Nancy Barrett was taken ill not long before shooting began for this episode, and she was replaced in the role of Carolyn Stoddard by Diana Walker. Miss Walker had her sides letter perfect; her only flub comes when she delivers a line in a level conversational tone, and a moment later has to apologize for shouting. She doesn’t seem to have much idea of what was going on in the story, though. Her Carolyn is a calm, practical-minded homemaker of the sort you might find on another daytime soap of the period, not someone who is keeping a stray Frankenstein’s monster in the spare room. Besides, Miss Barrett is probably Dark Shadows’ most reliably entertaining performer, an impossible act for anyone to follow.
Aside from the two actors who at various times filled in for Vince O’Brien in the famously disposable role of Sheriff Patterson, I believe Miss Walker is the only person to have served as a substitute for a temporarily unavailable cast member. Many times, the makers of the show went out of their way to rearrange the shooting schedule or rewrite scripts to avoid substitutions. Many of the show’s fans were extremely young and extremely intense, so I suspect Miss Walker’s mail after this appearance would have included some ugly items that would have confirmed the producers in their reluctance to call up the reserves.
Today is the last time we see Jerry Lacy as lawyer Tony Peterson. Mr Lacy will be back in other roles. In 1969 and 1970, he and Diana Walker were reunited in the original Broadway cast of Play It Again, Sam, in which Mr Lacy scored a triumph with the same Humphrey Bogart imitation that is the basis of Tony’s character, while Miss Walker played Sharon and understudied Nancy.
Heiress Carolyn came running when her mother, matriarch Liz, woke her with her screams. Liz was having a nightmare about being buried alive. She tries Carolyn’s patience and ours with her obsession that this will in fact happen to her.
Liz tries to call her lawyer, Richard Garner. Whoever answers the phone tells Liz that Garner is not available, hardly surprising since it is the middle of the night. She responds that if he doesn’t call back within the hour, he need never call again. Since we last saw Garner in #246, and his name hasn’t been mentioned since #271, it seems like he may as well get some sleep.
Liz then calls Tony, a young lawyer in town who used to date Carolyn. Tony comes over and Liz hires him to help with some changes to her will. She dictates excerpts from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial” by way of a codicil protecting her from being buried alive, and he tells her he thinks she’s being weird.
The most prominent reference to Poe on Dark Shadows up to this point was in #442, when vampire Barnabas reenacted the plot of “The Cask of Amontillado” by bricking the fanatical Rev’d Mr Trask up in an alcove in his basement. Like Tony, Trask was played by Jerry Lacy, so it is possible that the writers hope the audience will recognize the connection.
Poe wrote punchy little short stories each of which leaves the reader with a single horrifying image. “The Cask of Amontillado” worked well as the basis for an episode, and the bricking up of Trask is one of the most enduring images in all of Dark Shadows. “The Premature Burial” could have made for the same kind of success, had Liz’ obsession begun and ended within one episode. But it has already gone on longer than that, and there is no end in sight. Each time we come back to it, the situation becomes more familiar and less urgent.
Meanwhile, Carolyn takes a glass of milk and a sandwich to Adam, a Frankenstein’s monster she is hiding in the long-deserted west wing of the house. Adam has little to do but read, and he has become quite intellectual. He is playing both sides of a game of chess when Carolyn arrives, pretending that she is his opponent. When she comes, he attempts a joke, pretending she has left him alone so long he does not remember her name. She is distressed about Liz’ obsessive fear of being buried alive, and so does not recognize that he is joking.
Carolyn looks at the chessboard and asks Adam who he is playing. He says that he is pretending to play her. He is smiling and relaxed when he admits this, and he starts joking again as he tells her about their imaginary games. Adam’s pretending that he did not remember Carolyn’s name was a weak joke, but he is actually pretty funny when he tells her that when he pretends they are playing, she doesn’t do as well as he does. She still does not realize that he is kidding, and reacts with horror. She says she doesn’t play chess; in #357, her uncle Roger mentioned that she does, but that she usually loses to him. Perhaps in the 44 weeks since then, she has given up the game altogether.
Adam shows Carolyn the book he has been reading, a volume of Sigmund Freud’s works, and is disappointed she has not already read it. When she tells him she is worried because of Liz’ condition, he invites her to sit down and says “Tell me about your mother,” suggesting that he is ready to set up shop as a psychoanalyst. Adam is being serious now, but this part of the exchange is hilarious.
Carolyn goes out to the terrace and looks at the night sky, wondering if Freud could help her understand what is happening with her mother. I live in the year 2024, and so I have difficulty imagining how people could ever have taken Freud seriously. But he was very very big in the 1960s, and in its first year Dark Shadows gave us a lot of heavy-handed Freudian symbolism and a number of storylines with obvious psychoanalytic themes. Longtime viewers will find it a reassuring sign of continuity that Freud is still around as the thinker “every twentieth century man should read.”
Tony joins Carolyn on the terrace. He greets her and sees that she has a book about Freud. “I don’t have to ask why you’re reading him,” he remarks. Carolyn asks if he is referring to her mother, and Tony’s response is so indiscreet he may as well spinning his finger around his temple and saying “Cuckoo, cuckoo!” It is clear enough that the concept of “confidential communication” is alien to the lawyers in Soap Opera Land, and now we see that “basic respect” is also very much on the optional list. Carolyn tells Tony to do whatever Liz asks, and starts crying.
I was startled by Carolyn’s crying turn, because it is the first time in the two hundred or so episodes she has appeared in thus far Nancy Barrett has given a subpar performance. The actors all had to work under virtually impossible conditions, so I rarely mention it when one of those who usually does well has a bad day at the office, but the 20 seconds or so she spends very obviously not crying in this scene mark the end of an extraordinary streak.
Tony embraces Carolyn and kisses her. Adam’s room in the west wing overlooks the terrace, and he spies on them while they kiss. After Carolyn excuses herself and goes back into the house, Adam comes up behind Tony, grabs him, forbids him to touch Carolyn, and throws him to the ground.
