vampire lore – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 1114: I am the stranger

In June, Dark Shadows was set in an alternate universe to which vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman had traveled. Julia and Barnabas found a comatose woman. Barnabas took one look at her, saw how silent and immobile she was, and fell in love. He’s dead half the time, so we can’t judge him for that reaction.

The woman’s name was Roxanne Drew, and Barnabas’ love for her survived even after she regained the ability to walk and talk. Roxanne didn’t make it to the original continuity when Barnabas and Julia returned there in July. Barnabas’ sorrow for her was lightened in #1081, when he met Roxanne’s counterpart in his native universe. Their relationship took a turn for the worse in #1106, when he discovered that she, too, was a vampire. In #1107, he found out that Roxanne was alive in 1840, and that she underwent a mysterious and terrible change in that year.

Now, Barnabas is keeping Roxanne chained in her coffin in the secret room behind his bookcase. Julia has traveled back in time to 1840 and hopes to prevent a disaster that has destroyed the great house of Collinwood and its residents. Trying some mumbo-jumbo that he hopes will lead him to join Julia in the past, Barnabas has a vision of a tombstone saying that she died on 6 October 1840. He and his friend Timothy Eliot Stokes go to the graveyard and see such a tombstone there. Barnabas says that 6 October is three days away; the episode was originally broadcast on 1 October 1970, which is more than three days from 6 October. But there is a weekend in between, and days when the show isn’t on don’t count.

The stones. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas says that he must find a way to travel back in time before 6 October. Stokes asks why, and Barnabas says he himself doesn’t understand how it works. But regular viewers know that anniversaries have a power in the cosmos of Dark Shadows that physical laws have in our world. If an event took place exactly 130 years ago, or any other number of years ago, it is possible for people in the present to interact with that event in ways they cannot on other days of the year. That has been the case ever since undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins was on the show, before Barnabas made his first appearance.

Julia’s grave is next to one commemorating Minerva Trask, a hateful biddy who was one of the most effective villains during the period in 1969 when the show was set in 1897. That turns out to be foreshadowing. The scenes with Barnabas and Stokes in a contemporary setting are a prologue to an episode set mostly in 1840. Julia meets the living Roxanne, who is accompanied by Lamar Trask, a kinsman of Minerva’s loathsome husband Gregory.

Julia is a guest at Collinwood, impersonating Barnabas’ imaginary daughter and telling the family to await the arrival of her brother, Barnabas Junior, who looks remarkably like their late father. Julia is in the drawing room, talking to herself about how much she misses Barnabas, when Roxanne enters. Roxanne makes a little joke about talking to inanimate objects, and introduces herself as the sister of Samantha Drew Collins, wife of the missing Quentin Collins and lady of the house.

Trask enters. Julia is startled to see him. Roxanne asks Julia to guess what business Trask is in. She says she could not possibly, and Trask protests that guessing games are silly. That’s a shame. Julia must have seen What’s My Line?; we can imagine her asking “Is there a product connected with what you do? Is the product bigger than a bread box? Is the product alive? Are your services equally available to men and women?” etc.

Roxanne says that Lamar is an undertaker. She spits the word out, and asks him sarcastically if he prefers to be called a mortician. She reviles his profession in quite vigorous language. The dramatic date may be 1840, but at this moment we are very clearly in the aftermath of Jessica Mitford’s 1963 book The American Way of Death, an extremely influential polemic against the mortuary industry.

Lamar insists that Roxanne go out on the terrace to talk with him privately. When they are gone, Julia wonders to herself what will happen later this year to turn Roxanne into a vampire. She really ought to know. She released Barnabas from his chained coffin the other day, hoping that he would already be her friend returned from the future. But instead he was the same monster sealed up there in the 1790s, who had no idea who she was. Had his old friend Ben Stokes not shown up in the nick of time, Barnabas would have killed Julia then and there. He has gone on to take other victims, killing some of them, and remains at large. So it seems quite likely that Barnabas will bite Roxanne to death, causing her to rise as a vampire. When that happens, Julia will be to blame.

This is a temporal paradox. Julia hadn’t traveled back to 1840 when she first met the vampiric Roxanne, and Barnabas hadn’t been out of his coffin between the 1790s and 1897 at that point. Roxanne’s vampirism was involved in the circumstances that led to Julia’s trip to 1840. So the vampirism caused the trip that caused the vampirism. And Roxanne the vampire had clearly never seen Barnabas before when she met him in 1970. Of course it doesn’t make logical sense, but so much of the story is made up of the consequences of Julia and Barnabas’ bungling that it would be wrong if it were any other way.

