wardrobe – Page 2 – Dark Shadows Commentary

Episode 642: Stop thinking of Jeff

Heiress Carolyn comes back to the great house of Collinwood with her date for the evening, a mysterious drifter named Chris. He keeps trying to excuse himself, but she insists he stay. Carolyn is frightened because the barmaid who served them when they were at the Blue Whale tavern the night before was killed in an ultraviolent incident a few hours after they left, and the police are, as usual, stumped. Chris is uncomfortable because he is the killer. He is a werewolf, a fact which he has so far managed to conceal from all the characters he hasn’t already killed.

Carolyn’s mother, matriarch Liz, enters. She is followed by occult expert Professor Stokes and governess Vicki. Vicki is wearing a bright green overcoat that matches Carolyn’s dress. It seems likely that the two items are part of the same outfit, and that one of the women borrowed what she is wearing from the other. Carolyn is significantly shorter than Vicki, so it is unlikely Vicki’s dress would fit her as snugly as does this one. We can assume, therefore, that Vicki is wearing Carolyn’s coat.

Carolyn in the green dress, Vicki in the matching coat. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Vicki is sobbing because Liz and Stokes prevented her from flinging herself to her death from the cliff near the house. What Vicki’s plan would have meant for Carolyn’s coat we need hardly describe. If I were Carolyn, I would keep Vicki away from my closet from now on.

Vicki is suicidal because her husband, an unpleasant man known variously as Peter and Jeff, vanished into thin air the other day, going back in time to the 1790s. Stokes and Liz are with Vicki in her bedroom when a white dot surrounded by a blue halo appears on screen, representing Peter/ Jeff’s ghost. Had Peter/ Jeff been played by a white dot all along, he might have been considerably more tolerable than he was as portrayed by Roger Davis, but that’s just another of the what-ifs we have to think about when we reflect on the show.

“Today, the part of Jeff Clark will be played by a white dot.” Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Stokes decides to hold a séance to contact Peter/ Jeff. Chris and Liz are both reluctant to join, but Stokes insists. Carolyn goes into the trance and channels, not Peter/ Jeff, but someone named “Magda.” Magda doesn’t seem to recognize Peter/ Jeff’s name. She talks about “my curse”; Peter/ Jeff was not represented as being under a curse. She says “You must stop them!” and “He must not come back!”; returning viewers know that Chris’ little sister Amy and Liz’ young nephew David have contacted a ghost named Quentin and are bringing him back into the affairs of the house. So we can conclude that Magda’s message has nothing to do with Peter/ Jeff.

As Carolyn channels Magda, she gets more and more agitated. Chris grabs her and breaks the trance. Vicki appears to be disappointed that they didn’t reach Peter/ Jeff. She resumes sobbing and runs off, and Liz follows her. Chris clutches the dazed Carolyn to him, while Stokes angrily tells him he wishes he knew why he cut the trance short.

Angry Stokes. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

The first séance on Dark Shadows took place in #170 and #171. In that one, Vicki was medium for the gracious Josette. We had been hearing about Josette since #5, had seen her ghost in #70, had met her when she led the other ghosts out of the supernatural back-world to rescue Victoria from crazed handyman Matthew in #126, and were aware of her as she played a central role in opposing the machinations of the show’s chief menace for the months that followed, undead fire witch Laura. It was exciting to think of Josette entering into conversation with multiple characters at once. Many of the subsequent séances (today’s is the ninth by the count of the Dark Shadows Wiki‘s “Séance” page) had brought up voices we were just as eager to introduce to society.

But no one wants to hear more from Peter/ Jeff. He was a drag from his first appearance, and only got harder to take the more we saw of him. Vicki’s inexplicable attachment to him dealt her character the last of the many blows that alienated her from the audience. When Liz, Stokes, and others order Vicki to stop bringing this dreary personage up they speak for all of us who would very much like to forget he ever existed. The result of today’s séance gives us hope that the makers of the show have caught on to our distaste for Peter/ Jeff, and that they will be keeping future references to him to a minimum.

Episode 638: Red Riding Hood

Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, is visiting the great house of Collinwood to sit with her sick friend Vicki. There, she meets mysterious drifter Chris Jennings. Maggie is furious with Chris, because he refuses to stay in Collinsport and take his little sister Amy in. Ever since their brother Tom died, Amy has been living at Windcliff, a mental hospital 100 miles north of town. Chris won’t explain to Maggie or anyone else why he keeps moving.

