Tag: tom jennings

Episode 630: Held back by something that is over

Well-meaning governess Victoria Winters ran out of story at the end of #191, but they kept putting her on the show. Frustrated by her character’s uselessness, Alexandra Moltke Isles finally gave up and left Dark Shadows last week, but not even that sufficed to get the point across to its producers. Today they bring in one Betsy Durkin as a fake Shemp to postpone the character’s departure.

Vicki’s big scene today is a confrontation with suave warlock Nicholas about his plans to marry Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town. In the course of it, Vicki says “I know you’re going to say it’s none of my business, and it isn’t. Except I’m making it my business!” In other words, Vicki has to meddle in other people’s affairs, since she is not involved in any ongoing story that the audience could possibly care about.

Vicki tells Nicholas everything she knows about him and everything she suspects, leaving the audience with no questions about what is in her mind. Nicholas points out that Maggie would laugh uproariously if Vicki repeated her speech to her. Vicki does not deny this, but nonetheless says she will to go to Maggie unless Nicholas breaks his engagement to her.

This blatantly empty threat draws a contrast between Vicki, who is powerless to change the direction of any story she might join, and mad scientist Julia, who in #619 faced Nicholas down in this same room. Julia also began by ignoring Nicholas’ display of geniality, stating the facts about his nature, and declaring her hostility. But Julia had information Nicholas didn’t have, and when she revealed it to him she knocked him off his guard and took charge of the situation. Vicki has no such cards to play, and comes out of the scene looking more foolish and helpless than ever. Considering these scenes side by side, it is no surprise that Julia has taken over as the audience’s main point-of-view character, a function Vicki served in the show’s first year.

Nicholas does not use his magical powers against Vicki, and after she leaves his house he wonders why he did not. Again the contrast with Julia shows why this is so bad for Vicki’s character. When Julia brought Nicholas news about trouble he did not know he was in, he couldn’t be sure he would not need her help to get out of it. That not only explained how she managed to get out of his house without being turned into a toadstool, it also helped cement her status as Dark Shadows’ most dynamic protagonist. But when the only explanation Nicholas can find for his failure to brush Vicki aside is that he is ceasing to be much of a villain, he is telling the audience in so many words that Vicki is not worth their time.

Nicholas decides that he really ought to do something with Vicki after all. He goes to his basement and rips the tiles out of the floor. Longtime viewers will remember #273, when the flooring in the basement of the great house of Collinwood was torn to reveal that no corpse was buried there. That brought one of the principal storylines of the show’s first year, matriarch Liz’ long seclusion in the great house, to a ridiculous anticlimax.

Now the result is rather different. Nicholas drags a coffin up out of the hole he makes in his basement floor, opens it, and exposes a body with a stake in its chest. It is the body of Tom Jennings, who became a vampire in #564 and was staked in #571. Tom’s body disappeared shortly after the staking, and Nicholas was in the area at the time, so we were warned that he may not have been truly destroyed. Today we find that Nicholas did in fact preserve Tom, when he pulls the stake out of Tom’s heart and declares himself to be his master. At the end of the episode, Vicki is in bed when Tom crawls in through her window and bares his fangs at her.

The unstaking feels like a cheat, despite the earlier warning Tom might return. It looks silly when Nicholas pulls the stake out. Vampires are important enough in the world of Dark Shadows that they really oughtn’t to be things you can turn on and off like an electric light.

Nicholas reaches for Tom’s power switch. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

But the shot of Tom crawling into Vicki’s room is pretty effective, suggesting that he is a feral beast. It makes a nice counterpoint to the scene of ex-vampire Barnabas crawling out of a cell in #616, when Barnabas was reduced to a very basic psychological condition. Barnabas disappeared after his crawl, but Don Briscoe follows Tom’s by wiggling his tongue at the camera in his final closeup, making it look like he is super-excited to drink Vicki’s blood.

Nicholas and Maggie have a funny scene. Yesterday his boss, Satan, ordered Nicholas to sacrifice Maggie in a Black Mass so that she could join him in Hell. Today, Nicholas shows her an ancient cup. He tells her it was made “before your Christ* was born.” Maybe Maggie knows Nicholas isn’t Christian, but certainly she doesn’t know that he isn’t human, much less that he is a minion of the Devil. So you might think that she would react to the bizarre formulation “your Christ,” but she doesn’t seem to pick up on it at all. When Nicholas uses the cup for a little fortune-telling trick and tells her she will have a long and happy life, she does notice that he sounds disappointed.

*The first mention of that title on the show. Dark Shadows is in a weird little quasi-Christian phase at this point.

Episode 571: Bring me a mirror

In #210, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis found an old coffin and broke into it, hoping to reap a harvest of hidden jewels. Instead a hand darted out, and Willie became the sorely bedraggled blood thrall of vampire Barnabas Collins.

The next person to open Barnabas’ coffin was Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. Barnabas was keeping Maggie prisoner in his house on the great estate of Collinwood as part of his plan to persuade Maggie to forget her personality and turn into his lost love, the gracious Josette. In #250, Maggie decided to drive a stake through Barnabas’ heart, but had the bad luck to set to work a moment before sunset. He awoke, and spent the remaining two weeks of her captivity treating her even more cruelly than he had previously.

