was given reason to believe that Charles Delaware Tate may still be alive.” Barnabas replies “There’s no reason to believe that’s true.” That flat contradiction, with the jarring repetition of the word “reason,” shows that Barnabas is not only evading Julia’s questions, he is rejecting her personally in a way that he did not do even before they became friends, when he kept plotting to kill her. At least in those days he always listened closely to what she said, knowing that her great intelligence made her a danger to him. In this exchange he is treating her as if her words were beneath notice.

Julia sticks with the topic, and Barnabas says that even if Tate were still alive he would be “a hundred and totally useless!” That’s pretty rich coming from Barnabas, who himself is at least twice that age and would be in an awkward spot if he had to explain what use he is to anyone. But Julia only says that they must look into the matter.

A careless lie

Chris enters. He is delighted to see Barnabas, on whom he has pinned all his hopes. Barnabas tells him that “In all the time I was in the past, I found no solution for you. I am afraid there’s nothing that I can possibly do.” He follows that with “I must ask you to excuse me, I’m very tired,” and toddles off to bed.

Julia and Chris leave the house together. She tells him why she thinks Barnabas was lying. Chris goes home, and Julia goes back into the house, through the unlocked front door. She picks up the box, which is still on the table in the middle of the living room. As she heard Barnabas’ heartbeat coming from his portrait in the great house, so she hears breathing coming from inside the box. One wonders what other bodily functions will audibly manifest in objets d’art around Collinwood.

Episode 841: Beyond it lies the future

From April to July 1968, Dark Shadows was bogged down in a repetitious story called “The Dream Curse.” Each of a dozen characters had the same nightmare, in which they were in a small room with several doors. Behind each door they saw something that was supposed to be frightening.

When occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes (Thayer David) had the dream in #508, he defied its rules, caused wicked witch Angelique to appear in it, and brought the curse to a halt. Angelique had to cast another spell later to restart it.

Now the show has gone back in time and is a costume drama set in 1897. Thayer David plays sorcerer Count Petofi, who is among other things a vision of what Stokes might have been as a supervillain. Petofi has learned that both vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman have traveled to 1897 from 1969. Petofi is convinced that they would not have made this journey unless they knew exactly what they were doing and had a foolproof plan for getting home. Petofi does not know Barnabas and Julia very well.

Petofi and his servant Aristide are holding Julia prisoner in their home, an old mill. This might be called a hiding place, except that virtually everyone in the village of Collinsport and its environs has visited Petofi and Aristide there at least once. There’s so much foot traffic in and out of it someone could make a fortune if they set up a food cart outside the door.

Yesterday, Petofi forced Julia to tell him that she and Barnabas each came back in time by meditating on a set of I Ching wands. Petofi then cast the wands, and his “astral body” was transported to a room very much like that in which the nightmares of the Dream Curse took place. At first it seems that he will match Stokes’ performance when he had The Dream. There is in the world one person over whom Petofi has no power and who is sworn to kill him. All Petofi knows is that this person is Rroma by ethnicity, and is going to try to use a particular scimitar to cut off his right hand, where his magical powers are concentrated. As Petofi is entering the room, he sees the scimitar. When the unseen person holding the scimitar points it at Petofi’s throat rather than his wrist, he realizes that he is not in jeopardy, and he orders the wielder of the scimitar to be gone.

In the room, Petofi opens a couple of doors. Behind one is Barnabas baring his fangs; behind the other, a wall of fire. One of the notable features of the room are red velvet curtains hanging from the ceiling to the floor. Fans of Twin Peaks sometimes say that “Once you learn to see it, the Red Room is everywhere”; I guess they’re right.

This is the waiting room. Do you like Count Petofi? Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Petofi keeps his cool when he sees the gimmicks behind Door #1 and Door #2, but he does seem uncomfortable when he hears the voices of a male chorus singing a Romani song. After a moment, he finds his magical right hand squeezing his throat. All of a sudden he is back in his physical body, with Julia and Aristide by him, strangling himself. Petofi’s powers are so great that there are times when it seems that he will overwhelm all opposition and leave the show without a story to tell; the image of him crushing his own windpipe with his right hand suggests that he will ultimately be a victim of his own power.

Petofi recovers. He is sure Julia created his experience; he cannot conceive of events taking place outside anyone’s control. This marks a contrast with Stokes. Stokes, an upright and decent man, knows that Barnabas and Julia are keeping many secrets from him. When he has to work with them, he grumbles about this and makes it clear that he has dark suspicions. But though Stokes wishes he knew more about them, he does not press them very hard to reveal what they are hiding. Further, he was the one who explained the I Ching to them, including that meditation is a process of giving up control. Unlike Petofi, Stokes can easily accept that there are things that happen whether or not anyone wants them to.

When Julia cannot answer any of his questions, Petofi tells her why he keeps Aristide around:

Look at Aristide here. In point of fact, I don’t need a servant. The boy himself is no intellectual giant. He detests all forms of culture. Why then do I keep him on? Because I am a man who by nature shuns all forms of violence. I loathe the sight of blood. Aristide, on the other hand, has no such scruples. He revels in every form of torture and bloodshed known to the mind of man. I believe he even invented a few himself. He kills without the slightest feeling for his victims. He will kill you, Dr. Hoffman, if you do not tell me what I want to know.

As Aristide, Michael Stroka’s reactions when Petofi delivers this speech are quite funny. He looks really wounded when Petofi says that he is “no intellectual giant” and that he “detests all forms of culture,” but when he starts talking about how sadistic he is, he brightens up. When Petofi tells Julia that Aristide will kill her unless she tells him what he wants to know, he looks positively blissful.

Since Julia has nothing to tell, Petofi leaves Aristide to do his worst. He ties her to a chair in the back room. He rigs a string to the trigger of a revolver so that turning the doorknob will fire a round into Julia. He tells Julia that he hopes Barnabas will come to her rescue and therefore be her executioner.

Barnabas does shows up and confront Aristide. He turns the knob. We hear a shot, and see Julia slumped over in the chair.

Julia after the shot. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

One of the recurring faults on Dark Shadows is that when people are bound and gagged, they often have to use their teeth to hold the gags in place. Today they don’t even bother wrapping the cloth around Grayson Hall’s head- Michael Stroka just tucks it into her mouth. The suspense as Barnabas approaches the door depends on Julia’s inability to warn him not to turn the knob, and the closing shot loses its shock value when we can see Julia still biting down on the cloth. So this time it really is a problem.