Julia Hoffman, MD, is the director of Windcliff, and she has been a permanent houseguest at Collinwood since last summer. Julia comes downstairs, and finds Maggie still reading the Riot Act to Chris. When she tells Maggie that Vicki is ready to see her, Maggie looks contemptuously at Chris, exclaims “Good!,” and stalks out.

Julia picks up where Maggie left off. Chris tells her he came to Collinwood to give her some money to pass on to Amy; Julia gives the money back to him, and says “She doesn’t need money, she needs you!” Chris won’t tell Julia where he is going or why. She asks if he will at least stop at the hospital on his way out; he says he will not.

In #632, we saw Chris visit Amy at Windcliff. Also in that episode, it became very clear that Chris is a werewolf. Returning viewers who remember that about him also know that Julia is an expert in vampires and Frankensteins with secondary interests in ghosts and witches, so if Chris came clean with her she might well have a prescription for him. But wherever Chris has been wandering, it isn’t a market where the ABC affiliate runs Dark Shadows, so he misses his opportunity to seek specialist medical attention.

Vicki has some symptoms that require Julia’s attention. On her way upstairs, she asks Chris not to leave before she comes back, since she has some more scolding to do. When Julia does come back down, she gets a telephone call from Windcliff. Amy has run away. She asks where Chris is, only to find that he did not comply with her request.

Matriarch Liz decides to go to the Old House on the estate, home of her distant cousin Barnabas. She explains that Barnabas and Vicki have always been close, so that she thinks he might be able to help calm her. Julia apologizes that she can’t accompany Liz on the walk through the woods, explaining that she has to wait by the telephone in case Windcliff calls again.

Liz is wearing a bright red dress we haven’t seen before, and as she leaves the house she puts on a bright red coat that is also new. This striking ensemble makes her look very much like Red Riding Hood. We see Chris skulking in the woods as Liz is walking nearby; he isn’t wearing character makeup, but is bending down and panting, suggesting The Big Bad Wolf. Liz hears him and calls out, asking who is there. She is looking into the camera, a look of alarm growing on her face, while we zoom in on her. Growling, snarling noises play on the soundtrack, suggesting that our point of view is that of the attacking werewolf. Liz has been a major character since episode #1; also introduced in #1 was the keeper of the Collinsport Inn, Mr Wells, whom we saw the werewolf brutally kill in #632. The show has been dropping major characters from the story and important actors from the cast recently, so it is not in fact impossible that this might really be the death of Liz.

Red Riding Hood from the Big Bad Wolf’s point of view. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

When I was a teenager and first started reading long books, page 638 was always a milestone for me. When I’d read page 638, I was always sure I would make it to the end, no matter how many pages were left. Ever since, 638 has been my lucky number. I can’t claim to be certain I will carry this blog all the way to #1245-WordPress has been getting steadily buggier lately, blogging itself is an increasingly old-fashioned pastime, and who knows what might happen to me between now and April of 2027- but it does give me a boost to have reached this point.

Episode 615: Protecting the vampire

Sheriff Patterson is at the estate of Collinwood. In yesterday’s episode, local man Joe Haskell tried to strangle old world gentleman Barnabas Collins in his house on the estate. Joe is in custody now, and the sheriff opens the episode with questions for some people in the great house.

Sheriff Patterson is played today by one-time substitute Alfred Sandor. I don’t know how much notice Sandor had that he would be playing the part, but it wasn’t enough for him to memorize his sides. He takes at least as many glances at the teleprompter as he has lines. He has a fine sonorous voice, an easy physicality, and when he can break free from the teleprompter he creates the impression that the sheriff is listening and thinking. I wish that he, rather than Vince O’Brien, had become the default Sheriff Patterson after Dana Elcar left Dark Shadows. The sheriff never gets to catch any of the bad guys, but it would be nice if he at least seemed like he had some brains.

The sheriff tells Barnabas’ inseparable friend, Julia Hoffman, MD, that Joe had claimed Barnabas was trying to kill him. Julia dismisses this as absurd. Joe says he was in Barnabas’ house recuperating from an injury, and awoke to find Barnabas offering him medicine that was poisoned. Only Julia’s intervention kept Joe from taking the medicine. Julia concedes that this is true.

