victoria winters – Page 4 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 586: The way my life has turned out

Some very big problems with this one. Danny Horn goes into detail about three of them in his post about the episode on Dark Shadows Every Day, and I have further complaints.

Friday’s episode ended with Frankenstein’s monster Adam in the act of strangling well-meaning governess Vicki as she lies in her bed at the great house on the estate of Collinwood. In today’s opening Adam goes on throttling Vicki for quite a while. At length heiress Carolyn and recovering vampire Barnabas mosey into Vicki’s room. Adam is long gone, and Vicki is still alive. Permanent houseguest Julia is a doctor, and we hear a report of her prognosis that Vicki will be all right. Carolyn has been hiding Adam in a spare room; suave warlock Nicholas shows up and does some damage control. He suggests to Carolyn that Adam might not be guilty of the attempted strangulation, then goes to Adam’s room to talk with him while they wait for Carolyn to come. By the time she gets there, Adam and Nicholas have their story straight. Carolyn accepts Adam’s denials. At that point, everyone loses interest in Vicki and what happened to her.

Nicholas had put Adam up to demanding that Barnabas and Julia build him a mate. Adam had threatened to kill Vicki if they did not comply. Yesterday, he concluded that they were not taking him seriously, and that was his motive for the murder attempt. At the end of today’s episode, Barnabas goes back home to the Old House on the estate and finds Adam waiting for him. Adam tells Barnabas that he has decided they should use Carolyn as the donor of the “life force” that will bring the mate to life.

Adam’s attack on Vicki was Friday’s week-ending cliffhanger. It might have generated substantial suspense, as it has been so long since Vicki has had much to do on the show that it is possible we might be seeing the last of her. But, as Danny points out, they botch the scene badly:

I mean, there is obviously no way that she could have survived this attack. Adam is an enormous Frankenstein creature; it’s been established that he can bend steel bars just by giving them a stern look. Even for a soap heroine, there’s no way that Vicki could maintain structural integrity under these circumstances. She’s just not built for it.

It’s quite a grisly little scene, actually, because it happens so quickly. She doesn’t really get a chance to react. She was sleeping, and then Adam put his hands around her neck, and now she’s dead, and she doesn’t even know what’s going on…

By the time Carolyn returns to the scene of the crime, Julia’s already been and gone — the invisible off-screen soap doctor who doesn’t actually appear in this episode.

Barnabas tells Carolyn that Vicki’s alive, but she’s in shock. I am too, actually; our lame Frankenstein monster can’t even kill a governess at point-blank range.

Danny Horn, “Episode 586: The Invisible Woman,” posted 17 February 2015 on Dark Shadows Every Day.

Danny revisits this point later in his post:

Problem number one is the lack of consequences. They actually opened the week with the murder of a main character — and ten minutes later, everyone’s back to starting positions. Vicki’s not dead, and Adam’s not even being blamed for the assault.

Now, I’m not complaining that Adam hurt somebody and isn’t expressing any noticeable remorse. It’s true that today’s felony places Adam squarely in the villain column, but that’s fine. Fantasy-adventure stories need villains, and villains are supposed to do villainous things.

The consequences issue is that Adam basically just killed Vicki, and it hardly even registers as a plot point. There’s no investigation, no confession, and no character development; it’s just a thing that happened, and we can all forget about it.

Danny Horn, “Episode 586: The Invisible Woman,” posted 17 February 2015 on Dark Shadows Every Day.

Adam’s threat to kill Vicki never seemed to fit with his personality, but considering that he accidentally killed his friend Sam because he didn’t know his own strength, we could at least imagine that he might inadvertently carry it through. And as Danny says, the brevity and simplicity of the scene add to its force if we think it might actually show Vicki’s death. She was the show’s protagonist for its first 38 weeks and an important part of it for a long time after, and for her life to end so abruptly that she doesn’t even have a chance to scream, for the sake of a plot point that isn’t even her killer’s own idea, would be shocking in the pointless, unsatisfying way that violent deaths are shocking in real life. But if Adam can shake Vicki by the neck from the opening teaser through the first scene without seriously injuring her, he clearly isn’t going to kill anyone, and Barnabas and Julia may as well go off and do something else.

Nicholas is Dark Shadows’ main villain at this point; he is supposed to seem so powerful that we can’t imagine how the other characters will overcome him, and so wicked that we will forgive them for any expedient they can find that will work against him. This is currently the show’s main source of suspense. As Danny explains, they do serious damage to that today:

Nicholas is supposed to be the real mastermind behind this operation, so Adam still ends up reduced to being the dumb muscle, rather than a strategic thinker.

Unfortunately, Nicholas’ management skills are also kind of questionable at the moment. We see him scolding Adam for trying to kill Vicki, but where has Nicholas been for the last couple weeks?

It’s up to Adam to fill Nicholas in on the latest plot development — that Barnabas has chosen Maggie to be the sacrificial victim in their Bride of Frankenstein mad science experiment, giving her “life force” so Adam’s new mate can live.

Nicholas has a crush on Maggie, so he’s furious about this, but it’s a hollow moment. If Nicholas is the manipulative wizard running the show, then he should have known that they spent a good chunk of last week discussing this.

Dude, you have a magic mirror that can show you anything that’s going on at the Old House. You should have been on top of this. It’s just irresponsible.

Danny Horn, “Episode 586: The Invisible Woman,” posted 17 February 2015 on Dark Shadows Every Day.

A third major flaw with the episode comes with Carolyn’s role. Danny explains:

I know that it’s odd to say, “This storyline about creating a female love-slave for a violent psychopath isn’t particularly strong on women’s issues,” but Dark Shadows isn’t just a fantasy-adventure story, where you can marginalize all the female characters and move on to the car chase. It’s also a soap opera, and soap operas are supposed to be about women, and women-related subjects like feelings and consequences.