On the terrace, Lamar asks Roxanne to marry him. She refuses, angrily. My wife, Mrs Acilius, said that it was odd Lamar wanted to marry Roxanne, since she obviously hates him. I pointed out that he seems to hate her as well. Many married couples come to hate each other over the years, so I suppose it is a time-saver of a kind if two people get married who already hate each other.

Lamar keeps telling Roxanne that he made a deal with her father to marry her, and she keeps telling him that she doesn’t care. She wants to marry a mysterious stranger who will sweep her off her feet and show her a new life. Barnabas is eavesdropping from behind the wrought iron fence. He has not met Roxanne before, and cannot see her well, but he can well imagine himself being a mysterious stranger who will change everything in a woman’s life. Moreover, Barnabas hears her raging at Trask, whose late father was an enemy whom Barnabas killed with an even higher degree of sadism than is usual for him. Since Trask Junior looks and sounds just like Trask Senior, Roxanne’s hostility to him is enough to make Barnabas feel a special closeness to her.

Barnabas approaches Roxanne after Lamar has left. He persuades her to invite him to her home. When Barnabas was first on the show in April and May of 1967, they made good use of the trope that vampires can enter only where they are invited, but they soon became very inconsistent about that. It places a restriction on Barnabas’ movements that can be story-productive though, so I’m always happy when it seems they will be bringing it back.

In her room, Roxanne is disappointed Barnabas did not call. He materializes inside her window. She can’t very well be happy about that, but he talks her out of screaming. She looks into his eyes and falls into a trance. He bares his fangs, and she tilts her head to offer him her neck. Her fate would appear to be sealed.

This is the first episode credited to Lela Swift as line producer. Swift has been with the show as its principal director from the beginning. Even though Henry Kaplan is listed as director today, it has the crisp look and inventive compositions that characterize Swift’s style, not the muddy images and extreme closeups with which Kaplan was content to fill the time. We can hope that, with Swift in the driver’s seat, the show will consistently meet her high standards of visual strategy.

Episode 1112: There are people here who do remember Barnabas Collins

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman has traveled back in time from 1970 to 1840. Julia’s best friend, vampire Barnabas Collins, was unable to follow her into the past. Julia and Barnabas met in 1967 and became friends in 1968. In this period, Barnabas has been trapped in a chained coffin in the secret room of the old Collins family mausoleum for decades. She misses him so deeply that she convinces herself he must have used some mumbo-jumbo to project himself from 1970 into his body as it is in this time. She unchains the coffin and lets him out. He does not recognize her, and within seconds has his hands on her throat.

In the nick of time, Barnabas’ old retainer Ben Stokes shows up and tells him to let Julia go. Barnabas is shocked to see that Ben is far older than he was when last he saw him. Ben explains that 45 years have passed since he chained the coffin. Barnabas’ reaction settles a question that the vampire lore we have so far seen on Dark Shadows had left open. We have not known whether Barnabas experiences the passage of time while he is sealed in his coffin. Now, we see that he does not. That doesn’t stop him from throwing a big fit when Ben tells him that for the sake of all that is holy he must let himself be sealed back in; he pouts that he has already spent 45 years there, as if he had suffered consciously through all of them. That point will be exploited to broadly comic effect in Tim Burton’s 2012 feature film titled Dark Shadows, in which Johnny Depp’s version of Barnabas is closed in his coffin for a minute and a half and when the lid is reopened wails “How many centuries!?” This scene is played more subtly, but regular viewers will be just as inclined to laugh at Barnabas’ extravagant self-pity.

Ben tells Barnabas Julia’s preposterous story of a journey back in time from a future in which she is his fast friend. Barnabas tells Ben that he has gone mad, but Ben insists that he believes the story, bizarre as it is. Indeed, as a vampire Barnabas is hardly in a position to dismiss tales of the supernatural.

We got to know Ben from November 1967 to March 1968, when Dark Shadows was set in the 1790s. Young Daniel Collins was also a character on the show then. Daniel is in the cast of characters again now. He is the master of the great house of Collinwood, but is a man old before his time because of a severe mental illness and a heart condition that nineteenth century medicine is powerless to treat. When we saw that Ben and Daniel were in the story, longtime viewers realized that the 1840 segment would be a sequel to the 1790s segment. And indeed, Barnabas’ manner and tone of voice when he rises from his coffin are an exact match for what they were at the end of that part of the show. Jonathan Frid picks up right where he left off in #460. I know classically trained actors are taught to do things like that, but he pulls it off so brilliantly that I can’t help but wonder just how it was done.