Julia wondering what to say. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

New viewers might conclude from this that Julia is a compulsive truth-teller; after all, she is the only one who really knows that the medicine was poisoned, and she found that out by conducting tests which would probably consume all of it. But not only does she share her findings with the sheriff, she went out of her way to leave a sample of the poisoned medicine for the police to do follow-up testing on.

In fact, Julia is Dark Shadows‘ most fluent and most persuasive liar. It is unaccountable, not only that she confirms that the medicine was poisoned, but that the only suspects she lists when the sheriff asks who could have added the poison to the medicine are herself, Barnabas, Barnabas’ servant Willie, and Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. While she and Barnabas have already proven their willingness to pin their crimes on Willie, he is too closely associated with them to be a desirable choice for the role of patsy, and no one will believe Maggie is guilty of anything- “The Nicest Girl in Town” might as well be her legal name.

Barnabas has been under the power of vampire Angelique for a couple of weeks. Julia is an expert on vampirism; she joined the cast in the summer of 1967 when she was treating Maggie for the aftermath of abuse she suffered from Barnabas when he was a vampire. She then won her way into Barnabas’ confidence and used him as the subject for an experimental treatment she had devised to cure vampirism. After that treatment failed, another mad scientist devised a different procedure for freeing Barnabas of the effects of his curse, and it was Julia who completed that procedure successfully. She then herself spent time as the victim of another vampire, giving her another perspective on the topic and making her uniquely knowledgeable on it. She has seen abundant evidence of Barnabas’ condition in the many days since Angelique first bit him, but it is only at the end of today’s episode, when she pulls back his cravat and sees the bite marks, that she finally puts two and two together. Combined with her sudden fit of honesty when the sheriff is questioning her, her slowness in figuring out what’s going on with Barnabas makes us wonder what is wrong with her. It’s true she hasn’t been getting much sleep lately, maybe that’s the problem.

There is a little support for this idea in a scene when the sheriff meets Julia in the woods. He is coming from Barnabas’ house, she is going there. He says that he’s surprised to find her in the woods at night, and she says “The woods are- are scary.” It isn’t like her to stumble and repeat a word, nor is “scary” a word she would typically use. Educated adults on Dark Shadows favor a more formal lexical register, saying “frightening” or something like that, leaving such words as “scary” to mark a grossly uneducated character like Willie or a child like young David Collins. Perhaps this line indicates that Julia just needs a good rest.

Many commenters remark on some irregularities in Angelique’s costume, speculating that one of them might be Lara Parker’s left nipple. I don’t think so; it just looks like fabric pilling, as witness the fact that there are multiple prominences in different spots. In the first year of Dark Shadows, Joan Bennett and Alexandra Moltke Isles sometimes did wear tight-fitting tops that revealed the shape of the flesh underneath more precisely than you might expect; that happened often enough that I took it to be a conscious decision to challenge the audience to take a matter-of-fact attitude toward female anatomy, and thought the grownup thing to do was not to mention it. But the show long ago forgot about grownup attitudes, so it is only to be expected that people are still giggling about what they think they can see in this shot.

There is a small prominence in the right spot, but the more conspicuous one is some inches above and to the left. So I suggest you all calm down. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Episode 607: Bedtime

Suave warlock Nicholas Blair wakes Frankenstein’s monster Adam from a nightmare. As we have seen from night-time glimpses of fisherman Joe Haskell and the unpleasant Jeff Clark, it is standard for the young men of Collinsport to go to bed fully dressed, wearing coats, ties, and shoes. Adam is the youngest man around, having been brought to life just this May, but he is wearing pajamas.

Many commenters on fan boards assume that Adam has poor personal hygiene, perhaps because he has spent so much of his short life cooped up in hiding places without running water. But he lives in Nicholas’ house now, and unlike most characters, including Nicholas himself, he has two changes of clothing- the clothes that apparently came with the corpses from which he was assembled, a bright green sweater heiress Carolyn gave him, and his pajamas. So I think we ought to assume that he keeps himself clean.

Earlier this night, Nicholas sicced vampire Angelique on old world gentleman Barnabas Collins in order to keep Barnabas from interfering with his plans for Adam. But he discovers that Adam and Barnabas have a Corsican Brothers-type connection, so that puncture marks have appeared on Adam’s neck. Adam is also weakened, and afraid of Angelique. Nicholas concludes that Angelique will have to leave Barnabas alone. She is deeply disappointed when he tells her of this, but cannot argue, as it is almost dawn and she must get back in her coffin.

