Tag: violet welles

Episode 820: The music and the mirror

Help Me Return to the World of the Living

In Dark Shadows #1, set in 1966, two people came to Collinsport, Maine. They were the well-meaning Vicki Winters and dashing action hero Burke Devlin. Vicki had taken a job as the governess in the great house of Collinwood, hoping that she would find the answers to questions she had about her own mysterious origins. Those questions had left her feeling that she knew nothing about herself.

Burke was a working class boy from Collinsport who had gone to New York City five years before, fresh out of prison and penniless. By 1966 he was a corporate raider, a millionaire many times over. He came back to his hometown because he wanted revenge on high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins, who used Burke’s car to kill someone while Burke was passed out drunk in the backseat, then persuaded the court that Burke was solely responsible for the homicide. Burke and Vicki ultimately became a couple, but for some months Burke strung Roger’s niece Carolyn along and used her to cause trouble for the Collinses.

Now the show is set in 1897, and Burke and Vicki are both long gone. Carolyn and Roger are waiting for us when the show returns to contemporary dress, and the actors who play them are in the cast in other roles. But we’ve been reminded of Burke recently. Tim Shaw is a working class boy from Collinsport who, after spending time as a teacher at a miserable boarding school run by the evil Rev’d Gregory Trask, was chosen by Trask to take the fall for the murder of his wife, Minerva Trask. As Burke was physically present but mentally compromised at the killing for which he went to prison, so Tim was present at the killing of Minerva, but not in his right mind. The show is about the supernatural now, so it was a magic spell, not booze, that kept Tim from knowing what was going on when he poisoned Minerva. And the pace is too fast for arrests and trials, so Trask’s plan went wrong and he had to tell the police Tim wasn’t guilty after all. So Tim went straight to New York, and just a few weeks later came back to Collinsport, very rich and out for revenge.

Like Burke, Tim arrives in Collinsport with a woman. Unlike Vicki, Amanda Harris knew Tim before they got on the train. But we learn today that Amanda, like Vicki, is tormented by her ignorance of her own background. Again, the starker palette in which the show draws its stories at this period means that instead of not knowing who her birth parents were, Amanda has no memories at all prior to two years ago.

Amanda first appeared as a hardboiled operator who was attached, not to Tim, but to his money, and who gave him expert assistance in the con game he was running on Trask. As Tim was an elaboration on Don Briscoe’s W. C. Fields’ imitation, Amanda was a nod to Mae West. But the show has decided to make Amanda a long-term addition to the cast, and they already have an all-villain cast. So they soften Amanda’s edges. We see her packing her bags and telling Tim she is going to leave because he doesn’t really care about her and she can’t stand what she is doing with Trask. When she complains that Tim is just using her, she echoes speeches Carolyn made after her bitter realization about Burke’s true intentions. Now that her relationship to Tim mirrors both Vicki and Carolyn’s relationships to Burke, Amanda can inherit the goodwill longtime viewers have towards both of those characters.

To Have Something I Can Believe In

Tim’s sudden wealth came from his possession of a magical object, The Hand of Count Petofi. When Amanda first heard of the Hand, she asked if it was a piece of jewelry or some other kind of artifact. It did not occur to her that it was literally the severed hand of a Hungarian nobleman. This gruesome thing had been cut a century before, in 1797, by nine Rroma men, and had ever since been in the custody of the leader of their tribe.

In #778, broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi returned to her home in the Old House on the grounds of Collinwood. She had gone to Boston, where King Johnny Romana, possessor of the Hand, was staying with his caravan. She had pleaded with King Johnny to help her remove a curse she had placed that made rakish libertine Quentin Collins and all his male descendants into werewolves. Magda had not known when she placed the curse that Quentin was the father of her sister Jenny’s children. She hoped that King Johnny would take pity on the Rroma children and use the Hand to end the curse. When he did not, she stole it, intending to use its powers herself. Magda soon found that the Hand did no one’s bidding. It helped some people, hurt others, and was stolen by each of a long series of scheming characters.

After Tim brought the Hand back to Collinsport, it was stolen again. This time, the thief turned out to be none other than Count Petofi himself, 150 years old and on the point of death. Once he had the Hand back, it reattached itself to his wrist and he regained his health.

Petofi has some sort of plans for Quentin. He has retained one of his minions, nationally renowned artist Charles Delaware Tate, to paint a portrait of Quentin. That project is finished, but Tate is still living in a cottage he has rented in Collinsport. Today Petofi visits Tate there.

Petofi finds Tate sketching an imaginary woman, one he has been obsessively drawing and painting for about two years. Petofi sets himself up as Tate’s analyst. “Only little boys invent ideal women,” says he. He has a plan to relieve Tate’s childish fixation. It is another project. If Tate had seen A Chorus Line, he might appreciate Petofi’s theory of work as therapy, as explained in the lyric “Give me a job and you instantly get me involved, if you give me a job then the rest of the crap will get solved.” But that show won’t premiere for another 78 years, so Tate resists.

It doesn’t help that the job Petofi has in mind involves another severed hand. The Rroma are on their way, and they want the Hand back. Petofi, whose magical powers were formidable even when he was one-handed, is much mightier now, but the thought of the Rroma agitates him violently. Evidently they know about some weakness of his that enables them to defeat him. King Johnny and his men don’t know that Petofi is in Collinsport. He has cast a spell to silence Magda, but they won’t leave the area without the Hand. Several people know about Petofi and have no reason to protect him. If the Rroma start asking questions, it won’t be long before they close in. So Petofi has exhumed a recently deceased local man, cut off his right hand, and brought it to Tate for detailing.

Tate owes his talents, and his life, to Petofi, so the outcome of their meeting is never really in doubt. His next encounter does involve a surprise. Amanda comes to Petofi’s hiding place, sent by Tim, and asks for his help. Petofi tells Amanda that Tim has a poor strategic sense. Indeed, Petofi has already told Tim that, lovely as Amanda is, he has no use for her at the present time. But when he sees her face to face, Petofi recognizes her as the imaginary woman in Tate’s pictures.

Returning viewers already know that Tate’s portrait of Quentin takes on the features of a wolf when the Moon is full, so it is no surprise that his works, like several other portraits we have seen on Dark Shadows, have magical powers. When we learn that Tate first painted Amanda two years ago and she has no history prior to that time, we figure out that he inadvertently used those powers to conjure her into being.

Tate is played by Roger Davis, an unpleasant man who figured as Vicki’s love interest in her last, woefully ill-conceived storyline. In that arc, made and set in 1968, Mr Davis’ part was variously known as Peter Bradford and Jeff Clark. He had amnesia, and Vicki kept trying to help him recover memories which would prove to him that he has no roots in the 1960s, but that he is an uncanny being who was brought to life by an adventure she had outside the bounds of space and time. Once we recognize what they are suggesting about Amanda’s origin, longtime viewers might expect an inversion of that story, with Mr Davis playing the person trying to persuade his lover that he accidentally created her by a magical process he himself did not understand.

Somebody to Dance For

While all of this action is taking place downstream of Count Petofi, the person who set in motion the events that first brought Petofi to town is in big trouble. Magda comes home to find King Johnny himself waiting for her. He menaces her, calls her names, and twice hits her in the face very hard.

King Johnny closes in on Magda. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Ever since Violet Welles joined the writing staff, men have been slapping women quite a bit on Dark Shadows. Welles was by far the best writer of dialogue on the show, but I for one could do without the slapping. Fortunately King Johnny is played by Paul Michael, a well-trained actor; no matter how brutally King Johnny abuses Magda, Grayson Hall is in no danger. One could never say the same of Mr Davis’ screen partners.

King Johnny tells Magda that he will take her back to his caravan in Boston to stand trial for the death of Julianka, a Rroma maiden whom he sent to kill her some weeks ago. Since Magda cannot say Petofi’s name, she cannot tell King Johnny that it was he who killed Julianka. Magda is terrified of the trial, and King Johnny tells her that there is a way she can avoid it. If she does not give him the Hand, he will slit her throat immediately.

King Johnny searches the house, and does not find the Hand. He is about to carry out his promise to kill Magda when he sees the wooden box in which the Hand was long kept lying on the floor. He opens it. What he sees inside resembles the Hand closely enough to convince him, and keep Magda alive for another day. Clever as she has been so far, we may wonder how many days are left for her. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around to throw Magda a rope to grab onto.

Episode 811: A man’s investment in the future

In #797, the ghost of Rroma maiden Julianka appeared and placed a curse on her fellow grievous ethnic stereotype, Magda Rákóczi. Julianka blamed Magda for her death, and decreed that everyone Magda loved would die. Today, Magda is trying to prevent Julianka’s curse from taking the life of her desperately ill infant niece Lenore, daughter of her late sister Jenny. Magda goes to Lenore’s crib in company with Lenore’s father, Quentin Collins. Magda and Quentin try to conjure up Julianka’s ghost to plead for Lenore’s life, but instead they get the ghost of another Rroma woman- Jenny.