Episode 835: A past that runs parallel to our present

Stuffy Edward Collins was under a spell for several weeks that prevented him from keeping up with what has been happening on the estate of Collinwood in 1897. He knows that his distant cousin Barnabas is a vampire who originally died in the 1790s and has come back to prey on the living. From this, he has drawn the eminently logical conclusion that he is a character in a horror story, and that it is his responsibility to be the hero who destroys the undead ghoul.

Barnabas is beside himself. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

In fact, Dark Shadows stopped being that kind of show long ago. Others know that it is chiefly about time travel now. That point is made when we flash forward to the year 1969, from which Barnabas has traveled to prevent a disaster that had its roots in 1897. Barnabas’ friends Julia Hoffman and Timothy Eliot Stokes talk about the intersection of past and present, so that the events of 5 September 1897 are somehow also taking place on 5 September 1969. The show has been using anniversaries as substitutes for natural laws in this way since #157, broadcast and set in January 1967, and they spin this out much further today. In his post about the episode at his great Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn writes a big prose poem about the weirdness of the show’s conception of time at this point, it’s well worth reading.

When Barnabas first came on in the spring of 1967, it was set in contemporary times and the writers had a lot of fun with characters who mistook the genre of show they were on. Dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis heard the plot of Daphne du Maurier’s Frenchman’s Creek, concluded he was part of a Gothic romance, and wound up freeing Barnabas and becoming his blood thrall. That mistake continued to shape Willie’s character. Willie was forced to be Barnabas’ accomplice in the abduction and attempted brainwashing of Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Willie listened to Barnabas’ own rantings about his motive being an attempt to recreate his lost love Josette, and kept imagining that he would somehow overcome Barnabas to rescue Maggie and become her lover. Willie also harbored a deep hostility towards Burke Devlin, who was left over from a period when the show really was inspired by Gothic romance.

Willie’s sometime friend Jason McGuire made a similar mistake, believing that the show was still the noir crime drama it was when it spent weeks on the question of where Burke’s fountain pen had got to. So he sleuthed out signs of where Willie went when no one was looking and where Barnabas got his money. All that Barnabas could contribute to that kind of story was murder, and so he unceremoniously strangled Jason in #275.

Local physician Dr Dave Woodard thought he was on the usual daytime dramas of the period. Actor Robert Gerringer had a lot of fun playing Woodard as if he were on The Guiding Light. There were whole episodes built around that conceit- for example, we spend #235 in the Collinsport Hospital, where everyone acts just as you would expect them to on any other soap, except for Maggie, who is there being treated for vampire bites. Woodard notices that his friend Julia is growing close to Barnabas, and in #324 comes to the logical daytime conclusion- they are having an affair. Eventually Woodard finds out that he has misidentified the genre of the show, but it is too late- Barnabas and Julia murder him in #341.

Today, that is to say 5 September 1897, Edward catches Barnabas and locks him in the prison cell in the basement of the Old House at Collinwood. Barnabas kept Maggie in that cell when she was his prisoner, and the ghost of his little sister Sarah helped Maggie find a secret panel that led to a tunnel to the beach. In #260, Maggie escaped through that tunnel at the last minute before Barnabas could kill her, and Barnabas himself later used the same tunnel to escape from the cell in #616. In #781, Edward made it clear that he knew all about the tunnel and expected everyone else at Collinwood to know about it as well. So it is no surprise when he tells Barnabas that he has blocked it off. In fact, he says that he has blocked “all” of the secret passages- we may wonder just how many escape routes there are.

Edward leaves Barnabas alone in the cell, saying he will be back before dawn. There is a writing desk in the cell; Barnabas remembers that Willie moved that desk to the front parlor for him in 1967, and so he describes his predicament in a letter to Julia and closes it in a secret compartment of the desk.

In 1969, nine year old Amy Jennings is in the parlor, playing with her dolls. One of the dolls is named “Amanda”; this will catch the attention of returning viewers. The 1897 story features a character named Amanda, who is an oil painting come to life. If artist Charles Delaware Tate could make his paintings come to life, as in Greek myth the sculptor Pygmalion made a statue come to life as a woman named Galatea, then perhaps we should find out who made Amy’s doll before we let it out of our sight.

Amy first came on the show in November 1968, at the beginning of the story that led from contemporary dress to the 1897 segment. Her very first night at Collinwood, Amy went straight to the room where the magic objects were hidden that would trigger that story. She often delivers her lines directly into the camera, as if she knows perfectly well where the audience is. Amy is at the opposite pole from Edward and such earlier characters as Willie, Jason, and Woodard- she not only knows what genre the show is, she’s read the flimsies for next month’s episodes and is getting a head start on them.

Amy looks in the desk for a book to read to her dolls, and inadvertently opens the secret compartment. She eventually gives the letter to Julia; this is what prompts Julia and Stokes to have their talk about the ontological status of past events and what philosophers call “the reality of tense.” They know all about the time travel aspect of the show; Julia, in fact, has for some time been the closest thing the audience has in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s to a point of view character, one who knows everything we do. She was certainly the first one to know that the show was transitioning from vampire horror to quasi-science fiction. She surprised Barnabas in #291 with a proposal to develop a medical treatment that might put his vampirism into abeyance.

In the letter, Barnabas refers to his “secret.” Stokes does not know what this is, and is not satisfied with Julia’s lame attempts to answer his questions about it. This makes sense to regular viewers; shortly after Stokes arrived in Collinsport, another mad scientist got hold of Barnabas and succeeded where Julia had failed in putting the symptoms of the vampire curse into remission. For all the time he has known Barnabas, Stokes has seen him moving about in the day, casting reflections in mirrors, eating food not derived from human blood, etc. In 1968 and 1969, his ignorance of his Barnabas’ past vampirism is not much more serious than his ignorance of the details of the automobile accident that killed Mr Hanson in 1956. But the vampirism came back in full force when Barnabas went to the past, so Stokes is at a loss as to what the letter means.

Julia decides that she will try to travel into the past using the same mumbo-jumbo that transported Barnabas there. While Stokes reads up on that, Julia and Amy make a stop at the great house on the estate, which is impenetrably haunted by the ghost of Quentin Collins. That errand seems to be going sideways when the episode ends.

Episode 700: Beyond the door, anything is possible

Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and governess Maggie Evans make their way into a dusty little room in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood. Until last week, the ancient and esteemed Collins family lived in the main part of the great house, but now the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins has emerged from the west wing and made life unbearable there. They have taken refuge in Barnabas’ home, the Old House on the same estate. Maggie’s charges, twelve year old David Collins and nine year old Amy Jennings, are possessed by Quentin, and David has gone missing.