In #275, Willie’s onetime friend, seagoing con man Jason McGuire, made his way to Barnabas’ basement and found the coffin. As Willie had done 13 weeks before, Jason jumped to the conclusion the coffin was full of jewels. Willie tried to tell him this was not the case, but could not stop Jason looking inside. As when Maggie made her attempt to stake Barnabas, it is sunset. Again Barnabas’ hand darts forth; this time, he strangles Jason to death.

The first time someone opened Barnabas’ coffin during the day was in #289. Mad scientist Julia Hoffman had collected substantial evidence indicating that Barnabas was a vampire. As final confirmation, she slipped into his house one morning, made her way to the basement, opened the coffin, and reeled away, simultaneously shuddering and giving a look of triumph.

From November 1967 to March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. In #410, wicked witch Angelique had just turned Barnabas into a vampire. She went to his coffin with a stake and mallet, regretting her curse and trying to cut its effects short. As Jason and Maggie would do in 1967, Angelique waited until sunset to open the coffin. Barnabas awoke, demanded to know what was going on, and killed her.

Since then, Barnabas’ vampirism has gone into remission and he and Julia have become fast friends. As we begin today, Barnabas is engaged in a desperate battle for Julia’s sake. The new vampire on the block, Tom Jennings, has been feeding on Julia. She is near death, and will herself rise as a vampire unless Tom is destroyed and she is freed from his influence. Barnabas has found Tom in a crypt next to a coffin, and the two of them have an embarrassingly awkward fight scene. The sun rises, and Tom has to leave Barnabas and get into his coffin.

Barnabas stands over Tom’s open coffin with a mallet and stake. He wonders if anyone ever looked down on him in his coffin when he was a vampire. He tells himself no one could have, for they would have destroyed him if they had. This is a strange thing for him to think. Julia eventually told him that she had sneaked a peek at him in his coffin, and he must remember Willie, Maggie, Jason, and Angelique.

Julia is back at Barnabas’ house. Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, mistress of Collinwood and escaped mental patient, is watching over her. She is telling Julia that Barnabas left her to die and that she will be dead any moment. This cheery behavior is the consequence of Liz’ fixation on death and her obsessive fear that Julia and others are part of a conspiracy to bury her alive.

As Barnabas drives the stake through Tom’s heart in the crypt, Julia cries out from her bed, then suddenly gains strength. She asks Liz to bring her a mirror; Julia is delighted to see that Tom’s bite marks are gone.

Evidently Julia’s mirror is possessed by a far-right internet troll of the 2010s. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas comes back, sends Liz away, and tells Julia that she will be safe from Tom now. Barnabas and Julia are starting to get uncharacteristically mushy over each other when we cut to the downstairs, where Liz looks out the window and sees her brother Roger approaching.

Roger wants to send Liz back to the psychiatric hospital from which she escaped. Liz believes Roger is part of the conspiracy to bury her alive, and that sending her to the hospital will further that goal. So she hides behind an armchair.

Liz hiding.

In #10, Liz and Roger had a conversation in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood while Roger’s son David hid behind an armchair. In that conversation, Roger declared his belief that David should be sent to an institution, a plan which Liz forbade him to pursue. After Liz left the room, Roger caught David behind the armchair.

David found the prospect of institutionalization so terrifying that his next stop was the garage, where he tampered with the brakes of his father’s car in what very nearly turned out to be a successful attempt at patricide. Liz is too upset to develop such an intricate plan, and doesn’t seem to have David’s skills as an auto mechanic. But she shares her nephew’s horror of institutionalization. So after Roger and Barnabas have talked for a moment, she jumps up from behind the chair and starts making accusations.

Liz tells Roger and Barnabas that she saw Julia in a crypt in the family burial ground nearby, and that there was a coffin there. Barnabas is alarmed, since this is the coffin in which Tom’s staked remains now repose. Roger agrees to go to the crypt and to see if there is a coffin. Barnabas offers to go with him.

The suave Nicholas Blair shows up at the front door with a bouquet of flowers. We know that Nicholas is a warlock and that he is behind the renewed outbreak of vampirism, that he was watching while Barnabas staked Tom, and that he is also responsible for some other plots involving Barnabas and Julia. For their part, Barnabas and Julia have every reason to suspect that this is so, and have talked about their suspicions more than once. Nicholas tells Barnabas, Roger, and Liz that he has heard that Julia is ill and has come to visit her. At Liz’ insistence, Barnabas lets Nicholas see Julia while he and Roger go to the crypt.

Nicholas expresses his relief that Julia’s recovery will enable her to return to work soon. The only work Julia has done in the year she has been a houseguest at Collinwood has been in association with the supernatural goings-on she and Barnabas have been entangled in; currently, an agent of Nicholas’ is forcing them to build a Frankenstein’s monster. Nicholas may as well say explicitly that he is behind that scheme and the vampire troubles too. He tells Julia that he thinks he might fall ill and need her help as a doctor; she says that he seems indestructible, a word he receives with pleasure.