Ben had laid out a plan for Julia in yesterday’s episode. He told her to present herself at the great house of Collinwood as Julia Collins. She was to tell the Collinses that she was the daughter of the Barnabas Collins who left for England in the 1790s, that she has been living in America, near Philadelphia, for many years, while her brother, Barnabas Junior, had stayed in England. She was to say that Barnabas Junior has written to her saying that he wanted to meet her at Collinwood and to feign surprise that her brother is not already there. She would say that her bags were at the Collinsport Inn. They might then invite her to stay at Collinwood.

Julia leaves the mausoleum. When Barnabas rushes out to claim more victims, she peeks out from behind a tree and watches him go. She now has nowhere to turn but Collinwood and no plan to follow but Ben’s.

Samantha Collins, daughter-in-law of Daniel and the lady of the house at Collinwood, is in the woods when she senses a malign presence. She starts running, and we see Barnabas. By the time Samantha bursts into the front door of the great house, she is on the point of tears. She tells her brother-in-law Gabriel Collins and houseguest Gerard Stiles that she felt that something evil was in the woods. She didn’t see whatever it was, but has somehow come to the conclusion that it was “tall.” Yesterday Gerard, who is a clairvoyant, had a vision of Julia; he described her as tall. Neither Jonathan Frid nor Grayson Hall was much above average height, while the cast included several actors who were. For example, Christopher Pennock, who plays Gabriel, was well over six feet. Gabriel uses a wheelchair, so this role does not emphasize his tallness, but we can’t help noticing it when they keep banging on about the great height of two medium-sized people.

Gerard says that he will go into the woods to investigate. Samantha tells him not to, that she wants him to stay with her and make her feel safe. She tilts her head towards his chest. Samantha’s husband, whose name is Quentin Collins, is missing at sea and presumed dead. In this moment, we see that she is considering Gerard as Quentin’s successor.

Gabriel speaks up. He tells Samantha and Gerard that there is no reason to investigate, since the police are all over the grounds. A woman was found dead earlier in the evening, her corpse drained of all blood. The presence Samantha sensed must have been, not a man, but the animal that killed that woman.

By opening the coffin, not only did Julia needlessly expose herself to the gravest possible danger and release a monster who has already taken one human life and will doubtless take more. She also put an additional obstacle in the way of her own effort to establish herself at Collinwood. That she will present herself and announce Barnabas to the Collinses on the very night the vampire attacks start makes it all but impossible for them not to connect the two of them with those attacks.

Samantha answers a knock at the front door and finds Julia. Julia feigns surprise that Samantha does not recognize her name. She is startled to see Gerard, whose ghost she met in terrible moments in the years 1970 and 1995, but composes herself quickly. Samantha invites Julia in. She tells the story Ben had crafted for her and expresses surprise the Collinses had not received the letters she sent.

Ben shows up and Julia makes a show of recognizing his name. She says that her late father often spoke warmly of him, and that he will be impressed by how much Barnabas Junior looks like his old man. They embrace. By that point, Samantha and Gabriel are sold. Samantha insists Julia stay at Collinwood, and sends Gerard to the inn to fetch her bags. Gerard pounces when Julia says Barnabas Junior will be glad to see Collinwood “again”; she explains that their father told them so much about the place that it feels like they’ve been there before.

A toast to the new arrival. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Gerard does fetch a set of bags from the inn. Apparently Ben had supplied those, as he had earlier supplied the period-appropriate clothing Julia is wearing. He’s a very handy fellow to have on your side, that Ben.

In the morning, Ben joins Julia as she is returning to the mausoleum. He tells her sternly that they must chain the coffin back up and that she must never return to the secret room, no matter how sure she is that her version of Barnabas is summoning her.

They find they are too late. The coffin is gone. Both Julia and Ben know that Barnabas has a compulsion to stash his coffin at the foot of the cellar stairs in the Old House at Collinwood, and Julia also knows that Barnabas’ second choice for a hiding place is behind the bookcase in the parlor of that same house. Julia also knows of a cave near the beach where Barnabas has hidden his coffin a couple of times. So it would seem that they should be able to take the chains with them to those places, find the coffin, and take care of the matter before lunch. But for some reason they just give up.