Last night Maggie had a dream in which she entered this room, found a hole in the wall, and saw a door on the other side. She passed through that door and found a chamber crowded with Victorian bric-a-brac. She met Quentin there, and he gave her a kiss that looked very pleasant indeed. After she awoke, Maggie decided that she would go to the room to see if there was such a chamber behind the wall, convinced she would find David there. Or maybe that she would get another kiss, who can say.

Barnabas and his friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD, told Maggie it was far too dangerous for anyone to go to the great house alone, and insisted Barnabas accompany her on her expedition. This would seem to reduce the likelihood of another smooch from Quentin, but Maggie acquiesced.

Before we see Maggie and Barnabas, we are treated to a closeup of the tailor’s dummy to whom David referred in #681 as “Mr Juggins.” The camera pulls back, and we see that Mr Juggins is standing in front of a stone bust and next to a globe. The effect is quite stately. Unfortunately, this is Mr Juggins’ final appearance on the show. I think he had a lot of potential.

Barnabas and Maggie finds that there is indeed an opening where she had dreamed one would be and a door behind it. Barnabas pries the rest of the paneling off the false wall, and they enter the chamber beyond. Maggie confirms that it matches her dream perfectly.

They are marveling at this discovery, one made possible only by the intervention of whatever supernatural agency sent Maggie’s dream, when the doorknob starts turning. Occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes enters.

Maggie and Barnabas look wonderingly at Stokes, and ask how he knew about the chamber. Regular viewers will be at least as surprised to see him as they are. Stokes tells them he was searching a nearby corridor and could hear the noise Barnabas made when he ripped the paneling out. That deflates the moment a little, but does leave us with a sense that there is more to Stokes than we know.

Stokes joins Barnabas and Maggie in searching the chamber, and quickly finds Amy hiding behind a curtain. Amy passes out, and the men urge Maggie to take her to the Old House. Alone with Barnabas, Stokes finds a set of I Ching wands and a couple of books in a desk. He says that it tells him a great deal about Quentin that he had these things. He also says that they will never find David by searching the house- the only way to rescue him is by studying the I Ching.

Maggie has taken Amy back to the Old House. There, Amy suddenly exclaims “Stokes is wrong!” Evidently whatever spirit is possessing Amy is streaming audio from Quentin’s chamber. Maggie asks what she means, and Amy avers that David is in the great house, but that he will soon be entirely subsumed by the spirit of his grandfather Jamison. Maggie rushes out to get him.

We cut back to the great house. Maggie enters the foyer, and David comes to the head of the stairs. She calls to him; he answers and calls her by name, but is struggling. The door at the head of the stairs opens, indicating that Quentin is there. Maggie confronts him and demands David do the same. David struggles further. He is in Maggie’s arms when the door closes, indicating Quentin has left. Maggie exclaims “We won! We won!” But there is no victory. David collapses. Maggie takes him back to the Old House, where Julia examines him and concludes that he will be dead within hours unless the possession is broken.

This situation is familiar to longtime viewers. Dark Shadows version 1.0 ran from June 1966 to March 1967. Its main theme was David’s difficult relationship with Maggie’s predecessor as his governess, Vicki Winters. It reached its end in #191, when David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, tried to kill him. At the last moment, David ran from Laura into Vicki’s arms. With that, he had chosen life over death, and the story of Vicki and David had nowhere to go.

Maggie and Vicki were close friends, and so we can suppose she heard all about how David escaped from Laura. She knows what we know, and so she must feel the same shock we do when the scenario does not reach the same happy ending.

As David’s embrace of Vicki marked the end of Dark Shadows 1.0, his embrace of Maggie today marks the end of Dark Shadows 5.0.* This iteration of the show has focused on two intertwined stories. They concern werewolf Chris Jennings and the ghost of Quentin. Chris’ lycanthropy has been getting steadily more aggressive, and now he cannot revert to his human form at all. Quentin’s power has been growing in tandem with the expansion of Chris’ curse, so that there is nothing left for him to achieve. Both of these stories have, therefore, reached their conclusion. Moreover, the great house has been the constant element at the center of the show. Now that it is closed to the surviving characters, they cannot pick up a new plot and continue the series. It seems that this is to be the final episode of Dark Shadows.

In November 1967, it seemed that Dark Shadows had foreclosed every possible avenue of story development. The characters gathered for a séance, something we had seen them do three times before. Those previous séances had been dramatic high points, but this one had an outcome unlike anything we had seen. Vicki vanished from the circle. A woman unknown to the company took her place and identified herself as Phyllis Wick, governess at Collinwood in the year 1795. She and Vicki had traded places. Vicki took us with her, and for the next four months Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late eighteenth century. The result was a triumph that turned the show into a full-fledged hit, one of the major pop culture phenomena of the 1960s.

By now, we’ve seen ten séances, and they’ve gotten sloppy with them. In #600, a séance to contact someone named Philippe Cordier takes less time and trouble than it would have in 1969 to place a station-to-station telephone call. In #682, four characters held a séance in which no one objected when the medium went into the trance, breaking from a ritual form they had observed very strictly up to that point. In #698, we even heard about a séance held off-screen. So it is unlikely they will use a séance to get us from the conclusion of Dark Shadows 5.0 to the beginning of whatever it is that will compose Dark Shadows 6.0.

Barnabas and Stokes take Quentin’s I Ching wands and books to the basement the Old House, where Julia joins them. Stokes explains the I Ching more or less accurately, then Barnabas decides he will use the wands in an attempt to communicate with Quentin. Stokes warns him that the effects of the method are extremely unpredictable, and Julia keeps trying to stop the proceedings. Among them, the three represent the roles of convener, medium, and objector that we have seen in one séance after another.

But Quentin does not speak through any of the participants. Instead, Barnabas’ spirit leaves his body and walks towards a door. He opens it, and finds a coffin on the other side. It seems he is about to become a vampire again, as he was for the 172 years ending in March 1968. He is able to speak while this is going on; Julia knows what he means when he mentions a coffin and a mausoleum. Stokes is not a party to their criminal conspiracies, and so is puzzled. He asks Julia if she knows what Barnabas is talking about, and it is obvious that she is lying when she says she does not. Barnabas heads off towards the chained coffin, and an entirely new show.

