tomb of the collinses – Acilius on Dark Shadows

Episode 468: As free as you are

Vampire Barnabas Collins, desperate to save his own life after he aged extremely rapidly as the result of an attempt mad scientist Julia Hoffman had made to turn him into a real boy, bit his distant cousin Carolyn Collins Stoddard and enslaved her in #351. In #462, Barnabas was afraid that well-meaning governess Vicki Winters had learned his secret, so he bit her as well. As it happens, Vicki had not figured out that Barnabas was a vampire, so the bite was unnecessary. That was lucky for Barnabas. After he bit her, Vicki was noticeably less interested in Barnabas and less deferential to him than she had been at any point in the year or so she had known him.

Now, Barnabas has happened upon another mad scientist, Eric Lang. Lang has apparently succeeded where Julia had failed. Barnabas can go around in the daytime and do other things humans do. What’s more, Lang takes a look at Vicki’s neck and sees that the marks of Barnabas’ bite have vanished. Vicki remembers having the bites. Even after Lang has told her that they vanished because the reason for them no longer exists, she has an enigmatic look on her face when she stares into the mirror and studies the spot where they used to be. It was never clear what she made of Barnabas’ biting her and sucking her blood- maybe she just thought he favored an aggressive make out technique. She looks deeply puzzled now, but what exactly she is trying to understand is a mystery. She looks away from the mirror, then looks down, defeated in her attempt to find sense in her memories. Finally, she turns her back on the mirror and goes resolutely about her business.

For her part, Julia is in the great house of Collinwood with Carolyn. Julia is surprised that Carolyn is talking to her in a friendly manner, as she did before she and Barnabas “became so close.” Carolyn removes her scarf, glances in the mirror, and is delighted to see that the marks on her neck are gone. Carolyn asks what that means. Julia says that it means that she is free, as free as Barnabas, and that it must continue to be so.

Carolyn discovers her emancipation. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Unlike Vicki, Carolyn had a full briefing from Barnabas about his condition and its requirements, and she was deeply involved in his criminal enterprises for some weeks. Her joyous reaction to the disappearance of the marks leaves no doubt that she remembers something about this experience. There is nothing in any script after this to tell us what, but we will often notice actress Nancy Barrett giving a line reading or showing an unquiet reaction that suggests she remembers everything. I suppose you could say she was padding her part with these little signs, but the directors obviously didn’t object and it will be quite a while before the writers give her dialogue which forces her to stop doing it.

There’s also a lot of business in this episode with Vicki and an unpleasant man named Peter. Lately, Peter has been pretending to be someone else, even though the audience and Vicki know perfectly well who he is. Today the show suggests that this irritating little storyline is the consequence of Peter having amnesia. The episode ends with him, Vicki, and Julia opening the secret panel that reveals the hidden chamber in the Collins family mausoleum where Barnabas was trapped from the 1790s until 1967. That proves that Vicki traveled back in time to the 1790s and that Peter knew her in that era. Since the audience already knows both of those facts and none of the characters directly involved in the action has any reason to doubt either of them, it’s an anticlimactic conclusion.

When Vicki and Julia are entering the mausoleum, Vicki shines a flashlight directly into the camera. In at least eleven of the episodes made when the show was in black and white, characters entering darkened spaces did this with flashlights, often creating elaborate halo effects. Sometimes this appeared to be a blooper, several times it was obviously intentional. We’ve only seen it once or twice, briefly, since the show went to color in the summer of 1967. It’s nice to see it again.

Episode 460: Lies beyond the grave

In #365, well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795. Now, Vicki is about to be hanged for witchcraft, and the last of the story threads that have been playing out around her are about to be tied up.

Yesterday’s episode ended in the study at the great house of Collinwood, where naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes shot a wooden bolt from a crossbow into the chest of vampire Barnabas Collins. At the top of today’s episode, Barnabas pulls the bolt out, telling Nathan that the bolt didn’t hit him. Barnabas’ voice is dubbed in over this, clarifying that Nathan missed his heart. We then switch to Nathan’s point of view and see Barnabas approaching for the kill.

After the opening title, we see that Barnabas is still in the study. Time has apparently passed. Barnabas’ father Joshua enters. Barnabas asks him if Nathan has been buried. Joshua says that he has, and lists the stories that he will tell to cover up all the deaths that Barnabas has been involved with over the last few months. Barnabas wants Joshua to shoot him through the heart with a silver bullet right now and destroy him forever. Joshua cannot do that, but he promises that he will put Barnabas out of his misery come daylight, when he is in his coffin. Barnabas asks two more favors of his father, that he free much put-upon servant Ben and that he prevent the execution of the wrongly convicted Vicki. Joshua promises to do these things as well.

Joshua and Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Throughout this scene, actors Louis Edmonds and Jonathan Frid hold back tears. Patrick McCray remarks: “Crying is not the most powerful thing an actor can do on stage. Rather, it is the attempt not to cry that seizes audiences. In these moments, Frid and Edmonds seize. In a medium of love scenes, there is none more poignant.”