The first episode of Dark Shadows, broadcast on ABC-TV on 27 June 1966, was a moody, atmospheric Gothic drama, characterized above all by its hushed tone. For months afterward, the show was almost an essay on the theme of quietness. Now we come to the second anniversary of that premiere, and quietness is the last thing we hear.
This installment marks the final farewell of the show’s single loudest character, revenant witchfinder the Rev’d Mr Trask. In #519, Trask performed an exorcism on the witch variously known as Angelique Bouchard Collins and Cassandra Blair Collins. The exorcism seemed to be a great success; it ended with Angelique/ Cassandra vanishing into thin air, and she has not been seen since. That might have left someone watching Dark Shadows for the first time with the impression that it is a specifically Christian show and Trask is one of its heroes.
Today, they take steps to correct that impression. A man calling himself Nicholas Blair and claiming to be Angelique/ Cassandra’s brother has turned up on the great estate of Collinwood. In the basement of the Old House on the estate, he finds Trask’s skeleton. He conjures Trask up and interrogates him. Trask declares Nicholas to be a tool of the devil. Regular viewers know that this is something Trask says to all the fellas, but this time he is obviously correct. He goes into the same exorcism rite that produced such spectacular results with Angelique/ Cassandra. Nicholas simply turns around and gives him a sarcastic little round of applause. Nicholas keeps making demands of Trask. Trask takes a cross from under his cloak. Nicholas recoils from that. Trask vanishes, but his skeleton is still missing, suggesting that he has not found peace.
That Trask’s exorcism worked on Angelique/ Cassandra but not on Nicholas suggests that it is not a means through which God acts in the world, but is just another magical weapon that can be wielded with greater or lesser effect depending on the skill and strengths those involved. His loyalty to “THE ALMIGHTY!!!” has given Trask enough power to defeat Angelique/ Cassandra, but Nicholas ranks higher than she does in the hierarchy of “THE DE-VILLL!!!,” high enough that Trask’s mumbo-jumbo cannot reach him. The cross has its effect, but with that Trask is setting aside his own efforts and calling directly on the boss. Nicholas is quite certain that he can undo the effects of the exorcism, so for all we know, he might be able to call his own home office for help sufficient to overcome his aversion to the sign of the cross.
The show not only puts Christianity and the spiritual forces of darkness on a par as sources of magical power, they aren’t even the only such sources. Though we don’t hear about any of them today, scientists and doctors Peter Guthrie, Julia Hoffman, Eric Lang, and Timothy Eliot Stokes apparently acquired supernatural abilities along with their advanced degrees. We even know that Guthrie was a professor of psychology at Dartmouth College. So the Dartmouth Department of Psychological and Brian Sciences joins Christianity and diabolism as reservoirs of uncanny might.
In the great house on the estate, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard tells Nicholas that Angelique/ Cassandra alienated the Collins family by her dalliance with local attorney Tony Peterson. Nicholas goes to the village of Collinsport and calls on Tony, whom he realizes Angelique/ Cassandra ensorcelled into serving as her cat’s paw. Angelique/ Cassandra put Tony into a trance by having him strike his cigarette lighter; Nicholas achieves the same effect by opening his cigarette case. Tony really needs to stop smoking.
When he first sees Tony, Nicholas is stunned by his resemblance to Trask. They are both played by Jerry Lacy, and Angelique/ Cassandra told him that she chose him because he reminded her of her old acquaintance. We already know that there is a mystical connection between Tony and Trask; Tony was the medium through whom Trask spoke at the séance which led to his return to the world of the living. While he has Tony entranced, Nicholas extracts information from him that only Trask could have known. This suggests a notion of reincarnation that would have reminded viewers of what many of them probably thought Hindus and Buddhists believed, and would thus suggest a syncretistic approach to religion that would represent another step away from the Sunday-morning flavor that the ending of #519 might have left.
We return to the great house. Well-meaning governess Vicki opens the front door and finds her boyfriend, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. With this, a Christian world-view is pushed still further into the background, as a scene featuring Peter/ Jeff is enough to make anyone doubt the existence of a just and loving God.
Vicki and Peter/ Jeff talk about various events that don’t have anything to do with the show. He paws her awkwardly, and his hands dart to her neck as if he were about to strangle her. While he is out of the room for a moment, Trask materializes and tries to warn Vicki that “THE DE-VILLL!!!” is nearby. Before he can tell her that it’s Nicholas she should be worried about, Peter/ Jeff comes back in and starts yelling. At the sight of Peter/ Jeff, Trask wrinkles his nose and fades into nothingness, never to be seen again. Peter/ Jeff probably got a lot of that.
Yesterday, wiggéd witch Angelique/ Cassandra sent her cat’s paw Tony to kill sage Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes pulled “the old switcheroo” on him, and Tony drank from the glass into which he had put Angelique/ Cassandra’s poison. Today, we learn that Stokes gave Tony an emetic to save his life. Stokes calls mad scientist Julia Hoffman, MD to examine Tony and assist with the next stage of the battle against Angelique/ Cassandra.
Recovered, Tony has no idea why he obeyed Angelique/ Cassandra’s command to kill Stokes, and is ready to surrender to the police. Stokes tells him he is under the power of a witch, and enlists him in the battle against her.
Stokes takes out the memoirs of his ancestor Ben, who was Angelique’s cat’s paw in the eighteenth century. He does some automatic writing in Ben’s hand and finds that they must contact the spirit of the Rev’d Mr Trask, a witchfinder who inadvertently helped Angelique in those days. Fortunately, Trask, like Tony, was played by Jerry Lacy, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get hold of him. Stokes also finds that Trask was walled up in “the coffin room,” which Julia tells him is for some mysterious reason a nickname given to the space at the foot of the stairs in the basement of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Stokes decrees that he, Julia, and Tony must go to this room and hold a séance there.
On his way to the Old House, Tony follows Stokes’ instructions and stops at the main house on the estate and tells Angelique/ Cassandra that Stokes is dead. This follows a scene between Angelique/ Cassandra and her husband, sarcastic dandy Roger, in which Roger complains about her lack of interest in him. Her mind isn’t on the game of chess they are playing, she hasn’t been attentive to him for several nights, and she refuses to go on a honeymoon. Angelique/ Cassandra ensorcelled Roger into marrying her so that she could have a perch at Collinwood, and he seems to be slipping out of the spell’s power.