Barnabas returns to the darkness from which he came. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

*Version 2.0, running from March 1967 to November 1967, introduced Barnabas as a vampire. Barnabas occasionally preyed upon the living, but spent most of his time trying to fit in to the twentieth century. He was so successful in that project that matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard gave him the Old House on the estate of Collinwood to live in, and the viewing public started tuning in in large numbers.

Version 3.0, running from November 1967 to March 1968, was the 1790s segment. It was the inverse of version 2.0. Vicki’s attempt to navigate an alien time failed as spectacularly as Barnabas had succeeded, getting her condemned to death by the other characters and losing the loyalty of the audience.

Version 4.0 was a Monster Mash full of creatures familiar from Universal Pictures horror films of the 1930s; it ran from March to November 1968, and its main theme turned out to be the growing friendship between Barnabas and Julia.

Episode 694: Enough tragedy in this house

For months, the evil ghost of Quentin Collins has been gaining strength, secretly manipulating children Amy Jennings and David Collins as he prepares to drive everyone from the great house of Collinwood so that he can have the place to himself. Now he has cast aside all secrecy and he openly menaces the adult residents of the house. Today, they give up and leave. Once they are all gone, Quentin stands on the walkway at the top of the staircase in the foyer and laughs heartily.

Collinwood belongs to matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Liz’ brother Roger, David’s father, lives there as her guest. Up to this point, Liz and Roger have served primarily as blocking figures. Each is devoted to denial as a way of life. Occasionally a fact bursts upon them that is so enormous that one or the other of them has no choice but to face it for a little while. Usually they snap back into their characteristic mode of willful ignorance the moment the crisis is past, and even while it is going on the other responds by digging even deeper into the insistence that nothing is happening. When I first watched Dark Shadows, I could imagine the characters fleeing Collinwood one by one, then venturing back to get Liz and Roger, only to find them sitting serenely in the drawing room, assuring their would-be rescuers that everything was all right while leather-winged demons fluttered about their heads.

On Monday, Liz saw enough of Quentin’s power that she gave up her attitude of denial, apparently forever. Today, Roger does what we have been led to expect, and loudly declares that the whole issue is imaginary and that the other adults should be ashamed of themselves for encouraging the children to be afraid of ghosts. When the whole house starts to resound with the crepuscular tones of an old-timey waltz Quentin plays when he is exercising power, Roger declares that it is a trick the children are playing on them. The others go to pack their things while Roger stays in the drawing room.

Alone there, Roger sees Quentin materialize before him. On their way out, Liz and occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes check the drawing room one last time, and find Roger sitting motionless in a chair. For a moment we wonder if he will fall over dead. He starts speaking, though, and admits that he was wrong. As they leave, Roger looks back into the house and shouts a defiant pledge to return. Apparently the makers of Dark Shadows have decided they no longer need two major characters whose primary function is to put the brakes on the action.

Roger reacts to the sight of Quentin. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

After everyone has gone, the camera pans across sets representing several rooms in the great house. This must have taken some doing. The foyer and drawing room were the only standing sets; the others were built as needed. The show was done live to tape, so these sets must all have been standing simultaneously. The studio was not very big at all. I wonder if they crammed some of these into space that was not generally used for action.

The walkway at the top of the foyer stairs is a commanding position, and the show has been sparing in its use of it. Quentin’s triumphant laugh is the first time we see a villain stand there and exult in his new position as Master of Collinwood. In the early days of the show, the dashing and enigmatic Burke Devlin threatened to take control of the house. He never came very close to doing that, but it could have been interesting to see him stand on the walkway, survey the foyer, and think about the day when the house would be his. For a long period in 1967, seagoing con man Jason McGuire was bossing Liz around; there were several days when he might have stood on the walkway, looked around with smug satisfaction, and chuckled.

Yesterday’s episode ended with the drapes in a bedroom in flames. That was a real fire, not a special effect, and you could see it spreading rapidly and putting out a lot of smoke. Having failed in that attempt to murder everyone in the building, the technical staff in today’s reprise of the sequence settles for lighting some gas burners behind a window dressing.

Episode 693: Contemptuous and evil spirits

Dark Shadows showed its first exorcism in #400. At that point the show was a costume drama set in the 1790s. The fanatical Rev’d Mr Trask was convinced that time-traveling governess Victoria Winters was a witch and that she was hiding in the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. He stood outside that house with a forked stick. He set the points of the stick on fire and shouted commands for the forces of darkness to come out.

Vicki was indeed hiding in the house, but she was not alone there. The actual witch, the wicked Angelique, set a fire of her own. She built a house of cards and burned it to cast a spell that caused Vicki to see flames in her room and respond by running out into Trask’s clutches. What surrounded Vicki were special effects superimposed on the screen, but what was in Angelique’s room was real fire, and it flared alarmingly close to actress Lara Parker’s lovely face. You’d think they’d have learned from #191, when an on-camera fire went out of control and nearly killed the entire cast, or perhaps from #290, when an off-camera electrical mishap led to fire extinguisher noise almost drowning out some dialogue. But apparently the prevailing philosophy was no injuries, no problem, so they went right on playing with fire.

Today we have another unsuccessful exorcism, and its failure leads them to make another attempt to burn down the set. Occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes is informed that the evil spirit of the late Quentin Collins is haunting the great house of Collinwood and taking possession of strange and troubled boy David Collins. Stokes follows Trask’s rubric of standing outside the house, pointing a forked stick at it, and shouting inhospitable remarks at the spirits, but he doesn’t set fire to the points of the stick as Trask had done. There is a lot of excitement while he is performing the ritual, and once he finishes all of it dies down. Unsure of the outcome, he arranges to stay the night; while he is getting ready for bed, the curtains in his room catch fire. These are not special effects images; the curtains are really on fire, they are burning rapidly, and they are putting out a lot of smoke. The little building at 442 West 54th Street where Dark Shadows was made was packed with sets made of plywood and crammed with props, many of them highly flammable. Several sets were draped with huge fake cobwebs; I’m not sure what those were made of, but I doubt it was anything that would make a fire marshal very happy. It’s just amazing anyone who worked on the show lived to see 1971.

Hey, what’s the worst that could happen? Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

There is a lot of very good stuff in this one. All of the acting is top-notch. David Henesy and Thayer David had scenes together as several characters, first as David Collins and crazed handyman Matthew Morgan in 1966, then as young Daniel Collins and much put upon indentured servant Ben Stokes when the show was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and now in 1969 as Ben’s descendant Professor Stokes and David. Those scenes all crackled, and today when Stokes catches David hiding behind the secret panel in the drawing room, demands he tells him the truth about what is happening to him, tricks him into admitting that he is afraid of Quentin, and warns him of the dangers ahead, the two make the exchange work magnificently.