But here we are, watching an episode of daytime television that begins with strangling a woman who doesn’t struggle or even cry out, and then the rest of the time is mostly Carolyn talking to a series of men who lie to her and boss her around.

This is a real problem, and it’s going to come up again. The Bride of Frankenstein story has turned into a reverse beauty pageant, where the guys get together and argue about which woman they’re going to sacrifice on the altar of mad science. This hot potato is going to be tossed around between Carolyn, Vicki and Maggie all week.

Julia is the one female character in the story who actually has agency of her own, but she’s kind of sidelined too — mostly just turning the knobs and flipping the switches while the guys decide whose life force they’re going to extract. The fact that they can have this whole episode with Julia off-camera pretty much says everything.

Danny Horn, “Episode 586: The Invisible Woman,” posted 17 February 2015 on Dark Shadows Every Day.

Danny goes so far as to say that the gullibility Carolyn has to display when Adam and Nicholas lie to her “actually threatens to break the show,” and he is right. The failure to take female characters seriously not only disrespects the show’s core demographic, but specifically makes it harder to tell a suspenseful story. We can see why when Carolyn asks Barnabas why he believes Adam attacked Vicki. At this point Barnabas knows that Carolyn is hiding Adam, and he believes that Carolyn, like everyone else in the great house, is in danger from him. He therefore has every reason to confide in her, and since she can’t go to the police, no reason to hold back even the parts of the story that would incriminate him. But he flatly refuses to tell her anything at all. Ever since March 1967, the rule on Dark Shadows has been that only the villains are allowed to know what is going on. That cramps the action seriously, and when they add further restrictions on who can participate, it limits the possible outcomes of any situation so severely that it becomes all too predictable.

The scene in which Barnabas refuses to tell Carolyn what he knows brings up yet a fourth problem, one Danny does not mention. Barnabas takes such an indefensible position that he winds up seeming ridiculously weak. The main villain already looks weak, so when the principal protagonist does too, we have little reason to hope for an exciting story.

What keeps this episode from the “Stinkers” bin is Robert Rodan’s performance as Adam. In his early days, when Adam knew only a few words, Rodan managed to play on our sympathies, but had little opportunity to do more. Now the character speaks fluently and the actor delivers his lines with remarkable precision. Danny calls it a blooper when, during the three-scene in Adam’s room, Nicholas tells Carolyn that Adam is growing used to being blamed, and he responds by shouting all but the last word of “I am not used to… it.” I disagree. The dropping of his voice shows that there is a great deal Adam is not used to and does not plan to get used to, more than he can put into words.

The final scene in Barnabas’ house is also a fine turn for Rodan. Barnabas finds Adam waiting for him in his front parlor. We had seen Adam there in his first weeks as an inarticulate, raging creature; now he is well-spoken and very much in control of himself as he presents Barnabas with an impossible demand implicitly backed by a horrifying ultimatum. The contrast is chilling. I particularly relished Rodan’s rendering of this little speech:

Barnabas, please sit down.

When I first knew you,

I never thought I could be the gentleman that you are.

You are a very imposing man, Barnabas.

I still find it difficult not to be frightened by your manner.

Adam does not make threats in this scene; he creates a frightening situation simply by the imperturbable calm with which he issues his commands. It is Rodan’s finest moment so far.

Adam states his requirements. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Closing Miscellany

Nicholas tells Carolyn that he is concerned about what happens on the estate of Collinwood since “I live here too.” When he first moved into the house he now rents from the Collins family, it was on the other side of the village of Collinsport from their home. A week or two ago, the opening voiceover referred to it as “another house on the estate,” and we’ve been hearing people around Collinwood refer to it as “very near.” So that’s a retcon. Since Adam has been coming and going between Collinwood and Nicholas’ house without being seen, I suppose it is a logical one, but it does make you wonder what they were thinking when they originally made it so clear it was some distance away.

Barnabas asks Carolyn if there is a way into Vicki’s room than her locked door. He knows very well that there is, since he himself used a secret passage to get into that room twice when Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the 1790s and the gracious Josette slept there.

Episode 585: Death and mausoleums and being buried alive

Frankenstein’s monster Adam wants recovering vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman to build him a mate. Adam has threatened to kill well-meaning governess Vicki Winters and everyone else at the great house of Collinwood unless they comply. Today, Barnabas and Julia have to tell Adam that the procedure has hit a snag and they are not sure how to resolve it. So Adam goes to Vicki’s bedroom and, while she sleeps, prepares to strangle her. We hear Adam’s thoughts in a voiceover, saying that he does not hate Vicki, but that because Barnabas loves her and Barnabas “has condemned me to being alone forever,” Barnabas “must be alone too.” Barnabas knocks on Vicki’s door while Adam puts his hands on Vicki’s throat. Adam has hold of Vicki before she has a chance to cry out.

Adam sets about his business. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Adam first came to life when Barnabas donated his “life force” to him. When the episode ends with Barnabas trying to save Vicki while Adam tries to kill her, we therefore see two sides of the same character in conflict with each other. The donation that created Adam freed Barnabas from vampirism. The sides in this particular conflict reverse what we saw at Adam’s creation, when he represented an end to the danger Barnabas posed to Vicki.

Had the show been made in the 1990s or the 2000s, this ending might have been very suspenseful indeed. By this point in the series, Alexandra Moltke Isles was rather vocal about her dissatisfaction with the role of Vicki, and wanted out of her contract. In the era of soap opera magazines and internet discussion fora, that would have been well-known to the fans. When they saw a week-ending cliffhanger in the form of an attack on Vicki, they might have wondered whether this meant Mrs Isles had succeeded in escaping from the show. But none of those media existed in 1968. Besides, the broadcast networks’ Standards and Practices offices enforced rules that murderers had to be punished. If Adam killed Vicki, those rules would limit what they could do with the character. So I doubt the original audience really thought they might tune in Monday to see that Vicki was dead.