Stokes, Julia, and Tony gather in the coffin room. They begin the séance. This is the fifth séance we have seen on Dark Shadows, but the first that does not include well-meaning governess Vicki. In four of the previous five, it had been Vicki who went into the trance. On the other occasion, it was strange and troubled boy David who became the vessel through which the dead spoke to the living. The first three times Vicki served as the medium, she channeled the gracious Josette Collins, and when David filled that role he gave voice to David Radcliffe. In those days, Vicki was closely connected to Josette, perhaps a reincarnation of her, as David was another version of the cursed boy David Radcliffe. The final time Vicki spoke for the dead, she spoke for nine year old Sarah Collins, with whom she was no more closely connected than were any of a number of other characters. Sarah has no present-day counterpart, so her appearance at a séance suggested that Dark Shadows was moving away from its use of necromancy as a way of connecting characters from different time periods.
This time, Tony goes into the trance. In #481, Angelique/ Cassandra told Tony that she chose him as her cat’s paw because he resembled Trask, so when he is the medium through whom Trask speaks we are returning to Dark Shadows‘ original conception of how séances work. Trask mistakes Stokes for Ben, as Angelique did in a dream visitation last week. The brick wall behind which Trask’s remains are hidden bulges and is about to crumble when we fade to the credits.
True fans of Dark Shadows know that the episode’s real climax comes during those credits. Thayer David strolls onto the set under Louis Edmonds’ credit for Roger. He even looks into the camera when he realizes what he has done.
Yesterday, matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and her daughter Carolyn were in their drawing room quarreling about some family matters when a strange man stumbled into the house. The man was 6’6″ tall, his face was scarred, he trailed a length of chain from a shackle he wore on one ankle, and could speak only a few words. When Carolyn tuned the radio to an Easy Listening station, the man found that the listening was not at all easy for him. Saying “Not music!,” he smashed the radio. This prompted Liz to threaten him with a letter opener. Frightened, the man clutched at Carolyn. The situation escalated when Liz’ distant cousin Barnabas burst in and pointed a rifle at the man. Finally, the man ran out of the house, carrying Carolyn with him.
Today, Liz is moping in the foyer. Local man Tony Peterson, who had gone on a few dates with Carolyn some months ago, comes to the door. He and Liz discuss the situation. Liz laments the harsh tone she took with Carolyn during their argument. She tells Tony that she supposes there is a generational difference between them. He and Carolyn hide their feelings, while Liz expresses hers. This is an exceedingly strange thing for Liz to say- the whole foundation of her character is denial. In the first months of Dark Shadows, Liz was a central character, and the show was largely a study of that psychological defense mechanism and its consequences. She has moved to the margins of the action since then, but hasn’t changed her personality. Indeed, Liz’ conversation with Carolyn took a harsh turn precisely because she refused to face the unpleasant facts Carolyn was reporting to her.
Liz and Tony go to the Old House on the grounds of Liz’ estate, home to Barnabas. They find Barnabas’ servant Willie on the ground by the front door of that house; the door is open, and Willie is nursing a recent head wound. He confirms that the man had been there and that he was carrying Carolyn in his arms. He says that Carolyn appeared to be unconscious. Tony announces that he will go after them, and Willie tells him he will need a gun. “He’s strong, that Adam,” says Willie.
Liz demands to know why Willie called the man “Adam.” Willie denies that he did. That only irritates Liz, who insists that Willie tell her what he knows about the man. Willie repeats his denial, and says that he is worried about a nightmare. He keeps going on about this topic, to which Liz angrily responds “I don’t want to hear any more about your dream!”
Adam has taken Carolyn to an abandoned root cellar somewhere in the woods. This is a new set. Regular viewers, knowing what a rarity new sets are on a show with this one’s budget, will expect something important to happen there. What happens there today is that Adam and Carolyn struggle to communicate with each other. She asks him what he wants; he manages to say “Kill Barnabas!,” a goal which people who have been watching for the last several weeks will agree he has excellent reasons to pursue. He holds a burning pine cone and is surprised to find that it hurts when the fire reaches his hand; she is startled to find that he didn’t know that, and says that he is like a baby. She tries to leave the root cellar, but he won’t let her get to the door.
Liz spoke for the audience when she said she didn’t want to hear any more about Willie’s dream, but it is dramatized for us anyway. It ends with the image that frightens Willie the most, a wolf’s head. Longtime viewers can well understand why this might be a terrifying symbol to Willie. When Willie first worked for Barnabas, Barnabas habitually beat him with his heavy wooden cane topped with a metal handle in the shape of a wolf’s head. In those days, Barnabas was a vampire, and when he felt bloodlust dogs would howl. As Barnabas’ blood thrall, that sound would therefore tell Willie that either he himself would soon be drained of more blood, or that he would be forced to help Barnabas prey on someone else. So it makes sense that for Willie, terror has a canine face.
From #133, artist Sam Evans was compelled to paint a series of pictures that explained the evil intentions of undead blonde witch Laura Murdoch Collins, estranged wife of sarcastic dandy Roger Collins. In #146, Laura put a stop to Sam’s work by starting a fire that burned his hands so badly it seemed for a time he might never be able to paint again.
Sam shares his home, the “Evans cottage,” with his daughter Maggie, who is The Nicest Girl in Town and a waitress at the diner in the Collinsport Inn. Between her earnings there and the paintings Sam sells, the Evanses make a living, but it isn’t such a grand living that he can turn down any commissions, even very eccentric ones. Moreover, his work space entirely dominates the interior of the cottage. In the early days of the show, Sam’s old friend Burke Devlin often stopped by, and the conversation always turned to reminiscences of Burke’s youthful days of honest poverty. Nowadays the most frequent visitor is Maggie’s fiancé, hardworking fisherman Joe Haskell. Sam is delighted with the prospect of this upwardly mobile laborer as a son-in-law. When a representative of the moneyed world visits Sam or Maggie at home, as New York art dealer Portia Fitzsimmons did in #193 and old world gentleman Barnabas Collins did in #222, the contrast between their manner and the humble surroundings is meant to jolt us. The Evans cottage is therefore our window on the working class of Collinsport. When the troubles of the ancient and esteemed Collins family have an effect there, Dark Shadows is telling us that the whole town is dependent on the businesses they own and suffers as a result of their problems.