Barnabas comes back and tells Julia that the coffin has disappeared. He mentions that it is strange that Nicholas turned up when he did. Julia suggests that Nicholas may be the one who moved the coffin. All of a sudden Barnabas seems to forget everything he knows about Nicholas and dismisses that idea. It’s one of those frustrating moments when the characters seem to have the memory of a goldfish, and it ends the episode on a sour note.

Episode 570: Are you being profound?

When we first met Willie Loomis in March 1967, he was a dangerously unstable ruffian who came to the town of Collinsport and eventually to the great house of Collinwood in the train of seagoing con man Jason McGuire. Willie was such a violent and unpleasant fellow in those days that it was difficult to see why even a villain like Jason would choose to be associated with him.

The next month, Willie inadvertently freed vampire Barnabas Collins from his coffin. Barnabas bit Willie and transformed him into a sorely bedraggled blood thrall. That version of the character was so heavily beaten down and so sincerely remorseful that it was easy to wish him well, but he was so thoroughly dominated by Barnabas that no one else could get close to him.

In March 1968, Barnabas’ vampirism went into remission. His other victims regained their old personalities and apparently forgot about their time under his power. It is unclear just what effect Barnabas’ re-humanization has had on Willie. In #483, his first episode after Barnabas’ cure, Willie ran through the whole range of behavior he had shown in the preceding year. For a time, it seemed he might not remember that Barnabas had been a vampire. During that period, Barnabas assumed that Willie remembered everything, treated him as if he did, and after a couple of weeks of that treatment Willie and Barnabas were having the same kinds of conversations they had in the old days. Perhaps Barnabas accidentally gave Willie the therapy he needed to get his memory back.

Today, we open with Barnabas and Willie bickering in the front parlor of Barnabas’ house. They have been out hunting Tom Jennings, a vampire who has been feeding on Barnabas’ friend Julia. Willie says Barnabas has a reason for being so concerned about Julia, and Barnabas says that of course he does. He describes Julia’s current functions in the plot, and Willie says that isn’t what he’s talking about. Barnabas gets flustered, then asks “Are you being pro-fouuuund?”

Jonathan Frid lingers on the second syllable of “pro-fouuuund” until the whole audience is likely to be laughing. The whole scene is funny, because it shows us sides of Barnabas and Willie that we always suspected existed, but that we never expected to see. As my wife, Mrs Acilius, pointed out, Barnabas has been so phenomenally selfish for so long that it is excruciatingly difficult for him to admit that he is willing to put a friend’s interests ahead of his own. And seeing Willie tease him about his feelings shows that the former slave and master are now buddies. Willie is neither menacing nor cringing, but is sympathetic enough and self-confident enough that anyone could enjoy his company. At long last, we know why Jason fell in with him, and what Willie lost, at first by his descent into criminality, and later as Barnabas’ victim.

Willie needles his old pal Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

An unexpected visitor drops in. It is Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, mistress of Collinwood and escaped mental patient. Liz tells Barnabas that she saw Julia in a room with a coffin. Barnabas takes a while to put the pieces together, but it finally dawns on him that Liz is describing Tom’s lair. He goes there, and finds Julia unconscious on the floor next to the coffin.

Barnabas carries Julia into his house. Liz announces that Julia is dead. Barnabas assures her that she is still alive. Even though she is clearly breathing, Liz refuses to believe him.

Later, Liz goes up to Julia’s bedroom. She sits by Julia and tells her that she knows she was part of the conspiracy to bury her alive, but that she forgives her. The whole story of Liz’ fixation on this supposed conspiracy is pretty dull, but Joan Bennett was an extraordinary talent. When she has a scene like this, she can sell Liz as effectively as if she were at the center of an exciting arc.

Just before dawn, Barnabas and Willie go to Tom’s coffin with a mallet and stake. Willie keeps pointing out that the sun isn’t up yet, but Barnabas opens the coffin anyway. It’s empty. Willie panics and runs off. It’s unclear why Barnabas opened the coffin- maybe he turned in early in his time as a vampire, and assumed Tom would do the same. At any rate, the episode ends with a lot of rather awkward stage business as Barnabas and Tom wrestle and Tom bares his fangs. This poorly choreographed fight scene leaves us with a laugh as sour as the laughs from the intentionally funny scene between Barnabas and Willie at the opening were sweet.

Episode 569: Call me a superstitious woman

When housekeeper Mrs Johnson was first on Dark Shadows in September 1967, she was hyper-intense, determined to exact vengeance on the ancient and esteemed Collins family for the death of her longtime employer, Bill Malloy. In #69, she told the Collinses’ nemesis, dashing action hero Burke Devlin, that “I believe in signs and omens!” and that the signs and omens she could see showed that reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her family had Bill’s blood on their hands.

“I believe in signs and omens!” Mrs Johnson with Burke Devlin in #69.