There is also a scene in the drawing room between David Collins, his cousin Carolyn Collins Stoddard, and permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman while Stokes is performing the exorcism. He has to shout and writhe around a lot during this scene, very difficult things for child actors to do convincingly. But Mr Henesy had been acting professionally for four years before he joined the cast of the show in 1966, at the age of nine, and had studied acting under several distinguished teachers, among them Uta Hagen.

That background pays off; violent as the symptoms of the incipient possession are, Mr Henesy does not overplay them. It helps that he has support from Grayson Hall and Nancy Barrett; Hall plays Julia as firmly in control of herself, but obviously uneasy with the situation, while Miss Barrett shows Carolyn’s anxieties mounting until she shouts that David might be in real trouble. Since he is in convulsions and the crepuscular sound of the creaky old waltz that plays when Quentin is exercising power is emanating from the walls of the house, it would seem obvious that David is in real trouble. The line shows that Carolyn is starting to panic. When we see that neither the determinedly calm Julia nor the increasingly anxious Carolyn is having any particular influence on David’s emotions, we know that they are coming from someplace far removed from his visible surroundings.

Episode 692: The only existing link

There are two ongoing narrative threads in this part of Dark Shadows. One is the story of mysterious drifter Chris Jennings. Mad scientist Julia Hoffman knows Chris to be a werewolf and she is trying to help him. The other is the story of Quentin Collins, a ghost who is gradually gaining power and planning to drive everyone away from the great estate of Collinwood so that he can have the place to himself. Chris’ story had been the fast-paced A plot that kept expanding to involve more and more characters, while Quentin’s was the slow-paced B plot that consistently involved only Chris’ nine year old sister Amy, strange and troubled boy David Collins, and their governess Maggie Evans, with intermittent small parts for other established characters and the occasional chance for a day player to act a death scene. That changed yesterday, when Quentin decided that he had grown so strong he no longer needed to conceal himself from matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard or the other adults in the great house. Quentin’s story is now the main topic, and Chris is the secondary feature.

We open today with Liz telling Julia what happened the night before. Julia tells Liz that she and old world gentleman Barnabas Collins had suspected that an evil ghost was at work in the house, and that they have seen another spirit that seems to be opposed to it. Liz says she has called occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes arrives and questions everyone.

Liz is alone at the desk in the drawing room when a secret panel leading to a passage to the long-deserted west wing opens. A cutout meant to suggest a disembodied hand appears on the screen. It picks up a letter opener from the desk and is about to stab her when Stokes enters.

Stokes shouts. The hand drops the letter opener and vanishes. He tells Liz what he saw. He notices the panel is open, and asks Liz about it. She says that it leads to the west wing, but that, as far as she knows, no one has used it in years. That answers a question that has been on the audience’s minds since October 1966. In that month, we saw Liz’ brother, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, use the panel to play a dirty trick on well-meaning governess Victoria Winters. The panel was not seen or mentioned again until David and Amy started using it to do Quentin’s bidding several weeks ago. This line is our first confirmation that Liz knows that the panel and the passage behind it exist. Stokes asks Liz’ permission to perform an exorcism.

Meanwhile, Julia gets a telephone call from Chris. Liz’ daughter, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, has taken a fancy to Chris and installed him in a cottage on the estate. Chris tells her that he is facing an emergency. Someone has come to the village of Collinsport who might know his secret.

In the cottage, Chris tells Julia that an unpleasant man named Ned Stuart has brought his sister Sabrina to the village and that he is demanding Chris meet with Sabrina. Chris had assumed Sabrina was dead, because she was in the room with him one night two years before when he underwent the transformation into his lupine form. Ned had told Julia and Barnabas that he was looking for Chris because he wanted to know what happened to his sister; he had always referred to Sabrina in the past tense, leading them to assume she was dead. Now Chris is in a panic, convinced that Sabrina will tell the police about him and that he will be punished for the many, many homicides he has committed as the werewolf.

Julia points out that if Sabrina were going to do that, she could have done so at any time. He would already have been arrested. Sabrina must not have told Ned or anyone else what she saw, and Ned must be telling the truth when he says he does not know what happened the last time Chris and Sabrina were together. She persuades Chris to go to visit the Stuarts in their suite at the Collinsport Inn.

Julia accompanies Chris on the visit. Ned is irritated that Chris did not come alone. His remarks are uncomfortable to hear, chiefly because of actor Roger Davis’ habit of clenching his anal sphincters when he raises his voice, making him sound like he is suffering from agonizing constipation.

After Ned makes this fingernails-on-a-blackboard noise for a couple of minutes, he lets Chris and Julia into Sabrina’s room. She is in a catatonic state. Her hair is white, and her face is tinged with light blue makeup. The makeup makes her look haggard in color, but most TV sets in the USA in the 1960s received only in black and white. In black and white, the makeup is not very effective.

Ned says that Sabrina was like that when he found her, the morning after she paid her last visit to Chris’ apartment. Several takes of a framed copy of actress Lisa Blake Richards’ professional headshot invite us to imagine the before-and-after. Ned calls Sabrina’s attention to Chris; she rises from her chair, starts towards him, and collapses.

Episode 660: Suppose I am from another century

A couple of weeks ago well-meaning governess Victoria Winters vanished into a rift in the fabric of space and time, traveling back to the 1790s to be with her husband, a loudmouthed idiot known variously as Peter and Jeff. Now evidence is accumulating that when Vicki and Peter/ Jeff were reunited, they were immediately put to death for their many crimes. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins is determined to follow Vicki into the past and thwart the course of justice.

Barnabas and his best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, call on occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Barnabas pleads with Stokes to work the same mumbo-jumbo for him that enabled Peter/ Jeff to go back to the 1790s. Stokes says that the procedure would have no effect on Barnabas. He explains that it transported Peter/ Jeff only because Peter/ Jeff properly belonged to that period. It would do nothing to a person who was already living in his own time. Barnabas then asks “Suppose I am from another century?” Stokes replies “Then it’s one of the best-kept secrets in Collinsport, isn’t it?” while Julia coughs and looks panic-stricken.

Julia and Stokes react to Barnabas’ invitation to suppose that he is from another century.