Jenny assumes physical form. She picks up Lenore and sings the lullaby “All the Pretty Little Horses.” We’ve heard Jenny sing this almost every time she has been on the show. It appears to be the only song she knows. For his part, Quentin has a phonograph and only one record, which he plays obsessively over and over. When they lived together, their home must have been a pretty grim place, playlist-wise.

Jenny lifts Lenore’s illness, and says that if Quentin looks into his heart he will know what he must do to ensure that Lenore has a bright future. She vanishes, and Quentin mutters dismissively at the idea that his heart will be a source of useful information.

Later, Quentin will have a dream while sleeping in the drawing room at the great house on the estate of Collinwood. Jenny visits and tells him that he must have nothing to do with Lenore and that she must grow up far from Collinwood. So far, dream sequences on Dark Shadows have always represented visits from the supernatural, but this one might be an exception. Jenny did say that the information Quentin needed to help Lenore was already in his heart. He is clearly not the stuff of which good fathers are made, and as Jenny explicitly says in the dream no one has ever been happy at Collinwood. So the advice she gives does seem to be correct. Perhaps this is just Quentin’s own knowledge taking a shape he can recognize.

Quentin goes on dreaming that his brother Edward is choking him. He wakes up to find that Edward is in fact choking him. This might seem like a prophetic dream, but it too might just be a natural expression of Quentin’s own unprocessed knowledge. Edward, because of a magic spell not directly connected with today’s events, is under the mistaken impression that he is a valet formerly in the service of the Earl of Hampshire. Quentin has followed the Collinses’ long-established protocol for dealing with mentally ill family members, and locked Edward up in the room on top of the tower in the great house. He knows this makes Edward miserable, and it is reasonable to suppose that he would expect Edward to express anger about it. Strangulation is Quentin’s own preferred method of expressing anger, especially towards members of his immediate family, so it can’t have been hard for him to see that coming.

Edward’s motivation is not as simple as Quentin’s would be if their positions were reversed. The evil Gregory Trask has been visiting Edward in the tower room, and has told him that Quentin is determined to keep him imprisoned in that room forever. He asks him to kill Quentin. Edward apparently has decided to comply.

Earlier in the episode, Edward had been more punctilious about cooperating with Trask. Trask presented him with a document to sign, promising that by signing it he would secure his freedom. Edward read the document, even after Trask very loudly insisted that it was unnecessary to do so. When Edward saw that it involved making Trask guardian of his son, Edward protested that he had no son. Trask said that this did not matter, but Edward would not be moved. Edward later tells Quentin about this encounter.

The tower room is a re-dress of the set used as the bedroom of strange and troubled boy David Collins in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s. Today it includes the bed from that set, and we see Edward trying to sleep in it. This is a powerful image for longtime viewers. Louis Edmonds plays Edward in this costume drama segment and David’s father Roger in contemporary dress. Edward is the father of Jamison, who like David Collins is played by David Henesy. Not only has the spell robbed Edward of the memory of Jamison and of his role as a father, it has reduced him to curling up in a bed made for a boy rather than a man.

Edward in the child’s bed. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Roger was, for the first year of Dark Shadows, a spectacularly bad father. He openly hated David and exploited David’s miseries to try to manipulate him into doing his own criminal dirty work. He was indifferent to the family’s name and the fate of its businesses, would go to any lengths to hide from the consequences of his actions, had killed someone, and was an alcoholic. Edward shares none of these shortcomings. On the contrary, he goes to the opposite extreme. He is as brave as Roger is cowardly and tenderly loves his children, Jamison and Nora. But he is also stuffy, name-proud, and money-grubbing. The contrast with Roger shows these failings, not simply as negatives, but as the overgrowth of the virtues that separate Edward from Roger. Though Louis Edmonds and Jerry Lacy are such accomplished comic actors that Edward’s scenes with Trask are funny enough to be worthy of a staging of the Jeeves and Wooster stories, Edward’s loss of his identity as father of Jamison and Nora is a genuine tragedy.

Quentin is fond of Jamison, and once he learns that his children exist he seems to wish them well. Nonetheless, he shares most of the other vices of early Roger. As Edward shows us what Roger might have been had he had stronger moral fiber, Quentin is Roger with his vices magnified by black magic. When Jenny tells Quentin that he must not raise Lenore, longtime viewers remember Roger as he was when first we knew him, and remember how grim David’s future seemed at that time. It was only after well-meaning governess Vicki became the chief adult influence in his life that we could have hopes for David. So we cannot doubt that Jenny is right.

This is the last of 21 episodes of Dark Shadows directed by executive producer Dan Curtis. When Curtis first took the helm in #457, he had no experience as a director, and it showed. But he learned very quickly. This one looks great and the scenes play very smoothly. He would later direct the feature films House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows, as well as six episodes of the 1991 prime time revival of Dark Shadows and many other productions.

Episode 807: An award-winning performance, wouldn’t you say?

From #1 to #274, each episode of Dark Shadows began with a voiceover narration by Alexandra Moltke Isles, usually in character as well-meaning governess Vicki. This identified Vicki with our point of view and suggested that she would sooner or later learn everything we knew.

Jonathan Frid joined the cast as vampire Barnabas Collins in #211, and quickly became the show’s great breakout star. If the upright Vicki found out what we knew about Barnabas, one of them would have to be destroyed. Vicki was the favorite of longtime viewers and Barnabas was attracting new ones, so that was out of the question. Therefore, other members of the cast started taking turns reading the voiceovers, and doing so not as their characters, but in the role of External Narrator.

Today marks the first time Frid himself reads the narration. His training first in Canada, then at Britain’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and later at Yale School of Drama prepared Frid well in the art of dramatic reading, and in later years he would concentrate on that aspect of his craft. Several of his colleagues are his equals in these voiceovers- I would particularly mention Kathryn Leigh Scott, whose conception of The Narrator is always arresting, and Thayer David, who could consistently achieve the most difficult of all effects in voice acting, a perfectly simple reading. So I can’t say I wish Frid had done all of them, but he is always good, and today’s performance is among his most gorgeous.

The action opens on a set known to longtime viewers as the Evans cottage, where from 1966 to 1968 artist Sam Evans and his daughter Maggie served as Dark Shadows‘ principal representatives of the working class of the village of Collinsport. In those days, it was on this set that we saw how the misdeeds of the ancient and esteemed Collins family had consequences that spilled out of the estate of Collinwood and warped the lives of people trying to make a more or less honest living nearby.

Now the dramatic date is 1897, and Sam hasn’t been born yet. But the cottage is already an artist’s studio. It is temporarily occupied by the nationally famous Charles Delaware Tate, who is painting a portrait of rakish libertine Quentin Collins at the behest of evil sorcerer Count Petofi. Charity Trask, a resident of the great house of Collinwood, is visiting Tate in the cottage when she sees the face in the portrait change from that of Quentin. It takes on a great deal of fur and long fangs, and reminds Charity of a wolf.

By the time Tate looks at the painting again, it has resumed its normal appearance. He tells Charity that the transformation must have been in her imagination. She is willing to consider the possibility, but we know better. Quentin is a werewolf, a condition Petofi knows how to cure. Portraits on Dark Shadows have had supernatural qualities at least since #70, including portraits we saw Sam execute on this set in 1966, 1967, and 1968, and the show has borrowed from The Picture of Dorian Gray before. Moreover, Tate’s reaction to Charity is one of barely controlled panic. Nancy Barrett has to ramp up Charity’s own emotional distress to the limit to make it plausible she would not notice Tate’s extreme agitation. Perhaps if Tate were played by a better actor than the ever-disappointing Roger Davis, his response might have been ambiguous enough that Miss Barrett could keep the tone a bit lower, but his unequivocal display of alarm leaves her nowhere to go but over the top.

Mr Davis was under no obligation to play the scene transparently, since Tate later goes to Petofi’s henchman Aristide and lays out in so many words his precise relationship to Petofi’s operations and his knowledge of them. Tate’s career is his reward for selling his soul to Petofi, and he has already experienced great sorrow as a result of that bargain. Tate knows that the portrait changed to reflect the full Moon’s influence on Quentin and that Petofi is currently in possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins. Aristide tells us that Petofi’s own body is in suspended animation while he acts through Jamison. He also says that it was in 1797 that Petofi’s right hand was cut off, and that if he does not reclaim the hand in a few weeks, by the date of the one hundredth anniversary of the amputation, he will die and so will Tate.

Jamison/ Petofi is in the prison cell in the basement of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Barnabas has traveled back in time from the 1960s with some vaguely good intentions and is hanging around 1897 causing one disaster after another. Now, he is doing battle with Petofi and has locked him, in the form of Jamison, in the cell. Barnabas’ reluctant sidekick, broad ethnic stereotype Magda Rákóczi, guards Jamison/ Petofi during the day. Early in the episode, Jamison/ Petofi calls Magda and pleads with her to release him. He tells her that he is “just a little boy” and that she is a “rather heartless creature.” She says she wishes he were a little boy again, but that she isn’t stupid and he won’t fool her. Indeed, the phrase “rather heartless creature” and Jamison/ Petofi’s manner in delivering it sound so much like Thayer David as Petofi that they hardly count as an attempt to deceive Magda.