Closing Miscellany

They shot this one with cameras that were in very bad shape. Most of the episode is so heavily green tinted that it is surprising it met ABC’s broadcast standards.

Early in the episode, there is a fight scene between Adam and Barnabas. Violent scenes like these usually give way to woodwind music and the sight of either Vicki or heiress Carolyn in the sedate setting of the great house. But today it is followed by more heavy music and another scene of violence, as Adam finds Julia in the woods and assaults her. After that, we hear the woodwinds and see Vicki in her bedroom.

There, longtime viewers will be reminded of the fourth episode. In that one, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins tried to let himself into Vicki’s bedroom while she slept, and when he was caught and his sister Liz scolded him, he told her not to supervise his “morals.” That choice of words leaves little doubt he meant to violate Vicki in some sexual way. Since then Roger has ceased to be a villain and has become occasional comic relief. Today, he knocks on Vicki’s door, identifies himself, and she very calmly lets him in while in her nightgown, with no suggestion anything untoward might be in the offing. They have a little conference about Vicki’s relationship problems and Liz’ mental health. We can see why Mrs Isles was frustrated with Vicki’s part on the show- even when a man comes into her room in the middle of the night, half the time it’s for some dull recapping, and the other half she doesn’t even get to scream.

Episode 583: Act of treachery

Some time ago, mad scientist Eric Lang promised Barnabas Collins that he could cure him of vampirism. His cure involved building a Frankenstein’s monster and draining Barnabas’ “life force” into it. Lang expected that this experimental procedure would end with Barnabas’ body dead and his consciousness awakening inside the newly constructed creature.

Lang died before he could complete the experiment. Barnabas’ friend, Dr Julia Hoffman, picked up where Lang left off. To their surprise, both Barnabas and the new man lived. Barnabas was freed of his curse, but he and Julia turned out to be the worst parents conceivable. They took the new man, whom they named Adam, to the prison cell in the basement of Barnabas’ house and kept him chained to the wall, alone for all but a few minutes a day, with nothing to stimulate his mind. Adam eventually escaped, and quite understandably hates Barnabas.

Adam has fallen under the influence of suave warlock Nicholas Blair. Nicholas persuaded Adam to go to Barnabas and threaten to murder well-meaning governess Vicki and everyone else Barnabas cares about unless he provided him with a mate. Barnabas enlisted Julia to take charge of the process and his servant Willie to steal dead bodies to use for parts. Now there is a constructed female corpse on a table in Barnabas’ basement and an apparatus to use in its animation. All that is missing is a woman to donate her “life force.”

Yesterday, Barnabas’ servant Willie overheard Barnabas telling Julia that he wanted her to hypnotize Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, so that she would submit to the procedure. When Barnabas was a vampire, he took Maggie as his victim, keeping her in the cell where Adam would later be chained. After Maggie escaped from Barnabas, Julia hypnotized her to forget her ordeal. She now believes that Barnabas is just peachy.

Today, Maggie is on the terrace at the great house of Collinwood. She is having coffee with Vicki. The two of them are lamenting the fact that their fiancés have both become strangely distant lately, leading to the end of their engagements. Some of the fan-sites mention that both Kathryn Leigh Scott and Alexandra Moltke Isles have moments during this sad scene when they seem to be stifling laughter. In the years since the show ended, several of the actresses have said that Louis Edmonds had a habit of making wickedly hilarious remarks to them immediately before a taping that would involve a deeply serious scene, and that it would take everything they had not to burst out laughing at the worst possible moments. Edmonds’ character Roger Collins isn’t in this episode, but maybe he was on set for some other reason.

Barnabas shows up and talks with each woman separately. While Vicki is away getting a cup for Barnabas, Maggie tells him she might be leaving town soon. He is distressed to learn she may not be available for the crimes he is planning against her. After Maggie leaves, Vicki mentions that her charge David just left on a camping trip, and “It was quite something getting him off.” On Danny Horn’s Dark Shadows Every Day, a commenter named “Chris” remarked on this:

During the outdoor coffee scene after Maggie leaves Vicky with Barnabas, is the funniest blooper ever…….

Vicky, paraphasing: “I was getting David ready for his trip to Boston.”

Actual finish: “It was quite something getting him off.”

And then, she buries her face in the coffee cup, knowing that everyone is holding back laughter, and the awkward pause goes on forEVER.

Comment left by “Chris” at 7:57 AM Pacific time, 21 March 2016, on “Episode 583: Every Woman We Know,” by Danny Horn, on Dark Shadows Every Day (12 February 2015.)

To which I replied, “Vicki, no, he’s only twelve!”

When Mrs Isles is trying not to laugh, she bites her upper lip. She visibly does that before lifting the coffee cup to cover as much of her face as she possibly can, and the pause does go on a long time. So it could be that “Chris” is correct. I can only imagine Edmonds saying that now we know why they stopped showing the audience what goes on when Vicki and David are alone together.

While Maggie was Barnabas’ prisoner, Willie came to be very fond of her. Barnabas eventually framed Willie for his own crimes against Maggie; Willie was sent off to the mental hospital Julia is in charge of. After a few months, he was released. Willie came back. Since his return, Willie has been firmly convinced that Barnabas is his friend. Willie is also in love with Maggie. These attitudes thrust Willie into a crisis when he learns of Barnabas’ cruel plan for Maggie.

At first Willie tries to persuade Julia to refuse to bring Maggie into the experiment; she will not. Then he tries to stab the constructed body. Barnabas caught him before he could plunge the knife in, and threatened to kill him if he tried again.