Yesterday, Barnabas came back to the cottage and brought Sam a very odd commission indeed. He presented a painting of a lovely young woman in eighteenth century garb and offered Sam $500* to paint over the image so that before morning the woman would look to be “about 200 years old.” Sam wasn’t in a position to refuse that much money, even though Barnabas wouldn’t explain why he wanted him to do such a thing.
If Sam knew what the audience knows, he would likely have turned the job down even if Barnabas had offered $500,000,000. The woman in the portrait is Angelique, and like Laura she is an undead blonde witch. In the 1790s, Angelique cursed Barnabas and made him a vampire. In #466, Barnabas’ vampirism went into remission. Shortly thereafter, the portrait made its way to the great house of Collinwood, where Roger became obsessed with it. In #473, Roger returned from an unexplained absence with a new wife. She is Angelique, wearing a black wig and calling herself Cassandra. From #366-#461, Dark Shadows had been a costume drama set in the 1790s; during this segment, we saw that Angelique was a far more dynamic and brutal menace than Laura ever was. Sam would hardly want to involve himself in a battle with this wiggéd witch.
For his part, Barnabas first appeared on camera in #210 and #211. But his portrait was first seen hanging in the foyer at Collinwood in #205, having been prefigured in #195. Dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis became obsessed with the portrait of Barnabas. Willie could hear a heartbeat pounding from the portrait in #208 and #209, and followed its sound to the crypt where Barnabas was trapped in his coffin. As Roger’s obsession with Angelique’s portrait would bring her back to the world of the living, so Willie’s obsession with Barnabas’ portrait led to his return.
In the opening teaser, we see Sam working on the painting. He tells it that he can’t understand why Barnabas would want to disfigure such a pretty face, then resumes his task. The camera zooms in on the painting, as it had zoomed in on Barnabas’ portrait in #208 and #209, and the soundtrack plays the same heartbeat. Sam doesn’t react- he can’t hear it. It is addressed to the audience, especially to those members of the audience who remember the show as it was 13 months ago.
Angelique/ Cassandra is in the gazebo on the grounds of Collinwood. She is wearing a hooded cloak to conceal the aging she has already experienced as a result of Sam’s work. Her cat’s paw Tony Peterson, a local attorney, shows up, responding to her psychic summons. She entrances him with a flame and he tells her that the artist who has been in touch with the Collinses most frequently of late is Sam Evans. From this she concludes that Sam is aging her portrait at Barnabas’ bidding. Before Angelique/ Cassandra and Tony can go their separate ways, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard comes upon them.
Tony and Carolyn met in #357. In that episode, he was an instance of Jerry Lacy’s Humphrey Bogart imitation. A hard-boiled materialist, Tony had grown up in Collinsport as a working-class boy. He resented the Collinses and attributed all of their unusual characteristics to their wealth and social prominence. At that time, Barnabas was still a vampire and Carolyn was under his power. As a blood thrall, she knew that there was more to life than could be explained by Tony’s reductive logic, but she wasn’t free to offer any explanations. When Tony saw Barnabas biting Carolyn in #463, he interpreted their embrace as a sign of a sexual relationship.
Now their roles are reversed. It is unclear what Carolyn remembers from her time under Barnabas’ control; Nancy Barrett often plays the character as if she remembers everything, but the dialogue doesn’t give her much support for that, and in this scene she is as this-worldly as Tony was in the Autumn of 1967. She interprets Tony and Angelique/ Cassandra’s meeting at the gazebo as proof positive of an adulterous liaison, and declares she will report it to Roger. When Tony tells her that Angelique/ Cassandra has some mysterious power, Carolyn is dismissive, declaring that the Collinses are the ones who have all the power in this town. Tony tries to explain that the power Angelique/ Cassandra has is of an entirely different order from the power their ownership of capital gives the Collinses, and Carolyn responds with unconcealed contempt.
Angelique/ Cassandra knocks on the door of the Evans cottage. Sam opens the door. She ignores his objections and enters. While he keeps ordering her to get out of his house, she stands next to the portrait as he has aged it and points out her resemblance to it. He is astounded, but keeps telling her to leave. She says that she has no grievance against him and that no harm will come to him if he hands the painting over to her. He refuses. She heads out.
Angelique/ Cassandra has barely closed the door behind her when Sam has trouble seeing. After a moment, he realizes he has been struck blind. She comes back in, takes the painting, tells him she warned him, and leaves.
Over the years, several members of the cast said on the record that Sam’s blindness was actor David Ford’s idea. He thought that if he could wear dark glasses it wouldn’t bother the audience that he read all his lines off the teleprompter.
In 2022, a commenter on Danny Horn’s post about this episode on his blog Dark Shadows Every Day identified the portraits of Angelique as the work of ABC Art Department specialist Joseph Guilfoyle:
You asked if anyone knew who painted these portraits. I can verify that the portraits of Angelique were painted by Joseph Guilfoyle. He was an artist in the Art Department at ABC. He was my Godfather and his daughter remembers this very well as it made her a bit of a celebrity at the time. Portraits were not commissioned out but instead were created in the Art Department as it was filled with many talented artists.
Also worthy of note are the two facial makeups representing Angelique’s aging. It’s no wonder they didn’t have the personnel to make David Ford’s fake mustache look convincing when they were lavishing all the work on turning Lara Parker into two quite distinct old crones.
The costumers were involved in a famous production error in the final scene. Angelique/ Cassandra’s hooded cloak cuts off above her knees. There is no old age makeup on her legs, which are featured from every angle, making a ludicrous contrast with her face and wig.
Dr Julia Hoffman is in the front parlor of the house of her fellow mad scientist, Eric Lang. She is on the telephone, asking the operator to connect her with the police. Even though she has lived in the Collinsport area for months now, she is still surprised that the sheriff’s office doesn’t have an emergency number.