Later, Jamison/ Petofi casts a spell to summon Aristide, then calls to Magda again. When Magda arrives, Jamison/ Petofi gives himself a better script than the one from which he had acted in his previous scene with her. He pretends not to remember how he got into the cell and to be shocked that Magda knows he is there. Perhaps the utter transparency of his earlier pleadings was an attempt to get Magda to underestimate his abilities as a trickster.

In #803, we saw that when Petofi took possession of him Jamison’s right hand disappeared from his wrist, matching Petofi’s own mutilated condition. When Jamison/ Petofi feigns the amnesia that might come upon recovery from possession, we might therefore expect Magda to demand that he remove his gloves to prove that he is himself again. But he plays the part of Jamison so convincingly that we are not really surprised he does fool Magda. She goes into the cell, embraces Jamison/ Petofi, and he kisses her on the cheek. It is this kiss that spreads his magical power, and she realizes too late that she has been had.

Aristide arrives a moment later, and Jamison/ Petofi calls his portrayal of an innocent boy “an award-winning performance.” Indeed, if there had been daytime Emmys in 1969, David Henesy might have won one for his portrayal of Thayer David playing Petofi playing Jamison.

Aristide wants to kill Magda; Jamison/ Petofi forbids this. Under his power, she announces that she is responsible for all the evil that has happened in 1897. She was responsible for releasing Barnabas and therefore for all the murders and other harm he has done; she made Quentin a werewolf, and is to blame for his killings in his lupine form and for the curse his descendants will inherit; she stole Petofi’s severed hand and is at fault for the deaths of Rroma maiden Julianka and of her own husband Sandor that resulted from the hand’s presence. She even takes the blame for Quentin’s murder of her sister Jenny, the act for which the werewolf curse was meant as vengeance. Magda says she must be punished. Jamison/ Petofi tells her that he is not interested in punishing her. He has another use in mind for Magda She will lead him and Aristide to Barnabas’ coffin today, and they will destroy him.

Longtime viewers will perk up twice when Aristide says that Petofi lost his hand in 1797 and that he has exactly one hundred years to recover it. From December 1966 to March 1967, Dark Shadows’ first supernatural menace was undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, who at intervals of exactly one hundred years incinerated herself and a young son of hers, who was always named David, in an unholy ceremony that renewed her existence, but not that of the Davids. Since the usual laws of nature don’t apply, the show needs some other causal mechanism to create suspense, and anniversaries will do as well as anything else. Another iteration of Laura was on earlier in the 1897 segment. It was fun to see her again, but they could shoehorn her into that year only by retconning away the one hundred year pattern in her immolations. It’s reassuring in a way to see that Petofi is bringing centenaries back.

The date 1797 is also significant. It was in 1796 that Barnabas died and became a vampire. We flashed back to that period for the show’s first costume drama segment in November 1967 to March 1968, and Barnabas went back to 1796 for a week in January 1969. So we may go back again some day, and if Petofi was alive and in his prime in 1797, we might run into him there.

Barnabas and Petofi are not the only characters from the 1790s who might be on the minds of attentive longtime viewers. Barnabas’ little sister Sarah died in 1796, and as a ghost was an extremely important part of the show from June to November 1967. We’ve been getting reminders of Sarah for the last several days. In #792 wicked witch Angelique produced a toy soldier of Barnabas’ that Sarah gave to strange and troubled boy David in #331. In #805, Charity found Sarah’s recorder, a prop that often served as Sarah’s calling card in 1967, and talked about learning to play it. And today, we see a portrait standing on the floor of the Evans cottage, a set which Sarah visited in #260, depicting a girl wearing a bonnet very much like the one Sarah wore as a ghost in 1967 and a pink dress just like the one she wore when we saw her as a living being in the flashback to the 1790s.

Portrait at the cottage.

I wonder if, when they were making up the flimsies for this part of the show, they had thought of reintroducing Sarah. That would have required a recasting of the part- Sharon Smyth was noticeably older when we saw Sarah die in January 1968 than she was when Sarah was a ghost in June 1967, and by now we would wonder what she has been eating in the afterlife that has made her get so much taller. Besides, Miss Smyth* had stopped acting by this point.

The process of planning the stories was in two stages, a rough sketching of themes six months in advance, and a capsule of each episode written thirteen weeks ahead of time. There was a lot of flexibility when it came to putting those plans into effect. Some stories that were supposed to end within thirteen weeks were extended over years, while others that were expected to be a big deal petered out before they got going. In an interview preserved by Danny Horn at his great blog Dark Shadows Every Day, writer Violet Welles said that many of the moments on the show that made the least sense were those written when the plans hadn’t worked out: “toward the end of the cycle, you’d have characters who were really not a lot of interest who had to play scenes with other characters who really didn’t have a lot of interest, dealing with things that basically didn’t concern them. Those were hard to write.”  

This episode was taped on 25 July 1969; thirteen weeks before that was 21 May. Six months before was 25 January. By 25 January, Denise Nickerson had been on the show for two months as Amy Jennings. Nickerson was actually born on 1 April 1957, but they several times say that Amy is nine years old. When the show goes to 1897, Nickerson plays Nora Collins, who is also nine. On 19 May, Nickerson taped #761, the last episode she would appear in until #782. She is currently in the middle of a second long absence from 1897, unseen between #783 and #812. Her characters were so important in the months leading up to the 1897 segment and she played them so well that we wonder what they were thinking leaving her in the background so long.

Maybe they were thinking of bringing her back as Sarah. Nickerson didn’t look all that much like Sharon Smyth, and was a far more accomplished young actress than was Miss Smyth, but she did have brown hair, and the show prioritized hair color above all else in recasting parts. For example, two actresses followed Mrs Isles in the role of Vicki, neither of whom had much in common with her either in acting style or in looks, but who both had black hair. So perhaps there was a time when they intended to travel between 1897 and the 1790s and to meet Sarah, played by Denise Nickerson. If Nickerson were still alive, perhaps someone would ask her if she posed for the portrait that is standing on the floor of the Evans cottage today.

*She’s been using her married name for decades now, but when talking about her as a child it’s pretty weird to refer to her as “Mrs Lentz.” Since I use surnames for people associated with the making of the show and attach courtesy titles to surnames of living people, I have to call her “Miss Smyth.”

Episode 805: The shocking condition of your face

The 150 year old evil sorcerer Count Petofi has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins. Jamison/ Petofi has been casting spells to make the various residents of the estate of Collinwood reveal their true selves. Jamison’s distant cousin, Barnabas the vampire, has locked Jamison/ Petofi in the prison cell in the basement of the Old House on the estate. When Barnabas says that he will let Jamison out once Petofi has vacated his body, Jamison/ Petofi replies “If that is what you intend to do, Mr Collins, I’m afraid that you are stupid and incompetent.” There is no need to cast a spell on Barnabas- Maker of Stupid and Incompetent Plans is his true self, and we love him for it.

The great house on the estate is currently under the legal authority of the evil Rev’d Gregory Trask, husband of Judith Collins, who is a patient in a mental hospital. Jamison/ Petofi’s spell has caused Trask’s daughter Charity to be intermittently possessed by the spirit of Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye. Trask is horror-stricken by the makeup, clothes, and hairstyle Charity wears when Pansy is in charge of her, and her East London accent, insouciant attitude towards him, and tendency to sing and dance escalate this horror further. Nancy Barrett and Jerry Lacy are both talented comic actors, and their scenes as Charity/ Pansy and Trask are hilarious.

Trask is appalled to see Charity/ Pansy. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Collins family lawyer Evan Hanley is at home. Barnabas appears in Evan’s drawing room and asks for some information which Evan denies having. Evan tells Barnabas he has renounced his former interest in black magic and Satanism. Barnabas is skeptical, and Evan replies that his latest forays resulted in a gruesome disfigurement of his face. This disfigurement was later relieved, how we (frustratingly) do not know. But he wants nothing more to do with the occult, since he values the ability to look at himself in the mirror. Barnabas reminds Evan that he cannot see himself in a mirror, implying that he will use his vampire powers against him if he does not cooperate.

Trask comes to Evan’s house. He asks him to draw up papers that will complete his plan to seize control of all the Collins family’s assets. He mentions in passing that Jamison thinks he is Petofi. Evan knows enough about Petofi to be terrified. He tells Trask that neither of them has a chance in a battle with Petofi, and refuses to draw up the papers. Trask responds contemptuously.

Alone in the cell, Jamison/ Petofi decides to have some fun with Evan. We see Evan dozing in his armchair. He has a dream in which Jamison appears. Jamison kisses him; it is by his kisses that Petofi spreads the “true self” spell. Later, Evan goes to the great house at Collinwood and presents Trask with a paper to sign. Trask signs it eagerly, assuming it is the document he asked Evan to bring him. Instead, Evan has prepared a full confession to the murder of Trask’s first wife Minerva. The two of them plotted this murder together, and Trask is horrified when he sees his signature on it. He throws the paper in the fire; after he leaves the room, it rematerializes on the desk, complete with signatures.