As the storyline centered on Bill’s death petered out, Mrs Johnson forgot about her hostility to Liz and her family, and became their devoted retainer. Her new personality was that of a friendly old busybody who kept advancing the plot by blabbing all the information she has to whoever can use it to make the most trouble. Since Mrs Johnson opened the front door to the great house of Collinwood in #211 and admitted Barnabas Collins, she has become an intermittent presence on the show, but Clarice Blackburn plays her with so much style that her occasional appearances are always a highlight.

Today, Mrs Johnson lets suave warlock Nicholas Blair into the house. She informs Nicholas that Liz has escaped from Windcliff, the mental hospital where she has been staying for the last nine and a half weeks. She gets very worked up as she declares that Liz’ aberrations are no ordinary psychiatric problem, but are the product of a hostile supernatural force that plagues the Collinses. Her voice is fearful and she shies away from eye contact with Nicholas, a contrast with the anger and boldness she had shown with Burke Devlin 100 weeks ago, but she again underlines her point with exaggerated hand gestures and facial expressions.

Mrs Johnson tells Nicholas about the curse on the house. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

For regular viewers, it is surprising that Nicholas doesn’t seem to have known about the details of Liz’ trouble. His subordinate, the wicked witch known variously as Angelique and Cassandra, had sent Liz mad by placing a spell on her shortly before he arrived on the scene. He’s still keeping Angelique/ Cassandra around his house- he stripped her of her powers, turned her into a vampire, and has been using her to attack various men he wants to silence. You’d think he would at some point have asked her what happened to the lady who owns the town he has settled in. But, evidently his curiosity did not extend that far.

Liz’ brother Roger comes home and invites Nicholas to join him for a brandy. As they are headed for the drawing room, permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman enters. She is pale, unsteady on her feet, and talking with great distress about her inability to find Tom Jennings. Roger points out that Tom is dead, and Julia faints.

Nicholas carries Julia to the couch in the drawing room. While she lies on it unconscious, he sneaks a peek under her scarf and finds bite marks on her neck. Thus he learns that Tom, whom Angelique turned into a vampire at his direction, has been feeding on Julia.

Liz has not been an active part of any major storyline since #272, when it turned out that her belief that she had killed her husband was mistaken and she did not in fact have any terrible secrets to conceal. So Nicholas’ lack of interest in her might just be a sign that he doesn’t want to waste time on irrelevant details. But Julia is indispensable to Nicholas’ plan to found a new race of artificially constructed human beings. She is a medical doctor, and is the only person Nicholas can coerce into building a mate for the Frankenstein’s monster she recently helped bring to life. She hasn’t been able to work on the project since Tom bit her, and apparently won’t be able to resume work until she is freed of his influence. If Nicholas lets his projects get in each other’s way to this extent, one can draw no conclusion other than that he is a bad manager.

Julia recovers and refuses to see a doctor. She goes to bed, and Roger tells Nicholas he thinks Liz might be on the grounds of the estate. The two of them go out to look for her. Of course Liz is there; of course she sees Tom; of course it is only when Roger and Nicholas approach that Tom vanishes and she is spared his bite.

It has been established that Windcliff is about 100 miles north of Collinsport; in #294, the ghost of Sarah Collins performed one of the most stupendous of her many feats when she transported Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, from Windcliff to Collinsport on foot in about an hour. Liz has had 24 hours since she went missing from her room, and people used to hitch-hike in those days, so it wouldn’t necessarily have required a supernatural agency to get her home in that time. It still would have been quite a trip for an escaped mental patient to make by herself, without bus fare, as the subject of a state police all points bulletin, on the roads running through the woods of central Maine.

Back in the house, Liz makes it clear that she is not herself when she only gradually recognizes Mrs Johnson. She is also obsessed with a fear of being buried alive. Roger concludes that she has to return to the hospital, and goes off to get the car. Julia comes downstairs, and Mrs Johnson asks her to keep an eye on Liz while she goes off to telephone the hospital.

Liz asks Julia, who is the nominal director of Windcliff and a qualified psychiatrist, to examine her and see that she is sane. As she is about to respond, Julia hears dogs howling outside and goes into a trance. She opens the window and stares out into the night, saying that the dogs are calling to her and that she must go to “him.” While she does this, Liz asks her what she’s talking about, but clearly still wants her to serve as the standard of sanity. The first time we saw Liz, in #1, she was standing where Julia stands in this shot, looking out the window with Roger behind her. Liz reprised that pose many times in the first year of the show, and it became her signature. It is incongruous to see Julia in Liz’ customary place as Liz looks on. The whole encounter is so funny that I suspect the humor must have been intentional.

Liz begins to doubt that Julia will be able to help her.

Julia rushes from the house; Liz follows her out. Julia goes to the crypt where Tom’s coffin is kept; evidently Tom’s hunger is getting the better of him, and he has decided to DoorDash it tonight. Liz follows her in. Julia sees Liz and demands that she leave. Liz sees the coffin and asks if it the one in which she will be buried alive. Julia tells her it has nothing to do with her, and repeatedly yells at her to “Get out!” She complies. Tom appears, and opens his mouth to bite Julia.