In fact, Barnabas is a native of the eighteenth century. He finds himself in the 1960s because he was, for 172 years, a vampire. This is indeed one of the best-kept secrets in town. If any part of it leaks out he and Julia will be spending the 1970s and 1980s in prison, so it is no wonder she tries to shut him down before he can make any indiscreet revelations to Stokes. But it is an exciting moment for longtime viewers. As it stands, Julia is the only character who knows Barnabas’ secret, and therefore the only one who can speak freely with him or interpret new information in the light of what the audience already knows. Stokes is a highly dynamic character; if he joins the inner circle, there is no telling how fast the action might move or in what direction. It is a bit of a letdown that Barnabas decides not to come out to him.

Stokes makes a little speech that puzzles many viewers. He says that he has reached the conclusion that Peter/ Jeff really was two people. The spirit of an eighteenth century man named Peter Bradford must have come to the year 1968 and taken possession of the body of a living man named Jeff Clark. Now that Peter has returned to the past, Jeff must have regained control of his physical being and is out there in the world someplace. This theory does not fit with anything we have seen over the last several months, and it won’t lead to any further story development.

Peter/ Jeff himself suggested the same idea a few weeks ago, but he had so little information about himself that we could discount it. Stokes, though, is one of the mouthpieces through which the show tells us what we are supposed to believe.

Many science fiction and fantasy fans like to take the world-building elements of their favorite franchises as seriously as they possibly can, and treat every apparent contradiction or dead end as a riddle to be solved. That kind of analysis doesn’t get you very far with Dark Shadows, a narrative universe whose structure star Joan Bennett summarized by saying “We ramble around.” It is tempting to go to the opposite extreme, and to assume that they didn’t do any advance planning at all. But we know from an interview that writer Violet Welles gave to the fanzine The World of Dark Shadows in 1991 that they did the same planning exercises that other daytime soaps did. They would make up six month story forecasts called “flimsies” and fill those out with more detailed plans covering periods of 13 weeks. Welles explains the resulting difficulty:

The difficult ones were — we were in 13-week segments, and there were sometimes characters that didn’t work, and because they didn’t work, they didn’t use them as much, they weren’t part of the plot. So at the end of the 13 weeks, toward the end of the cycle, you’d have characters who were really not a lot of interest who had to play scenes with other characters who really didn’t have a lot of interest, dealing with things that basically didn’t concern them. Those were hard to write. But you never felt particularly overwhelmed.

Violet Welles interviewed by Megan Powell-Nivling, The World of Dark Shadows, issue #59/60, June 1991. Preserved by Danny Horn on Dark Shadows Every Day, 30 August 2015.

In other words, while the writers definitely did long-range planning, those long-range plans come into the audience’s view not a source of secret message to decode, but in the residue left over from stories that didn’t work out. During his months on the show, Peter/ Jeff spent a lot of time getting violently angry when people called him “Peter,” responding in his grating whine “My na-a-ame is JEFF! CLARK!” That disagreeable habit made up about 90 percent of Peter/ Jeff’s personality, and the other 10 percent was no picnic either. Coupled with this Goes Nowhere/ Does Nothing story about Peter appropriating the body of Jeff Clark, I would guess that in some early stage of planning they kicked around the possibility of having two Peter/ Jeffs. But it has long since become clear that one Peter/ Jeff is already one too many. That leaves them to fill out some scenes that would otherwise run short with material that may have seemed like a good idea when they made up the flimsies six months ago, but that is pointless now.

Also in this episode, children Amy Jennings and David Collins visit Eagle Hill cemetery and have questions. Amy suggests they go see the caretaker, a suggestion David derides. He declares that the caretaker is as old as the tombstones, and that he won’t answer any of their questions. Amy insists, and they go looking for him.

The caretaker appeared on the show four times when David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, was the chief supernatural menace. He then made five more appearances early in Barnabas’ time as a vampire. As played by veteran stage actor Daniel F. Keyes, he was a delight, a boundlessly befuddled old chap who seemed to have strayed in from the pages of EC Comics. Sadly, David and Amy don’t find the caretaker today.

Eagle Hill cemetery itself was introduced as one of several burial grounds in the Collinsport area. It is the old graveyard north of town, and Barnabas and his immediate family were the only Collinses buried there. The rest of the Collins ancestors were interred in a private family cemetery, and there was also a public cemetery somewhere in or around the village of Collinsport. They stuck with this geography longer than you might have expected. But today Amy explicitly says that Eagle Hill is on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood, just outside the front door of the main house. This contributes to the effect, growing very noticeable lately, that the imaginary space in which the drama takes place is collapsing in on itself. The occasional excursions the show took to the town of Bangor, Maine in its early days are long gone, and now we barely even see the village of Collinsport. It’s often said that Dark Shadows is Star Trek for agoraphobes; it is starting to feel as if it is retreating into a very small cocoon indeed.

Episode 641: Your time is now

In #2, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins saw governess Victoria Winters standing at the edge of a high cliff overlooking the ocean. She didn’t know he was there until he startled her by asking her if she was planning to jump. As the weeks go on, Vicki will learn of other women who have leapt to their deaths from that spot, including a story that over the years two governesses were among them and that legend says a third will someday follow suit. The cliff is the face of Widows’ Hill, named after women whose husbands never returned home from the sea; several times during storms an eerie note sounds in the wind, a note known as “The Widows’ Wail,” which the locals believe to be the ghosts of the Widows announcing that a tragic death will soon take place.

Vicki stands at the edge of the cliff again at the end of this installment while the Widows’ Wail sounds. She is distraught that she has herself become a widow and is dwelling on the idea that she can be reunited with her husband in death.

Though occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes told her earlier in the episode that “Your time is now!,” Vicki’s time as a lively part of the show in fact ran out in March 1967, with the resolution of the story about her effort to befriend her charge, Roger’s strange and troubled young son David. Actress Alexandra Moltke Isles finally gave up on the character and left Dark Shadows after #627. Her successor in the role, Betsy Durkin, has essentially nothing to work with. We do not share her grief for the husband she is mourning; he was one of Dark Shadows‘ most repellent characters, and it is such a relief that he is away that we sympathize only too much with everyone who tells her to stop bringing him up. Nor do we have any other reason to care about her, since she is relevant to no ongoing plotlines. Even longtime viewers who remember the foreshadowing of Vicki’s possible death by a jump off the cliff will not react strongly to the sight of her there, since Miss Durkin is not Mrs Isles and does not bring her screen iconography to the reprise of the theme.