We then cut to the Blue Whale, where an unshaven Joe is drinking. Joe is another of Angelique’s victims, and as a result of her power over him has lost his job, his fiancée Maggie Evans, and his self-respect. We were first introduced to Joe in this room, back in #3. In those days, he was a hardworking young fisherman who was too sturdily honest to be tempted by a bribe to spy on the ancient and esteemed Collins family. We have seen him back on this set many times, usually as a stalwart representative of whatever is wholesome and rational. But today he is one of the old drunks leaning on the bar.

Maggie enters. She walks up to Joe. He does not react, and she starts to walk away. She turns back to him and says hello. They have a sad little chat. She says he almost seems to feel about her the way he used to; he says she has no idea how he feels. She tells him what she expects him to say, that he won’t be able to explain to her what’s going on with him; he confirms that it is so. He asks if she is there to meet Nicholas; she says she is, and asks if there is any reason she shouldn’t. He says he supposes not.

Nicholas enters. He asks Maggie if she would like to sit at the bar, but she indicates a table. Joe looks at them, and we hear his thoughts as he wishes he could explain what Angelique has done to him. This gains poignancy for regular viewers, not only because of the contrast between the broken-down figure we see today and the robust young man who so often modeled health and sanity on this same set previously, but also because less than two weeks ago, in #599, Maggie knew all about what Joe was going through. She and Joe were ready to run off together when Nicholas used his sorcery to mind-wipe their knowledge away and reset the story to its current dismal status quo.

Joe leaves the bar and goes to Nicholas’ house to call on Angelique. She is surprised to see him. She didn’t summon him, and she isn’t hungry. She tells him to go away. He says that he’s lost everything because of her, and that she is all he has left. She says he doesn’t have her either, because she is done with him. To make him even more miserable, she takes him to Nicholas’ magical mirror, which can be used to spy on whomever the user chooses, and shows Joe that Nicholas has walked Maggie home. Joe hears Maggie agree that she might fall in love with Nicholas, and watches them exchange a long, passionate kiss.

Joe asks Angelique if she cares that she has utterly ruined his life, to which she replies “Not particularly.” He says that he hates everything he has become, and that he despairs of ever being anything else. He picks up a letter opener intending to stab Angelique. Unable to bring himself to attack her, he sticks it into his own belly.

Angelique makes Joe feel like Mickey Mouse. Screenshot by Dark Shadows Before I Die.

Joel Crothers was dissatisfied with the part of Joe and with Dark Shadows generally. In a couple of months, he will leave the show and take a role on another soap. Very few viewers would have been likely to know that was coming in 1968, but Joe was a popular character who was chronically underutilized. He would have had many fans who might have shared Joe’s fear that the show will leave him in the state to which this storyline has reduced him.

Episode 601: Neither of us is a match

Recovering vampire Barnabas Collins and mad scientist Julia Hoffman are wearing complementary gray outfits today. Julia has a yellow blouse under her gray jacket; Barnabas’ shirt is white, but his tie is flecked with yellow florets that match Julia’s top. Barnabas and Julia have been inseparable for some time, but this is the first time they have coordinated their outfits. I suspect director Lela Swift and wardrobe mistress Ramse Mostoller collaborated to emphasize Barnabas and Julia’s bond.

I don’t know how Julia’s blouse shows up on your screen, but I assure you it is yellow and it matches the bits in Barnabas’ tie.

As Julia’s outfit mirrors Barnabas’ so the ring in his portrait above the mantel mirrors the one on his finger.

In separate scenes, we see heiress Carolyn and Frankenstein’s monster Adam. Adam is in love with Carolyn, and she has recently started admitting that she has deeper feelings for him than she had once believed herself capable of. Each of them wears a bright green sweater today. Adam’s sweater was a gift from Carolyn; perhaps she bought them as a matching set.

There’s also some back and forth involving unsightly ex-convict Harry Johnson and suave warlock Nicholas Blair. Their outfits are unique, which is no surprise. They are disconnected not only from each other, but also from the other characters, because they stand at opposite extremes in the story. Nicholas has the most complete understanding of what is going on and the most ability to affect events, Harry the least of both those things. Harry tries to sell Nicholas some information; Nicholas isn’t interested in paying him. A threat on his lips, Harry goes to leave Nicholas’ house. He finds that he can’t open the door. Within seconds of trying to frighten Nicholas into submission, Harry starts begging him to come open the door. That leads to some magic tricks which show just how ridiculously far out of his depth Harry is in his attempt to strong-arm Nicholas. Granted, Harry was out of his depth earlier in the episode when he tried to play hardball with Carolyn, so you’d think he’d have developed a sense of his limitations by now.