Later, Willie goes to Maggie’s house and tries to persuade her to leave town immediately because “people” will hurt her if she doesn’t. When she asks what people, he with great reluctance tells her that “Barnabas, he’s involved… Now look, it’s not his fault- but he’s in it whether he likes it or not.” When Maggie expresses disbelief that Barnabas could be a part of any plan to hurt her, Willie says “I’ve got my loyalties to Barnabas, because he’s been good to me. And I’m being as loyal to him as I can be.” Even first-time viewers who do not know that Barnabas was a vampire who fed on Willie, beat him unmercifully, killed his friend Jason and forced him to dispose of the body, etc, will remember the opening of today’s episode when Barnabas greets Willie with a death threat. When we see that Willie sincerely believes that Barnabas has been good to him, we know that we are seeing a man who is as utterly lost as he can be.

After he fails to talk Maggie into getting on the next bus out of town, Willie goes back to the lab and steals a bottle of chloroform. He knocks over a stool; the noise brings Barnabas. Barnabas glances around the room, concludes that he is alone, and leaves. We see Willie cowering behind a table. Barnabas’ brief visit to the lab makes Willie seem even more pitiable. Barnabas doesn’t know where Willie is, does know that he has access to the lab, and has seen him trying to sabotage the experiment. Even so, he has so little regard for Willie’s ability to take action that he doesn’t see any need to do a real search. We hear his thoughts in voiceover as he thinks “There’s no one here.” Seeing Willie making himself small, we might suspect that Barnabas would have the same thought even if he were looking directly at his onetime slave.

Meanwhile, Barnabas encounters Adam on the terrace at the great house. Adam says that he will murder Vicki tonight unless Barnabas returns to the lab and gets back to work.

Willie breaks into Maggie’s bedroom. She awakens to find him pressing a cloth to her mouth. She screams, he apologizes, and the chloroform takes effect. He hears Barnabas let himself into the house and call for Maggie; when Barnabas comes into the bedroom, he finds the room vacant and the French windows open. We first saw this room in May 1967, when Barnabas was a vampire taking Maggie into his power. In those days, her father Sam and fiancé Joe were horrified to find that she had disappeared from it, leaving the windows open. That was because she was answering Barnabas’ call. Now Sam is dead and Joe is estranged from Maggie, and it is Barnabas’ turn to find that Maggie is gone. When he does, Adam’s threat to kill Vicki replays in his thoughts.

Episode 579: One tick of the clock

In the first 38 weeks of Dark Shadows, the best scenes were those between well-meaning governess Vicki and her charge, strange and troubled boy David. The scenes were not especially well-written- at one point, Vicki reads aloud from a textbook describing the geography of the state of Maine- but Alexandra Moltke Isles and David Henesy always found a way to use nonverbal cues to communicate to the audience exactly how matters stood in their characters’ relationship to each other.

Mrs Isles and Mr Henesy haven’t had a two-scene in donkey’s years, and so she has had to find another partner to play off. In recent months, her finest moments have come when she was standing next to the elaborately decorated clock in the foyer of the great house of Collinwood. Today, she stands there while confronting her fiancé, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. She does a great job, and in response Roger Davis, whose performance as Peter/ Jeff was notably insipid in the first half of the episode, comes to life and is himself compelling to watch.

Mrs Isles standing next to her co-star. Also pictured: Roger Davis.

It’s been weeks since Peter/ Jeff has spent time with Vicki, and he has been extremely evasive when she asks him what is keeping him so busy. He has turned down a job offer that would have made it possible for them to start life together on a sound financial footing, again without an explanation. When he asks her simply to accept that he has a good reason, she explodes with “You put everything on that basis, and it’s just not fair!” They go into the drawing room and after he keeps dodging her questions she gives him his ring back.

Peter/ Jeff’s problem is that he is committed to spend all his time helping mad scientist Julia and recovering vampire Barnabas with an experiment meant to bring a Frankenstein’s monster to life, a project he doesn’t feel he can tell Vicki about. Earlier in the episode, he was in the lab in Barnabas’ basement and sneaked a peek at Julia’s notebook. Julia was angry when she caught him with her property. This appears to be the same little red notebook Julia hid from Barnabas in the autumn of 1967, at one point stashing it inside the clock that has such a salutary effect on Vicki.

Later, Vicki dropped by Barnabas’ house. Peter/ Jeff sneaked upstairs to eavesdrop on Vicki’s conversation with Julia. He stands inside the cellar door, which has a barred window. We’ve seen Barnabas’ front parlor through these bars several times, and it always catches my attention. This time, the shot is composed very much in the style of a panel from an old EC horror comic book, a style the show has borrowed in some of its most effective moments.

Peter/ Jeff eavesdrops on Vicki and Julia.

Episode 576: Enough to occupy your mind

Well-meaning governess Vicki is engaged to marry an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Vicki knows that Peter/ Jeff has some kind of job that keeps him busy during the day. She does not know that he has been spending all night working at a second job. He is helping to build a Frankenstein’s monster. This second job is unpaid; his incentive is that if the monster is not built, an already existing Frankenstein’s monster named Adam has said that he will kill Vicki and everyone else in the great house of Collinwood.

As we open today, Peter/ Jeff is bitten by vampire Angelique. After Peter/ Jeff regains consciousness, Angelique starts giving him orders. He ignores them, and she bites him again. After that, he seems dazed and agrees to do whatever she commands. She wants him to hook her up to the body under construction and to use her “life force” to animate it. He tells her that he doesn’t know how to do that, and that the body isn’t ready to come to life in any case. Turns out she needn’t have bothered.