Julia locked the door to the parlor; Lang is outside it with a gun, and recovering vampire Barnabas Collins is knocking and calling her name. They want to stop her reporting to the police that Lang is building a Frankenstein’s monster with body parts retrieved from the cemetery, and that he was planning to cut a living man’s head off to use as the last piece of the creature. Lang plans to bring the body to life by draining Barnabas’ “life-force” into it. Barnabas hopes this will free him of the vampire curse once and for all, and is desperate to complete the experiment.
Barnabas shouts that Julia should remember “someone.” When he can’t come up with the name, Lang prompts him with a yell of “Dave Woodard!” Barnabas and Julia killed local physician Dave Woodard in #341; Julia hangs up the phone, realizing that if the operator ever does manage to find a police officer any investigation of Lang would likely expose her as a murderer.
Barnabas has told Lang a great deal about himself. For example, in #467, Lang was the first person Barnabas told that his vampirism was the result of a curse placed on him by wicked witch Angelique. So returning viewers can believe that Barnabas might have confided in Lang about the murder of Dr Woodard. But it would be strange for him to have done so off-screen. And just Friday, Barnabas explained to Lang that the reason he thinks Julia can be trusted with the secret of the experiment is that she has a crush on him.* He hasn’t had much time to share more information with Lang since then, and if Lang had already known that Julia couldn’t call the cops without exposing herself to a murder charge Barnabas wouldn’t have needed to mention her crush on him. The likeliest explanation is that the loud and clear exclamation of “Dave Woodard!” is not Lang prompting Barnabas at all; rather, it was Addison Powell prompting Jonathan Frid. The result is a blooper that seriously confuses the relationships among Lang, Barnabas, and Julia. It’s early enough in the episode that it really is odd they didn’t stop tape and start over.
At any rate, they never mention Woodard again. He was introduced early in the vampire storyline. He was the counterpart to Dr John Seward, the physician in Dracula who realizes that all the patients who are suddenly showing up with puncture wounds on their necks and massive blood loss need care he is not trained to provide, and calls in his old med professor, Dr Van Helsing. Julia was the Van Helsing analogue, but she wound up siding with the vampire and killing her onetime friend. It is appropriate that the last reference to Woodard comes in this, the second episode of Dark Shadows with no cast members introduced before Barnabas. From now on, the daylight world Woodard represented and tried to restore is no longer present even as a memory.
Julia lets Barnabas and Lang into the parlor, and asks Lang to promise that he won’t kill anyone. He gives such a promise. She is unconvinced, but agrees not to call the police. She also tells Lang she will continue to oppose the experiment.
On the terrace of the great house of Collinwood, Barnabas and Julia talk about Lang’s experiment. Angelique, wearing a black wig and calling herself Cassandra, lives in the house as the wife of sarcastic dandy Roger, and the terrace is surrounded by trees, fences, and other prime screens for eavesdroppers. Barnabas and Julia know this well, as each of them has eavesdropped on important conversations here themselves.
Of course Angelique/ Cassandra comes by and hears everything. Barnabas does catch her, grab her, call her by her right name, and vow that she won’t stop him. After he lets her go, he moans to Julia that it was foolish of them to discuss their plans there. That underlines the foolishness of an idea key to the plan, that after Lang’s creature has been animated Angelique will never realize that Barnabas is dwelling within it and place a fresh curse on it. Barnabas assumes that Angelique, who has transcended time itself to pursue him, will just give up and go away once she sees that his original body is dead, and won’t have any questions about the new guy living at his doctor’s house.
Angelique summons her new cat’s paw, lawyer Tony Peterson. Jerry Lacy plays Tony. From #365 to #461, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s. In that phase of the show, Mr Lacy played the Rev’d Mr Trask, a fanatical witchfinder who inadvertently gave Angelique a great deal of assistance in her campaign to destroy the Collins family and those close to them. Most of the characters in the 1790s segment represent a commentary of some kind on the characters the same actors play in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s. Tony and Trask have seemed to be an exception. In 1967, Tony was introduced through his profession and served mainly as an instance of Mr Lacy’s famous Humphrey Bogart imitation. Trask did end up functioning as a lawyer in a witchcraft trial, and his lunatic shouting about “THE ALMIGHTY!!” and “THE DE-VILLLL!!!!” were occasionally suggestive of what Bogart might have ended up doing if Captain Queeg’s testimony before the court-martial in The Caine Mutiny had gone on for nineteen weeks. Otherwise, there didn’t seem to be any fruitful points of comparison between the two.
Angelique tells Tony that the reason she chose him as her servant was that he reminded her of Trask. She orders him to go to Lang’s and steal a talisman that can guard against witches. At that, Tony shouts “Against you!,” and he sounds very much like Trask. Perhaps we are to think that a secular education and a steady diet of Hollywood movies could have turned the farcically warped Trask into a basically reasonable fellow like Tony, but that there is no strength in those things to stand up to a force like Angelique.
The talisman was a gift to Lang from Barnabas. Lang refuses to keep it on his person, even though it saved his life to clutch it when Angelique was making his heart beat so fast it was about to burst. Lang shows up at Barnabas’ house, under the false impression he received a telephone call from Barnabas. Barnabas, who has no telephone in his house, explains to Lang that Angelique has lured him away. When he learns that Lang has left the talisman in his desk drawer at home, he insists on accompanying him back there.
It is too late. Tony has already stolen the talisman and delivered it to Angelique. She looks at it and says that Lang will not be able to save either Barnabas or himself. Presumably, not even by reminding him of his lines.
The more efficient a means of communication is, the sooner it is likely to be choked with unwanted messages, some of them harmful to recipients who engage with them. We describe this tendency by saying that eventually, everything turns into email.