The performers have a powerful theme to work with, one that Danny Horn explicates when he considers the question of why Joshua is still alive at the end of this storyline. When she made Barnabas a vampire, wicked witch Angelique decreed that everyone who loved him would die. Yesterday, Joshua confessed that he feared he was incapable of love, and Barnabas told him that such a disability might save his life. But when we see Edmonds and Frid struggling against the urge to weep, we know that Joshua loves Barnabas very deeply indeed, as we have in recent weeks seen that he loved others he has lost. Danny explains:

The reason why Joshua is spared from the curse is that the love he feels for Barnabas isn’t the kind of love that Angelique recognizes, and so he slips under her radar.

Angelique’s love is selfish, and spiteful. She uses it as a convenient excuse for running over anyone who gets in her way. She doesn’t understand love that arises from respect, and strength of character. And she will never feel the kind of deep, honest love that Joshua now realizes for the first time that he is in fact capable of.
Danny Horn, from “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves,” posted on Dark Shadows Every Day 16 August 2014

Danny goes on to explain that, while others had love for Barnabas that included a selfless element, there was also something in their feelings that Angelique could recognize, while Joshua’s love for him comes entirely from this higher plane. The portion of Dark Shadows set in the years 1795-1796 turns out to be The Tragedy of Joshua Collins, not only because Joshua has the highest social status among the characters, makes the most important decisions, and is played by one of the best actors, but because he grows into the sort of person who is governed by this kind of love. When the world around him is being ground down into dishonesty and cheapness, largely due to the consequences of his own misguided actions, Joshua discovers a new kind of strength within himself. Even amid the ruins of a world he himself did as much as anyone to wreck, Joshua represents the hope that something better might yet come into being.

After daybreak, Joshua stands beside Barnabas’ coffin in the secret chamber hidden inside the Collins family mausoleum, the pistol in his hand. Joshua cannot bring himself to fire the silver bullets into his son’s heart. Ben enters. Joshua orders him to affix a silver crucifix to the inside of the coffin to immobilize Barnabas there, and then to chain the coffin shut. Joshua and Ben assure each other that Barnabas will never be released. Later, we see Ben in the chamber, alone with the chained coffin. He looks at it and says “Goodbye, Mr Barnabas, goodbye.” Thayer David delivers that line with an unforgettable simplicity.

Returning viewers know that Joshua’s plan to keep Barnabas confined will work only until April of 1967, when Barnabas will be freed to prey upon the living once more. That July, in #276, Barnabas will stand in the hidden chamber and say that, while in chaining the coffin rather than destroying him his father “thought he was being merciful, what he did was no act of mercy.” This remark, combined with a story he told Vicki in #214 about his conflict with Joshua, just may have been the germ from which the whole story of Joshua grew. At any rate, the promise ABC-TV made to its viewers when it aired this promotional spot in November 1967 has been fulfilled:

Back in the study, Joshua frees Ben and gives him a severance packet of $100, worth about $2500 in 2024 dollars. When Ben thanks him for his generosity, Joshua denies that he is being generous. I have to agree with Joshua there- that amount might get a fellow out of town, but he’d have to find a new job pretty fast if he wanted to stay in the habit of sleeping indoors.

Another servant brings a note while Joshua and Ben are in the study. The governor has refused Joshua’s plea that Vicki’s execution be stayed. She will be hanged tonight.

At the gaol, Vicki’s boyfriend, an unpleasant man named Peter, is brought to her cell. The gaoler tells them they have five minutes before Vicki will be taken to her death. It is little wonder Vicki’s last request was to have time with Peter. Spending five minutes with him is like living to a ripe old age. Peter vows to overcome death and reunite with her. The last time we heard that was when Barnabas died the first time. In #409, he used his dying breaths to ask gracious lady Josette to wait for him to return to her. Fool that she was, Josette did, leading to disaster for her. Returning viewers may well wince, not only at the ominous parallel with Josette’s grim fate, but also at the memory of the many tedious scenes in which Josette at first insisted that Barnabas was coming back and was then at a loss when asked to explain herself. Besides, we don’t want to see any more of Peter.

The scene of Vicki’s hanging is quite elaborate by Dark Shadows standards. They’ve built a fairly realistic gibbet, hired several extras, put hats on them, and given them burning torches to hold. They test the equipment with a heavy sack, slowly lead Vicki to the place of honor, ask her if she wants a mask, and command the Lord to have mercy on her unrepentant soul. The camera drifts up to the top of the rigging, leaving Vicki out of the shot. When the time comes, we hear the drop and see the rope tighten.

Swing time for Vicki. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

This marks the end of the 1795 flashback, but not necessarily of Dark Shadows 3.0. In #437, Vicki told Peter that she often had nightmares in her childhood, so often that she became a connoisseur of nightmares. She would stay asleep throughout the whole process, waking up only at the very moment she was about to be killed. That was a rather heavy-handed way of telling the audience that Vicki would ascend the gallows, put her head in the noose, and find herself back in the 1960s. Once she is back in her own time, what she has learned in the 1790s will have consequences for what she does next. So we can expect an epilogue of some kind before Dark Shadows 4.0 begins.

Episode 454: The course of history

Throughout its first 38 weeks, Dark Shadows told the story of well-meaning governess Vicki and her attempts to befriend strange and troubled boy David (David Henesy.) This story reached its conclusion in #191, when David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, beckoned David into the flames of a burning fishing shack. David ultimately fled from the shack, running into Vicki’s arms. Once David had chosen Vicki and life over his mother and death, there was nowhere for their story to go. Since there was nothing going on in any of the other narrative arcs on the show at that point, #191 marked the end of Dark Shadows 1.0.