Back in the great house, Gerard confronts Julia with an earring he found on the dresser in her room when he was putting her bags away. He tells her its mate was found in the long-disused playroom upstairs two nights ago, and asks her how long she has been lurking around. She denies everything, failing to quell his suspicions. Freeing Barnabas to prey upon the living may have been the most foolish thing Julia could possibly have done, but it was not much wiser of her to leave one extremely distinctive earring in such a conspicuous place when she has lost its mate she knows not where.

It was Gabriel who found the earring. He showed it to Gerard shortly after, prompting Gerard to have his vision of the “tall” Julia. Gerard and Gabriel have a scene early in today’s episode, before they meet Julia, in which they go back over the matter of the earring. We can see not only that Gerard is onto Julia, but also that Gabriel has a plan of some kind in which he is planning to involve Gerard. Combined with Samantha’s obvious interest in Gerard, that in turn suggests that we will see how multiple members of the household entangle themselves with him and put him in a position from which he can become a threat to the future of Collinwood.

In the closing credits, Grayson Hall is billed as “Julia Collins.” It has been their custom to list characters by the names they use, even when the audience knows those names to be false. So after Angelique Collins rose from the dead, killed her sister Alexis Stokes, and assumed Alexis’ identity in #1000, when the show was set in an alternate universe, Lara Parker kept being billed as Alexis until all the characters who were fooled by her imposture were off the show. Actors sometimes wander onto the set during the closing credits. My wife, Mrs Acilius, imagines someone doing so while still in character, looking at a credit that gives away someone’s true identity, and pointing at it with wide eyes and an “Aha!” Maybe they were trying to protect Julia from that.

Episode 954: Her chosen profession

The Leviathan People are an unseen race of Elder Gods who want to displace humankind and retake the Earth. To that end, they have assembled a secret cult of people who are under their control.

One of the most fervently devoted cultists is Megan Todd. Megan is standing on the terrace of the great house of Collinwood. Old world gentleman Barnabas Collins, former leader of the cult, appears. Megan tells Barnabas he is a traitor to the Leviathans. Barnabas tells her he is more than that- he has become a vampire. He bites Megan, breaking the Leviathans’ grip on her and taking her into his own power.

In the 1790s, Barnabas was briefly married to a wicked witch named Angelique. It was Angelique who, in those days, first made him a vampire. She has mellowed considerably since then. She has renounced the use of her powers and is living on an island off the coast of central Maine with her husband, a businessman named Sky Rumson. Barnabas turns up in Angelique’s bedroom and tells her that the Leviathans have made him a vampire again. He also tells her that Sky was the one who tipped off the Leviathans that he had become disaffected from the cult. She does not want to believe this.

Sky introduces Angelique to a man named Nicholas Blair. Sky tells Angelique that Nicholas is responsible for all his success. Angelique and Nicholas are surprised to see each other. He was her boss when she was working in Satan’s upper New England operation, back in 1968. Later, Sky will confirm to Angelique that he is a member of the Leviathan cult, and will tell her that his dearest wish is that she should also join it.

While Angelique is in her room packing to leave, Nicholas tells Sky that she cannot become a member of the cult, and gives him a flaming torch to use to kill her. Sky says that he really loves Angelique and doesn’t want to comply. Nicholas insists. We cut to Angelique. Sky bursts in, the torch in his hand, not noticeably shorter than it was when Nicholas gave him his orders. Evidently it didn’t take long for him to pick a side.

Can this marriage be saved? Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Dark Shadows never explicitly used the bit of lore that says vampires cannot cross flowing water, so I don’t suppose we can say it was an inconsistency for them to have Barnabas get himself onto an island and back to the mainland. I’m a bit disappointed they didn’t incorporate it into the story- it’s a familiar bit, and Angelique is so powerful that if she and Barnabas are going to be on the same side they need to put as many obstacles between them as they can to keep the suspense going. Otherwise she can just turn all of his adversaries into toadstools.

Episode 575: This rotten collection of death

How Revolting and Disgusting You Really Are

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair has a job for a woman. Talking to his subordinate, vampire Angelique, he says that the job must go to “the most evil woman who ever lived.” At this, Angelique breaks into a smile, then raises her head proudly. Nicholas then says, “Someone like Lucrezia Borgia.” At this, Angelique’s face falls, and she protests that Lucrezia is dead.

Angelique, flattered when she thinks Nicholas is describing her as “The most evil woman who ever lived.”