This phase of the show actually belongs to a character introduced in #632, eleven year old Amy Jennings. When Amy meets Stokes today she announces that she likes him because he is funny; he replies that he is pleased to find that “My appeal extends to all ages now.” Indeed it does; in its first year, Dark Shadows was very much aimed at adults, some of whom remembered Joan Bennett as one of the great movie stars of the 1930s and 1940s and were impressed by her presence in the cast as matriarch Liz, some of whom appreciated it as a specimen of slow-paced, highly atmospheric Gothic romance, and some of whom were fascinated by the story of Vicki and David and its theme of a grownup trying to make a difference in the life of a troubled child. But by the time Stokes arrived in #464, Dark Shadows had become a kids’ show. As Thayer David plays him, Stokes is amusing enough that anyone can like him, but the absolute seriousness with which he regularly expounds the most preposterous mumbo-jumbo is designed to make him a favorite of the very young.

Amy likes Stokes. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Amy’s friendship with David develops in scenes that kids will find engaging, as they go exploring the big haunted house of Collinwood and find their way into spooky adventures. She also takes the lead in her relationships with adults more consistently than David ever did. While in the first year and a half of the show David often knew things the adults didn’t know, that was usually because he accepted the facts they refused to see. No matter what he said or did, he couldn’t move them from their habits of denial and evasion. But Amy has sources of information that the grownups around her don’t have. So today she has a vision of her brother Chris in some kind of terrible trouble. When she tells Vicki and Liz about her vision, Liz tries to telephone Chris and is deeply disturbed when he doesn’t answer. As my wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out, it is after one o’clock in the morning, so you wouldn’t expect her to attach great importance to his failure to pick up the phone. That she does suggests that she is taking Amy seriously.

Returning viewers know that Amy’s vision is correct. Chris is a werewolf, and he just killed a barmaid. That Amy not only has a paranormal means of knowing how Chris is doing, but that she is also able to get through to the adults and influence their actions, suggests that she will have a major impact on the werewolf story as long as it continues. Indeed, she already has- the werewolf was about to eat Liz the other day, but backed off when he saw Amy nearby.

Amy is central to the other storyline that is beginning at this point. That is “The Haunting of Collinwood,” in which the ghost of Liz and Roger’s’ great-uncle Quentin Collins is going to be creating difficulties for everyone. Amy and David went into the long-deserted west wing of the house and retrieved an antique telephone from a room there. Though its cord is cut, Amy can sometimes hear Quentin’s voice through its receiver. When she is alone and worried about Chris, she picks the telephone up and asks for Quentin. She is disappointed he does not answer. None of the adults knows about Quentin’s ghost or the telephone. Not even David has heard more than Quentin’s breathing through the receiver. Again, Amy is uniquely positioned to understand and affect the action.

According to the closing credits, this week’s five episodes were directed by “Penberry Jones.” The name “Penberry Jones” is unknown to Google aside from these credits, and it sounds like a joke of some sort. Though the fansites all mention the improbability of Jones’ name and the likelihood that it is a pseudonym, none that I could find offers any clue as to who might have been behind that pseudonym. From the early 1970s until the quarantines of Covid-19 in 2020, Dark Shadows fans would organize festivals a couple of times every year at which panels of people who had been involved in making the show took questions from the audience. If any of those audiences asked who Penberry Jones was, either they did not get an answer or that answer was not recorded.

The name “Penberry” may remind longtime viewers of Dark Shadows of episode #83, which is about Roger burying a pen. Roger was a major villain then, and his part gave actor Louis Edmonds an opportunity to show what he could do. Roger has long since been demoted to occasional comic relief; one might imagine that Edmonds wanted to take a turn in the director’s chair, and that he chose his whimsical pseudonym as a nod to his character’s origins. Appealing as that idea may be, it does not seem at all likely. So many of the panel discussions among cast members abounded in fond stories about Edmonds that surely someone would have mentioned it if he had directed five episodes.

Indeed, most of the longer-lived members of the cast participated in so many of those panels that they all had moments when they had to grope more or less desperately for something fresh to say. If anyone whose name fans would recognize and who worked closely with the cast were “Penberry Jones,” it’s hard to imagine that one or another of them wouldn’t have brought it up in one of those moments.

Whoever it was must have been known to executive producer Dan Curtis and line producer Bob Costello, and probably quite well known to them. The Directors Guild of America does allow its members to change the names under which they are credited, as for example John Walter Sullivan was allowed to direct several episodes of Dark Shadows as “Jack Sullivan” and several more as “Sean Dhu Sullivan.” But it does not allow them simply to use pseudonyms at will. It wasn’t until 1969 that directors working in features could be billed as “Alan Smithee,” and then they had to prove that they did not really have control of the final product before they were allowed to substitute that name for their own. The first television production credited to “Alan Smithee” didn’t appear until 1970. So it is unlikely that “Penberry Jones” directed any screen productions under any other name. Curtis and Costello probably wouldn’t have chosen a first-time director with no imminent prospects of other screen work unless it were someone they already knew and trusted.

If “Penberry Jones” didn’t cover anyone the cast knew well or a director who worked under another name, but was someone who was close to Dan Curtis or Bob Costello, it should be possible to compile a short list of suspects. I’m not so deeply immersed in the behind-the-scenes lore that I can compile that list myself, but maybe you are. If so, I’d like to hear from you in the comments!

The director’s name isn’t the only puzzle in the closing credits. Every previous episode of Dark Shadows ended with the credits playing in front of a stationary shot of one or another set. It was always one shot per closing credits sequence. This time they start with a stationary shot of Vicki’s room, then cut to a stationary shot of the foyer. It’s hard to see what the point of that transition is. Perhaps we could ask “Penberry Jones,” if we had any idea who that was.

Episode 636: The old Adam

Unique among the narrative arcs in Dark Shadows, the story of Frankenstein’s monster Adam has a clear structure. It consists of a prologue and five acts, with an interlude between the second and third acts.

The prologue is about the process of building a patchwork man and animating him. It begins when mad scientist Eric Lang meets vampire Barnabas Collins in #466 and ends in #490, when Barnabas and another mad scientist, Julia Hoffman, bring Adam to life.

The next two weeks make up Act One of Adam’s story. Vampires and mad scientists are both metaphors for extreme selfishness, and so it is unsurprising that Barnabas and Julia turn out to be the worst possible parents. Though he has the body of a grown man, Adam has just begun to live. Barnabas and Julia lock their newborn in the prison cell in the basement of Barnabas’ house and leave him alone there for hours on end, chaining him to the wall. Robert Rodan’s facial expressions convey the heartbreak of this horrific act of child abuse unforgettably. We can’t help but take his suffering seriously. This is the first major difficulty for the storyline. Barnabas and Julia are the core of Dark Shadows, so that if we feel bad about them, we feel bad about the show.