In #365, Vicki became unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795. That inaugurated Dark Shadows 3.0, successor to the period when we got to know Barnabas Collins, vampire. Today’s opening voiceover tells us that the eighteenth century flashback is almost over. Longtime viewers will get this message not only from the voiceover, but from an echo of #191. Daniel Collins, played by David Henesy, runs from the fishing shack, thereby escaping from mortal jeopardy, and goes to Vicki in search of safety.

Daniel escaped from the fishing shack. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Vicki has utterly failed to adapt to the eighteenth century, with the result that she has been convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death. With her repellent boyfriend Peter, Vicki has escaped from gaol. Fugitives Vicki and Peter are hiding out in the secret chamber hidden in the Collins family mausoleum when Vicki has a dream that young Daniel is about to be murdered by naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes. Before Vicki’s witchcraft trial, she had been Daniel’s governess, and he is still her friend. He ran into her and Peter after they escaped from gaol, knows that they are in the mausoleum, and is faithfully keeping their secret.

Vicki has brought with her from the 1960s the knowledge that Daniel will be the ancestor of the Collins family she knew in her own time. She fears that her dream will come true, her young friend will die, and his descendants will never be born.

As it happens, Nathan is scheming to kill Daniel. Nathan has married Daniel’s sister Millicent. After the wedding, Nathan discovered that Millicent had signed her vast fortune over to Daniel. If Daniel dies, the money all reverts to Millicent. So Nathan summons his unsightly henchman Noah to a fishing shack on the grounds of the estate of Collinwood and demands that he abduct Daniel, put him on a boat, and throw him into the ocean. When Noah balks, Nathan threatens to go to the constable and turn Noah in for the crimes they have already committed together. The show has out of its way to demonstrate that Noah isn’t very bright, so it isn’t a complete shock that he would think it was safer to murder a child than to call Nathan’s bluff.

Noah finds Daniel in the woods, grabs him, takes him to the fishing shack, and tells him they will be taking a boat ride together. Noah is then distracted by the wind, allowing Daniel to run away and find refuge with Vicki in the hidden chamber.

Throughout her time in the 1790s, Vicki has made a series of attempts to prevent the terrible events recorded in the history of the Collinses. She has failed every time, and the past has fallen into the same shape it took when these events originally played out and a woman named Phyllis Wick was the governess at Collinwood. But by trying to save Daniel, Vicki is not trying to change the course of history- she is trying to preserve it. It is not explained whether Phyllis rescued Daniel in the first version of this history, or if Nathan’s murder plot was somehow the result of Vicki’s intervention. Either way, it reinforces the message of the opening voiceover. Vicki has now passed all of the tragic milestones of the period, and is left with nothing to do but to contain damage that she herself might have done. It is time for her to go home.

Episode 453: Legal guardian

In December 1966, crazed handyman Matthew Morgan (Thayer David) abducted well-meaning governess Vicki and held her prisoner in a secret room behind the bookcase in the front parlor of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Vicki had run into Matthew there when she saw his dusty footprints leading up to the bookcase in #115. Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy,) did not know that Matthew had abducted Vicki, and was convinced that he had gone into hiding because he was unjustly accused of murdering local man Bill Malloy. So when David found out Matthew was in the Old House, he brought him food and water. In #120, David heard Vicki’s muffled voice behind the bookcase; in #123, he pulled the bookcase back and found her; in #124, he was too frightened to help her escape.

Now, Vicki has come unstuck in time, and found herself in the late eighteenth century. She made a promising start, landing a position as governess to the children at Collinwood, among them Daniel (David Henesy.) But she has adapted poorly to her new surroundings, so poorly that she has been convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death. Accompanied by her boyfriend, an unpleasant young man named Peter, she has escaped from gaol. Vicki was shot in the arm while escaping, and is still bleeding. She and Peter have made their way to the Old House. There, much put-upon servant Ben (Thayer David) at once gives Vicki and Peter such help as he can.

When a knock comes at the door, Ben tells Vicki and Peter he will hide them. He goes to the bookcase, and Vicki whispers “The secret room.” When Vicki first saw Ben, they were in this parlor, and she was frightened because she mistook him for Matthew. In her hushed voice and the look of awe on her face when she sees Ben trying to save her life by putting her in the room where his Doppelgänger will try to kill her in 1966, Alexandra Moltke Isles’ Vicki conveys the thought that Ben and Matthew really are two versions of the same guy. Ben is a kind-hearted sort whose fierce loyalties sometimes overcome his good sense; Matthew a paranoid ogre whose single-minded devotion to matriarch Liz leads him to kill and menace those dearest to Liz. The difference between the two men begins in the events that have been taking place around Vicki in the 1790s. Ben grew up in the ordinary world of day and night, where natural laws apply and there is hope for goodness. Matthew has spent his whole life in a town laboring under an ancient curse. Matthew’s crimes would be the fruit of Ben’s virtues, had Ben been warped by the evil of centuries that hangs over the Collinsport of the 1960s.