Nicholas brushes this objection off, saying that “The spirit of evil can be made to live again.” Longtime viewers may have been wondering whether Lucrezia Borgia would make an appearance, since her name has come up more than once. In #152, sarcastic dandy Roger insulted his sister, reclusive matriarch Liz, by comparing her to Lucrezia; in #178, Roger insulted his niece, heiress Carolyn, in the same way; and in #523, Carolyn brought up Lucrezia to insult Angelique, whom she knew when Angelique was calling herself Cassandra and was married to Roger. Perhaps we might have imagined some kind of story where Roger turns out to have some kind of supernatural connection to Lucrezia.

Nicholas continues teasing Angelique, bringing up the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, alleged serial killer and blood drinker of the 16th and 17th centuries. Angelique calls that lady “a vile woman,” in a tone that suggests she knew her personally. From November 1967 through March 1968, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s, and Angelique was its chief villain. She was not a vampire then, but a witch. Her spells were very powerful, but she was quite clumsy in her use of them, suggesting that she was a young woman new to witchcraft. Perhaps this line is meant to open the door to a retcon, one which will make it possible to tell stories about Angelique set in even earlier periods than the 1790s segment.

Nicholas agrees that the countess was “a vile woman,” and repeats that epithet as the first in a list of her qualifications for the job he has in mind- “ambitious, cunning, devious, unprincipled, decadent!” He finally concludes his teasing of Angelique and tells her that he will not hire her for the job. She is disappointed, as one of the benefits of the job is release from vampirism. She leaves the room. In the corridor, she flashes a smile which regular viewers recognize as a sign that she is going to defy Nicholas and try to seize what he would not give her.

The Only Filthy Way It Could Be Done

The job is an unusual one. Nicholas has persuaded Frankenstein’s monster Adam to confront old world gentleman Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman with a threat. If Julia and Barnabas do not repeat the procedure that created Adam and produce a woman who will be his mate, Adam will kill everyone in and around the great house of Collinwood. Subjected to that extortion, they undertake the project.

The procedure not only involves building a body from parts of corpses and running electrical charges through it, but also requires that the body be somehow connected to a person who will serve as its “life force.” It is energy drained from this person that will animate the body. Barnabas was Adam’s “life force.” Before the procedure, Barnabas was a vampire. Serving as Adam’s “life force” put his vampirism into remission. Nicholas talked about this with Angelique, raising her hopes that he would let her escape from vampirism the same way, only to dash those hopes cruelly.

Julia completed the experiment that brought Adam to life after the death of another mad scientist, Eric Lang. Lang had built the body and the apparatus, and had left detailed notes. Julia had studied those notes for some time before she knew which switches to throw and which dials to turn. Under Adam’s threat, Julia has rebuilt the apparatus in Barnabas’ basement and she has a cadaver there which she is using for parts. Barnabas has ordered his servant Willie to help with the grave robbing. Barnabas has also enlisted the aid of Lang’s former grave robber, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. The equipment needs a lot of tending, and Peter/ Jeff is the lab tech on that detail.

A Nice, New, Clean Slab of Flesh

Peter/ Jeff is by himself in the basement lab when Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes walks in. It’s news to Peter/ Jeff that Stokes is aware of the project, but he tells him that he knows everything about it. Stokes stays so calm as he examines the apparatus and looks at the cadaver that one supposes he must know a great deal.

Stokes asks Peter/ Jeff how the equipment runs when Barnabas’ house has no electricity. Peter/ Jeff says that Julia installed a generator. This must be some unusual kind of generator, since it runs in absolute silence. Later in the episode, Stokes will have a conversation with another character about how Barnabas doesn’t have a telephone.

When Barnabas was a vampire, he didn’t want meter readers or other workers dropping by unannounced and he had no use for modern conveniences. So of course he did not connect his house to the electric grid or to telephone service in those days. As for other utilities, it is a fairly prominent bit of lore that vampires cannot tolerate running water, so of course he wasn’t going to have any plumbing. But he’s been unvamped for almost six months now, so he may as well just update his house. Stokes’ lines today lampshade the problems he creates by refusing to do so.

Another unannounced visitor interrupts Stokes’ conversation with Peter/ Jeff. It is Adam. He is upset to find Stokes in the lab. Stokes once took Adam in and taught him English, and in those days Adam considered Stokes to be his best friend. But Stokes shocked Adam when he broke the news to him that he was an artificially constructed man, and has thoroughly alienated him by trying to talk him out of the violent lifestyle Nicholas has persuaded him to adopt.