During Trask’s confrontation with Charity/ Pansy Faye, the picture suddenly changes from color to sepia tone. After about a half a minute, it changes back. Evidently there was a fault in the videotape master at this point, and an excerpt from the kinescope was used to patch it. The color comes back right after Trask slaps Charity/ Pansy, causing Pansy to release Charity for a bit. It creates the eerie feeling that Trask somehow fixed our TV set by slapping her.

Dark Shadows continually comments on itself as it goes along. In the early days, all the episodes were scripted by Art Wallace. Wallace’s favorite method of composition was a sort of diptych, in which two sets of characters faced similar situations and responded to them differently, highlighting the contrast between their personalities. Petofi’s “true self” spell is of course another way of creating similar contrasts between characters played by the same actor.

As the show came to focus on time travel stories, they could cast actors as characters who represent alternative versions of parts they played in other periods, again putting characters played by the same actors in contrast with one another. And as Wallace would juxtapose similar situations within a single episode, the multiple times periods allowed them to take themes that had been developed in one way in a story set in one year and develop them differently in a story set in another. So Jamison/ Petofi’s contagious curse is a reworking of the “Dream Curse,” which dragged on from April to July 1968. The Dream Curse involved a lot of repetition and very little variety of tone. Jamison/ Petofi’s spells all get right to the point, and are sometimes scary, sometimes bizarre, and often quite funny. So the second time is definitely the charm here.

At one point Charity holds a recorder and tells her father she wants to learn how to play it. The first time we saw this prop was in #260. That episode was set in 1967, and Barnabas was holding Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, prisoner in the cell where Jamison/ Petofi is today. The ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah befriended Maggie, and materialized in the cell playing “London Bridge” on that recorder. Over the next several months, the recorder came to be a symbol of Sarah, one that she occasionally left behind as a sign that she had been in a place. Longtime fans will likely remember that, and see it as an indication that what is happening to Charity is going to have permanent consequences, as Sarah’s haunting had permanent consequences.

Episode 804: He is a gem, isn’t he

The evil Count Petofi, a 150 year old sorcerer, has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins and is wreaking havoc in the great house of Collinwood. Due to Petofi’s spells, Jamison’s father Edward thinks he is a valet recently separated from the service of the Earl of Hampshire. Edward’s brother Quentin tries to explain to him what is actually going on, but Edward merely concludes that he is Quentin’s valet now. When Quentin follows the Collinses’ long-established protocol for dealing with mentally ill family members and locks Edward in the tower room, Edward bangs on the door and protests that he won’t be able to do his job if he is locked up. “And I will do it!” he vows.

Charity Trask, disastrously uptight step-daughter of Quentin and Edward’s sister Judith, falls under Petofi’s influence and is possessed by the spirit of Cockney showgirl Pansy Faye. Pansy was on the show briefly in June. The childlike Carl Collins, brother to Judith, Edward, and Quentin, was engaged to marry Pansy before she was killed by vampire Dirk Wilkins. Pansy and Charity never met; when Carl asked Charity if she had seen Pansy, the scene was staged to make it seem absurd that the two women could exist in the same universe. Now, they exist in the same body.

Ta Ra Boom De Ayyyy… Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

If Petofi has caused startling changes in Jamison, Edward, and Charity, the change in Quentin is perhaps the most jarring of all. He has been a ghost, a homicidal maniac, a Satanist, a zombie, and a werewolf, but always and everywhere a source of total chaos, who destroys all recognized order and is perfectly at home in the midst of sheer madness. Today, Quentin keeps making earnest attempts to restore everyone to their right minds and reestablish the proper and respectable relations within the household.

First time viewers will immediately catch on that the preteen David Henesy is not the actor who would usually play a 150 year old Hungarian nobleman, and when Nancy Barrett suddenly takes on an East London accent and enters wearing a garish costume and doing a dance with lot of hip shaking and pelvic thrusts, they will know that Charity is turning into someone else. The dialogue in the scenes involving Edward explains what is happening to him. They may not know that Quentin is not supposed to be the defender of the status quo. That information is supplied in two scenes. Charity/ Pansy receives a psychic message from the world beyond telling her that Quentin was involved in the murder of Carl, and she announces this information. Also, Quentin calls for help, and the helper who materializes is his distant cousin, Barnabas Collins the vampire.

At the end of the episode, Barnabas lays hold of Jamison/ Petofi and drags him into the secret passage leading from the drawing room to the west wing. It is usually bad news when a vampire abducts a child and shoves him into a dark space, but David Henesy brings such joy to the role of Jamison/ Petofi that we can hardly doubt that what comes next will be equally fun to watch.

Meanwhile, a painter named Charles Delaware Tate has presented himself. Tate’s first appearance will cause a sinking sensation in longtime viewers; he is played by Roger Davis, a terrible actor who delivers much of his dialogue by shouting while clenching the sphincter muscles in his buttocks, and who routinely assaults the women and children in the cast while on camera. We may have hoped we had seen the last of Mr Davis when his most recent character, Dirk, was destroyed shortly after murdering Pansy. But evidently Pansy’s return in the form of another actress has come at the price of Mr Davis’ return in the guise of another character.

For much of 1968, Mr Davis played a man known variously as Peter Bradford and Jeff Clark. His approach to characterization consisted of shouting “My name is Jeff Clark!” When this technique was played out, he took to shouting “My name is Peter Bradford!” He doesn’t shout today, mercifully. But he does say the name “Charles Delaware Tate” quite a few times.

Today’s story about Tate is potentially interesting. Jamison/ Petofi finds him when he answers the front door. Tate asks to see Jamison Collins; Jamison/ Petofi confirms that despite his appearance, he is indeed the person Tate has come to see. Tate accepts this with a blandness that suggests that he knows he is dealing with a magical personage.

Jamison/ Petofi gives Tate a photograph of Quentin and says that he wants a portrait of him. When Quentin comes to the drawing room and finds Tate sketching, he asks who he is. Again, Quentin adopts a stern tone which suits someone defending the sanctity of private property against an unknown intruder. Tate introduces himself and shows him a handwritten letter which Quentin instantly accepts as the product of his grandmother Edith. He tells Tate that Edith has been dead for some time and that he is not interested in a portrait of himself. Tate says that he has already accepted the commission and the money that Edith sent with it, and so he will rent lodgings in the village of Collinsport and finish the job regardless. Quentin does what viewers have hoped everyone who shared a scene with one of Mr Davis’ characters would do, and throws him out.

The forged letter is a fascinating touch for returning viewers. Petofi made himself welcome as a guest at Collinwood by showing Edward forged papers creating the impression that he shared Edward’s friendship with the Earl of Hampshire. That he has also created papers that Quentin immediately accepts as coming from Edith, who died long before Petofi had any reason to come to Collinwood, suggests that his powers of forgery are very extensive indeed.

Tate not only seems to know that Petofi has magical powers; he also shows an acquaintance with Petofi’s henchman Aristide.* When Tate mentions Aristide, he calls him “Aristeedy,” a sort of pet name with a diminutive suffix. This is probably just a blooper on the part of Mr Davis, but since Petofi is continually telling Aristide how lovely he is and how he is more attractive when he doesn’t speak, it does remind us of the gay subtext that runs through their scenes together. We might suspect that Petofi and Aristide’s sexuality is in one way or another one of the reasons they are connected to Tate.

The script opens all of these questions about Tate. Had he been played by an actor who was capable of depicting depth and highlighting ambiguity, it could have been a lot of fun to speculate about just what their answers might be. In #137, future movie star Frederic Forrest was a featured extra on the dance floor at The Blue Whale tavern; it’s easy to suppose he would have taken a speaking part. So when the show puts Mr Davis in front of us, I like to make the time a little more tolerable by imagining what Forrest might have brought to the role of Tate.

*His name is spelled “Aristede” in the closing credits, but it was “Aristide” in the original scripts.

Episode 803: As soon as you’re finished with the mumbo-jumbo

The spirit of evil sorcerer Count Petofi has taken possession of twelve year old Jamison Collins, much to everyone’s consternation. David Henesy spends most of the episode mimicking Thayer David’s Petofi, with hilarious results.

Jamison/ Petofi sipping a glass of “mineral water… for the digestion.” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

We see Jamison’s favorite uncle, Quentin the Satanist, trying to cast a spell to break Petofi’s possession of Jamison. As he always does when he is calling on the dark powers of the unseen realms, Quentin gets very fervent. We pan to Jamison/ Petofi, standing next to Quentin in a state of utter boredom, asking if Quentin will bring him a glass of mineral water once he’s “finished with all the mumbo-jumbo.”