While Vicki and Peter huddle in the secret room, Daniel bursts into the parlor. Ben tries to hurry him out, but the lad notices a trail of bloodstains leading to the bookcase. Before Ben can stop him, Daniel opens the bookcase and finds the fugitives.

Daniel discovers the fugitives. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Daniel is as convinced of Vicki’s innocence as David will be of Matthew’s, and he is eager to help her and her friend. Ben says he will take the fugitives to a safer hiding place, and forbids Daniel to follow them. Of course Daniel does follow them, and sees them enter the Collins family mausoleum in the old cemetery north of town. He cannot see inside, where Ben opens a secret panel and ushers Vicki and Peter into the hidden chamber behind. This chamber will be hugely important in 1967. Vicki will hear about it in that year after David, who spent a week trapped there ending in #315, tells people about it in #334. But David will be unable to show the chamber to Vicki or anyone else, and most adults assumed it was just something he had imagined. Vicki is astonished to see it today.

Daniel goes home to the great house of Collinwood, where his brother-in-law, naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes, handles him roughly and demands to know where he saw Vicki. When Daniel denies having seen Vicki, Nathan asks him how he came to have a bloodstain on his sleeve. He tells Daniel that Vicki was wounded when she escaped from gaol, and declares that it is her blood on Daniel. He warns Daniel that it is a crime to withhold information about a fugitive. Daniel keeps denying everything.

Back in the hidden chamber, Vicki is asleep. She dreams that Nathan is trying to kill Daniel. Returning viewers know that this is in fact true. Nathan married Daniel’s sister, fluttery heiress Millicent, because wanted her vast fortune. He found out on their wedding day that she had signed everything over to Daniel. It has occurred to him that if Daniel should die, it will all revert to Millicent, so he is scheming to bring that death about. Vicki has been in gaol since all of this started; nothing she has seen or heard could have led her to conclude that Nathan was a threat to Daniel. We must take it as a message from the supernatural world. This is not the first time we have seen Vicki receive such a message while in a concealed place. In #126, when Matthew was bringing an ax to decapitate her, Vicki was visited in the secret room behind the bookcase in the Old House by the ghost of gracious lady Josette bringing her good news.

The segment of Dark Shadows set in the 1790s is nearing its end. They have killed off most of the characters, have stopped introducing new ones, and those who remain are all facing crises that can be resolved only by further reducing the number of people available to participate in the action. The echoes of #123 and #124 will underline that point for viewers who have been with Dark Shadows from the start. Not only did those episodes tip Matthew into the final part of his storyline, they introduced David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, marking a new phase of the show. Calling back to those installments, and condensing the action of #115 through #126 into a few minutes, they are telling us that the end of the 1790s segment is near, and that when it comes it will come fast.

Episode 416: Poor lost children

We open in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood, where Naomi Collins (Joan Bennett) is drinking alone. Her husband Joshua (Louis Edmonds) enters, returning home after an absence of some days, and greets Naomi with a loud expression of scorn for her alcoholism. She looks up and recites these lines: “A little bird flew to the window. It hovered there for a moment, and then flew away. The first bird of the morning.” Many times, Joan Bennett found ways to show the viewers of Dark Shadows why she had been one of the biggest movie stars of her generation, but this is not one of those times. She delivers this little speech stiffly, as if embarrassed by it.

Joshua is about to leave the room when Naomi tells him that their daughter Sarah died the night before, on her eleventh birthday. He is thunderstruck and says that he cannot believe it. Naomi replies, “Yes, that is what we must do- not believe it!” With this line, Joan Bennett recovers her footing. As matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in the first 73 weeks of Dark Shadows, when the show was set in 1966 and 1967, Bennett created a character who had devoted her entire life to this motto. Now that the show is set in the late 18th century, we see that the Collinses had been living by it for hundreds of years. Once she starts playing a character who is wrestling with denial, Bennett is in familiar territory, and she is terrific to watch.

Joshua believes that the bewildered Victoria Winters (Alexandra Moltke Isles) is a witch, and that a spell she cast on Sarah caused her death. He goes to the gaol in the village of Collinsport where Vicki is being held, awaiting trial on witchcraft charges. We see her in her cell, the first time we have seen this set. Joshua confronts her there. She denies his accusation. She tells him she is a time-traveler displaced from 1967 and that she has been trying to use her knowledge of history to rescue people from the fates that she has read about. This is true, as it happens, but of course Joshua is not favorably impressed. He tells her to enjoy the few sunsets and sunrises that she will see between now and the day she is put to death.

A week before, Naomi and Joshua’s other child, their forty-ish son Barnabas (Jonathan Frid,) had died of a mysterious illness. Joshua decreed that no one must know that Barnabas had died. He had Barnabas’ body interred in a secret chamber hidden inside the Collins family mausoleum, and put out the word that Barnabas had gone to England.

Unknown to Joshua or Naomi, Barnabas has become a vampire. Joshua’s remark to Vicki about sunrises and sunsets thus carried an ironic charge for regular viewers. When Barnabas emerges from his coffin after this sunset, his friend, much put-upon servant Ben Stokes (Thayer David,) tells him Sarah has died. Barnabas blames himself for this. Sarah had seen him with blood on his face, and in her fear had run away. Alone in the night, she suffered from exposure. Barnabas tells Ben that he will go into the village of Collinsport, confess everything to the authorities, and let the sunlight destroy him. At least that will save Vicki. Ben pleads with him to find another way, but Barnabas insists.