Julia’s expulsion of Liz from the crypt is an effective turn, but it is also a sad one for longtime viewers. When Dark Shadows started, the presence of Joan Bennett in the cast was probably its single biggest ratings draw, and all the way through her name appears at the beginning of the credits under the word “Starring.” But for a year now, the show’s whole attitude towards Liz has been one of active hostility. They simply will not let her be involved in the action. When Julia shouts “Get out, get out, get out!,” she is speaking with the voice of the story conference.

Danny Horn’s post about this episode on Dark Shadows Every Day details how Liz has been pushed to the margins and kept there as the show has evolved. Danny makes a point of not discussing the first 42 weeks, when Liz was enough of a part of the action that Joan Bennett had some chance to show what she could do, but in this post at least he seems to realize that the makers of Dark Shadows were squandering a considerable resource.

Episode 566: Too much sunlight

Permanent houseguest Julia Hoffman asked housekeeper Mrs Johnson to add more draperies to those already on the window of her room. In #361, she had asked Mrs Johnson to remove all the draperies. Evidently Julia fixates on window treatments when she isn’t feeling well.

Julia’s trouble today is that she has been bitten by vampire Tom Jennings. She is trying to keep this fact from everyone, including her friend Barnabas Collins and Barnabas’ servant Willie Loomis. Since Barnabas was himself a vampire for 172 years and Willie was for many months his victim, they are particularly well-positioned to recognize the signs of vampirism, and both do know that Tom is now an undead bloodsucker. At Barnabas’ direction, Willie sneaks into Julia’s room; the gleeful look on his face as he lets himself into a lady’s bedroom suggests that the personality he had before Barnabas bit him, when he was a dangerously unstable ruffian who threatened to rape all the young women and beat up their boyfriends, is not entirely gone.

Blast from the past. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Willie was himself staying at the great house of Collinwood, perhaps in this very room, when Barnabas first bit him. After he sees Julia, he goes back to Barnabas’ house and tells him about the contrast between her condition when he found her unconscious early this morning and her current state. She was dazed and weakened then, and now seems much stronger, but is strangely hostile. This so closely matches the description of Willie’s own condition in his early days as a blood thrall that there is no need for him to mention Tom to explain why there is such an urgent note of concern in his voice.

Barnabas goes to the great house and intercepts Julia returning from a session with Tom. After some verbal preliminaries, he pulls the scarf off her neck and exposes the vampire’s bite marks. Julia’s secret is out.

Tom has a substantial amount of dialogue today, the first we have heard him speak since he joined the ranks of the undead. Don Briscoe doesn’t seem to have found the character yet. There is a familiar note in the voice, but one I couldn’t place until much later in the series. Eventually, Briscoe will appear in a different role and not only imitate the voice of a famous actor of the past but wear a costume modeled on one that actor wore in his most celebrated parts. I won’t give away who it is, but once you’ve seen those episodes you will recognize that person’s voice every time Briscoe speaks.

Episode 565: I keep hearing the sea

One mad scientist built a Frankenstein’s monster, and another brought it to life. The builder, Eric Lang, had forced a man to dig up freshly buried corpses he used as materials. That man, an unpleasant fellow named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff, left Lang’s employ after he awoke on a surgical table and found Lang trying to cut his head off. Shortly after that, Lang died, and his colleague Julia Hoffman completed the experiment.

Lang and Julia’s creation is known as Adam. Adam is under the mistaken impression that Julia’s friend, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins, was his maker. He is now threatening to kill all the Collinses unless Barnabas and Julia provide him with a mate. They are complying. They have collected Lang’s journals, and are keeping a cadaver and some equipment in Barnabas’ basement.

Well-meaning governess Vicki is engaged to marry Peter/ Jeff. Barnabas is fond of Vicki, and Adam’s original threat was to kill her. He kidnapped her and held her prisoner for a couple of days; it was when he released her that he extended his threat to the whole family. When he was holding her, Adam gave Vicki’s engagement ring to Barnabas as proof of his seriousness. Now Barnabas has told Vicki that her ring turned up outside his house, and she drops by to pick it up.

Barnabas is alarmed that Vicki came to the house after dark. He knows not only that Adam is still at large, but also that a vampire named Tom Jennings is on the prowl. Vicki doesn’t remember her time as Adam’s prisoner and knows nothing about Tom, but she has heard enough about strange goings-on that she appreciates Barnabas’ concern. She assures Barnabas that she didn’t walk through the woods, and she isn’t alone. Peter/ Jeff is just outside, waiting in her car. Barnabas tells her he’s sorry Peter/ Jeff didn’t come in with her. As he says this, he looks at the door, giving the impression that he is sincere. Earlier, Peter/ Jeff had told Vicki that he was jealous of Barnabas; this scene makes it clear that he has nothing to worry about on that score. Regular viewers know that Julia has a crush on Barnabas; his behavior towards Vicki, whom he sometimes claims to love and want to marry, leaves her looking blissful.

Vicki notices that Julia is carrying one of Lang’s journals; Barnabas tells her that he and Julia are thinking of writing a book about Lang. Vicki knows only that Lang was a doctor who was a friend of theirs, so she accepts this explanation easily. When she goes, Barnabas insists on accompanying her to the car.