Twice, Jamison/ Petofi pretends he is not possessed, but is his usual preteen self. He does this in order to trick people into letting him kiss them, which is how Petofi’s power spreads to them. This gives Mr Henesy the challenge of showing how Thayer David would play Petofi playing Jamison. That’s the sort of thing an actor needs a director’s help to pull off. Unfortunately, the woeful Henry Kaplan was at the helm today, so we discover that Petofi’s imitation of Jamison sounds exactly like the original, who is in turn uncannily like Jamison’s grandson David Collins and his great-great-grandfather Daniel Collins, who are also played by Mr Henesy.

Those whom Jamison/ Petofi kisses reveal their “true selves.” So maidservant Beth reveals that she was under the power of Jamison’s distant cousin, vampire Barnabas Collins. When Jamison’s father Edward passes this word along to Quentin, Quentin tells him is going to confront Barnabas. Edward has been hunting Barnabas, and by saying this Quentin implies that he knows where Barnabas is and that he has been helping to hide him. For some reason, Edward only smiles in response to this revelation.

Petofi wears a prosthesis in place of his right hand; Edward finds that Jamison’s right hand has also been replaced with a prosthesis. After this horrifying discovery, Jamison/ Petofi kisses Edward. Quentin returns shortly after, and finds that Edward does not recognize him or know the name of the house. Edward identifies himself as a newcomer to the area, and says that he would be glad of any work the family might hire him to do. Evidently his “true self” is a guy who needs a job. Since he has not inherited any assets or accumulated enough to live on, I don’t suppose we can disagree with whatever force it was that declared this to be Edward’s reality.

In place of episode 801: Periodization again

No episode of Dark Shadows premiered 56 years ago this afternoon; the show was preempted by ABC-TV’s coverage of the Apollo 11 mission. That mission included the first steps taken by humans on the surface of the Moon, at a site 25 kilometers south of a crater then known as Sabine D. The following year, Sabine D was renamed Collins. That was not an attempt to console Dark Shadows fans for the trauma of a Monday spent away from Barnabas and his relatives, but was an honor given to United States Air Force officer Michael Collins, Command Module pilot on Apollo 11. Moreover, the nearby crater named Moltke was not named for Alexandra Moltke Isles, who played well-meaning governess Vicki in 333 episodes of Dark Shadows, but for her distant cousin Count Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, who died in 1891 and never appeared on the show (as far as we can tell.)

Photo courtesy of Sky and Telescope.

These changes to the map of the Moon remind me that, on this 56th anniversary watch-through, I’ve been revising my mental map of the show’s development. I used to divide it into chunks with labels like “Meet Vicki,” “Meet Matthew,” “Meet Laura,” “Meet Barnabas,” “Meet Julia,” “Meet Angelique,” and so on. In that scheme, this 161st week is an early part of the chunk I would have called “Meet Petofi.” I still see that the show defaults to having a main character, but now I think in terms of larger units. I also tend to focus more on the writing staff than on the central characters. So the first 38 weeks drew their vitality from the story of Vicki’s attempt to befriend strange and troubled boy David, a story which reached its conclusion at the end of the Phoenix tale, when David chose Vicki and life over his mother and death. That was Dark Shadows version 1.0, and I subdivide it less into the parts driven by Vicki, Matthew, and Laura than into the parts written by Art Wallace alone, by Wallace in alternation with Francis Swann, and by Ron Sproat and Malcolm Marmorstein with uncredited contributions by Joe Caldwell.

Dark Shadows 2.0 ran from March to November 1967, and its most interesting theme was vampire Barnabas Collins’ attempt to pass himself off as a living man native to the twentieth century. The first part of this, written by Sproat and Marmorstein, was even more slow-paced than were the first 38 weeks. Caldwell was credited with a number of scripts from May through October, Gordon Russell joined the staff in July, Marmorstein was fired in August, and Sam Hall replaced Caldwell in November. With each of those changes, the pace picked up and the overall quality of the scripts improved noticeably. There was also a shift in story in the middle of this period, as mad scientist Julia Hoffman teamed up with Barnabas in an attempt to physically transform him into a human, shifting his masquerade from an acting job to a medical problem.

Dark Shadows 3.0 ran from November 1967 to March 1968. This was a costume drama set in the 1790s, an era to which Vicki had traveled when she came unstuck in time while participating in a séance. It seemed at first that it would invert the 1967 story, with Vicki trying to pass herself off as a native in the time to which Barnabas actually belonged, but for some reason they chose to write Vicki as a screaming ninny during this segment. Mrs Isles made a valiant effort to overcome the painfully dumb lines she was given, but by the end of it, the character was no longer sustainable.

Barnabas was a human through the first half of Dark Shadows 3.0, and a vampire for the second half. That alternation answered three questions, each of which opened a door for further development.

First, the audience wanted to see how Barnabas became a bloodsucking ghoul. When they showed this happening in the course of his relationship with wicked witch Angelique, they laid the groundwork for more stories involving her.

Second, the audience wanted to see what Barnabas was like in his lifetime. When they showed this, they proved that he didn’t have to be a vampire to be interesting, and made it possible for Julia’s experiment or some other effort to free him of the effects of the curse to succeed.

Third, the audience wanted to see what Barnabas would be like if he were as deadly as one might expect a vampire to be. In the whole of 1967, Barnabas killed only two characters, each of them a middle aged man who had run out of story and seemed likely to disappear anyway. But he kills seven people in 1795-1796, not counting people who died of fright or confusion or despair as a result of seeing him.

When it was set in contemporary times, Dark Shadows was careful to keep its characters alive. They need to fill 22 minutes a day with conversations, and if they end up with Barnabas alone on the estate of Collinwood those will get to be rather one-sided. But since they were not committed to staying in the 1790s, they could let him slaughter people with abandon. That created a fast pace that the show tried to maintain for the rest of its time on the air. In consequence of that pace, by the end of the 1790s segment the show had left behind its origins as a Gothic romance appealing to an older demographic who were impressed that Joan Bennett was in the cast and had become a kids’ show.

Vicki returned to 1968 in #461, but Dark Shadows 3.0 did not end at that moment. Vicki came back to exactly the same collection of narrative dead-ends the show had gone to the eighteenth century to escape. It wasn’t until #466 that Barnabas found that he had been cured of vampirism- not by Julia, but by another mad scientist. That set the tone for Dark Shadows 4.0. Version 2.0 may have been content with one mad scientist, but 4.0 needed at least two, in addition to multiple witches, Frankensteins, vampires, ghosts, an invisible man, and, if not the Devil himself, at least one of the assistant managers of his upper New England operations. The fast pace of the 1790s segment turned into a frantic dash through this Monster Mash era.

In the course of Dark Shadows 4.0, there were four personnel changes that had especially profound effects. Two were in the cast. At the end of the segment, Mrs Isles left the role of Vicki, never to return to the show. Though Vicki had been pushed to the margins long before, she was so strongly associated with the first phase of Dark Shadows that every time she appeared on screen she made a connection with those early days. With her departure, that link is broken.

Thayer David, who had played crazed handyman Matthew Morgan in 1966 and much-put-upon indentured servant Ben Stokes in the 1790s segment, returned in 1968 as Ben’s descendant, occult expert Timothy Eliot Stokes. Ben was a commentary on Matthew, an example of what he might have been had he not grown up in a community under the somber mark of the Collinses and the many curses they bear. As such, David was like the rest of the cast for the 1790s, playing a character who shed light on the part he took in contemporary dress. But as Stokes, he is playing a man who has no direct connection to Matthew, and little connection to Ben. With that doubling, we see that any performer might return to the cast in a new role at any point in the story.

The other personnel changes during Dark Shadows 4.0 took place behind the camera. Ron Sproat ended his duties as a regular member of the writing staff late in that period, and left the show altogether shortly after. Sproat was the most devoted to conventional soapcraft of all the writers, and was the only one who consistently took care to keep the show comprehensible to first-time viewers. But he didn’t have an especially fertile imagination for story points or for clever dialogue. As Hall and Russell hit their stride and really started cooking, Sproat’s relative weakness became impossible to ignore. The show entered its most exciting phase when Sproat left, but his absence would later be felt at times when the staff tried to keep the story moving at a breakneck pace even when they were too fatigued to make sure it all made some kind of sense.

The least remarked of all the personnel changes was the departure of director John Sedwick. Sedwick was an outstanding visual artist, the equal of his colleague Lela Swift. Swift stayed with the show to the end, eventually combining the role of producer with responsibility for directing half the episodes. But after several men helmed a few episodes each, they settled on the lamentable Henry Kaplan as her alternate in the director’s chair. Kaplan was a famously poor director of actors, and the visual compositions he knew how to orchestrate ran the gamut from closeup to extreme closeup to even more extreme closeup. Dark Shadows was never all that easy for first-time viewers to take seriously, and when you tune in to one of Kaplan’s efforts you’re likely to dismiss it before you hear a word of dialogue.

As Dark Shadows 3.0 didn’t end until the show had already been back in 1968 for a week, so version 4.0 ended well before it began its next time travel story. In #627, we meet werewolf Chris Jennings and hear about Chris’ little sister, who will eventually be named Amy. Amy befriends David, and together they become the central figures in the Haunting of Collinwood by the ghost of Quentin Collins. This leads Barnabas to travel back in time to 1897 in #701. Barnabas and the show will stay in that year until #884. This whole arc, from #627 airing in November 1968 to #884 airing in November 1969, makes up Dark Shadows 5.0.