Adam goes on a self-pitying rant when Stokes tries to reason with him. Peter/ Jeff interrupts and tells Adam something Stokes left out of his birds and bees talk, that he was built out of parts of dead bodies. Peter/ Jeff taunts Adam about this in a speech that is full of such gems that I suspect it was written, not by the credited author of today’s script, Gordon Russell, but by Russell’s frequent uncredited collaborator Violet Welles. Welles’ name will start to appear in the credits in 711, and fans of the show recognize the sparkle that marks her dialogue.

Peter/ Jeff tries to stab Adam. Adam easily disarms him and holds the knife at his throat. Stokes tells Adam that without Peter/ Jeff the project will be delayed. Adam then flings Peter/ Jeff to the floor. Peter/ Jeff is played by Roger Davis, an actor who had a big television career and was irritating in every part. Mr Davis is so annoying on Dark Shadows that Mrs Acilius and I can’t be the only ones who are disappointed when Adam doesn’t kill his character off the show and who cheer when he throws him to the floor.

Peter/ Jeff gets up and leaves the lab. Adam demands Stokes bring him back to resume working. Knowing how violent Adam is, Stokes follows Peter/ Jeff to the great house of Collinwood. Peter/ Jeff is meeting his fiancée, well-meaning governess Vicki, there, planning to take her out for a date. Stokes tells him that they will be in grave danger from Adam unless he goes back to the lab at once. Peter/ Jeff looks out the window, and sees Adam peering in. Adam actually opens the window and reaches into the drawing room while Vicki and Peter/ Jeff are there; it is hard to understand how Vicki doesn’t notice him. Peter/ Jeff makes an excuse, and goes back to the lab.

We see him back at work. The camera pans up to a mirror. It holds on the mirror for several seconds while we see Angelique’s reflection. Previously, they have stressed that vampires do not cast reflections. There have been several moments when actors have missed their marks or other production faults have occurred that left us seeing a vampire in a mirror, but this is obviously intentional, and it is jarring to regular viewers.

Angelique and Peter/ Jeff talk for a moment, then she bites him. Evidently she plans to enslave him and use his access to the laboratory to force her way into the role of “life force” for Adam’s mate. So far, almost every victim of a vampire we have seen has been left unable to do the work s/he was doing before being bitten, so regular viewers might suspect that Angelique’s ploy will simply incapacitate Peter/ Jeff from helping with the project. This expectation becomes all the more substantial when we remember the many times Angelique’s schemes have blown up in her face. The less likely it seems to us Angelique will succeed, the less effective this week-ending cliffhanger will be.

Episode 563: A kind of magician

Beverly Hope Atkinson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Blue Whale

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

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

Maggie startled. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

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

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

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

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

The Fix

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

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

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

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

Episode 559: I specialize in human relations

Suave warlock Nicholas is studying a mirror in his parlor. His subordinate, vampire Angelique, enters and comments on his vanity. He invites her to look at the mirror and tell him what she sees. “Only your reflection,” she replies. But the audience also sees the reflection of her hair and forehead. Her line, coupled with the fact that we do not see her whole face, suggests that her reflection was not supposed to be visible. In #288 the idea that vampires do not cast reflections was a crucial plot point. When old world gentleman Barnabas was a vampire, he several times cast the sorts of reflection Angelique casts today, usually as the result of Jonathan Frid missing his mark. Perhaps Lara Parker simply took half a step too many in this scene.

Angelique casts a reflection. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Every Day.

Nicholas’ mirror is no simple reflector. It functions as a closed circuit TV. He uses it to show Angelique the room in the attic where well-meaning governess Vicki is being held prisoner. He lets Vicki go, casts a spell to cause her to forget her captivity, and then tells Angelique that he will be going out.

Angelique asks what she is supposed to do while he is gone- sit in her chair and get bored? He says he couldn’t have put it better himself. When he returns, she is in fact in the chair, sitting still. It’s hilarious that she doesn’t pace, or get a book, or try to see if the mirror gets any other channels.

Nicholas was away visiting Maggie, The Nicest Girl in Town, on whom he has a crush. Maggie’s fiancé Joe dropped in while he was at her house. He tells Angelique that Joe is to be the next victim of her vampire’s bite.

Episode 1044: Weekend at Barney’s

Dark Shadows is not only inconsistent about details of vampire lore, but sometimes tangles itself up in those details in ways that make the show unnecessarily difficult to follow.

Episode 1044: Weekend at Barney’s