One of the most potent means of communication on Dark Shadows have been dream visitations from supernatural beings. As early as #10, matriarch Liz, who in waking life resolutely denied that any paranormal phenomena could be found on the estate of Collinwood, writhed as she slept in her armchair, muttering about ghosts. Since then, we’ve seen undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins and the spirit of the benevolent Josette send competing dreams to influence strange and troubled boy David; the mysterious Widows have beckoned Liz to a watery grave; the ghost of little Sarah Collins visited David and told him all about her big brother, then-vampire Barnabas; revenant Jeremiah Collins and phantom Nathan Forbes have given important information to well-meaning governess Vicki; and several characters have had vivid dreams of unspecified, but obviously supernatural, provenance.
Today, wicked witch Angelique visits Barnabas in a dream and tells him that she is launching a malware attack on the dreamers of Collinsport. It’s going to be sequential; it will take over each user’s wetware in turn, compelling them to forward it to someone else. With each iteration, the worm will become more complex, until it reaches Barnabas in a dream of his own. When he accesses it, he will revert to vampirism.
On his Dark Shadows Every Day, Danny Horn made a detailed comparison of Angelique’s explanation of the Dream Curse with the introduction to the 1931 film Frankenstein. He’s convinced me that the reference was intentional. Since there is a version of Frankenstein playing out on Dark Shadows right now, they are assuring us that the Dream Curse storyline will intersect with that one.
Angelique’s explanation only takes up the last act of the episode. There is a lot of other good stuff in the earlier parts, most revolving around Jerry Lacy’s character Tony Peterson. Tony was first introduced as a showcase for Mr Lacy’s famous Humphrey Bogart imitation; he has discarded that now. He still wears a brown suit and a tan overcoat, but sounds like Jerry Lacy.
Tony quarrels with heiress Carolyn about her relationship with Barnabas. She tells him that she and Barnabas have no romantic interest in each other, and tells him to go ask Barnabas if he doesn’t believe her. He goes to Barnabas’ house, and gives Jonathan Frid a rare opportunity to play intentional comedy.
Angelique, who, under the name Cassandra, has married sarcastic dandy Roger Collins and is living with him in the great house at Collinwood, steals Tony’s lighter and uses it to cast a spell on him. She needs a helper, and has decided to enslave Tony. Mr Lacy and Lara Parker are such fun together that, decades after the show, a company called Big Finish brought them back as Tony and Cassandra in a series of audio dramas. Called The Tony and Cassandra Mysteries, they were among the most popular of the Dark Shadows-themed plays Big Finish put out. I haven’t heard any of them- I’m too stingy to pay $37.41 to download an audio file- but if the scene the two of them play in the gazebo at Collinwood today is any indication, I’m sure they’re wonderful.
The very beginning of the episode is good too. Carolyn is coming back from a trip and has her hands full of luggage, so she knocks on the front door of the great house rather than look for her key. Angelique/ Cassandra answers. Carolyn has no idea who she is. When Angelique/ Cassandra identifies herself as Roger’s wife, Carolyn is shocked that Roger has remarried. She is even more shocked when Angelique/ Cassandra says that she and Roger had known each other only a day when they were married. Nancy Barrett is a high-energy actress, and a tightly-focused one. Her reactions to Angelique/ Cassandra’s successive announcements are like a laser light show on the theme of stunned disbelief.
Carolyn mentions that David decided to stay on in Boston for a few days. Since David is about ten years old, we might expect some explanation as to his lodging, but none is forthcoming. Some time ago we heard about an “Aunt Catherine” in Boston; I suppose he might be at her house, but hey, if the alternative is Collinwood he wouldn’t be any less safe if he were roughing it around Mass and Cass.
We open in the old cemetery north of town, where well-meaning governess Vicki and matriarch Liz are looking for the grave of Vicki’s old boyfriend Peter. Vicki last saw Peter this past Friday, which was over 170 years ago. That discrepancy was the result of some time travel she did in between. Vicki met Peter while spending nineteen weeks in the late eighteenth century. She came back home on Monday. By the end of her visit to the past, Vicki and Peter were both scheduled to be hanged for their many crimes. Vicki was whisked back to 1968 at the last possible instant, escaping by such a narrow margin that she had rope burns on her neck.
Vicki and Liz find Peter’s grave marker. Liz remarks that his date of death is the same as today’s date- 3 April. This sets Vicki off. She says that the hangings took place at dusk, that it’s dusk now, and that Peter is therefore being hanged even as they speak. Liz declares that this is gibberish. The date on the stone is 3 April 1795, and today’s date is 3 April 1968. Vicki tries to explain that everything that ever happened is happening over and again someplace. Yesterday, Liz heard similarly opaque verbiage from her distant cousin Barnabas. She didn’t buy this line when Barnabas was pitching it, and she isn’t any more impressed when she hears it from Vicki.
Longtime viewers of Dark Shadows are likely to make a connection. From December 1966 to March 1967, Vicki led the battle against the show’s first supernatural menace, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. When she saw the dates on which Laura’s previous incarnations immolated themselves along with their young sons, Vicki realized that she acted at intervals of exactly one hundred years. Laura was an embodiment of the cyclical nature of time; fighting her, Vicki is trying to break the cycle of death and rebirth, like a comely young Buddha.
I don’t think the show is making a serious metaphysical point by developing this theme. When you’re telling a story about a place where the usual laws of nature don’t apply, you need to substitute some other set of rules the audience can understand in order to create suspense. The power of anniversaries will do as well as anything else.
Back in the great house of Collinwood, we see Liz’ daughter Carolyn come in the front door wearing riding clothes and carrying a crop. This is the first indication that the Collinses have horses. In the early months of Dark Shadows, the family was running out of money, the estate was decrepit and mortgaged to the hilt, and they were barely holding onto control of their business. The stories those circumstances generated never went anywhere, and they’ve gradually been retconning the Collinses to be richer and richer. If they’re up to horse ownership now, by next year they might have a luxury yacht and a private jet.
The drawing room doors open, and lawyer Tony Peterson emerges. He quarrels with Carolyn about their last encounter. That was two weeks ago in story time, but we saw it before Vicki left for the past in November. It’s an even deeper dive for us than that makes it sound, because our view of Tony has changed profoundly in the interim. He was first introduced as an example of Jerry Lacy’s famous Humphrey Bogart imitation, and he still is that. But in the 1790s segment, Mr Lacy played the Rev’d Mr Trask, the fanatical witchfinder who hounded Vicki to her death and occasioned many other disasters. By now, we have come to see most of the 1960s characters as the (not necessarily dark) shadows cast by their eighteenth century counterparts. When Tony shows up today we find ourselves trying to figure out what it is about Collinsport in the twentieth century that could turn a holy terror like Trask into a basically nice guy like Tony.