Sarah’s remains have been deposited in a vault in the outer part of the mausoleum. Naomi comes in to look at the vault again; Joshua follows her. Naomi has many bitter words for Joshua; he is ready to lament the deaths of their children. Barnabas and Ben, hiding inside the secret chamber, listen to this painful conversation.

For viewers who have been watching Dark Shadows from the beginning, the scene of Barnabas and Ben eavesdropping on Joshua and Naomi evokes two earlier scenes with particular force. In #318, Barnabas and his associate, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, stood on the same spots where Barnabas and Ben stand now, listening as two local men talking in the outer chamber revealed knowledge that might expose their many crimes. In #118, crazed groundskeeper Matthew Morgan, also played by Thayer David, held Vicki prisoner in a different secret chamber, and the two of them listened as another pair of local men searched for Vicki just outside. In those episodes, Frid and David played men who were bent on murder, but whom we knew to be unlikely to kill their intended targets. Today, they are playing characters who are both desperate to stop killing, but we know that they are doomed to take more lives.

After Naomi and Joshua leave, Barnabas tells Ben he cannot turn himself in. The family must not be disgraced. He tells Ben to come back in the morning with a stake made of holly and to drive it through his heart. He gives him this command in just the same words the witch Angelique had used in #410. Ben had not at that time known what had become of Barnabas, and had complied only because he was under Angelique’s power. He resists Barnabas’ command now, saying that he cannot destroy one who has been a true friend to him. Barnabas tells him he is already destroyed, and that staking him will be a mercy. Ben reluctantly agrees.

Episode 414: Walks the night

There was a lunar eclipse on the night of 24 January 1796; it reached its maximum at 10:09:20 Eastern time. In our time-band, that eclipse was not easily visible in central Maine, but in this episode we see that in the universe of Dark Shadows, it was spectacular there. Caddish naval officer Nathan Forbes and fluttery heiress Millicent Collins come inside from the terrace of the great house of Collinwood after watching the eclipse.

In the drawing room, Nathan proposes marriage to Millicent. She gladly accepts. Matriarch Naomi Collins enters. Millicent is worried Naomi will disapprove of them being alone together so late, while Nathan wants to tell her of the engagement. Before they can say anything, Naomi tells them that her daughter Sarah, whose eleventh birthday is day after tomorrow on the 26th, has gone missing. Nathan volunteers to take charge of the search parties.

Sarah had been looking for her big brother Barnabas. Unknown to her, Barnabas has become a vampire and has been snacking on the women who frequent the waterfront of the village of Collinsport. In yesterday’s episode, Sarah caught a glimpse of Barnabas, followed him to the cemetery, and wound up in the outer room of the family mausoleum, near the secret panel behind which Barnabas’ coffin is hidden. At the top of today’s episode, the door out of the mausoleum slams itself shut and Sarah is unable to open it.

That moment suggests a solution to a riddle that has been part of Dark Shadows ever since Barnabas joined the cast of characters in April 1967, when the show was set in contemporary times. Doors in structures associated with Barnabas would close themselves and trap people. Sometimes this advanced Barnabas’ objectives, but just as often it was an inconvenience to him. Today, he most definitely does not want Sarah to be in the mausoleum. Part of the curse that made Barnabas a vampire is that everyone who loves him will die. Barnabas has killed the malign Angelique, the witch who placed the curse on him, but he is still a vampire- the curse lives on. So perhaps the curse itself has a power that makes the doors slam shut, keeping Sarah in this cold room until she falls ill.

At the waterfront, Barnabas meets a woman named Ruby Tate. Ruby is fashion-forward, to say the least; her outfit would become stylish nearly a century later. It’s the sort of thing that might have been admired by the women Jack the Ripper killed in the Whitechapel section of London in 1888-1891. Indeed, this foggy scene is a fairly obvious reference to the Whitechapel murders.

Ruby smiles for the last time. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas is alarmed when Ruby recognizes him and calls him by name. He is befuddled when she tells him she had heard that he went to England- he doesn’t know that his father Joshua is spreading that story to conceal his death, which Joshua believes to have been the result of the plague. Ruby keeps saying that the other girls will be jealous when she tells them she spent the night with Mr Barnabas Collins, alarming him further.

In the early months of the show, the story of Burke Devlin’s quest for revenge on the Collinses had occasionally brought up the contrast between the working class village of Collinsport and the lordly family on the estate of Collinwood and suggested class conflict as a theme. Those suggestions were never very richly developed, and lately we have spent so much time holed up with the Collinses in their mansions that it is startling to see them through the eyes of the villagers. Ruby’s excitement at pairing off with one of the area’s grand aristocrats reminds us that the curse threatens the future of more than one family.

Ruby promises Barnabas not to tell anyone about him, but does notice him looking at her strangely. Something clicks, and she cries out “It’s you!” Barnabas draws closer. Fleeing him, she falls into the water. Barnabas calls Ruby’s name, but cannot stop her drowning.