Meanwhile, Vicki gets some news. Roger, brother of matriarch Liz, tells her that he wants to send Peter/ Jeff on a six-week training program along with two junior executives from the Collins family business, and that if he works out there will be a job for him at the end of it. Vicki is dazzled by the offer.

Peter/ Jeff comes by. Roger meets him alone in the drawing room to make the offer. Peter/ Jeff can neither leave the Frankenstein project nor tell Roger about it. He has to turn the offer down without explanation, leaving Roger offended. Vicki then asks Peter/ Jeff what he was thinking, and he can’t explain the situation to her, either. She is frustrated that she tells him everything about herself, but she can’t get any information from him. She says that the offer must have represented a “family decision” on the part of the Collinses, implying that Peter/ Jeff’s refusal will reflect badly on both of them in their eyes.

When Dark Shadows started in June 1966, Vicki was its chief protagonist, Roger its most menacing villain, and the Collinses’ business interests a major part of the story. Vicki receded to the margins after her most interesting storyline, her difficult relationship with her charge David, was resolved in March 1967, and by that time Roger had become harmless and the business had long since ceased to be a source of interest. When we hear Roger talking about a job for Peter/ Jeff, for a moment it seems that he and the business might once again be important, and that Vicki might again have something to do with the plot. Vicki’s disappointment in her beau reminds us that the character doesn’t really have a place on the show any more.

Upstairs, Liz is taking clothes out of her closet and talking about them with her daughter Carolyn. They jar longtime viewers when they look at a particular dress and reminisce that they bought it on a trip to Boston. For the first 55 weeks of the show, Liz was a recluse who hadn’t left home since Carolyn was an infant. I suspect Liz had worn that dress during that period, and wish I’d looked for it when we were on those episodes during this watch-through. There certainly hasn’t been enough time since then for the trip to Boston to evoke the nostalgic tone in which they describe it, or for the dress to have fallen so far out of fashion that the ladies agree it is time to throw it away.

The Liz-is-a-recluse story was never exciting, and once they ditched it the show was quick to give us scenes of Liz happily going out. It is sometimes said that Dark Shadows is what Star Trek would have been if they had replaced space travel with agoraphobia, and Liz’ seclusion was the first exploration of this topic. Following the deep cut into the early days of the show in Roger’s offer to Peter/ Jeff with a moment when such a prominent part of its first year is simply forgotten is so typical of this period’s episodes that I wonder if some of the dialogue was written by uncredited contributors who weren’t up to date on bygone story points.

Carolyn is glad that Liz, who just recently escaped from a mental hospital, is taking an interest in her wardrobe. Liz lets her down hard when she says that she wants to get rid of as many belongings as possible in the short time before her death. Carolyn tries to tell her that she isn’t dying, but Liz refuses to listen. She demands that Carolyn promise to have an open casket at her funeral.

Liz was in the mental hospital because of a psychological disturbance with which Angelique afflicted her some months ago. When she did that, Angelique was a witch. Since then, Angelique has been stripped of her witchly powers, killed, and brought back to the world as a vampire. You might think Angelique’s spells would all have been broken when she was de-witched; that has been the pattern on Dark Shadows previously. For example, when blonde fire witch Laura vanished in #191, the spell she had cast that caused Liz to mope around and be obsessed with death until she was sent off to a hospital was broken. Longtime viewers wonder if Liz’ continuing obsession with death and her paranoid fear of being buried alive are natural symptoms of the trauma Angelique put her through, and if she just needs better therapy than she was getting in the hospital.

Liz has a dream. It opens with Angelique looking directly into the camera. Angelique is wearing the same costume she wore in the scene with Peter/ Jeff and laughing. When Liz knew Angelique, she never dressed that way, she wore a black wig, and so far as the audience knows she never let Liz hear her signature evil laugh. So it seems that Liz’ current troubles are indeed a part of Angelique’s ongoing spell.

Facing us, Angelique tells Liz that she will be plagued by her obsessions until she dies. This is enough to trigger PTSD flashbacks in regular viewers. Twenty weeks ago, in #477, Angelique was looking at us when she described “The Dream Curse,” an abysmally repetitious, ultimately pointless storyline that dragged on for months. Joan Bennett was a fine actress and a great star, but there was only so much even she could do with a character who just mopes around and talks about death, and Dark Shadows has already made her do it more than once. In a comment on Danny Horn’s post about this episode, I wondered if Angelique couldn’t have cast a spell on Liz that isn’t just a retread of one we’ve seen before, and suggested one that would give her “a compulsion to put on a top hat and tails and sing and dance.” Here’s an animated gif of a cartoon showing Joan Bennett’s sister Constance dancing with Jean Harlow and Joan Crawford; it has more entertainment value than did the entire Dream Curse, and might serve as a consolation to those of us left shaking by Angelique’s threat to clog up the story again:

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 567: You will help me

A tall, strange man named Adam is taking a stroll outside the great house of Collinwood. On the terrace, he meets well-meaning governess Vicki and Vicki’s fiancé, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Vicki recognizes Adam as the man who recently kidnapped her, and Peter/ Jeff tries to fight him. Adam is much stronger than Peter/ Jeff, so he flings him to the ground, where his head smashes against the pavement. Adam runs off.

Recovering vampire Barnabas and mad scientist Julia happen by. They know what Vicki does not and Peter/ Jeff only suspects, that Adam is a Frankenstein’s monster. They brought him to life after the death of the originator of the experiment, a doctor named Lang. Now Adam is threatening to kill Vicki and every other resident of Collinwood unless Julia and Barnabas make a mate for him. When they hear Vicki and Peter/ Jeff’s story, they go back to Barnabas’ house in case Adam checks up on their progress.

We cut to the laboratory in Barnabas’ basement, and see that Adam is already there. He startles himself when he bumps his head on some equipment. Coupled with the head wound he inflicted on Peter/ Jeff, this amounts to a minor theme in the episode.