The major subdivisions of version 5.0 are the “Meet Amy” section that runs from #627 to #700, the “Meet Quentin” section from #701 to #778, and the “Meet Petofi” section from #778 to #884. The transitions among these segments showed that the shift from one time frame to another is not essential for making a chapter break in the show. The reset from the focus on Quentin to the focus on Petofi rolls across a few weeks, and does not have the single spectacular moment when we first find ourselves in 1897, but it is just as definite a break. It even involves doubling Thayer David, who played broad ethnic stereotype Sandor Rákóczi in 5.0.1 (the “Meet Quentin” section,) and who plays sorcerer Count Petofi in 5.0.2 (the “Meet Petofi” section.) As Ben was an alternative version of Matthew, so Petofi is an answer to the question “What would Stokes be like if he were evil?” As such, he brings version 5.0.2 in line with version 3.0, in which characters in one time frame mirror those in another.

That we can make a major transition without returning to the 1960s raises the question of whether we need to go back there at all. Barnabas is on a mission to save David and Amy and Chris, but he could always find a fresh threat to them in the 1890s. And the characters we have met in that period are at least as compelling as are those we left behind in the contemporary time frame. Despite the deficiencies of Henry Kaplan, the writing staff of Hall, Russell, and the brilliantly witty Violet Welles combine with an almost unanimously strong cast to make the dialogue glitter. It is the strongest period of the show by far, and it is difficult to imagine wanting it to end.

We will go back to a contemporary setting, eventually. The H. P. Lovecraft-inspired monster cult known as the “Leviathans” will be the center of version 6.0; in that segment, the show will start on the most adult tone it ever adopts, and end pitched squarely at a very young demographic. The change may well have come because the three-person writing staff burned out, and became a grave matter when Welles left the show.

Version 7.0 is another time travel story, but a story of traveling sideways in time, to an alternative universe where the characters wear clothing appropriate to 1970 but have different personalities and different relationships than do the people with the same names and faces whom we have met previously.

Version 8.0 is the most ambitious of all the segments, starting with a trip in time to the far-off future year 1995, returning to 1970 for a reprise of the Haunting of Collinwood, this time by a ghost who resembles Quentin in hairstyle and wardrobe but not in height, and proceeding to a long stay in the year 1840. That version had enough characters and enough story to last indefinitely, but Hall and Russell were the only full-time writers, and they simply could not keep it up. It finally collapsed, and the last nine weeks were set in another alternate universe, with no characters in common with the stories we had seen up to that point.

Version 9.0 had a drab feeling; some say it isn’t Dark Shadows at all, but another series shot on the same sets with some of the same actors. The name Dim Reflections has been proposed for it. There is one week in the middle of Dim Reflections when Violet Welles comes back to make some uncredited contributions to the scripts; you can tell it’s her, because all of a sudden the characters have senses of humor. But after that Gordon Russell is all alone at his typewriter until Sam Hall returns for the very last day, and by that time everyone knows it is time to go.

Episode 777: Two murderers at Collinwood

The opening voiceover, delivered by Kay Frye, tells us that a vampire named Dirk Wilkins has been destroyed. We hear that Dirk was the pawn of someone called Barnabas Collins, who hoped to use him to conceal a secret of his own. The narrator also says that “certain things cannot be forgotten, as Judith Collins will learn this day.” This implies that the day’s action will center on challenges in information management.

Returning viewers may not recognize Miss Frye’s voice. We have seen her as Pansy Faye, Cockney showgirl, improbable fiancée of prankster Carl Collins, and victim of Dirk’s first murder. As narrator, Miss Frye forgoes Pansy’s rather uncertain East London accent. She also takes a different approach to the role of narrator than she had to that of Pansy. When we first saw her, Pansy was putting on an act for Carl’s benefit, and Pansy is a terrible actress. When Carl left, Pansy dropped her act and we could see that Miss Frye is as capable a performer as the character is a poor one. Today’s voiceover gives Miss Frye a still better role. The crass and cynical Pansy did not call for much nuance. But as narrator, Miss Frye speaks with a quiet urgency and subtle modulation of the voice that leaves us wondering what might have been had she been cast in a bigger part.

We cut to what regular viewers recognize as the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood in the year 1897, where a man in a cassock is talking tenderly with a woman in a colorful dress. The man is very affectionate, even stroking the woman’s neck with two fingers.

Trask fingers Judith’s neck. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The woman is the Judith Collins mentioned in the opening voiceover; the man is the Rev’d Gregory Trask. It is not mentioned in the episode, but Trask is the keeper of a boarding school called Worthington Hall. Also unmentioned is that Trask conspired with a Satanist named Evan Hanley to brainwash a young man named Tim Shaw, one of the teachers at Worthington Hall, and that once he was under their control they used Tim to murder Trask’s wife Minerva. Trask wanted Minerva out of the way, evidently because he plans to marry Judith and take control of her vast fortune.

Judith is disconsolate at the thought that she was under Dirk’s control. While Trask is talking sweetly to Judith, Tim enters. Trask pulls a gun on him and instructs Judith to call the police and report that Minerva’s murderer has been captured.

Tim, who has up to this point ranged from mousy to timid to utterly defeated, is suddenly assertive. He tells Judith that she won’t want to telephone the sheriff. He says that there are two murderers at Collinwood, and she is one of them.

Tim says that he came upon Judith in the act of shooting neurotic intellectual Rachel Drummond to death. Returning viewers know that this is true; Tim, Judith, and Rachel were all under Dirk’s power at the time, and for reasons that made sense only to the dim-witted Dirk he ordered Judith to kill Rachel. A vague memory comes back to Judith and prompts her to confess; when Trask realizes that Tim will not back down from his accusation and Judith will not participate in a cover-up, he tells Tim he will make a deal with him.

Trask calls the sheriff. He addresses himself to “Sheriff Furman,” a name we have not heard before. It quickly becomes clear that we are not likely to hear it again. He tells the sheriff that Tim was out of town the night Minerva was poisoned and that, in his grief, he had forgotten this fact. Returning viewers know that Evan has told the sheriff that he saw Tim with Minerva while she was dying. One might assume that Trask would at least have to call Evan first to ensure that he gave the sheriff a story to account for this discrepancy, but Trask doesn’t bother to contact Evan at all. Evidently the sheriff is such an abysmal moron that Trask can safely assume he won’t think of any questions.

Sheriff Furman’s manifest incompetence prompts one of Danny Horn’s funniest posts at Dark Shadows Every Day, in which he writes a series of hypothetical police reports about the killings we have seen so far in the 1897 segment. One of Danny’s recurring themes is that law enforcement characters on Dark Shadows serve only to delay the plot. There is so much story in 1897 that the producers saw no need to slow things down, so it shouldn’t be surprising that neither Sheriff Furman nor any of his deputies appear on-screen.

For my part, I wish they had stayed in 1897 considerably longer, so I would have liked to spend one day a week or so without much forward narrative movement. That might have included some episodes when the police show up and you do a lot of recapping, some built around character studies of the type Joe Caldwell wrote so well in 1967, some in which we reconnect with Collinwood as it is on the night in 1969 when Barnabas left for the past, and so on. Not only would that have extended the show’s strongest period and helped new viewers catch up to what is going on, it would also have enabled them to make more use of the many fine actors whom we go weeks on end without seeing. Even David Selby, whose handsome rake Quentin Collins is breaking out as a pop culture sensation at this point, hasn’t been on the show since #768. Other fan favorites are in the midst of even longer unexplained absences; for example, Lara Parker’s wicked witch Angelique has not been seen since #760.

Tim, who was out of the room while Trask was on the phone, returns. He “gladly!” agrees to leave Trask’s employ, and at first says that he will “gladly” leave the village of Collinsport. But then it dawns on him that he needs a job, and he blackmails Judith into assuring him that she will find a place for him in her business.

This will remind longtime viewers of the spring and early summer of 1967. At that time, Dark Shadows took place in a contemporary setting, and there were two major storylines. One was the introduction of the vampire Barnabas Collins. The other was the blackmail of matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard by seagoing con man Jason McGuire. Like Judith, Liz owns all of the Collins family’s assets; also like her, she is played by Joan Bennett. Threatening to expose the terrible secret that she was a murderer, Jason forced Liz to take him into her home, pay his debts, give him a job, and agree to marry him. When she finally balked rather than go through with the marriage, it turned out Liz wasn’t a murderer after all, the whole thing was a scam Jason cooked up.

Jason was a short-term character brought on to tie up the last non-supernatural narrative loose ends and fill time while Barnabas found his footing, as witness the casting of Dennis Patrick, who refused to sign a contract for the role since he wanted to be free to move to Los Angeles without giving more than 24 hours notice. But in those days, before the internet or soap opera magazines, the audience had no way of knowing that. They may well have thought that Barnabas would be destroyed and Jason’s oppression of Liz would become the show’s backbone.