Apparently Barnabas found someone else to attack after Ruby drowned, because his face is smeared with blood when next we see him. He returns to the mausoleum. Sarah sees him. He keeps his face turned away from her while she pleads with him to take her home. He keeps telling her to go without him. He finally turns to look at her. She sees the blood and shouts “You’re not Barnabas! You’re not, you’re not!” She runs out of the mausoleum, and dawn breaks.

Ruby Tate is played by Elaine Hyman. Hyman was busy as an actress in New York for decades before her death in 2020. She was in three plays that made it to Broadway, and her TV credits included episodes of The Sopranos, Broad City, and several iterations of the Law and Order franchise. She’s a sensation as Ruby, it’s a shame this is her only appearance on Dark Shadows.

Episode 413: So sad for such a long time

Sarah Collins is going to turn 11 two days from now, on 26 January 1796. Sarah misses her big brother Barnabas. She has been told that Barnabas has gone to England, and today her mother, Naomi, tells her that Barnabas may not be back for a long time, maybe not until Sarah is grown up. Sarah refuses to believe this. She insists that if she lights a candle in the window of the bedroom where Barnabas’ onetime fiancée, the gracious Josette, has been staying, Barnabas will “somehow know it’s there” and come home.

Sarah is right to disbelieve her mother. On the orders of her husband, haughty overlord Joshua, Naomi is repeating a lie to conceal Barnabas’ death. Joshua believes that Barnabas died from the plague, and that if that word gets out the men won’t report for work at the family’s shipyard. In fact, Barnabas never had the plague. He died of a witch’s curse. As a further result of the curse, he is now a vampire. The last few nights, he has been snacking on the women who frequent the waterfront of the village.

Josette is out of town, so Sarah takes the candle to her room, meaning to leave it there as a surprise. Looking out the window, she sees Barnabas on the lawn, peering up. Sarah is excited to see her brother, and runs out of the house after him. He doesn’t want her to know what has become of him, and runs off.

Seconds after she exits the front door, Sarah is in the cemetery. It has been established many times that this cemetery is miles from the house; earlier in this very episode, Barnabas’ helper Ben visited him in his tomb there, and made it clear he had plenty of opportunity to shake anyone who might be following him as he journeyed there from the house. This inconsistency bothers a lot of people, but I kind of like it. We got to know Sarah as a ghost in 1967, and she was at the center of a number of very intriguing surrealistic sequences. She’s alive now, but the whole situation is so bizarre that it only seems right she moves as she would in a dream. Watching the scene this time, I was surprised- I had remembered the set behind Sarah being blurred as she ran and some other visual effects that would have presented it as an eldritch moment, but none of those was actually there.

The episode ends with Sarah in the outer part of the tomb, near the secret panel behind which Barnabas’ coffin is hidden. She is calling out to him. We have been warned that Sarah will die on her birthday as a result of exposure; when Barnabas does not come to her, she complains of the cold, and we end on an ominous note.

When Sarah sees Barnabas standing on the lawn, we echo earlier phases of Dark Shadows. We often saw characters looking out that window during the first 73 weeks of Dark Shadows, when the dramatic date was 1966 or 1967 and the room was occupied by well-meaning governess Vicki. We also saw Barnabas peer up at Vicki’s window from the lawn several times. The first time was at the end of #214, when the camera stuck with him so long we wondered if he really was a vampire and not just a garden gnome.

The closing shot of #214, set in 1967. Compare with the image of Barnabas on the lawn above.

Barnabas’ penchant for staring at windows in turn echoed his predecessor as the show’s supernatural menace, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. As ten year old Sarah Collins looks out a window and sees her big brother Barnabas looking up at her from the lawn today, so in #134 did another child of the same age, strange and troubled boy David Collins, look out a window and see his mother Laura looking up at him from the same lawn.

Vicki is in this episode. Sarah’s ghost yanked her here from November 1967 so that she could “tell the story from the beginning.” It isn’t so much Vicki who has been getting the story as it is the audience. Vicki is left out of most of the key developments; in particular, she has no clue Barnabas is a vampire. She has done such a poor job of fitting into her new environment that even though witchcraft laws had been repealed throughout the English-speaking world sixty years before, the village of Collinsport has brought them back just for her. She is in gaol, and from there has continued to find ways to make her situation so much worse that she is now all but certain to be hanged.

Today, Vicki asks for Naomi to visit her in the gaol. Barnabas and Ben are the only ones who know who the witch really was, but neither of them is in a position to talk to the authorities and clear Vicki’s name. Naomi and Sarah are the only other people who believe that Vicki is innocent. Vicki tells Naomi that she has a book printed in the twentieth century that tells her Sarah will die of exposure on her eleventh birthday. In response, Naomi looks at her in wonderment and says that she is starting to believe she really is a witch. Vicki dismisses that topic, and pleads with her to keep Sarah indoors for the next few days. Naomi agrees to do so.

Vicki’s warnings not only make Naomi suspect that the charges against her are true; it is because Naomi is not home that no one stops Sarah running out and getting stuck in a cold place. I suppose there is meant to be a dramatic irony in seeing Vicki bring about the very disasters she is trying to prevent, but the character’s foolishness throughout the whole segment set in the late eighteenth century blunts that irony.