Act Two begins at the end of #500, when Adam escapes from his cell and fights Barnabas. Adam can speak only a few words, has no idea how people interact with each other, and does not know his own strength. As a result, he hurts everyone he meets. He makes one friend during this period, blind artist Sam Evans. In a moment of confusion, Adam hits Sam in #515, causing an injury that leads to Sam’s death. Again, we pity Adam throughout this period, but can see no way he will be able to contribute anything to the story but more death and sorrow.

In #518, occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes persuaded Adam to come home with him. Adam stays in Stokes’ apartment for some time, learning to talk, to read, and to do various other things. Aside from a few glimpses of these lessons, Adam is off-screen and not involved in the action during this period. That is why I say his time as a guest at Stokes’ place is an interlude, not an Act.

Act Three begins in #539, when Adam has to leave Stokes’ place to avoid the police and heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard lets him live in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood. In this period, Adam falls in love with Carolyn. She is attracted to him, but struggles against her feelings. This situation may sound more likely than either severe child abuse or lethal awkwardness to lead to an engaging story, but it suffers from its setting. Week after week, we see Adam cooped up in his dusty little room, alone with books and a chess set. The Creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein reads The Sorrows of Werther, Plutarch’s Lives, and Paradise Lost; Adam reads the poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the works of Sigmund Freud. He is marginally better off than he was in Barnabas’ basement cell, but he is still a prisoner, and it is still depressing to be confined along with him.

In Act Four, Adam is under the influence of suave warlock Nicholas Blair. In #549 Nicholas talks Adam into trying to rape Carolyn; that attack draws a line under their budding romance. By #551, Nicholas has talked Adam into confronting Barnabas and demanding that he build a woman to be his mate. Adam tells Barnabas that if he does not comply, he will murder everyone who lives in the great house of Collinwood, starting with well-meaning governess Vicki. Longtime viewers remember that Vicki spent the first 38 weeks of the show befriending strange and troubled boy David Collins, healing the psychological wounds David had suffered in his early years with his own unsuitable parents. If anyone could help Adam recover from the abuse he himself suffered from Barnabas and Julia in his first two weeks of life, it would be Vicki. His threat to kill her therefore shows just how little hope there is for Adam.

The project to build Adam’s mate reached its climax in #596, when she came to life and was given the name Eve. This began Act Five, which was all about Eve’s unconcealed hatred for Adam. Nicholas persuaded her to pretend to like him in #624; there is a jump cut in that episode which suggests that they may have had sex. Adam found out that she had been faking her interest in him, and murdered her in #626. Nicholas then persuaded him that if Barnabas and Julia could bring Eve’s body back to life, she would have a sweeter temperament. Adam renewed his demands upon them, and they ran the experiment again in #633/634, but it was a total failure, destroying Eve’s body so that it no further attempt would be possible.

Deranged with fury, Adam went to Vicki’s bedroom in the great house to abduct her. Carolyn found him there; she saw him hit Vicki in the face and flatten her. This not only alienated whatever sympathy Carolyn might have retained for Adam, it also shows how far he has come since the days when he was a danger because he didn’t know his own strength. The blow he delivers to Vicki is the same as the one he dealt to Sam, but while Sam wound up in the hospital and eventually died in part because of it, Vicki is only knocked out. He is still a deadly menace, but now he kills intentionally. This is emphasized when he chokes Carolyn in the same way as he had Eve, but she makes a full recovery a bit later.

Adam took Vicki to the laboratory in Barnabas’ basement where the equipment is still set up and Eve’s charred remains are still on a bed. He hooked Vicki up to the equipment and was trying to use it to torture her to death when Barnabas and Julia made their way to him. He laughs at Barnabas. Since the laboratory is only a few steps from the cell where Adam was kept in his early days, it was clear that this was closing the loop on the child abuse theme of Act One. Barnabas shot Adam in the shoulder, ending the threat to Vicki, and Adam escaped.

Stokes is the last friend Adam has left, and he sneaks into his apartment today. The telephone rings; Adam picks it up but does not say anything. Adam had done the same thing in #521, during the interlude when he was staying with Stokes. In those days, he didn’t know what a telephone was. But now, he is consciously trying to be stealthy. He recognizes the voice on the telephone as that of an intensely unpleasant man known variously as Peter and Jeff, and a moment later he picks up a knife. This is a perfectly understandable reaction to any reminder of Peter/ Jeff.

Stokes comes in, and Adam puts the weapon down. Stokes sees his gunshot wounds, and goes to call a doctor. “Not Julia!,” Adam objects, to which Stokes replies with the assurance that “Dr Hoffman is not my resident physician.” Before Adam can explain how he came to be shot, Stokes announces that “I won’t even ask you what has happened. Curiosity is the most boring obsession.” He telephones a doctor whom he calls “Carl,” and says that he knows he can count on his discretion. That Stokes knows a doctor who will come to his apartment, treat a fugitive from justice for a gunshot wound, and as a matter of course keep the matter between them is a sign that he is someone who will be able to look after Adam quite well.

Stokes gives Adam a new shirt. Adam tells him that he despairs of ever being loved because of the prominent scars on his face. Stokes introduces him to the concept of plastic surgery and tells him that the scars should be easy enough to correct. He is talking to Adam about the prospect of a new life when a knock comes at the door. Adam exits, never to be seen again.

Plaid Adam. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

One of the big surprises for me on this rewatch of Dark Shadows has been how good an actor Robert Rodan really was. The Adam story was such a downer that Mrs Acilius and I hadn’t liked anything about it before, and Rodan was caught up in our overall rejection of it. But he was excellent every step of the way. Whatever is going to happen to Adam after his exchange with Stokes will happen far from Collinsport, which is to say, not on Dark Shadows, so when we wish for more Rodan on the show we are wishing he could have been cast later as another character. I think his height- 6’6″- probably kept that from happening. Two other actors who are almost as tall as Rodan would become major cast members later. One of those, David Selby, will join the cast in just two weeks, much too soon for Rodan to reappear as someone else. The other, Christopher Pennock, won’t show up until #936, by which time Rodan had moved to Los Angeles.

Rodan did some commercials for Cheer detergent when he was in California. Here he is in a Star Trek themed bit where he wears pointed ears. Evidently he was the laundry officer aboard a Vulcan ship.