In yesterday’s episode, a vampire was in fact destroyed. In May and June 1967, Barnabas’ chief victim was Maggie Evans, who like Rachel was played by Kathryn Leigh Scott. It was possible then that he would kill Maggie and that she would rise as a vampire, as Lucy Westenra did in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, compelling the good guys to stake her. Rachel doesn’t become a vampire, but Trask does tell the sheriff that it was the men hunting Dirk who shot her, accidentally. So when the final appearances of Dirk and Rachel lead to Judith both submitting to blackmail because of her mistaken belief that she is a murderer and taking steps towards marrying an overwhelmingly evil man, longtime viewers will remember a resolution that seemed to be on the horizon back in 1967.

Carl enters. Judith has no patience for her childish brother, and dismisses his concerns about Pansy. She tells Carl to go with Tim to the Old House on the estate. Tim took Rachel to the Old House when she was dying. Barnabas, who has traveled back in time to 1897, is staying there, and he had befriended Rachel. Tim had hoped Barnabas would help them, but it was daylight and he was not available. Rachel died in the Old House, and Tim left her corpse there when he came to the great house.

When Carl and Tim leave, Trask warns Judith that she almost gave herself away. “You must be more cautious, Judith! Even Carl was suspicious.” Judith agrees, showing that Trask is luring her into his world of lies.

We see Tim and Carl at the Old House. Rachel’s body is no longer there. Who took it, and why didn’t Tim and Carl leave with them? We are not told. Carl goes on about how wonderful Pansy is, and says he is going to the police because he thinks someone at Collinwood has done her harm. Evidently Carl’s suspicions are more highly developed than Trask realizes. Trask underestimates Carl because he is focused exclusively on Rachel and Tim. He never met Pansy, and knows nothing about her.

Carl leaves the house, and Pansy’s ghost appears to Tim. Tim is bewildered, and asks Pansy if she is looking for Barnabas. That is a natural assumption- after all, it is Barnabas’ house and Tim has no idea who Pansy is. When she vanishes into thin air, he shouts for Carl. He finds Carl not far outside the door, and describes the woman he saw. Carl jumps to the conclusion that she is Pansy, and starts calling for her. He sends Tim along to the great house, and continues searching for Pansy.

Evidently Carl’s search did not take long, because we see him standing next to Tim in the drawing room at the great house in the next shot. It is Rachel’s funeral.

Trask delivers a eulogy in which he says of Rachel that “The littlest angels have a new teacher.” Even first-time viewers are likely to laugh out loud at this ridiculous turn of phrase, and those who have been with the show for a while will see more in it than that. From childhood on, Rachel was Trask’s prisoner, first as one of the pupils imprisoned in his horrible school, then when he extorted her into staying on as a teacher with threats that he would have her prosecuted on false charges of theft and murder if she tried to leave. He made flagrant sexual advances to her as well, all the more hideous because he has been responsible for her since she was a small girl. In Rachel and Tim’s helpless personalities, we saw what can happen when a criminal like Trask is given an opportunity to turn a person into filet of human being, and an ominous sign of what might lie in store for Judith’s nephew and niece Jamison and Nora, who are currently among the inmates at Worthington Hall.

Tim and Carl bury Rachel themselves. My wife, Mrs Acilius, asked “Isn’t this usually handled by professionals?” Presumably whoever took Rachel’s body from the Old House would have been a better choice for the work than are Tim and Carl, but that isn’t the Collins way.

Tim announces his intention to get drunk. Carl brings up other things they might do, and Tim says that those will have to wait until after he gets drunk. After Tim leaves to pursue his eminently sound plan, Carl hears Pansy singing. He wonders if she is dead. He realizes that her voice is coming from the mausoleum which we know to have been Barnabas’ longtime home. Carl is played by John Karlen, who in the parts of Dark Shadows set in the 1960s plays the luckless Willie Loomis. It was Willie who inadvertently released Barnabas from the mausoleum, so longtime viewers who see this actor on this set will expect something important to happen in the story.

Episode 767: Birthdays are for people who get older

For the first several months of Dark Shadows, heiress Carolyn Collins Stoddard made no attempt to conceal her loathing of her young cousin, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy.) That changed at the beginning of 1967, during the storyline centered on David’s mother, undead blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins. Laura cast a spell that caused Carolyn’s mother, reclusive matriarch Liz (Joan Bennett,) to enter a catatonic state. When that happened, Carolyn assumed responsibility for the family’s properties and enterprises. In that position, Carolyn took on a new maturity, and the capricious and often thoughtlessly cruel character we knew in the early days was gone forever.

Laura went up in smoke in March 1967, and the next month vampire Barnabas Collins succeeded her as the show’s supernatural menace. The adults in the great house of Collinwood- Liz, Carolyn, David’s father Roger, and well-meaning governess Vicki- were all taken with Barnabas. Liz gave him the Old House on the estate to live in, and none of them could see the abundant evidence that their distant cousin was a bloodsucking ghoul from beyond the grave. But the ghost of Barnabas’ nine year old sister Sarah appeared to David and led him to suspect that something was off about the new arrival. By late September, David had all but solved the puzzle, and was trying to get the grownups to see the obvious.

In #335, broadcast in October 1967, a psychiatrist named Dr Fisher came from Boston to examine David. Dr Fisher explained Sarah as an imaginary friend David had created in his attempt to control the fear of death he had developed after seeing his mother burn up, and his claim that Barnabas was an undead monster as that fear reasserting itself. We know that this is entirely wrong as far as David goes, but it does go a long way towards explaining the appeal Dark Shadows has for its audience.

In November 1967, Vicki came unstuck in time and Dark Shadows turned into a costume drama set in the late eighteenth century. When she came home and the show returned to contemporary dress in March 1968, David’s understanding of Barnabas and the resulting danger Barnabas would kill David, which had been the chief driving force of the action when she left, had been forgotten. Later that month Barnabas was freed from the effects of the vampire curse, and he set about fighting other uncanny monsters.

Now we are in the fourteenth week of the show’s second major costume drama segment. In late 1968 and early 1969, the malign ghost of Quentin Collins ruined things for everyone. David was under his possession and on the point of death when Barnabas decided the time had come to sit in his basement, throw some I Ching wands, and meditate on them. As a result, he found himself in the year 1897, when Quentin was a living being.

Barnabas has again managed to install himself as master of the Old House, though the Collinses of 1897 are a much less trusting lot than are their descendants in the 1960s. Barnabas and Quentin are becoming friends, but Quentin is increasingly irritated with Barnabas’ refusal to tell him anything about himself beyond the cover story that he concocted when he arrived. The owner of the house, spinster Judith Collins (Joan Bennett,) is more or less satisfied with that story, but her nephew and presumptive heir, twelve year old Jamison Collins (David Henesy,) has come to share Quentin’s belief that there is far more to Barnabas than meets the eye.

Today, Judith approaches Barnabas with a question. She says that Jamison has awoken from a terrible nightmare, and that while he was thrashing about in bed he called out “David Collins is dead!” This comes as a shock to Barnabas, suggesting a message from the future that he has already failed in his weird mission.

Judith has never heard of anyone named “David Collins” and can find no record of such a person, and asks Barnabas if he, who seems to know so much about the family history, has ever heard of an ancestor with that name. This will be of interest to longtime viewers. In #153, it was established that David was the first of his name in the Collins family, and that his mother, undead blonde fire witch Laura, had insisted on calling him that. This would eventually become evidence that Laura’s evil plans for David were in place long before he was born. But in #288, David would see a portrait of a long-forgotten ancestor named “David Collins” in an old volume, and would wonder if he was named for him. The name “David” had such a profound significance in the Laura story that it seemed like a major retcon when David delivered the line, but nothing came of it. Another iteration of Laura was on the show recently, and it seems we are back to the original understanding of how David got his name.

Shaken, Barnabas says that “David Collins is no one who exists!” Judith reacts to his obvious shock and his odd phraseology with the suspicion you would expect it to elicit, but still urges Barnabas to talk with Jamison. By the time she gets the boy to the drawing room, Quentin has joined Barnabas there and is sniping at him about his interest in the family. When Barnabas asks Judith and Quentin to leave him alone with Jamison, Quentin resists, demanding to know why they can’t stay. Barnabas doesn’t give much of an explanation, and it seems to be only Judith’s unwillingness to let Quentin win any argument that leads her to insist that Barnabas get his way.

As it turns out, the reason Judith and Quentin had to leave is that the dream will be played for us as a flashback, and Joan Bennett and David Selby feature in it. We have seen a great many dream sequences on Dark Shadows, but this is the first time one has been presented in retrospect while the dreamer is telling us about it. All previous dream sequences have begun with a character in bed and have shared that character’s experience with us. Several times, including the countless sequences during the “Dream Curse” storyline of April to July 1968, there was a vague possibility that the person would either die during the dream or wake from it irreversibly changed. So even longtime viewers might be surprised when Jamison sits down with Barnabas, starts talking, and we find ourselves in his dream.