Barnabas and Julia enter, and Adam confronts them. He demands to know why the procedure is taking so long. They try to explain that building a human body from dead parts and bringing it to life takes at least four weeks, but he is unimpressed. Finally Julia volunteers that she is under the weather and claims that the procedure is on hold while she recuperates. Adam agrees to wait four weeks before he starts murdering everyone. Barnabas says that it would help if he would stay away; Adam refuses to do so, and says he will pop in occasionally.

We might think it would be to Barnabas and Julia’s advantage for Adam to stay and watch the whole procedure, so that he can see just how difficult and time-consuming it really is. But they have another problem he knows nothing about. There is a vampire on the loose, and he bit Julia the night before. Barnabas has decided to lock Julia up in the house and use her as bait to draw the vampire in. He declares that he will be ready to destroy the vampire when he comes.

After Adam goes, Barnabas sits down and talks about his plans. Julia puts her hand on his shoulder and looks at him sadly. It is as tender a moment as the two of them have shared, and it makes us feel what Julia has missed because Barnabas does not requite her romantic feelings for him. As Christine Scoleri puts it on Dark Shadows Before I Die, “Poor Julia. At long last, Barnabas says he’s going to take her and lock her up in the Old House and she’s unable to appreciate it.”

An affectionate moment. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Meanwhile, Peter/ Jeff has called the police, and they have agreed to send six men to the estate to search for Adam. Peter/ Jeff asks Vicki to wait in the great house while he goes off to check on a hunch. He makes his way to Barnabas’ house. He gets there just in time to see Adam exiting the front door.

Peter/ Jeff finds the door locked, but lets himself in through the window in the parlor that so many uninvited visitors to Barnabas’ have used. He goes to the basement. Lang had forced him to assist with his project, so he recognizes the equipment. He raises the blanket that covers the cadaver Julia is using for materials and reacts with horror. Barnabas enters and confirms that he and Julia are going to “create another one.”

Episode 556: A pocket in time

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair has turned his subordinate Angelique into a vampire. Nicholas tells Angelique that she will bite only those people he orders her to bite.

Nicholas leaves Angelique in his house. She answers a knock at the door and finds a sheriff’s deputy asking questions related to a local man who recently suffered some mysterious neck wounds. Angelique identifies herself as Nicholas’ secretary and answers some questions. She invites the deputy to sit on the couch. He asks why, and she responds that it is because they are obviously attracted to each other. Within seconds, they are locked in an embrace. Angelique is about to bite his neck when Nicholas enters and breaks things up. The embarrassed deputy clambers to his feet and straightens his uniform. He asks Nicholas a few cursory questions about the injured man, then hastens away.

Angelique seduces the deputy. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Some of the commenters on the various fan sites point out that the deputy’s behavior does not conform to law enforcement’s conventional best practices, and others compare the scene to porno movies they have watched. I think the strength of the scene is that it shows how quickly an encounter between two people can take a turn in an utterly unexpected direction, perhaps with drastic consequences.

The deputy seems competent enough when first we see him, and for all we know he might have been a model policeman for years up to this point. But all he has to do is get lost in Angelique’s eyes for one second, and there he is in her arms, about to become her breakfast. When Nicholas interrupts them, the deputy’s reaction shows that he knows he is misbehaving and risking his job; the audience is clearly supposed to know that police officers are not supposed to act this way.

I don’t know about the porno movies, but a resonance with them would reinforce the same point. The movies those commenters describe begin with fully clothed people delivering dialogue and establishing scenarios, as if they were in domestic dramas or situation comedies. But then the clothes come off and the unsimulated sex starts, and they jump into a different genre, one from which there is no return. The deputy may act like a character in a police procedural, a genre in which Dark Shadows dabbled in its first months on the air. But it is a horror story now, and he comes within an ace of becoming someone who could fit only into such a story.

Nicholas chastises Angelique for ignoring his commands. He is holding well-meaning governess Vicki prisoner in another room in the house, and orders Angelique to go to that room and terrorize her. It turns out that he also wants her to persuade Vicki to give her her engagement ring. Vicki was unconscious when Nicholas claimed her and took her to his house, so if he simply wanted the ring he could have taken it then. Perhaps the people who bring up the porno movies are onto something about Nicholas’ motivations, and he is hoping to drop in on another seduction scene.

Vicki knows Angelique and knows that she has died. Vicki suspects that Angelique is a ghost; Angelique offers her hand as proof that she is not. This rather chilly contact is the only moment the two women touch.

Not hot enough to draw Nicholas. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

As it happens, Vicki has had extensive experience with ghosts, most of it quite friendly. During her first captivity, when strange and troubled boy David trapped her in a room in the west wing of the great house of Collinwood, the ghost of local man Bill Malloy appeared to her, sang, and dripped seaweed on the floor. That frightened her at the time, but led to the breakthrough that ended David’s hostility to her. During her third captivity, when crazed handyman Matthew Morgan kept her in a secret room in the Old House on the same estate, the ghost of gracious lady Josette appeared to Vicki, told her not to be afraid, and led other ghosts, including Bill’s, in scaring Matthew to death before he could kill her. Vicki and Josette’s ghost teamed up to lead the opposition to David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, when she came back to Collinwood and tried to lure David to his death. So Angelique might be missing a chance to ingratiate herself to Vicki when she shows her that she is not a ghost.

Angelique asks Vicki for her ring and promises to give it to Vicki’s fiancé, an unpleasant man named Peter who prefers to be called Jeff. Vicki refuses, explaining that the ring is the only possession she has in this latest captivity to assure her that she is still connected to the world outside. Angelique says that if she does not give her the ring, she will spend eternity in the room.