Carolyn browbeats Tony into coming back at 8 pm to take her to dinner. He leaves, and Carolyn’s distant cousin, Barnabas the vampire, enters. Barnabas asks Carolyn if she’s noticed a change in Vicki. She has no idea what he’s talking about. He asks if she’s “more like you.” Thus first-time viewers learn that Carolyn is under Barnabas’ power. Returning viewers learn something, too. Yesterday’s episode ended with Barnabas about to bite Vicki, but cut to the closing credits before he sank his teeth into her. We’ve seen that before. Now we know that he has finally gone through with it.
In the opening scenes, Vicki showed absolutely no sign that anything had happened to her; Carolyn hasn’t noticed any change in her either. Soon, Vicki and Liz come home, and Vicki doesn’t react to Barnabas any differently than she had before he bit her. The people Barnabas has bitten have shown a wide variety of effects afterward. Perhaps Vicki will be the first victim who just can’t be bothered.
Vicki has a painting with her that she bought in town after she and Liz visited Peter’s grave. It turns out to be a portrait of Angelique, the wicked witch whose curse made Barnabas a vampire in the 1790s. That portrait first appeared in #449, a sign to the characters that Angelique’s evil spirit was still at work and to the audience that actress Lara Parker would be back on the show after the costume drama insert ended. Barnabas is upset to see this token of his old nemesis, and leaves the house. Vicki does not consciously remember the events she saw during her visit to the past, but when she sees Barnabas go she tells Liz that it makes sense that he would not like the picture.
Tony returns and spends a few moments twitting Carolyn for her glamorous attire, describing the homely pastimes in which a working class boy like himself whiles away his idle moments. This prompts her to tease him back. Viewers who remember Tony and Carolyn’s previous interactions will recognize this as their style of flirtatious banter. They agree to go to dinner.
Before Tony and Carolyn can leave, we cut to Barnabas, standing in the window of his own house and staring at the great house. He calls to Carolyn, summoning her to come to him immediately. We cut back to the great house, and see Carolyn’s face go blank while Tony is still talking. She excuses herself, telling him she will meet him later. He is outraged, and vows he will not wait for her.
In Barnabas’ house, Carolyn tells Barnabas she objects to his summons. Irritated by this, he starts talking about Vicki. He says that he couldn’t understand why biting her did not bring her under his power, but that seeing the portrait explained it to him. The witch is interfering with his efforts. Carolyn laughs at the idea of a witch. This is a bit odd. Carolyn has lived her whole life up to this point in a haunted house and is having a conversation with a vampire. It wouldn’t seem to be a stretch for her to believe in witches.
Barnabas has a bad habit of leaving his front window uncovered. Many times, we have seen people peer into that window and discover Barnabas’ secrets. Now, Tony sees Barnabas bite Carolyn’s neck.
Carolyn goes home to the great house and finds Tony in the foyer. She is delighted at the idea that he is waiting to go on their date, but such is not the case. He is there to berate her for her perverse relationship with her cousin Barnabas and to storm out.
In this, we see the first point of similarity between Tony and Trask. Trask was right that there was a witch at Collinwood and right that the witch was the source of all the troubles afflicting the Collinses. But he was wrong about her identity, and wrong about the means to combat her. Likewise, Tony is right that Carolyn and Barnabas are manipulating him, and is right that their relationship is unwholesome. But he has no understanding of their goals, and his belief that their relationship is sexual is quite mistaken.
Carolyn’s protest that Barnabas is merely her cousin, like Tony’s indignant implication that their family relationship makes what they are doing incest, is rather strained. In the cemetery, Liz mentioned that Daniel Collins was her great-great grandfather, which would make Daniel’s sister Millicent Carolyn’s great-great-great-great aunt. When Millicent and Daniel were introduced during the 1790s segment, Barnabas’ father Joshua identified them as his second cousins. That was a distant enough relative that Joshua considered Millicent a potential marriage partner for either Joshua’s brother Jeremiah or for Barnabas himself. Since Barnabas and Carolyn are second cousins five times removed, nothing going on between them could very well be called incestuous.
Later, Barnabas goes to the drawing room in the great house and looks at the portrait of Angelique. To his surprise, Carolyn is waiting for him. She tells him that she doesn’t want to be his blood thrall anymore. She declares that he loves Vicki and that she has her own life to live. He is too busy to discuss the matter with her, and she leaves.
Barnabas cuts the portrait out of the frame, and throws it into the fireplace. He gives a little speech about how this is the only way Angelique can be destroyed. He turns from the fire, and sees that the portrait has regenerated. Angelique’s laughter sounds in the air, and Barnabas realizes that she is present.
This is not the first time a portrait of an undead blonde witch has been thrown into the fire in the drawing room, prompting a woman’s disembodied voice to make itself heard. In #149, Laura’s estranged husband, Roger Collins, threw into it a painting featuring her with their son, strange and troubled boy David. When that painting burned, we heard a scream coming from no one we could see. Whether the screamer was Laura or benevolent ghost Josette was never explained. What was clear was that burning the painting accomplished none of the goals Roger may have had in mind, as Barnabas’ incineration of this painting serves none of his purposes.
When Dark Shadows debuted in June 1966, it was a Gothic romance in which characters sometimes equivocated about whether they were using the word “ghost” metaphorically to refer to present troubles caused by past conflicts or literally to refer to things that go bump in the night.
That version of the series ended with the story of undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. In Laura’s months on the show, her arc absorbed such major plot elements as the conflict between high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins and local man Burke Devlin, the psychological problems of strange and troubled boy David, David’s relationship with his well-meaning governess Vicki, and the tensions between the ancient and esteemed Collins family and the working class people of the town of Collinsport. By the time Laura went up in smoke in #191 and #192, there was no life remaining in any open narrative thread, and Dark Shadows 1.0 was at an end.