Episode 310: A logical place

Strange and troubled boy David is peering into his crystal ball.* David’s cousin Carolyn tells him it is time to go to dinner. He tells her he is looking for his friend, mysterious little girl Sarah. Sarah has been driving the story of Dark Shadows for weeks now, and the ratings keep going up. Not only does she get viewers to tune into their television sets, she even gets Carolyn to start watching the crystal ball.

Hazel Roy is billed as costume designer for this episode. Mrs Roy died in 2010, no doubt still embarrassed by David’s shirt.

Hardworking young fisherman Joe comes to the house. Joe is also looking for Sarah, and asks if David can help find her. He explains that Sarah might know who abducted Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. David says that he knows where Sarah is, but that it is a place he promised he would keep secret. He offers to go himself and bring her back. Joe is all for it, but Carolyn points out that it is after dark, David’s dinner is getting cold, and that his source of information is something he saw in his crystal ball. Joe backs down.

David recognizes the urgency of the situation. He sneaks out of the house and goes to the secret place, the Tomb of the Collinses in the old cemetery north of town. Sarah is indeed there. When David asks if she knows who abducted Maggie Evans, she replies that all she knows is that she has a friend named Maggie.

David takes that at face value. Regular viewers cannot be so sure. We know that Sarah is a ghost, and that she returned to the Earth after her brother, vampire Barnabas Collins, was loosed to prey upon the living. We do not know whether Sarah knows that she is a ghost or that Barnabas is a vampire. Nor do we know what she remembers from one apparition to the next. Clearly she remembers the people she has spent time with, but we can’t be sure if she remembers that Maggie told her that her father’s name was Evans and where she could find him. She might be telling the truth when she denies knowing anything more than Maggie’s first name, or she might be lying to protect Barnabas from exposure.

My wife, Mrs Acilius, compares Sarah to a superhero. Like a superhero, Sarah shows up, does what needs to be done to meet the immediate need, and disappears. You could almost say that she “lives in the moment,” if that were not the opposite of what ghosts do. Maggie needs a friend, Sarah shows up and befriends her. Maggie needs to escape from Barnabas, Sarah arranges her escape. Maggie needs to escape from mad scientist Julia Hoffman, Sarah breaks her out and leads her home. Barnabas needs to be stopped from killing Maggie, Sarah stops him.

Playing catch with David, Sarah throws the ball wide, and he ducks to look for it. When he looks up to complain that she threw it where he can’t find it, she has disappeared. Evidently all that needed to happen was that David had to go to the tomb- she has accomplished that, so she goes back to her rest.

David looks for her in the tomb and in the secret room. As he is about to leave, he hears voices approaching. He must honor Sarah’s secret, so he looks for a hiding place. The only place he can find is the tomb, so he stays inside.

The voices are those of Barnabas and his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie. Willie had seen Sarah through the window of their house** in the opening scene, and Barnabas has decided to come to the tomb where Sarah was buried in hopes that she will appear to him.

David realizes that Barnabas and Willie are coming into the tomb. He hides in the secret room. Little does he know that Barnabas is an expert on this room- he was trapped in a coffin there for a century or two, until Willie accidentally released him in April. That old coffin is still there, and when David hears Barnabas order Willie to open the panel he hides inside it.

We don’t know an in-universe reason why this was what needed to happen. We do know that Barnabas has been so harmless lately that the vampire story is running out of juice, so we can see why the writers would want to create a situation where Barnabas decides he has to kill David. But it is so mysterious what Sarah’s motives are or whether she is the kind of being who has what we could recognize as motives that the episode leaves us in suspense, not only as to how David will get out of danger, but what we will learn about her as a result of the incident.

*The crystal ball was a big deal for a while after dashing action hero Burke Devlin gave it to David in #48. He hasn’t really used it since #82, and Burke has since lost his connection to the plot, been recast with a less interesting actor, and turned into a hopeless schlub. It’s hard to see any way back into the story for Burke, but maybe there is hope that the crystal ball will again be a focus of interest.

**Willie was polishing the chandelier when he turned to the window and saw Sarah. Evidently he had seen her reflection in the crystal. So Sarah is twice detected today through scrying.