If we saw a smart person operating at the top of her form and still causing a series of calamities, we might have a sense of tragic inevitability, a feeling that the course of history cannot be changed whatever we do. But Vicki has not been that person. Movie reviewer Roger Ebert famously called stories that depend on the characters doing things the average member of the audience would be too smart to do “idiot plot.” For all the strengths of the 1795 segment, there is an idiot plot at the center of it, and Vicki is the Designated Dum-Dum. That undercuts the arc and destroys the character.

Episode 411: No longer really human

Messy eater. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

At the top of the episode, wicked witch Angelique is in the secret chamber hidden inside the Collins family mausoleum. She is standing before the open coffin of Barnabas Collins, a stake in one hand and a mallet in the other. The sun is setting; once it does, Barnabas will rise as a vampire. She would drive the stake through his heart to prevent this outcome, but she is moving in time with the background music, and it is too slow. Barnabas awakes, knocks the equipment from her hands, and grabs her throat.

In 1967, throat-grabbing was Barnabas’ reflex when someone opened his coffin at dusk. The character first appeared in #210 as a hand darting to the throat of would-be grave robber Willie Loomis; Barnabas would bite Willie and enslave him. In #275, seagoing con man Jason McGuire opened the coffin; again the hand darted to the throat, and in #276 we learned that Jason was dead. That was the first time in 1967 Barnabas killed someone.

Now it is 1795. When we return from the opening title sequence, Barnabas has let go of Angelique. He has questions, and she is trying to avoid answering them. He realizes that she is afraid of him. When he figures out that she has turned him into a monster, he strangles her. In 1967, thirteen weeks separated Willie’s freeing of Barnabas from the death of Jason; this time, Barnabas chokes the life out of Angelique only eight minutes after he first awakens as a vampire.

Barnabas opens the door to the outer part of the mausoleum. The mechanism that opens this door is hidden inside one of the stairs leading out, and the camera lingers on it long enough to show that Barnabas must already be very familiar with the room to have gone directly to it. Returning viewers will remember that Angelique seemed unable to find it yesterday, and committed fans will remember that strange and troubled boy David Collins spent a whole week trapped in the secret chamber in September 1967 because it was so well hidden. The ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah had to manifest to David in #315 and show him the door opener before the plot could move forward.

In the outer part of the mausoleum, Barnabas finds much put-upon servant Ben. Ben had been Barnabas’ devoted friend, but Angelique cast a spell on him and forced him to do her evil bidding. He is glad to hear Angelique is dead, and pledges to help Barnabas. As a living man, Barnabas had always gone out of his way to reciprocate Ben’s friendship, but throughout their conversation in the mausoleum he keeps telling Ben about the reasons he has to kill him. Only when Ben points out that he will need someone to protect him during the day does Barnabas agree to let him live. This was the same appeal that mad scientist Julia Hoffman made to Barnabas in #351. Since Barnabas was busily preparing to kill Julia a few episodes after that, this echo does not inspire much hope for Ben’s future.

Barnabas and Ben are having a little talk about how to dispose of Angelique’s corpse when they hear someone approaching the mausoleum. Barnabas hustles back into the secret chamber. Ben turns to the entrance, an appropriately helpless expression on his face.

Ben faces the darkness, waiting for whatever fresh hell may be approaching.

Haughty overlord Joshua Collins enters. Joshua is Barnabas’ father and Ben’s legally recognized master. Joshua accuses Ben of coming to rob Barnabas’ grave. Ben denies it. Joshua demands to know who he was talking to a moment before. Ben says that he was praying and that the only way out of the chamber is the way Joshua came. Joshua says that it is not the only way- Ben’s confederate could have gone into the secret chamber. Joshua opens the secret chamber, looks inside, and sees only Barnabas’ coffin. He is about to close the panel again when a bat flies out and flusters him. After the bat is gone, he agrees to let Ben stay and say more prayers for Barnabas.

Ben is in the graveyard when Barnabas materializes in front of him. Barnabas tells Ben that his new existence has brought him new powers. When the two of them return to the mausoleum, Ben sees that Barnabas’ face is streaked with blood. Barnabas tells him that he has discovered that along with his new powers, he has a new need- he must drink other people’s blood in order to survive. Tomorrow, Ben will hear of an unfortunate woman in the village killed by a wild animal. Barnabas says that he should have let Angelique destroy him; Ben protests that he oughtn’t say things like that. Evidently Ben is going to stick with Barnabas no matter how gruesome his deeds become.

Episode 410: Do you know the word “vampire”?

The name “Barnabas Collins” was first spoken on Dark Shadows by strange and troubled boy David Collins in #205. By the time of his first appearance in #211, it was already clear to the audience that Barnabas was a vampire. Yet the word “vampire” was never spoken on the show in those days. Barnabas was referred to as one of “the Undead,” a title that had previously been given to David’s mother, blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, and also as “the living dead.” At times avoidance of the word led to a bit of fun. So in #315, mad scientist Julia Hoffman is trying to talk Barnabas out of killing David, and says that the boy must not die “at the hands of a-.” When her voice breaks off, Barnabas smiles, leans in, turns his face towards her, and asks “at the hands of a what, doctor?” He is positively gleeful that she has come so close to blurting out a taboo word. It’s as if he had caught her about to make a fool of herself by uttering a slur, and he all but dares her to say it out loud.