Barnabas returns, and tells Julia that he and his servant Willie Loomis will go out and try to find Tom before he bites someone. He speaks tenderly to her; she smiles.

Julia, content with the state of her relationship with Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Julia goes to the basement to close down the experiment for the night. She is still in a blissful mood as she listens to the radio playing the Jackie Gleason Orchestra’s truly appalling version of George Gershwin’s “Love is Here to Stay.” Since they have a stolen corpse in the basement and incriminating documents scattered throughout the house, the front door is of course unlocked. Peter/ Jeff lets himself in and is shocked to find Lang’s journal on the desk in the front parlor.

Julia comes upstairs and finds Peter/ Jeff. He explains that he wanted to see Barnabas and asks why they have Lang’s journal. Julia repeats the story Barnabas told Vicki. Peter/ Jeff laughs at the idea that Barnabas and Julia would write a book about Lang’s attempt to build a man from stolen body parts; Julia says it won’t be about that part of his life. Peter/ Jeff is still laughing when he leaves the house.

It’s odd Julia sticks with Barnabas’ story. A few days ago, Peter/ Jeff confronted Barnabas and Julia with his suspicion that Adam is Lang’s creation. Had she said they were disturbed by his suggestion and were checking Lang’s records to make sure there was no way he could be right, he wouldn’t be in a position to contradict her. He certainly wouldn’t be bothered that they lied to Vicki to cover up what they know about Lang’s experiment, since he is at one with them in his desperation to keep her from ever finding out what he did. Later, we see her writing a note to Barnabas explaining that Peter/ Jeff had not believed “my- really, your- story.” Perhaps she is embarrassed that she did not live up to her usual standards as Dark Shadows’ most fluent and most plausible liar.

Julia heads back to the basement, and we see a figure peering in the window. It is Tom. Coming on the heels of her failure to deceive Peter/ Jeff, this leaves us with no doubt that Julia’s happy night will soon give way to misery.

Bad news for Julia. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

While Julia is writing her note for Barnabas, Tom appears in the basement. Julia sees him, realizes who he is, and screams as he bares his fangs and approaches the camera.

Dead eyes, sharp fangs. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This ending comes as an anticlimax. The sight of Tom at the window was enough to let us know what Julia was in for; there was no real need to continue the episode beyond it. Moreover, the scene is poorly executed. When Tom walks toward the camera, he twice stops himself awkwardly because he’s running out of set. He also stops in the middle of opening his mouth, apparently realizing he has started that move too soon. Julia’s scream doesn’t help, either. Grayson Hall was a brilliant actress, the heart of the show, but she was terrible at screaming. This is actually one of her better attempts, but coupled with Don Briscoe’s stumbling it still brings a bad laugh.

Episode 563: A kind of magician

Beverly Hope Atkinson

This episode features the first appearance on Dark Shadows by an actor of color, and the only speaking part any non-White performer ever had. (CORRECTION: Mr Nakamura, played by Sho Onodera in #903, has a couple of lines.) This fact is made even more depressing because that performer fits so perfectly into the show that a first time viewer would assume she had been a major player from episode #1.

Beverly Hope Atkinson plays an unnamed nurse who meets suave warlock Nicholas Blair when he is trying to make his way into a hospital room occupied by Tom Jennings, a victim of one of Nicholas’ evil schemes. She firmly refuses him admittance. When Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, enters and asks to see Tom, the unnamed nurse smiles brightly and says “Of course, Maggie!” in a tone that makes it sound like they’ve been friends all their lives. She then shuts the door before Nicholas can follow. He asks her why Maggie can go in and he cannot, and she tells him sternly that Maggie has permission from the doctor.

Unnamed nurse is happy to see Maggie. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

I have a fanfic idea about Atkinson’s nurse that I originally posted as a comment on Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day. I can’t find it there, but here is a copy of it:

In the first 42 weeks of the show, when the supernatural was in the background and the stories were slow, it would have been easy to have a couple of tea party scenes at the Evans cottage where Maggie and her lifelong friend, Unnamed Nurse, recap whatever is going on. Those scenes could have led to a whole exploration of the tension between the working-class people in the village and the jerks in the big house on the hill. That in turn could have led to the introduction of Unnamed Nurse’s family, headed by Unnamed’s parents, Mr and Mrs Nurse, including her brothers, Young Mr Nurse and Master Nurse, and her sister, Moody Miss Nurse. We could then have seen the ancestors of the Nurse family in each of the flashback segments and analogues of them in Parallel Time.

At some point in my musings about this idea, I decided the family should be named “Wilson” (if I had a reason for this, I’ve forgotten it, but I now think of Atkinson’s character as Nurse Wilson,) and that in a flashback segment we should learn that they are descended from free persons of color who settled in Collinsport before the Civil War and were the first proprietors of the Collinsport Inn. Some wicked deed by a member of the Collins family knocked them out of the entrepreneurial class long ago, and they’ve been working their way back up the socio-economic ladder ever since.