Some time ago, Vicki spent nineteen weeks in the late eighteenth century, during which time she learned that Angelique was an enormously malign being responsible for the deaths of any number of people. She was herself accused of and sentenced to be hanged for some of Angelique’s crimes. Since she returned to the present, Vicki and the people she most cares about have suffered further agonies at Angelique’s hands, and Vicki knows about this, too. There is absolutely no reason why she should trust her, and she explicitly tells her she does not. Yet she does give her the ring at the end of the scene. The performers do what they can. Alexandra Moltke Isles’ steady gaze and trembling body do suggest that Vicki is so worn out, confused, and desperate that she might turn for help even to her bitterest enemy. But the script just does not give her enough support to make this interpretation stick.

Mrs Isles is facing another script problem that makes her character look like that old bane, Dumb Vicki. There is a window in the room with a Venetian blind in front of it and a shutter behind. Vicki looks at the window, but we do not see her even try to open it. The room is full of all sorts of objects, and she has a bed covered with blankets. Even if the window is sealed shut, she could easily cover it with a blanket and use some of the junk to smash the glass and beat on the shutters. That it does not occur to her to do so makes it all too easy to believe Angelique is telling the truth when she says Vicki will be in the room forever.

Episode 555: Innocent, completely innocent

Suave Nicholas Blair, a middle manager in Satan’s terrestrial operations, has met with considerable success in his efforts to corrupt Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Today, Nicholas finds that Adam has abducted well-meaning governess Vicki Winters as part of his effort to force old world gentleman Barnabas Collins to create a mate for him. Nicholas praises Adam’s plan, and persuades Adam to let him take Vicki from his hiding place in the west wing of the great house of Collinwood. Nicholas says that he can keep Vicki far more securely in his own house.

Nicholas gives Adam a vial full of drugs and tells him to put them in Vicki’s drink when she comes to so that she will be easier to handle. In #528, Nicholas described himself as “much too talented to spend my time drugging drinks.” Perhaps he is, but the writers have to pump out five scripts a week, so whaddaya gonna do.

When Vicki wakes up, she pleads with Adam to let her go. She asks what reason he has for abducting her, and he immediately says “No reason!,” then scrunches up his face and says “No, I have a reason.” He won’t tell Vicki what that reason is, but he is interesting to listen to. Vicki makes a run for the door; he grabs her and puts her back on the bed. He asks her, with genuine concern, whether he hurt her. She assures him he did not. He gives her the drugged drink.

Nicholas comes to take Vicki. We cut directly from Vicki unconscious on Adam’s bed to her unconscious on a bed in Nicholas’ house. I don’t think this is the first time Dark Shadows has used a jump cut, but we certainly haven’t seen it often. Abrupt editing is so much at odds with the stately visual grammar of the show that it qualifies as a special effect. Unfortunately, it is an effect that does not make any particular point here, and so is wasted.

The other day, the corpse of Nicholas’ subordinate, wicked witch Angelique, disappeared. We then saw a coffin in Nicholas’ basement. Nicholas talked to the coffin, calling it “Angelique,” indicating that her body was inside. Yesterday, there was a vampire attack. We didn’t see the vampire, but there couldn’t be much doubt that it was her. That is confirmed in the final shot of today’s episode, when we see Angelique in the coffin, her fangs showing.

Toothsome blonde. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 553: The five captivities of Victoria Winters

The First Captivity

In #83, strange and troubled boy David Collins repaid his governess, the well-meaning Vicki, for her determined attempts to befriend him by locking her in a room where he hoped she would die. The room was located deep in the long-deserted west wing of the great house of Collinwood, and Vicki found that she could neither open the door nor reach the window.

Vicki had two visitors during her time trapped in this dusty chamber. In #85, the ghost of local man Bill Malloy appeared and sang to her; this was the first sustained and direct interaction between a living person and a supernatural being on Dark Shadows, and it left Vicki terrified and confused. In #87, David’s abusive father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, knocked on the door and pretended to be a ghost, scaring Vicki further. When Roger then opened the door and rescued Vicki, she threw her arms around him, sobbing and saying that he was right and David really was a monster. In those days, Vicki’s attempt to win David over was the only storyline on the show that worked; when it seems that she will join all the other grownups in giving up on the little guy, the audience’s hearts break.

The Second Captivity

In #108, Vicki had come to the conclusion that Roger killed Bill. Unsure where to go, she stopped in the cottage on the estate where handyman Matthew Morgan made his home. Talking to him, she prompted him to make an indiscreet remark that revealed that he, not Roger, pushed Bill off the cliff from which he fell to his death.

Matthew would not let her leave the cottage. He acknowledged that she had done nothing wrong, but said that he would have to kill her now that she knew his secret. She tried to dissuade him, but it was only a chance visit from matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard that prevented the murder. Matthew ran away, and Vicki was free.

The Third Captivity

In #116, Vicki went to look for David in the long-deserted Old House on the estate. She did not find him, but instead found Matthew, a wanted fugitive with a grudge against her. Until #126, Matthew kept her bound and gagged in the secret room behind the bookcase in the front parlor.

Others came and went. David, no longer homicidal, is convinced Matthew is innocent of Bill’s death and unaware he is holding Vicki, and he sneaks Matthew food he has stolen from the kitchen in the great house. Vicki’s friends Burke and Joe search the Old House, and she can only listen while Matthew hides with her in the secret room.

Matthew was fetching an ax with which to kill Vicki when the ghost of the gracious Josette Collins appeared to her and told her not to be afraid. When he came back, Josette led the ghosts of Bill Malloy and of the legendary Widows of Widows’ Hill as they surrounded Matthew and scared him to death.