As of today, Barnabas has been a part of Dark Shadows for 41 weeks, the same length of time the show had been running before David spoke his name.* The embargo on the word “vampire” finally ends today. We are in the year 1795, and wicked witch Angelique has cursed Barnabas. The first part of the curse has killed him. His father, haughty overlord Joshua, believes Barnabas died of the plague and has hidden his corpse in the secret room of the Collins family mausoleum lest this news cause a panic at the shipyards. Joshua refuses to tell anyone where Barnabas’ remains are, even Angelique, who was Barnabas’ wife.

Angelique regrets the curse, and tried to lift it while Barnabas was still alive. Now that he has died, she wants to prevent the second part of it from coming true. If she does not drive a stake through Barnabas’ heart before dusk, he will rise as a vampire.

Angelique summons much put-upon servant Ben. Ben had been Barnabas’ loyal friend, and to his great misery Angelique has used her powers to enslave him and force him to help in her evil schemes. Now she orders him to find Barnabas’ body, make a sharp stake out of holly wood, and report back to her.

Joshua violently disapproved of Angelique’s marriage to Barnabas and wants to be rid of her. He offers her $20,000 in gold if she will go away and leave behind a signed paper promising never to return. He leaves the paper and the passbook to the bank account containing the gold, and we see her sign.

It isn’t always very meaningful to compare prices across centuries. You couldn’t get a smartphone or a Lexus or a roll of toilet paper for any amount of money in the eighteenth century. But we can compare the price of gold from year to year. In 1795, the official price of gold in the USA was $19.39 per ounce. So, when Joshua offers Angelique $20,000 in gold, he is offering her 1031.46** ounces of it. As I’m writing this (17 January 2024,) the price of an ounce of gold is $2010.60. So, there is a sense in which Joshua pays Angelique $2,073,852.50 to leave Collinwood.

Ben returns with the stake; he and Angelique go to the mausoleum. There, Ben opens the secret room, remarking that Joshua showed it to him on his first day as a servant at Collinwood. Joshua had explained that he hid guns there for the Continentals during the War for Independence, and he wants Ben to keep it clean so that it will be ready in case it is ever needed again. Ben says that it is hard to believe that Joshua was a patriot during the Revolution, but he supposes he was. That Joshua still thinks it might be necessary to take up arms at short notice during the second term of the Washington administration suggests his politics might have been rather fervent.

In the secret room, Angelique and Ben see Barnabas’ coffin. She introduces Ben to the word “vampire,” then tells him to open the coffin. He refuses, and runs out of the room. He shuts the door, sealing her in the chamber with Barnabas. It is surprising that he can do this- perhaps her power over him is waning. She opens the coffin herself and picks up the stake and mallet. The music plays on the soundtrack, and she moves in time with it. She raises the mallet, we catch a glimpse of Barnabas*** in his coffin, and the episode ends.

Angelique prepares to stake Barnabas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

*Though he has been in the air for a bit longer than that. We first saw his portrait on the wall next to the front door of the great house of Collinwood in #204, and while the portrait was being painted an elaborate shot was tricked up in #195 to make it look like a portrait was on that spot.

**To be exact, 1031.45951521 ounces.

***A stand-in wearing heavy makeup, not Jonathan Frid.

Episode 336: People don’t keep secrets anymore

Early in the story of vampire Barnabas Collins, local physician Dave Woodard decided to call in an expert from out of town. Dr Julia Hoffman was doubly qualified as a specialist in psychiatry and hematology, and so she seemed to be ideally suited to make sense of the baffling occurrences taking place around Collinsport. Readers of Bram Stoker’s Dracula will recognize Woodard as the counterpart of Dr John Seward and Julia as Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

Now, Woodard realizes that Julia has gone over to Barnabas’ side. So, crafted to be the stolid Seward, he must try to do the work of Van Helsing. Today, he manages to meet and talk with the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah, persuades her to show him the secret chamber in the tomb where her body is buried, and confronts Julia.

Sarah complains that “People don’t keep secrets anymore.” She’s had it with this damn century.

All of this would have been very powerful had Woodard been played by Robert Gerringer. Gerringer played the part starting in May. For most of that time, Woodard had little information and no power to advance the plot. He was largely confined to scenes that groaned under the weight of recapping. Gerringer made this thankless role as interesting as anyone could, managing to shade Woodard’s internal life so that we could see how confusing it would be for a trained scientist to confront facts that could be explained only by reference to the supernatural.

Gerringer’s acting style stands apart from those of his cast-mates. Most of the cast of Dark Shadows knew nothing at all about daytime serials when they joined the show, and they don’t sound or move in ways that are typical of the genre. But Gerringer’s voice is that of every doctor in the soaps my mother watched when I was a kid. His presence on Dark Shadows is a constant reminder of the incongruity of a vampire as a regular character on a soap opera in 1967.

Unfortunately, Gerringer is not in this one. The National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians were on strike when this episode was made, and Gerringer refused to cross their picket line. So his part is being played by someone else, and the intended effect of the whole thing is badly blunted.

There’s also a scene between well-meaning governess Vicki and her depressing boyfriend Burke. There was some talk a while ago about them buying a “house by the sea,” and they make it clear today that we won’t be hearing much more about that. That never really amounted to a story, and it’s something of a disappointment that it is a dead end.