Jamison doesn’t know it, but his dream is set in 1969. After Quentin’s ghost made the great house uninhabitable, the family took refuge in the Old House. Jamison goes to its basement, where he sees Barnabas immobilized before the I Ching wands. Unable to get his attention, he goes upstairs to the front parlor, where Carolyn, Liz, and Roger are preparing a birthday party for David. Carolyn is opposed to the exercise. She manipulates a hand puppet while making unpleasant remarks in a high-pitched voice, and says that “Birthdays are for people who get older!” Evidently time is passing in 1969 while Barnabas is struggling with his mission in 1897.

When Vicki was in the 1790s from November 1967 to March 1968, we did not catch any glimpses of the period she had left. Only for a few minutes immediately after she vanished and a few more immediately before she reappeared did we see the drawing room at the great house, and those minutes represented the whole passage of time the contemporary characters experienced during the four months of Vicki’s absence. We’ve already been in 1897 longer than we were in 1795-1796 then, and Jamison’s dream suggests that contemporary time is passing more rapidly now. Since David was within hours of death when Barnabas departed so many weeks ago, his prognosis would seem grim.

The dream is one longtime viewers can imagine David having. Carolyn has been friendly to her little cousin since early 1967, but she was so nasty to him in 1966 that he might well imagine her being impatient with his failure to finish dying sooner. Roger was even more openly hostile to David in those days, and only began to show normal fatherly feeling for him after he realized that he had narrowly escaped death at Laura’s hands. But even though David returned Roger’s open hatred and tried to kill him, he did after all retain a wish for a healthier relationship with him, and so it is not surprising that Roger would appear in a dream of his as someone wishing him well.

David wonders where Barnabas and Quentin are. The adults say that Barnabas is away, but do not recognize Quentin’s name. Roger looks Quentin up in a volume of family history, and finds that there is no entry for him. He declares that this means that there can never have been any such person. Again, if we think of this as a dream of David’s that has intruded itself onto Jamison’s consciousness, it makes sense that Roger, and for that matter Liz and Carolyn, are clueless about what is really going on around them.

Roger can find no reference to Quentin in the family history. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Quentin appears, at first as the unspeaking ghost he was in when we first saw him from December 1968 to March 1969. Roger, Liz, and Carolyn vanish, and David talks with Quentin. Quentin says that the Roger, Liz, and Carolyn could not see him because he is dead, and that David can see him because he will soon be dead.

Quentin tells David that his own death was preceded by three events, and that if he had understood the significance of any of those events at the time he might have survived. The first event was the discovery of a silver bullet at Collinwood. The second was the murder of someone who might have been able to help him. The third was the turning of the one person he truly loved against Quentin; when that happened “there was almost no time left for Quentin Collins.”

Jamison asks Barnabas what the dream means. Barnabas claims not to know. Jamison replies that he thinks Barnabas knows exactly what it means, and is very upset with him for refusing to share his knowledge. In #660, David had said that “Barnabas knows lots of things he doesn’t tell anyone”; Jamison has already caught on to this same fact.

One of the people with whom Barnabas will not share his knowledge is Quentin. Even though Quentin’s ghost explicitly said in Jamison’s dream that his own demise could have been prevented, and Barnabas’ mission therefore completed, had he known about the three upcoming events, Barnabas flatly refuses to tell Quentin about them. Even when the silver bullet is discovered at Collinwood at the end of the episode, Barnabas still will not pass the dream’s warning on to Quentin.

Instead, Barnabas reenacts Dr Fisher’s part from #335. He seizes in Jamison’s description of the 1960s wardrobe he saw David, Roger, Liz, and Carolyn wearing, and says that it is the key- it shows that the whole scene is a masquerade. As Dr Fisher had said that Sarah Collins was an imaginary figure David had fabricated to contain the fear of death that had afflicted him since he saw his mother Laura die, so Barnabas claims that David Collins is a figure Jamison has fabricated to contain the fear of death that had afflicted him since he saw his mother Laura die. As Dr Fisher’s interpretation was all wrong in-universe but was quite plausible as an explanation of the audience’s responses to the show, so Barnabas’ interpretation is a grotesque lie in-universe but is quite plausible as writer Violet Welles’ description of the creative process that led to the decision to reuse Laura in the 1897 segment of the show. It allows them to pair David with Jamison and Roger with Edward, comparing and contrasting their personalities.

Episode 757: All of them witches

Undead blonde fire witch Laura is in the act of driving a stake into the heart of vampire Barnabas when she is interrupted by another undead blonde fire witch, Angelique. Angelique announces that she will always be there to thwart any attempt to stake Barnabas, which rather tends to deflate the suspense inherent in having a protagonist who is a vampire. The two of them exchange threats, and Laura finds that she can hold Angelique at bay by generating the right kind of fire.

Laura leaves Barnabas’ house. His unwilling sidekick, thoroughly human witch Magda, sees her and asks what she was doing there. Laura does not answer, but Angelique enters and tells her. Angelique says that Barnabas would doubtless wreak a terrible vengeance if he found out what had happened while Magda was away. Angelique orders Magda to go to the great house of Collinwood and fetch a fourth witch, black magic enthusiast Quentin. Magda complies reluctantly.

Quentin is falling down drunk, which is not unusual. He has a better excuse than he typically does, however, since he just found out that Magda turned him into a werewolf. He is furious to see her. He says that no matter what she thinks, he will not “lie down and die!” This elicits a laugh from Magda, who points out that he can barely stand up. She tells him that Angelique has ordered him to come to Barnabas’ house, and that he cannot oppose her.

In the house, Angelique tells Quentin he must help her defend Barnabas from Laura. Quentin moans that he is in no condition to help anyone, which only makes Angelique impatient. Unlike her and Magda, Quentin does not know that Barnabas is a vampire, so Angelique keeps reminding herself to say that Barnabas has gone away for the day and that Laura will be a threat to him when he comes back tonight. Quentin tells Angelique about a trinket Laura received from some of the gods of ancient Egypt that keeps her alive, and she sends Magda to steal it from her.

Magda goes to Laura’s cottage. Magda tells Laura that she has more reason to hate Barnabas than she does, since Barnabas enslaved her husband Sandor. She wants Barnabas to be destroyed, but if Laura tells the authorities about him Sandor, too, will be killed. The dramatic date is 1897, and the state of Maine abolished the death penalty in 1887, so Magda is afraid of an extrajudicial killing rather than an execution for complicity in Barnabas’ murders.

Laura tells her that it is necessary to expose Barnabas if he is to be destroyed, but Magda tells her of another way. She says that vampires can be killed by silver bullets through the heart. Laura goes to get money for Magda to buy silver and have it made into bullets. While she is out of the room, Magda steals the trinket. It seems that Magda has given herself a chance to get rid of both Laura and Barnabas.

Once Angelique has the trinket, she tells Quentin that he will have to perform a ceremony using his copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. He is still heavily hungover and balks at the orders, but she gives him no choice. Once he starts his incantation, he breaks into a big smile, clasps the book to his chest, and preaches the phrases like a megachurch pastor when the collection plates are circulating. We cut to Angelique. Her expression is so admiring it is hard to tell whether the reaction is the character’s or the actress’. Angelique does some mumbo-jumbo with objects in the fireplace.

In her cottage, Laura struggles. She looks frantically for the trinket, then prays to Amun-Ra. The final shot of her is filtered to distort her image. It turns her eyes into little black coals, which is an effective visual metaphor.

Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Laura has been important in the history of the show and is key to this little period of the plot, but it is fairly clear that she is a short-timer now. All she cares about is taking her children away and burning them to death so that she can renew her own existence, and she keeps saying she is on a tight deadline for that project. We can be sure she won’t succeed, and even if she does she will be off the show. So she really could die, making the cliffhanger more suspenseful than usual.

Soaps classically divided the days of the week so that very little happened on Tuesday or Wednesday, Thursdays were devoted to plot mechanics setting up a big development, Fridays would show that big development and end with a memorable cliffhanger, and Mondays would resolve the cliffhanger and give a lot of recap to bring new viewers up to speed. Dark Shadows never followed this formula. These last three episodes are a case in point. #755 was all about Laura trying and failing to figure out whether Barnabas was a vampire. That was a mid-week throwaway if ever there was one, but it aired on a Friday. Yesterday she got confirmation that he was, and we ended with a fine cliffhanger with her holding the stake and mallet beside Barnabas’ open coffin. That aired on Monday, but was a perfect Thursday scene-setter. Today, a Tuesday, we have a whiz-bang battle of the witches, with new alignments and new dangers, a great Friday climax with a cliffhanger fitting for the end of any week.

Violet Welles was far and away the best writer of dialogue on Dark Shadows, and today’s script is so full of gems that even the plot summary on the Dark Shadows wiki is full of quotes. I can hardly blame the editor for that deviation from the usual format, there is so much good stuff I would have been tempted to transcribe the entire script if someone else had not already done so.