The Fourth Captivity

From #365 to #461, Dark Shadows was a costume drama set in the late eighteenth century. Vicki had come unstuck in time, and found herself at Collinwood as it was in those days. Her total failure to adapt to her new environment led to her arrest, trial, and condemnation as a witch. From #401 on, she was in gaol, with a couple of brief and disastrous excursions.

Vicki had several visitors during her time in gaol, most of them people who had at some point wished her well but whom she alienated by her compulsive sharing of information she had learned when she was in the 1960s. By the time she had been sentenced to hang, she had only two friends left. One was her gaoler/ defense attorney/ boyfriend/ co-conspirator/ fellow prisoner, an unpleasant man named Peter Bradford. The other was Barnabas Collins, a vampire. Neither was able to do her much good, so in #460 and #461, Vicki mounted the gallows, was hooded, a noose placed around her neck, and the lever pulled to open the trap door under her feet. She then found herself restored to her own time, mere moments after her departure, but wearing the clothes she wore in the 1790s and bearing the marks of the wounds she sustained then, including the rope burns on her neck.

The Fifth Captivity

Shortly after Vicki returned to 1968, Barnabas’ vampirism went into remission. Peter also turned up, suffering from total amnesia and calling himself Jeff Clark, but still disagreeable to look at or listen to. Vicki and Peter/ Jeff became engaged the other day. Yesterday, Vicki left Peter/ Jeff to wait for her in the great house while she went to the Old House, which is now Barnabas’ home. She wanted to give him the news.

What freed Barnabas of the vampire curse was the creation of Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Now, Adam wants a mate, and is under the mistaken impression that Barnabas can create one for him. He has decided to extort Barnabas’ cooperation by taking Vicki as his hostage.

Adam is wanted by the police for abductions and assaults he committed before he learned to talk. Heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard, who is acting as mistress of Collinwood while Liz is in the hospital, took pity on Adam and has been hiding him in a dusty room in the west wing. It is not the room Vicki was trapped in back in 1966; there is a window within reach. But when she comes to and finds herself there, she tells Adam she knows where she is. He responds “No!” She says that it’s the west wing, and she has been there before Most of the audience joined the show long after Vicki’s first captivity, so it will be as much news to them as it is to Adam that Vicki is on familiar ground.

Adam agrees that Vicki has done nothing to harm him, but tells her that he may nonetheless have to kill her. In this, he reminds us of what Matthew said to Vicki when he held her prisoner in his cottage.

Peter/ Jeff is still waiting for Vicki in the foyer of the great house when Carolyn finds him. He tells her Vicki went to Barnabas’ house more than two hours before, promising to return in an hour. Carolyn smiles and, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, tells Peter/ Jeff that Barnabas and Vicki are “such good friends” it’s no wonder the two of them would lose track of time when they were alone together. This bothers Peter/ Jeff almost as much as it was obviously intended to do, and he goes to the Old House.

Peter/ Jeff arrives and demands Barnabas take him to Vicki. Barnabas is taken aback by Peter/ Jeff’s tone, and for good reason. When actor Roger Davis shouted his lines, which he did most of the time, he projected his voice not from the muscles of the pelvic floor, as singers are often taught to do, but from the sphincters in his buttocks, with the result that he sounded like he was trying to defecate. Barnabas has some nice rugs on his floor, so an angry Peter/ Jeff is an alarming visitor.

While Peter/ Jeff yells at him, Barnabas remembers that Adam had been in the house just moments before Vicki came, and that he had threatened to make Barnabas “very sorry” for not doing what he wanted. It was odd that Barnabas didn’t offer to walk Vicki home after that, a fact which has apparently dawned on him. He rounds on Peter/ Jeff and says that they are both to blame if anything happened to Vicki, since neither of them should have let her walk through the woods alone. Peter/ Jeff agrees with that, and his yelling moderates a bit. They get some flashlights and go out to search for her.

As they are searching, Peter/ Jeff proves that he is a true member of the Dark Shadows cast when he shines a flashlight directly into the camera. Barnabas tells him they should split up. This may or may not be a logical step towards finding Vicki, but it definitely will reduce Barnabas’ exposure to Peter/ Jeff, so it is no wonder he is eager to do it.

Peter/ Jeff carries on the tradition. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Barnabas goes to the great house and talks to Carolyn. He tells her that Vicki is missing, that he and Peter/ Jeff have searched the woods thoroughly, and that he suspects Adam has abducted her. He insists that she tell him where Adam is, and she denies knowing. He tells her he does not believe her, and says that if Adam harms Vicki, she “will be held responsible.” Jonathan Frid and Nancy Barrett were always interesting to watch together, and this is the first time they have played a scene where their characters were adversaries facing each other down. The dialogue is nothing special and the situation is all too familiar, but their performances make for a few fresh and exciting minutes.

Carolyn goes to Adam’s room. As Barnabas had been reading when Peter/ Jeff called on him, so Adam, who shares a mystical connection with Barnabas, has a book in his hand when Carolyn stops by. As David sneaked food from the kitchen to Matthew at the Old House, so Carolyn has been sneaking food from the kitchen to Adam in the west wing.

Adam is very slow to let Carolyn into the room. She notes that he has always invited her in before, and does not go away when he claims to have been asleep. He lets her in. As Burke and Joe had searched the Old House when Matthew was hiding Vicki in the secret room there, so Carolyn looks around the room while we know Vicki is somewhere inside it. Adam denies having been out of the room, and tells her Barnabas was lying when he said he had gone to his house. Adam has not lied to Carolyn before, so she accepts what he says. After she leaves, Adam opens the door to his own secret room, a closet in which Vicki is bound and gagged as Matthew had once bound and gagged her.

This is the twelfth episode directed by John Walter Sullivan, but the first credited to him as “Sean Dhu Sullivan.” The name “Jack Sullivan” appeared on the previous installments.