We met Maggie in #1 as the waitress at the diner in the Collinsport Inn. She, her late father Sam, and her fiancé, hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell, have been Dark Shadows‘ main representatives of the people in the village. Her house, the modest counterpoint to the mansions on the Collins family’s great estate, has been familiar to us from the beginning, and is the place where we have seen most vividly what the Collinses’ doings have meant for the people who work for their businesses and live in their town. So, as a frequent visitor there, the nurse could have given a whole new dimension to the drama, showing that it isn’t just one family whose lives hang in the balance, but that a whole community is exposed to the consequences of what happens on the hill.

The Blue Whale

Joe is sitting alone at a table in the Blue Whale tavern, and he looks terrible. He’s pale and fidgety, looking around and periodically jumping up to peek out the window.

Maggie comes in and joins Joe. At first she is angry with him- he stood her up last night, without so much as a telephone call. She sees how upset he is and her anger is mixed with worry. He pounds on the table while the camera is tight on her. Her startled reaction reminds us of the early months of the show, when Sam was a self-pitying drunk and Maggie was a sophisticated portrait of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

Maggie startled. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

After that moment, Maggie gets very quiet. When Joe says with alarm that it is getting dark, she responds that “It usually does, at this time of day.” It’s inherently funny to hear someone make that kind of matter-of-fact statement in response to an inexplicably intense remark, but also poignant to those of us who remember Maggie’s early interactions with Sam. From childhood on, simple rationality must have seemed to Maggie like a joke in the face of the overpowering irrationality at the center of her life.

As it happens, Joe is indeed exhibiting addicted behavior. But he isn’t hooked on alcohol. Instead, he is under the power of a vampire. Angelique, who was once the wicked witch who first made Barnabas Collins a vampire, found herself reduced to bloodsucker status when she displeased Nicholas. At Nicholas’ direction, she bit Joe the other day, and now Joe is desperate to hear her summons and report for another bite. She does call, and he does dash out, leaving a bewildered Maggie behind.

It was at the Blue Whale that we first met Joe, back in #3. Then, he was an upstanding young man who indignantly rejected the attempts of one of the Collins family’s sworn enemies to bribe him into spying against them. We’ve seen him in the tavern many times since then, always as the doughty representative of the wholesome and intelligible world against the sinister and supernatural. For example, in #215 it was a deeply troubled Joe who brought the news to Maggie and others at the Blue Whale that the cows on his uncle’s farm had been somehow drained of blood, news which turned out to be the first sign of vampirism in the area. This is the first time we’ve seen the Blue Whale since #358, back in November, and the first time a scene has closed with the formerly very familiar Blue Whale jukebox dance tunes in even longer than that. Longtime viewers see a loop closing. Joe leaves the place where he has most often shown himself as one who dwells in the daylight and goes down to the deepest dark.

Once Joe is gone, Nicholas enters. He engages Maggie in conversation, and talks his way into the seat Joe vacated. Soon he is doing magic tricks for her and she is agreeing to have dinner with him. He brings up the idea of staying out all night, and she seems amenable. Where is her old friend the nurse when you need her?

The Fix

Joe lets himself into Nicholas’ house, a place by the sea that he is renting from the Collinses. Angelique is there. Joe laments his dependency on her, and asks if she was the one who attacked Tom, whom he identifies as his cousin. Perhaps the son of the uncle whose cows fell victim to Barnabas long ago! She doesn’t bother to deny it. She tells him that they will both visit Tom tonight. She bites Joe.

Joe visits Tom, who has emerged from the coma in which Angelique’s first bite left him. He tells Joe all about Angelique’s attack on him. He says he knows how bizarre the story sounds, but that he hopes that if he has Joe to vouch for him he will be able to make the police take it seriously. Joe gives Tom a few perfunctory assurances, then opens the window. Joe explains that he is doing this because it is hot in the room. Tom does not agree that it is hot, but Joe insists, and Tom is too ill to argue long.

Joe leaves, and we jump forward to 2 AM. The window is still open- apparently no nurse was on duty. Perhaps the hospital thought Beverly Hope Atkinson’s character did such a good job on the day shift that the patients could just cruise along through the night. We hear a bat squeaking, and Angelique appears. She bites Tom.

In Barnabas’ first weeks on Dark Shadows, the show made heavy use of the idea that vampires can enter a lodging only when they have been invited. For example, he went to the diner after hours so that Maggie would have to invite him in, and later went to her house and stood just outside the front door for a noticeably long time before she explicitly asked him to enter. They haven’t done anything with that idea in a long time, but neither have they very clearly contradicted it. Perhaps Joe’s opening of the window is the invitation Angelique needs to make her way into the hospital.

Episode 554: What must be

Recovering vampire Barnabas Collins is in the woods on the estate of Collinwood, searching for well-meaning governess Vicki Winters. He hears dogs howling, as they used to howl when he was in the grip of bloodlust. He goes to pieces at the memory.

Barnabas’ fellow searcher, Vicki’s fiancé Peter Bradford, sees him standing petrified. Barnabas asks him if he can hear the dogs. Peter says he can, and is puzzled that Barnabas was afraid he was hallucinating their sounds. Peter asks Barnabas if he is all right. Barnabas insists that he is just worried about Vicki, and resumes searching.