Dark Shadows 2.0 launched in #193 with the introduction of seagoing con man Jason McGuire. Jason was an in-betweener who would tie up the loose ends remaining from the 25 weeks before Laura joined the gallery of characters and facilitate the introduction of Laura’s successor as a major supernatural menace, vampire Barnabas Collins. Jason kept himself busy blackmailing reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, his sidekick Willie Loomis accidentally released Barnabas, and the show kept dropping hints that when Liz finally stood up to Jason all of the original secrets would be laid bare.
The makers of Dark Shadows didn’t do much advance planning, so they kept Jason on the show for 13 weeks after Barnabas premiered while they tried to come up with some other way to fill the time. When Jason’s plan finally blew up in his face, they even left some of the old secrets still buried, most notably the question of where Vicki originally came from.
Barnabas finally killed Jason in #275, and he hasn’t been mentioned in a while. But he is not forgotten. As we open today, lawyer Tony Peterson has caught heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard in his office, rummaging through his safe. Tony has been dating Carolyn and is clearly very much attracted to her. He invites her to tell him a story that will give him an excuse not to call the police. She has to think fast to come up with one, and what she settles on is a version of the story of Jason and Liz.
Tony knows that Carolyn was trying to steal a notebook that he had put in his safe. This notebook was the property of his newest client, Julia Hoffman, a permanent guest at the great house of Collinwood. Carolyn tells Tony that Julia was blackmailing Liz. The notebook, she claims, is a diary kept by a man with whom Liz had an affair, and it contains proof that the man was Carolyn’s father. Julia knew the man and knew that he was planning to come to Collinwood to squeeze money out of Liz in return for his silence, but he died before he could do so. Julia took the diary and picked up where he left off.
Since Tony’s professional ethics will not allow him to be a party to blackmail, this is the one story that could give him a plausible reason not to report Carolyn’s crime to the police. It also gives him a reason to feel sorry for the Collinses, whom he hated when we first saw him, removing an obstacle to the possibility he might fall in love with Carolyn.
The echo of the Jason/ Liz story in the image of Liz forced to accept a blackmailer as a member of the household offers a great deal more than narrative convenience to regular viewers. The audience knew what Jason was threatening to tell if Liz did not submit to his demands, but the characters did not. One idea that some among them seemed to suspect was that Jason was Vicki’s father and Liz was her mother. Indeed, the makers of the show did plan to explain Vicki’s paternity at the end of the blackmail arc, a plan they abandoned so late that the climactic episode runs some minutes short. When Carolyn brings up the idea of her mother being blackmailed to keep it secret that she bore a child out of wedlock, those of us who have been watching all along will realize that she was among those who suspected that this was the secret that gave Jason his hold over her.
The audience knows that there will be no romance between Tony and Carolyn, because we know that she is Barnabas’ blood thrall. Barnabas sent her after Julia’s notebook, because it contains the records of an experiment in which she tried to cure him of vampirism. It would expose him were it to fall into the hands of the authorities. Since Barnabas wants to rid himself of Julia, perhaps by killing her, perhaps by driving her totally insane, he cannot leave such a document out of his possession.
Dark Shadows has come to as much of a dead end now as it had when Laura’s arc was ending. None of the ongoing stories has room for more than a few steps of further development, and if they keep running through those steps at the current pace everything will be resolved in a couple of days. Bringing up Jason, whose introduction marked the beginning of Dark Shadows 2.0, leads us to wonder if they have something up their sleeves that will launch Dark Shadows 3.0.
Tony takes Carolyn home to Collinwood, where he confronts Julia. He tells her what Carolyn told him. She denies it, and says that she will write a letter entrusting the notebook to him to remain unread unless something happens to her, in which case he will read it and hand it over to the authorities. That satisfies him that he isn’t a party to blackmail, and he agrees to her terms.
For the last couple of days, Barnabas has been using black magic in an attempt to break Julia’s grip on sanity. Her clear thinking and calm demeanor in this scene prove that this attempt has failed. The only open question in the only ongoing conflict is, therefore, whether Barnabas will try to murder Julia. She is such a valuable character that it is hard to feel any real suspense about whether he will succeed in killing her, but there is a chance that he will make an attempt.
David and Vicki have come home from a trip to Boston. David enters the drawing room, sees Julia, and greets her. She can barely pay attention to him long enough to say hello. He asks if she is all right; again, she is clearly not at all focused on him. She excuses herself, saying she has to go to Barnabas’ house.
David’s relationships to the other characters were the engine that drove Dark Shadows 1.0, and when Barnabas began to pose a danger to David that same engine accelerated the pace of Dark Shadows 2.0. Julia has been central to the plot for some time; that she can’t be bothered to take any notice of David tells us that that engine has fallen apart. Whatever they are planning to do next week, David won’t be at the heart of it.
David leaves the drawing room. He gets as far as the foyer. There, he sees his friend, the ghost of Barnabas’ ten year old sister Sarah. He tells Sarah that he has been on a trip. She asks where he went. He says he went to China. “Oh,” she responds, blandly. “You’re not impressed?” “No, my father’s friends used to go to China on their ships.” “Well, I didn’t really go to China. I went to Boston.” “BOSTON!!!” Sarah exclaims. “I went to Boston once!” She’s electrified. It’s adorable beyond belief.
Suddenly, Sarah looks disturbed and says she has to go. David asks why, and she says there is trouble brewing at the Old House. Again, David has been sidelined. If there is going to be any more action, it will have to come from fresh sources.
The Old House is Barnabas’ house, and that’s where we go next. We see Julia arriving there. She tells Barnabas that Vicki is back. He is mildly interested. She then tells him that she has seen Sarah. Barnabas longs to see Sarah, and is tormented that she will appear to others but not to him. He accuses Julia of lying. She insists that she is not, and taunts him with Sarah’s refusal to appear to him. He grabs Julia by the throat. He has done this before as a threat, but this time it looks like he really means to strangle her. Before he can, a wind blows the door open and the candles out, and Sarah walks in. She approaches her brother, glaring at him.
Dark Shadows Commentary 