Shortly after, Barnabas finds himself in the foyer of the great house on the estate, slumped in a chair under his own portrait. He makes a sad contrast with the haughty figure in the painting. His friend Julia Hoffman enters, and he gives her a pleading look that emphasizes the contrast between his present weakness and the arrogant power he wielded when he posed for the portrait, more than 170 years before.

Barnabas tells Julia that he does not know how he got into the house. The last he remembers, he was in the woods and heard the dogs howling. She suggests that their noise may not mean anything, but he is sure there is some unearthly horror afoot.

Barnabas tells Julia something else he is sure of. Earlier this evening, Frankenstein’s monster Adam came to his house. Adam mistakenly believes that Barnabas created him, and demanded that he build a woman to be his mate. When Barnabas told him that would be impossible, Adam vowed to make him sorry, then left. Shortly after, Vicki came by for a brief visit. Barnabas is certain that Adam abducted Vicki to use as a hostage, and that the only ransom he will accept is the artificially created woman he has no way of supplying.

Barnabas goes to the telephone and announces he is going to tell the police what he knows about Adam. Julia objects that Adam can tell the police enough about the two of them to expose them both to prosecution. Barnabas says that he is willing to take that risk for Vicki’s sake, and begins dialing. Julia says she is not, and places her finger on the telephone receiver to end the call.

Julia has never been able to entirely conceal her dislike for Vicki, rolling her eyes when Vicki talks to her and making sarcastic remarks when Barnabas praises her, so regular viewers can hardly be surprised that Julia does not volunteer to go to prison for her sake. Still, Julia has often enough shown a troubled conscience about the many crimes she has committed during her association with Barnabas that her utter coolness represents a new step in the character’s development. The other day she wanted to shoot wicked witch Angelique, but Angelique was not really human and was enormously dangerous. Even so, Julia was deeply upset when she made up her mind to kill her, and she backed down when she came face to face with Angelique. But Vicki is resolutely, unfailingly, rather tediously good, Good with a capital G. That Julia is so blandly willing to consign her to death at Adam’s hands suggests that her sense of right and wrong will no longer serve as a brake on any sinister plans that might advance whatever goals she and Barnabas are pursuing.

Barnabas looks at Julia, shocked. Perhaps her coldness shocks him. Perhaps what shocks him is that he is so dependent on her that he does not resume dialing.

Meanwhile, another drama has played out not so far away. Electrician Tom Jennings was inspecting the wiring in a house that suave warlock Nicholas Blair is renting from the ancient and esteemed Collins family. Tom told Nicholas that he wanted to inspect the cellar to make sure the foundation was in good repair. Nicholas replied that this would not be necessary, but Tom insisted. He opened the cellar door, and found a coffin. Nicholas told him that the coffin was there when he moved in. Tom asked if he’d called the police, and Nicholas replied there was no need, since the coffin was empty.

On his way home, Tom told himself that the Collinses wouldn’t leave a coffin in the basement of one of their houses. That shows what he knows- for the first 55 weeks of the show, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard thought that her husband was buried in a box in the basement of the great house, and when he was a vampire Barnabas kept his coffin in the basement of his house. It wouldn’t be a Collins house if it didn’t have a coffin in the basement, and a dungeon too.

Tom sees someone and asks who it is. The part of the other person is played by the camera, so we do not know. The camera zooms in, and Tom collapses.

Later, Peter finds Tom propped against a tree. He touches Tom, and Tom falls over, apparently dead. He has two bloody wounds on his neck. Peter goes back to the great house. He tells Barnabas and Julia that he must use the telephone. They hear him describe Tom’s wounds to the police. Afterward, Barnabas and Julia realize that there is another vampire operating in the area.

Tom’s appearance is the debut of Don Briscoe, who would be a big part of Dark Shadows for almost two years. On his Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn told an amazing story about Briscoe:

Many years ago, when I was in high school, my mother walked into the room while I was watching Dark Shadows.

She looked at the guy on the screen, and said, “Is his name Don?”

I said, yeah, that’s Don Briscoe, and she said, “I thought so. I knew him, when I was in grad school. He asked me out once.”

Seriously, true story. She said that they were both getting a master’s in English — he was at Columbia University, and she was at Barnard, which is right across the street. He asked her out on a date, and he was very handsome, and very nice, but he wasn’t Jewish, so she said no.

At the time, I had no way to verify this, and I never really knew what to think about it. I mean, she knew the guy’s first name, but maybe she confused him with some other brown-haired guy named Don.

But now I have this excellent book called Barnabas & Company, which has extensive bios on everybody in the cast. It turns out that he really did get a master’s degree in English at Columbia University, and that means that Don Briscoe is kind of my dad.

Danny Horn, “Episode 565: Weird Science,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 10 January 2015

Granted, hundreds of actors had parts on Dark Shadows over the five years of its run, a great many people have blogged about the show, and I’m sure Danny’s mother was a very attractive young woman who had offers from lots of fellows. But Briscoe was one of the more important members of the cast, and Danny is as good as any of the bloggers. So it really is a noteworthy coincidence that they are connected to each other in that particular way.